Trans-Pacific Partnership (NAFTA on Steroids) Threatens Sovereignty

26 June 2014 
Joe Wolverton, II, J.D.
Source: The New American


As anyone who reads The New American knows, the are several fronts in the plutocrats’ war to eradicate our fundamental liberties and the Constitution that protects them. It is sometimes difficult to keep up with the manifold threats to the prosperity and perpetuation of the American Republic.
Of all the weapons aimed at our freedom and founding documents, though, there is perhaps none more potent than the Trans-Pacific Partnership (TPP). So imminent is the harm hiding within the still-secret “trade pact” that one author recently described the TPP as “The greatest threat to American sovereignty.”

That’s quite a claim, but, a close scrutiny of the details (scant though they may be) of the 12-nation agreement reveals that the accusation is accurate.

Since his second inauguration, President Obama has kept his foot on the TPP pedal, pushing for the quick culmination of the deliberations and the ratification of the same by the Senate.

Since his reelection in 2012, President Obama has been forced to focus on domestic issues, chief among which was the ObamaCare rollout debacle. Not that foreign policy hasn’t had its time in the foreground, speaking specifically of Syria, Ukraine, and Iraq.

Now, however, the Trans-Pacific Partnership (TPP) will be brought front and center, and the president reckons the time is right to renew his effort to solve the problems plaguing the approval of the 12-nation regional trade pact.

President Obama used the State of the Union address in January as an opportunity to request Trade Promotion Authority (TPA) from Congress. TPA is a tool that the president demands be in the U.S. trade representative’s bag when he sits down with his colleagues from the other TPP participant nations.

Not so fast. The Washington Post reported on February 19 on the pressure the president is feeling from his own party to pump the brakes on the TPP and fast track authority:

Already, Senate Majority Leader Harry M. Reid (D-Nev.) and House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.) are opposed to moving forward with granting Obama fast-track authority.

"Everyone would be well-advised just to not push this right now," Reid said in March. He's generally opposed to large global trade agreements.

Resistance from Reid and Pelosi usually would be enough to at least ease the White House push. But Obama and Vice President Biden have also been directly confronted on the issue in recent weeks by rank-and-file members. And 151 House Democrats — more than half of the caucus — co-signed a letter late last year written by Rep. Rosa DeLauro (D-Conn.) to voice opposition to fast track authority and the TPP.

Others in the president's party have pointed out what should be obvious dangers of the TPP. The Politico article contains a quote from a Democratic lawmaker:

“TPP would force Americans to compete against workers from Vietnam, where the minimum wage is $2.75 per day,” Rep. Rosa DeLauro (D-Conn.) said. “It threatens to roll back financial regulations, environmental standards and U.S laws that protect the safety of drugs and food and the toys we give our kids.”

On May 24, the Financial Times published an article on the “fast track” debate, focusing on the efforts of Senator Ron Wyden (D-Ore.) to convince a sufficient bloc of Democrats to drop their opposition to granting trade promotion authority. The Financial Times reported:

To do so, he [Wyden] argues, will mean addressing concerns over the lack of transparency that plague negotiations. He also wants to make sure any TPA bill, which traditionally sets US objectives for trade deals as well as limiting Congress’s ability to amend them, addresses modern sectors such as the trade in digital goods.

In a move that will cause concern with some US negotiating partners such as Brunei and Vietnam, Mr Wyden says he would also like to see trade agreements address human rights, something advocated by fellow Democrats.

“I think it’s the responsible thing to do and I think it will bring more support for the cause of trade expansion,” Mr Wyden says.

A post published on the blog Economy in Crisis expertly lays out the danger lurking in the fast track process:

If Congress foolishly grants Obama fast-track trade authority, President Obama alone will draft the agreement without Congressional input. Congress will have just 90 days before signing and entering into an agreement, requiring a floor vote 15 days after the bill is discharged from Committees. Congress will then have only 20 hours of debate in each House, not the normal debate and cloture or the ability to amend the legislation. If passed, the TPP will become U.S. law and will then require approval from every one of the other signatory nations before Congress can revoke or change their content. There will be all sorts of mischief lurking in the TPP pages and we will not know until it is approved.

As with the multitude of similar trade pacts the United States has formed, the ultimate aim of the TPP is the creation of a regional super government — thus the stonewalling of federal lawmakers who dare seek to assert some sort of oversight.

In the case of the TPP, the zone would be called the Free Trade Area of the Asia Pacific (FTAAP). Members of the proposed “free trade” bloc include all the current TPP participants: Malaysia, Singapore, Japan, Vietnam, Brunei, Australia, New Zealand, Peru, Mexico, Chile, Canada, and the United States. The regional trading partnership is intended to establish “a comprehensive free trade agreement across the region.”

Economic and political integration will push the once-independent United States of America into yet another collectivist bloc that will facilitate the complete dissolution of our nation and our states into no more than impotent members of a one-world government.



Predicting such a scenario isn’t exactly a prophetic act, though. The TPP has been described as “NAFTA on steroids,” and a quick rehearsal of the devastation washed up on American shores in the wake of NAFTA will serve as a cautionary tale of the terrors of the TPP.

