| |
 |
Monday, September 22, 2008 |
AfterDowningStreet: "Russia, China and Germany refuse to countenance tougher sanctions against Iran notwithstanding the International Atomic Energy Agency's report from Vienna that its inspections of suspect activities and covert projects were stalled by Tehran's non-cooperation. Diplomats for the five permanent Security Council members and Germany, meeting at the State Department Friday, Sept 19, therefore failed to agree on a new round of sanctions ahead of their foreign ministers' meeting at UN Center next week."
11:05:30 AM 
|
|
EUObsever: "The UK and Germany believe that a new international system regulating the financial sector must be constructed to prevent a repeat of global banking crisis in the future.
Peter Steinbrueck, Germany's Social-Democrat finance minister, raised on Sunday (21 September) the idea of 'an international authority that will make the traffic rules for financial markets', while speaking to German radio, Reuters reports.
Meanwhile, UK Prime Minister Gordon Brown is to outline proposals for just such a body, run under the authority of the International Monetary fund, in a speech to the Labour Party conference on Monday, as well as domestic plans to crack down on 'irresponsible' bonuses handed out in the City, London's financial quarter.
Elsewhere, European banks have been lobbying hard to win support under the framework of the $700 billion bail-out of Wall Street announced on Friday by US treasury secretary Henry Paulson.
However, to participate in the scheme, he suggested that European taxpayers would also have to take part in bankrolling the biggest bail-out of private firms in world history: 'Our system's a global one, and I also am going to be pressing colleagues around the world to design similar systems for their banks,' he said."
Of course there should be regulation in the financial sector, not only a stop to deregulation, but some serious control of finances that would prohibit disaster capitalism, prohibit short selling and hedge funds.
Control should never be in the hands of those institutions like the IMF and the World Bank which have been instrumental in the new imperialist financial world order which did nothing to alleviate poverty, but only increased exploitation, revolution and wars.
The whole system should change, and privatisation and deregulation must be turned back. Nationalisation and regulation is what we need. Nationalisation that benefits the people, and regulation that prevents economical crises.
The present US and British governments are still imperialist in nature, and will do everything to turn the present crisis into another way to benefit big finance and let the taxpayers pay for it. The financial criminals are already loading their guns.
MarketWatch: "A group of the world's biggest hedge funds are planning to sue the U.K.'s Financial Services Authority for millions of British pounds in losses from the regulator's ban on short-selling, the Sunday Telegraph reported late Saturday, citing unnamed fund managers and lawyers."
TheNation: "It is safe to say that there is no moment more dangerous for consumers - and citizens - than one of financial panic when the federal government is moving boldly to respond.
Regulatory frameworks are restructured, rules are rewritten and authority is shifted at lightning speed, with limited or no analysis of what business or special interest in profiteering on fear and uncertainty.
So it comes as no surprise that, as the Bush White House and Democrats leaders of the Congress are hustling to avert a meltdown of American financial systems that even cautious observers are suggesting could be the worst since the Great Depression, insurance-industry lobbyists are working this week to slip a radical rewrite of regulations that currently empower states to protect consumers.
That may sound like madness. But is a scenario that consumer protection groups and state insurance commissioners suggest could unfold if a fast-tracked proposal for financial services deregulation that was written to ease if not eliminate essential oversight of multi-national insurance and financial-service firms, the 'Insurance Information Act of 2008' (H.R. 5840)."
Naomi Klein in The Guardian: "Whatever the events of this week mean, nobody should believe the overblown claims that the market crisis signals the death of 'free market' ideology. Free market ideology has always been a servant to the interests of capital, and its presence ebbs and flows depending on its usefulness to those interests.
During boom times, it's profitable to preach laissez faire, because an absentee government allows speculative bubbles to inflate. When those bubbles burst, the ideology becomes a hindrance, and it goes dormant while big government rides to the rescue. But rest assured: the ideology will come roaring back when the bailouts are done. The massive debts the public is accumulating to bail out the speculators will then become part of a global budget crisis that will be the rationalisation for deep cuts to social programmes, and for a renewed push to privatise what is left of the public sector. We will also be told that our hopes for a green future are, sadly, too costly.
This spectacle necessarily raises the question: if the state can intervene to save corporations that took reckless risks in the housing markets, why can't it intervene to prevent millions of Americans from imminent foreclosure? By the same token, if $85bn can be made instantly available to buy the insurance giant AIG, why is single-payer health care - which would protect Americans from the predatory practices of health-care insurance companies - seemingly such an unattainable dream? And if ever more corporations need taxpayer funds to stay afloat, why can't taxpayers make demands in return - like caps on executive pay, and a guarantee against more job losses?
None of this, however, will happen without huge public pressure placed on politicians in this key period. And not polite lobbying but a return to the streets and the kind of direct action that ushered in the New Deal in the 1930s. Without it, there will be superficial changes and a return, as quickly as possible, to business as usual."
NYTimes: "Congressional Democrats began to set their own terms on Sunday for a plan to rescue the nation's financial institutions, including greater legislative oversight of the Treasury Department, more direct assistance for homeowners and limits on the pay of top executives whose firms seek help."
Guardian: "A message to Blairites huddling and hankering for the good old days. Times they are a changing and they and the whole party needs to change with it.
Or as Neal Lawson, from Compass, bluntly put it: 'New Labour is not new enough, or Labour enough.'
Is this a clarion call to drop the 'new' in New Labour?"
11:01:14 AM
|
|
© Copyright 2008.
|
|
|
|
|
