be a voice in your state

[TLC]

"His G20 visit pretty much solidified himself as the leader of the world." and where do you come up with this? not according to what I have seen and read. hell, he isn't even that popular here anymore. 20% drop in ratings in 2+ months. not impressive. start at 83 and drop to 63. wonder when they will do the next one. wonder if it will drop again?



STRASBOURG, France – Welcomed with thunderous cheers, President Barack Obama pledged on Friday to repair damaged relations with Europe, saying the world came together following the 2001 terrorist attacks but then "we got sidetracked by Iraq."

"We must be honest with ourselves," Obama said. "In recent years, we've allowed our alliance to drift."

The new U.S. president said that despite the bitter feelings that were generated by Iraq, the United States and its allies must stand together because "al-Qaida is still a threat."

Speaking before a French and German audience at a town-hall style gathering, Obama also encouraged a skeptical Europe to support his revamped strategy for rooting out terrorism suspects in Afghanistan and Pakistan, and said Europe should not expect America to shoulder the burden of sending in combat troops by itself.

"This is a joint problem," Obama said on the cusp of the NATO summit. "And it requires a joint effort."

He opened his appearance with a 25-minute prepared speech in which he set a dramatic, long-term goal of "a world without nuclear weapons." He said he would outline details of his nonproliferation proposal in a speech in Prague on Sunday, near the end of a European trip that is spanning five countries in eight days.

"Even with the Cold War now over, the spread of nuclear weapons or the theft of nuclear material could lead to the extermination of any city on the planet," Obama said.

He held the campaign-like event in the midst of his first European trip as president as he sought to strengthen the United States' standing in the world while working with foreign counterparts to right the troubled global economy.

Obama said the United States shares blame for the crisis, but that "every nation bears responsibility for what lies ahead — especially now."

 

[TLC]

Large numbers hide big G20 divisions
By Chris Giles in London

Published: April 2 2009 19:22 | Last updated: April 2 2009 19:22

Gordon Brown declared on Thursday that “this is the day the world came together to fight recession not with words but with a plan for economic recovery and reform.” He said the global fiscal stimulus, the largest “the world has ever seen”, amounted to $5,000bn while there was another new $1,100bn “programme of support to restore credit, growth and jobs in the world economy”.

Figures at the end of any international summit need to be examined closely, particularly those presented by the UK prime minister. His reputation for numerical inflation, repeat announcements and double counting precedes him.

EDITOR’S CHOICE
In depth: G20 - Apr-02

The emphasis on quantities rather than concrete agreements also serves to mask the big missing element in the communiqué: a new and binding commitment to specific measures to clean up the toxic assets of the world’s banking systems. On this, all the G20 agreed was that the countries would do the right thing. Rather than speeding up actions as the IMF had hoped, the leaders said: “We are committed to take all necessary actions to restore the normal flow of credit through the financial system and ensure the soundness of systemically important institutions” in line with a flexible framework agreed in mid-March.
The $5,000bn fiscal stimulus figure is far from the discretionary stimulus sought by the US and the IMF.

No new money has been committed and the UK Treasury, while trying to pin the figure on the IMF, said it related to the cumulative increase in government borrowing across the G20 between 2008 and 2010, compared with 2007.

Even UK officials were sheepish about that number. But how does the $1,100bn total add up?

Almost half – $500bn – comes in the form of new money for the IMF so that it can guarantee it has enough money to lend to countries caught up in the financial crisis.

Japan unilaterally gave $100bn last November, while the EU pledged €75bn ($101bn) in March. There were no new commitments from the US, China or Saudi Arabia on Thursday, and instead a generalised pledge for a new financing scheme of $500bn into which all these existing commitments and new money would be placed.

“We aim to make substantial progress by the Spring meetings” of the Fund in late April, an annex said.

If the new commitments to the IMF were conspicuous by their absence, the $250bn of new money in Special Drawing Rights – the Fund’s own currency – was new but not all it seems. This policy of creating new SDRs, a currency basket based on the dollar, euro, yen and sterling, is the equivalent of quantitative easing on the global scale. The IMF will create the new $250bn and will allocate this according to the voting shares its 186 members have in the Fund.

The policy is significant because it represents new money that poor countries can turn into dollars, euros, yen and sterling but rich countries will get most of this new foreign exchange reserve. The group of seven largest and most advanced world economies will get 44 per cent alone. Germany made significant concessions in agreeing to the new allocation of SDRs. It has traditionally opposed such moves because there are no strings attached to poor countries using the money and, in normal times, creating money is inflationary.

But this policy has gained momentum since Ted Truman, now an adviser of Tim Geithner, the US Treasury secretary, advocated exactly this move writing in the Financial Times in early March.

On trade finance, Mr Brown repeated a claim that 90 per cent of $14,000bn of world trade is financed by trade credit, a figure under much dispute among trade economists at the World Bank, who point out that the original research from which the figure comes suggests trade credit and cash finance the trade. Much trade is also within companies and so not reliant on trade finance. Even with those qualifiers, the $250bn figure fails to stand up to minimal testing. An annex to the communiqué says that the new money committed is only $3bn-$4bn and the $250bn figure is an aspiration for the amount of trade that will be financed over the next two years rather than the amount of new trade finance.

In contrast, the new $100bn of lending by multilateral development banks is much closer to reality. Some of the money is being brought forward from the future but much of this additional lending will be financed by borrowing on the international capital markets.

When all the sums are added together, rather than $1,100bn, the new commitments appear to be below $100bn and most of those were in train without the G20 summit. While the inflation of relatively small and old commitments into an enormous number does not render the summit a failure, the desire to produce large headline numbers as the main result of the gathering suggests the divisions and spats on other issues were considerable.

 

[DaveHawk]

jose this must be one of your relatives

This is a portion of a letter from a Washington, DC newspaper where there are various comments about a discussion.

This has to be a classic example of a failed education system!!!! Or, some really stupid people!

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[Nut]

I won't be joining the tea party.


http://www.dispatchpolitics.com/liv...-02-09_B1_2QDEC78.html?adsec=politics&sid=101


I got the phone call today stating I was going to get the $25 a week increase.


But on another good thing. I finally was able to submit a resume to a place that was actually looking for someone