In its report entitled “NAFTA at 20,” Public Citizen’s Global Trade Watch provided a primer on NAFTA’s enervating effect on the American economy. The paper reports:

NAFTA created new privileges and protections for foreign investors that incentivized the offshoring of investment and jobs by eliminating many of the risks normally associated with moving production to low-wage countries. NAFTA allowed foreign investors to directly challenge before foreign tribunals domestic policies and actions, demanding government compensation for policies that they claimed undermined their expected future profits. NAFTA also contained chapters that required the three countries to limit regulation of services, such as trucking and banking; extend medicine patent monopolies; limit food and product safety standards and border inspection; and waive domestic procurement preferences, such as Buy American.

Some of the specific harm caused by NAFTA is highlighted in the report:

1. $181 billion U.S. trade deficit with NAFTA partners Mexico and Canada

2. One million net U.S. jobs lost because of NAFTA

3. A doubling of immigration from Mexico

4. Larger agricultural trade deficits with Mexico and Canada

5. More than $360 million paid to corporations after “investor-state” tribunal attacks on, and rollbacks of, domestic public interest policies.

Americans who study the subject realize that the domestic legal processes being carried out in secret by the globalists sitting around the TPP negotiating table is, like NAFTA before it, an attack on American laws, American courts, American freedom of expression, American sovereignty, and the American Constitution.

Joe A. Wolverton, II, J.D. is a correspondent for The New American and travels nationwide speaking on nullification, the Second Amendment, the surveillance state, and other constitutional issues.  Follow him on Twitter @TNAJoeWolverton and he can be reached at jwolverton@thenewamerican.com.

Link: http://www.thenewamerican.com/economy/item/18572-trans-pacific-partnership-nafta-on-steroids-threatens-sovereignty.

Turkey to move towards renewable energyexc

6 June 2014
By Oguzhan Ozsoy and Bahattin Gonultas
Source: developing8.org

Turkey aims to upscale renewables by 30 percent by 2023 with the second fastest rise in demand for energy in the world after China

Turkey looks to renewable energy as an alternative source to relieve its dependency on foreign energy and fossil fuel resources such as oil, gas and coal, according to experts.

Turkey is second in the world after China in terms of its rising energy demand, and consequently the country aims to upscale renewables by 30 percent by 2023.

Turkey generated 45 percent of its electricity from natural gas, 25 percent from coal, 25 percent from hydro-power and 3 percent produced by wind power plants in 2013. 

Turkey consumed 245.5 billion kilowatt-hour (kWh) of electricity in 2013 and Turkey’s total electricity consumption for 2014 is estimated to be 256 billion kilowatt-hour (kWh), an increase of 4.1 percent compared to last year, according to the Turkish Electricity Production Company (TEIAS). 

Turkey meets half of its electricity needs from fossil fuels - 32 percent from coal and 23 percent from natural gas.

According to the study from the country's Energy Ministry, Turkey's electricity demand will reach 620 billion kilowatt per hour.

Turkey will generate 15 percent of its electricity from hydropower, 12 percent from wind and geothermal power, 11 percent from nuclear energy, 5 percent from solar power and 2 percent from others by 2030, according to the ministry.

Solar Energy Industrialists Association (GENSED) Professor Sener Oktik, said "Clean energy is the guarantee of our future energy needs and our environment," and he claimed that solar power will expand into the world’s biggest source of energy before the next century.

"Solar power will dominate, making up almost 37 percent of all energy supplies, with oil providing 10 percent, wind power 8 percent and natural gas 7 percent by 2100," said Oktik.

He also said the photovoltaics sector, which is a method of generating power by converting solar radiation into direct electricity current using semiconductors that exhibit the photovoltaic effect, is rapidly emerging in the Asia pacific region.

Turkish Wind Energy Association (TUREB) President Mustafa Serdar Ataseven said, "If Turkey increases the number of wind power plants, this could be reflected in lower energy costs for citizens because we use our own local resources, with no payment required for the energy sources and no gas emissions from wind power."

"Turkey has energy sources that are environmentally friendly. We need to work together to use these resources very effectively," Ataseven said.

Ataseven stated that energy imports to Turkey are very expensive. "Imports make the country dependent on foreign sources. We need to produce our energy locally without damaging our environment," he added. 

Turkey's wind energy has a 3,000 megawatt (MW) production capacity and will reach 4,000 MW levels by the end of the year.

Source: Anadolu Agency

 

Link:http://developing8.org/Latestnews.aspx?NewsTitle=Turkey%20to%20move%20towards%20renewable%20energyexc.

 

BRICS countries to set up their own IMF

April 14, 2014
Olga Samofalova, Vzglyad 
Source: Russia Beyond The Headlines

 

Very soon, the IMF will cease to be the world's only organization capable of rendering international financial assistance. The BRICS countries are setting up alternative institutions, including a currency reserve pool and a development bank. 

The BRICS countries (Brazil, Russia, India, China and South Africa) have made significant progress in setting up structures that would serve as an alternative to the International Monetary Fund and the World Bank, which are dominated by the U.S. and the EU. A currency reserve pool, as a replacement for the IMF, and a BRICS development bank, as a replacement for the World Bank, will begin operating as soon as in 2015, Russian Ambassador at Large Vadim Lukov has said.

Brazil has already drafted a charter for the BRICS Development Bank, while Russia is drawing up intergovernmental agreements on setting the bank up, he added.

In addition, the BRICS countries have already agreed on the amount of authorized capital for the new institutions: $100 billion each. "Talks are under way on the distribution of the initial capital of $50 billion between the partners and on the location for the headquarters of the bank. Each of the BRICS countries has expressed a considerable interest in having the headquarters on its territory," Lukov said.

Source: Russia Beyond the Headlines - http://rbth.com/business/2014/04/14/brics_countries_to_set_up_their_own_imf_35891.html)

Russia pushes BRICS nations to establish their own rating agency

April 29, 2014 
Alexei Lossan
Source: Russia Beyond the Headlines 


Standard & Poor's has downgraded Russia’s long-term foreign currency sovereign credit rating from BBB to BBB-. According to the Russian authorities, the major rating agencies are influenced by the United States, and an alternative BRICS-based rating agency should be established. China has already expressed its interest in the project.

Assistance from China

Russia is to propose to its BRICS partners the establishment of a single common credit rating agency that will compete with the Big Three – Standard & Poor's, Moody's and Fitch. 

That was the conclusion reached by participants of a meeting chaired by Russia’s First Deputy Prime Minister Igor Shuvalov, after Standard & Poor's downgraded Russia’s long-term foreign currency sovereign credit rating from BBB to BBB-.

"First of all, the case in question is the involvement of our traditional partners, such as the BRICS nations and the Eurasian Economic Union,” Konstantin Korishchenko, Head of the Department of Stock Markets and Financial Engineering at the Russian Academy of the National Economy and Public Administration, who attended the meeting, told RBTH. 

“All the BRICS nations already have national rating structures, so it is primarily a matter of mutual recognition. Our foreign partners can help each other in terms of setting standards and oversight mechanisms, but most importantly in the mutual recognition of their ratings," said Korishchenko.
  
In particular, according to sources from the RBC-Daily newspaper, a new agency could be established based on a partnership between the Russian rating agency RusRating and the Chinese agency Dagong Global. 

The U.S. agency Egan-Jones Ratings, which has long dreamed of pushing back the Big Three, could help facilitate the process. Furthermore, Dagong Global has already held talks with RusRating in Beijing at a BRICS meeting: The company has proposed to start negotiations to establish a new international credit rating agency to be based in the BRICS nations.

According to Mikhail Kuzmin, an analyst at Investcafé, Dagong Global is represented today mainly domestically, although the agency does assign sovereign ratings to various countries. In turn, the U.S.’s Egan-Jones Ratings mainly assigns ratings to debt instruments including bond issues, bank loans, etc.
As noted by Vadim Vedernikov, Deputy Director of the Research and Risk Management Department at UFS IC, both agencies are known for their long-term activities on assigning ratings to corporate and sovereign issuers, as they operate in "hot" credit markets such as China and the United States. 

The project to set up a single common agency has already been called the Universal Credit Rating Group. 

"The ratings which the Universal Credit Rating Group could start assigning to Russian companies could gain a degree of recognition in foreign investment circles approaching that of the ratings which have been assigned by the American Three,” says Vedernikov.

Alternative solutions
The other solution is to cooperate with ARC Ratings, the international consortium of agencies from Portugal, India, South Africa, Malaysia and Brazil.
Source: Russia Beyond the Headlines - http://rbth.com/business/2014/04/29/russia_pushes_brics_nations_to_establish_their_own_rating_agency_36307.html?code=878965eda68282ffc73407b5665fdc42)

Waking up to a World Currency

15 September 2010
by  Alex Newman
Source: The New American

If all the advocates of a world fiat currency (a currency not backed by a precious commodity like gold) were to scream at once, workers in world capitals, business centers, colleges, and news media may be deafened. And if global financial elites have their way, America will move quickly toward accepting a planetary fiat currency issued by a world central bank. Calls for a new global monetary regime are nothing new. After World War II left the world’s financial system in disarray, political leaders and financial gurus met at Bretton Woods, New Hampshire, from July 1-22, 1944, to plan the post-war economic order. Economist John Maynard Keynes and the British government proposed the creation of a world currency called the “bancor,” and the U.S. government proposed a world currency to be known as “unitas.” But for a lot of reasons, mostly American reluctance, the schemes never took off. Instead, the Bretton Woods agreement resulted in the U.S. dollar — its value at the time tied to gold — being crowned “the” world reserve currency. But the dollar’s place as the unchallenged world currency began being displaced with the dollar’s decoupling from gold in 1971. A new system emerged: The dollar retained its position as the world’s reserve currency, but now it was backed not by gold, but only by trust and the fact that oil and other commodities were traded around the world in dollars. Since then, the U.S. government has been growing itself and its power through creating money via the inflationary power of the Federal Reserve, thus making the dollar increasingly less stable, prompting vigorous calls for a world currency to stabilize world financial markets. That has especially been true as markets have imploded.

Leading the Charge
Naturally, prominent globalist leaders and central bankers have been at the forefront of promoting world-currency schemes. And they are confident that the groundwork has been sufficiently laid to achieve the goal. Russian President Dmitry Medvedev has been among the most vocal supporters. At the G-8 meeting last year, he actually pulled a “united future world currency” coin out of his pocket bearing the words “unity in diversity.” Then, he explained to the audience that it “means they’re getting ready. I think it’s a good sign that we understand how interdependent we are.” In June of this year, he was at it again. “We are making plans for the future. We are talking about creating other reserve currencies, and we are counting on other countries to understand this,” Medvedev told an economic forum in St. Petersburg, Russia.

At the same forum, French President Nicolas Sarkozy concurred, saying world powers “should think together about a new international currency system” at the upcoming G-20 summit. He also said the world’s financial system was “outdated” and should be replaced. “We all need to think about the foundations for a new international financial system,” he urged. “We’ve been based on the Bretton Woods institutions of 1945, when our American friends were the only superpower. My question is: Are we still in 1945? The answer here is, ‘no.’”

Numerous other prominent national leaders have jumped on the international fiat-currency bandwagon as well — too many to list in a short article. But perhaps more importantly, powerful central bankers around the world are also pushing the issue. Former Fed boss and current chairman of Obama’s “Economic Recovery Advisory Board” Paul Volcker, for example, has long been a strong proponent of a global fiat currency and a global central bank. He is widely reported to have said, “A global economy needs a global currency.” And he has repeatedly called for such a system, hoping to see it emerge during his lifetime.

In China, the “people’s” central-bank boss Zhou Xiaochuan has also frequently called for a new reserve currency. In a 2009 report published on the central bank’s website entitled “Reform the International Monetary System,” Xiaochuan explained that “the desirable goal of reforming the international monetary system, therefore, is to create an international reserve currency that is disconnected from individual nations and is able to remain stable in the long run, thus removing the inherent deficiencies caused by using credit-based national currencies.”

When asked about the communist-Chinese regime’s idea at a Council on Foreign Relations event, tax-dodging U.S. Treasury Secretary Timothy Geithner, a regular proponent of global regulation, after acknowledging that he had not read it yet, said, “We’re actually quite open to that.” The dollar immediately plunged. And while Geithner promptly backtracked on his statement, as the saying goes, the cat was already out of the bag.

At a separate Council on Foreign Relations event earlier this year, European Central Bank boss Jean-Claude Trichet gave a speech entitled “Global Governance Today.” While different in important respects from calls to empower the International Monetary Fund as the world central bank, which seems to be the consensus view on how to quickly achieve a world currency, Trichet offered a vision that would ultimately lead to the same end. “We need a set of rules, institutions, informal groupings and cooperation mechanisms that we call ‘global governance,’” he said, praising the progress that has already been made in “strengthening the mandate of existing international institutions” but noting that “no market can survive without a set of rules. This is particularly true at the international level.”

In terms of the international monetary system, he applauded the fact that central banks around the world were already “able to take quick, decisive and coordinated action at short notice.” But “the crisis also showed that gaps in the system of global governance — in terms of both efficiency and legitimacy — have to be filled,” he explained, pointing out that the process was already ongoing.

“Overall, the system is moving decisively towards genuine global governance that is much more inclusive,” Trichet said. “The significant transformation of global governance that we are engineering today is illustrated by three examples. First, the emergence of the G20 as the prime group for global economic governance at the level of ministers, governors and heads of state or government. Second, the establishment of the Global Economy Meeting of central bank governors under the auspices of the [Bank for International Settlements (BIS)] as the prime group for the governance of central bank cooperation. And third, the extension of Financial Stability Board membership to include all the systemic emerging market economies.” In other words, the BIS, the central bank of central banks (which was almost disbanded for supporting the Nazis), is becoming increasingly powerful, along with global financial regulatory institutions. And for Trichet, this is a positive development.

He added, “Global governance is of the essence to improve decisively the resilience of the global financial system,” and concluded by saying, “The crisis has driven an historic change in the framework of global governance. In my view this transformation was overdue.” And indeed, the economic crisis has given a major boost to advocates of a world financial and monetary regime.

Global Institutions
With the onset of the global financial crisis, which interestingly enough was largely brought on by an asset bubble caused via currency manipulation by the United States’ version of a central bank — the Federal Reserve — international authorities have become increasingly vocal about the supposed need for a world fiat currency controlled by a single world central bank. The United Nations and the International Monetary Fund are the most prominent among them. And both of these quasi-governmental institutions have recently issued reports blasting the dollar and calling for a world fiat currency.

“A new global reserve system could be created, one that no longer relies on the United States dollar as the single major reserve currency,” said the UN’s World Economic and Social Survey for 2010. “The dollar has proved not to be a stable store of value, which is a requisite for a stable reserve currency.” The new UN report said that the IMF should be given the authority to print its own fiat currency, claiming that the new system “must not be based on a single currency or even multiple national currencies but instead, should permit the emission of international liquidity — such as [Special Drawing Rights] — to create a more stable global financial system.” SDRs are “assets” issued by the IMF with a value currently based on multiple national fiat currencies.

Late last year, another UN report from a different arm of the institution offered similar analyses and suggestions. “In the discussion about necessary reforms of the international monetary and financial system, the problem of the United States dollar serving as the main international reserve asset has received renewed attention,” said the report, published by the UN Conference on Trade and Development. The paper also pointed to SDRs as the potential international reserve currency.

Earlier in 2009, another UN panel also called for talks on setting up a new international monetary system and moving away from the dollar. And the calls are only becoming more frequent and respected as time goes on.

Then there is the International Monetary Fund, a likely candidate for the position of global central banker, which in some ways has already taken on the role. Like other figures within the organization, IMF boss Dominique Strauss-Kahn — an avowed socialist — has repeatedly called for global regulation and a world currency controlled by the “Fund.”

“One day, the fund might even be called upon to provide a globally issued reserve asset, similar to — but in important respects different from — the SDR,” he explained in a speech earlier this year, saying it would be “intellectually healthy to explore” the creation of a new IMF-backed world reserve currency before it is “needed.” A few months later, he told the High-Level Conference on the International Monetary System that “crisis is an opportunity” and “a new global currency issued by a global central bank, with robust governance and institutional features, could provide a nominal anchor and risk-free asset for the system.”

And it’s not just Strauss-Kahn. In a barely noticed paper published in April of this year, the Fund went even further than the UN or Strauss-Kahn. It outlined the future global fiat currency, to be run by a transformed and newly empowered IMF.

The paper, published by the IMF’s Strategy, Policy, and Review Department and entitled “Reserve Accumulation and International Monetary Stability,” offers very specific proposals which — not surprisingly — would involve handing it massive new powers over the global economy and “making the special drawing right (SDR) the principal reserve asset in the [International Monetary System].” And this is merely the short-term policy; the IMF wants to go further, with the creation of a global currency called the bancor.

Of course, even the IMF says its schemes will not likely come about quickly or easily. “It is understood that some of the ideas discussed are unlikely to materialize in the foreseeable future absent a dramatic shift in appetite for international cooperation,” it says in the report. Some analysts have suggested a war with Iran or a crash of China’s economy could trigger such a shift.

Trend Toward Monetary Unions
Monetary unions, where a collection of national governments surrender their power over money to international institutions, are popping up around the world. In recent decades, there has been a declining number of currencies as more countries abandon their own currencies to use a multinational currency, such as the euro.

Africa already contains a patchwork of regional supranational currencies, including one in West Africa, another in Central Africa, and a group of countries that use the South African Rand. A plan to introduce a continental currency — sometimes referred to as the “afro” — controlled by the already existing African Union’s African Central Bank is set for completion in less than two decades. In Asia, calls for a regional monetary union are growing stronger. Arabian nations, through the Gulf Cooperation Council, are planning their own common currency right now.

In closer proximity to the United States, a group of Caribbean nations formed the Eastern Caribbean Currency Union. All use the East Caribbean dollar. More recently, a number of leftist Latin American regimes created the SUCRE under the leadership of socialist despot Hugo Chavez. And a South American currency is currently in the works. Significant numbers of nations have also unilaterally abandoned their own currencies and switched to the dollar, such as Ecuador and El Salvador. In Europe, while not officially joining the Eurozone, numerous small countries have also switched to the euro. And this is exactly what many proponents of a global fiat currency are promoting as a means to that end. Once there are fewer currencies and the principal of supranational currency is established, such as has already occurred with the euro, it becomes easier to simply merge them.

A 2007 article for the Council on Foreign Relations’ magazine Foreign Affairs entitled “The End of National Currency” offered some insight into the strategy being pursued. Benn Steil, the powerful group’s director of international economics, suggests a very specific proposal: “Governments should replace national currencies with the dollar or the euro or, in the case of Asia, collaborate to produce a new multinational currency over a comparably large and economically diversified area.... Most of the world’s smaller and poorer countries would clearly be best off unilaterally adopting the dollar or the euro, which would enable their safe and rapid integration into global financial markets. Latin American countries should dollarize; eastern European countries and Turkey, euroize.”

And that is precisely the argument of the most prominent global currency enthusiasts. Columbia economics Professor Robert Mundell, who could not be reached by press time, is one of them. He is a Nobel-prize winner, a key advisor to the communist Chinese regime, and also known as the “father” of the euro. And he argues that the world should move toward a new global currency system called the “DEY” — a “basket” of dollars, euros, and yen controlled and issued by a global central bank, possibly a newly empowered IMF. Eventually, the architecture would lead to a truly global fiat currency.

“My approach is rather to start out with arrangements for stabilizing exchange rates, and move from there to a global currency. It would start off from the situation as it is at present and gradually move it toward the desired solution. We could start off with the three big currencies in the world, the dollar, euro, and yen, and with specified weights, make a basket of them into a unit that could be called the DEY,” Mundell explained in a 2005 speech called “The case for a world currency.” “The DEY could then become the platform on which to build a global currency, which I shall call the INTOR.”

His “basic plan” for the world currency would be implemented in three stages, he said. First, stabilization of exchange rates. Next, a monetary union under the DEY consisting of most of the world’s economy. And finally, the creation of the INTOR. While Mundell acknowledged that it might be difficult, he expressed optimism about the currency’s prospects, saying, “The next big crisis might be the occasion for a reconvening of a Bretton Woods type conference to establish the conditions for a new international monetary system.” With the United States looking at a likely second round of economic turmoil and its dollar becoming increasingly unstable as interest payments on the national debt take up an ever larger part of all taxes collected, such a “crisis” is probably closer than Americans would like to imagine.

Other prominent advocates agree with the Mundell strategy for achieving a world currency managed by a global central bank. “We’ll probably get there by the merger of monetary unions,” explained Morrison Bonpasse, founder and president of the Single Global Currency Association and author of The Single Global Currency: Common Cents for the World, in an interview with The New American. “But there are several possible routes. One is to continue the current regionalization of currencies, to include North America, and creation, expansion and merger of monetary unions; and then combine those currencies into one. Another is for smaller countries to continue to ‘ize’ their nations’ legal tender, as in ‘dollarize’ and ‘euroize.’ … Once the ‘tipping point’ is reached where one currency supports approximately 40-50 percent of the world’s GDP, the movement will accelerate to anoint that currency as the single global currency.” The organization’s target date: 2024.

Clearly, the move toward regional currencies is picking up traction, especially during this decade.

Already Emerging
Some argue that the global central bank and all that it entails are already taking solid form or, worse, already here.

“What the IMF is doing is, they’ve positioned themselves and are actually beginning the process of issuing debt for the first time,” explained James Rickards, senior managing director for market intelligence and co-head of threat finance and market intelligence at Omnis, a leading consulting firm. “So what that means is the IMF is acting like a central bank because it’s leveraging its balance sheet,” he told The New American, saying SDRs could replace the dollar and become the international reserve currency in two to five years. And it’s already going on. “In terms of paper currency, a leveraged balance sheet, and the creation of liquidity out of thin air, the IMF is clearly the way they’re going because, as I said, they’ve already done it.... It’s not speculation, it’s actually happening,” he said, noting that the shift away from dollars has already started and would accelerate.

The IMF has indeed taken some extraordinary steps recently. Last year, for example, for the first time in the Fund’s history, it issued bonds denominated in SDRs. The Chinese regime promptly gobbled up $50 billion worth, with the IMF saying in a statement that the sale “offers China a safe investment instrument” and that it was part of a broader plan to “boost the Fund’s capacity to help its membership — particularly the developing and emerging market countries — weather the global financial crisis, and facilitate an early recovery of the global economy.” And of course, there’s still more.

“The other thing the IMF has done — not for the first time, really for the second time, but the first time in quite a large size — is to issue SDRs,” explained Rickards. “The IMF is issuing its own paper currency,” and, like all fiat currencies, it’s backed by nothing, Rickards said. “I view all of these as pilot programs. In other words, they’re kind of testing the plumbing.... Now the IMF is positioned to — in effect, and I think this is the plan — to become a global central bank which can issue its own currency called SDRs, leverage its balance sheet through borrowing, and then create assets by making loans and investing in securities, all under the auspices of the IMF executive committee, which is basically the same set of people as the G20.”

At recent G20 confabs, the centralization of the world’s monetary system has indeed been a hot topic. Headlines around the world announced — boldly and with good cause — the imminent arrival of a “new world order,” a global currency, a world central bank, and a planetary monetary-policy regime. The early 2009 G20 declaration, for example, said, “We have agreed to support a general SDR allocation which will inject $250 billion into the world economy and increase global liquidity.” In simpler terms, printing international fiat money.

Now, the regulatory regime is going global, too. And fast. The same G20 meeting also led to the Financial Stability Forum being transformed into the Financial Stability Board, usurping financial regulatory authority traditionally held by national central banks around the world. The new “board” is rapidly becoming a global financial regulator as its mandate expands to include overseeing action to address vulnerabilities in the financial system, setting guidelines, and even managing “contingency planning for cross-border crisis management.”

Media Support
No strategy for dramatic, unpopular change would be complete without a public media campaign. So, of course, among the prominent voices throwing their weight behind a global fiat currency and a global central bank are some of the most influential media outlets in the world. Already in 1988, The Economist wrote an article predicting a global currency within 30 years, saying, “This means a big loss of economic sovereignty, but the trends that make the [new hypothetical global currency] so appealing are taking that sovereignty away in any case.”

A decade later, the New York Times took up the issue with a piece from prominent CFR insider and global central bank promoter Jeffrey Garten calling for a “global Fed.” After praising the development of various unconstitutional institutions in the United States, most notably the Federal Reserve, Garten wrote, “The world needs an institution that has a hand on the economic rudder when the seas become stormy. It needs a global central bank.” Ten years after that, Garten penned a piece for the Financial Times, once again advocating “the establishment of a Global Monetary Authority.”

In a 2008 Newsweek article entitled “We Need a Bank of the World,” Garten claimed, “The financial crisis is global, and only an international central bank can deal with it.” The piece called for world leaders to “begin laying the groundwork for establishing a global central bank” because “the Fed no longer has the capability to lead singlehandedly.”

The year after that article, Garten was at it again, this time in Businessweek. “If critics could suspend the hyperventilating for a few minutes, they’d realize a global central bank is becoming a necessity in today’s complex, interconnected world economy,” he wrote. The piece also cites Tim “TurboTax” Geithner, who said, “We need a common global solution to these markets, not separate regional solutions.”

Meanwhile, the Washington Post ran a 2009 story praising the International Monetary Fund’s transformation into a bank of the world. “Bowing to a new economic world order, the IMF would grant fresh powers to the likes of China, India and Brazil. It would have vastly expanded authority to act as a global banker to governments rich and poor,” wrote Post staff writer Anthony Faiola. “And with more flexibility to effectively print its own money, it would have the ability to inject liquidity into global markets in a way once limited to major central banks.” The article also mentioned “the IMF’s transformation into a veritable United Nations for the global economy” and quoted various experts praising the developments.

Even the supposedly more free-market-friendly press in the United States has also backed the scheme. “World money, with a world central bank, seems a next logical step,” wrote Wall Street Journal editor emeritus Robert Bartley in a 2003 opinion piece for the newspaper. “A world money would be an extraordinary boon to international stability.” He was writing from Mundell’s monetary conference at his castle in Italy.

The world elite is on a mission. Its plan to impose a global fiat monetary regime on humanity is well under way. And if serious resistance is not mounted soon, the new world monetary order could be just around the corner.

Link:  http://www.thenewamerican.com/economy/economics/item/4498-waking-up-to-a-world-currency.

Netanyahu and Gov. Brown to sign pro-business pact

13 hours ago
By MARTHA MENDOZA
Source: Yahoo Finance

MOUNTAIN VIEW, Calif. (AP) — Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu is making a swing through the Silicon Valley where he met with high-tech leaders and signed a pro-business agreement with Gov. Jerry Brown.

Sitting next to Netanyahu, Brown said Wednesday their agreement builds on their respective strengths in research and technology to confront critical problems both Israel and California face including drought and cybersecurity.

Wednesday's visit followed Netanyahu's meetings with President Barack Obama in Washington, D.C., on Monday and his appearance Tuesday at the Los Angeles premiere of a television documentary that features him.

Netanyahu planned stops at Stanford University, Apple Inc. in Cupertino, a meeting with WhatsApp co-founder Jan Koum, a Jewish Ukrainian immigrant who sold his company to Facebook Inc. for $19 billion last month.

Foreign companies in Turkey face squeeze

February 25, 2014
By Tom Bergin and Michael Shields
Source: Yahoo News

LONDON/VIENNA (Reuters) - Foreign companies in Turkey are beginning to feel the effects of a sagging currency, rising inflation and a growing political power struggle, adding to fears the country may not be the source of future growth that some companies had hoped.

As Western companies unveiled their 2013 results in recent weeks, most of those with operations in Turkey said they were committed to continuing to invest in the country. However, many acknowledged bumps in their performance there.

Like other developing economies, Turkey has been battered in recent months by U.S. Federal Reserve plans to reduce its monetary stimulus. This had allowed financial investors to borrow cheaply in the United States and invest in high yielding securities in faster growing, lesser developed economies.

But Turkey has been hit particularly badly by a power struggle between Prime Minister Tayyip Erdogan and an Islamic cleric he accuses of concocting a corruption scandal in an attempt to undermine him.

The corruption scandal along with rising inflation and sustained falls in the lira have prompted rating agencies to cut their outlook for Turkey and warn there could be a hard economic landing.

Companies are watching the fallout closely.

U.S. carmaker Ford and German auto parts maker ElringKlinger, which have plants in the country, said the drop in the lira was eating into earnings. Foreign owned factories rely heavily on foreign-made components and the weak lira is pushing up the price of these.

British mobile phone group Vodafone said revenue growth at its Turkish unit dropped almost 80 percent in the last quarter of 2013, compared to the same period of 2012, due to a mix of tougher regulation and price pressure.

Austrian oil group OMV, which is among the most reliant on Turkey for earnings of all the foreign investors there said the economic volatility was challenging the very profitability of its Petrol Ofisi filling station and lubricants unit.

Joe Kaeser, Chief Executive of German engineering group, Siemens, told investors in late January that his perception of Turkey had shifted from being a market that was "peachy" for businesses that sell infrastructure, energy and healthcare equipment, to one where he now grouped the country among riskier plays like Ukraine.

"If you had asked me a year ago or two years ago about Turkey, I would have told you this is the place to be," he said on an investor call.

"In the meantime we do see that those geopolitical impacts have been spreading uncertainty also into the economic development," he added.

BUOYANT MESSAGES

Turkey has enjoyed strong economic growth since Erdogan came to power in 2002.

This and trade agreements with the European Union helped make the country a magnet for European manufacturers which wanted to access cheap labor, or consumer goods groups which wanted to participate in an increasingly valuable market.

While the current instability is prompting some companies to tighten risk management - BASF said it was reducing working capital so that less cash was tied up in Turkey - none of the more than a dozen companies contacted by Reuters said they had plans to scale back investment.

"We monitor the situation daily but in the medium term we remain positive and ready to invest," UniCredit's CEO Federico Ghizzoni said earlier this month. He added the bank planned to hire 2,000 people and open 60 branches in Turkey this year.

Kasper Rorsted, CEO of detergent maker Henkel, which is building a factory in Turkey, said while the weaker lira did force his company to cut prices, such fluctuations were common in emerging markets and that his eye remained on the long term.

"The high inflation you right now have in Turkey with a big devaluation of the Turkish lira … you have to deal with it," said in a television interview with Reuters Insider.

European companies' commitment to Turkey is partly thanks stagnant markets at home, analysts say.

But the view that Turkey is experiencing a temporary blip and that growth and demand will recover to the vigorous levels seen in the 2000s is too optimistic, said Fadi Hakura, Head of Turkey Project at think tank Chatham House.

"Turkey has entered the middle income trap. Without fundamental reform, such as upgrading its institutions for governance and its human capital (through better education), Turkey will likely see growth of only 2 to 4 percent over the long term," he said, adding the country enjoyed around 5.2 percent growth since 2002.
Hakura said such fundamental reform currently looked unlikely and consequently, the authorities were likely to continue to rely on existing measures such as higher interest rates and lending restrictions to tackle the country's balance of payments problems.

Such measures are bad news for companies seeking to tap the Turkish consumer.

"Consumer based businesses will not likely enjoy the same revenues and profits in the future that they have experienced over the last decade," Hakura said.

(Additional reporting by Victoria Bryan, Maria Sheahan and Frank Siebelt in Frankfurt, Nicholas Tattersall and Alsi Kandemir in Istanbul, James Davey and Paul Sandle in London, Silvia Aloisi, Danilo Masoni and Isla Binnie, Milan, Robert-Jan Bartunek in Brussels, Tom Kaeckenhoff in Duesseldorf)

Turkey signs $3.5 bln deal for Sikorsky helicopters

February 21, 2014 
By Seda Sezer and Andrea Shalal 
Source:  Yahoo Finance

Feb 21 (Reuters) - Turkey signed a deal worth $3.5 billion on Friday to buy helicopters from United Technologies Corp's Sikorsky Aircraft unit, finalizing an order originally agreed upon in 2011, the prime minister said.

The agreement includes options that analysts say could result in billions of dollars of additional orders over the next three decades.

The 109 helicopters, a version of Sikorsky's popular Black Hawk, will be assembled in Turkey. The main contractor is Turkish Aerospace Industries with components to be supplied by Sikorsky, Aselsan and other Turkish companies.

Sikorsky said the deal marked the start of an important partnership with Turkish industry.

"Turkey is such an important market in terms of being a large customer, and it is also strategically important in terms of who they are in the world," Sikorsky President Mick Maurer said in a telephone interview.

He said the agreement would allow Turkish industry to develop the capability to produce nearly every part of the helicopter, including a newly designed Turkish cockpit.

Maurer declined to give many details about the new agreement but said it would give his company a second source for many of the helicopter's components.

He said Sikorsky would work with Turkey to market the international version of the Black Hawk in other countries, leveraging Turkey's existing relationships in those areas and generating additional orders for Turkish suppliers.

"We're going out arm in arm, as we bring in other sales outside of Turkey that will be supplied by the new supply chain," Maurer said.

Maurer said the company expected continued demand for the helicopter in Asia, the Middle East and Europe.

Even if the co-marketing efforts do not pan out, the deal still gives Sikorsky access to "one of the biggest export helicopter markets in the world," said aerospace analyst Richard Aboulafia. "Turkey has requirements that go way beyond these numbers," he said.

Virginia-based defense consultant Jim McAleese said the deal would help Sikorsky weather a downturn in U.S. helicopter orders and underscored the "franchise value" of the company just weeks after speculation that United Technologies could spin it off as a low-value asset.

"This could not have come at a better time," McAleese said.

Despite the deal, Sikorsky on Friday announced it would begin laying off 600 workers in coming weeks, citing continued "challenging and unstable economic conditions."

Sam Mehta, president of Sikorsky's Defense Systems and Services division, said the deal marked the start of a 30-year relationship, and included options for a wide range of Turkish government agencies to buy versions of the helicopter.

It also opened opportunities for servicing and repairing the helicopters, he said.

Link:  http://finance.yahoo.com/news/turkey-signs-3-5-bln-002523659.html.

Turkey Promises Orthodox Policy at Private Central Bank Meeting

Feb 19, 2014
By Onur Ant
Source: Bloomberg News

Turkey’s central bank promised economists that its policy is becoming simpler and more predictable, according to two people who attended a private meeting in Ankara today.

Deputy Governor Mehmet Yorukoglu and Abdullah Yavas, a member of the monetary policy committee, told the economists that the bank is moving toward a more orthodox policy where the benchmark one-week repurchase rate will be the main instrument for funding banks, according to Bora Tamer Yilmaz of Ziraat Investment and Inanc Sozer of Odeabank AS, who were at the meeting.

“Bank officials said that they wanted their policies to be viewed as more orthodox and more predictable,” Yilmaz said.

Turkey’s central bank developed an interest-rate corridor since 2010 that allowed it to vary monetary conditions on a daily basis. Critics said the system was over-complicated, and called it a way of circumventing political opposition to higher rates. The bank reversed course last month, raising all its main rates at an emergency meeting as it sought to stem a plunge in the lira.

The bank will keep policy tight until it’s confident that inflation, which was 7.8 percent last month, is slowing toward the target of 5 percent by mid-2015, Sozer said.

The move toward orthodoxy suggests the rates corridor will be symmetrical, with the overnight lending and borrowing rates that mark its boundary at an equal distance from the benchmark, Yilmaz said.

Link:  http://www.bloomberg.com/news/2014-02-19/turkey-promises-orthodox-policy-at-private-central-bank-meeting.html?cmpid=yhoo.
 

Halkbank Profit Beats Estimates After Former CEO’s Arrest

Feb 18, 2014 
By Isobel Finkel
Source: Bloomberg News

Turkiye Halk Bankasi AS (HALKB) reported full-year profit that beat estimates, two months after the Turkish lender’s chief executive officer was arrested amid a corruption probe.
Net income rose to 2.75 billion liras ($1.3 billion) from 2.6 billion liras in 2012, the Istanbul-based lender said in a stock exchange filing today. That beat the 2.7 billion-lira estimate of 22 analysts surveyed by Bloomberg.

Halkbank stock has dropped 24 percent in Istanbul trading since former CEO Suleyman Aslan was arrested on Dec. 17 after police found $4.5 million in shoe boxes at his home. His lawyer has said the money was charitable donations Aslan had gathered to build Islamic schools in Turkey and Macedonia. Aslan is awaiting trial.

Ali Fuat Taskesenlioglu, who was named CEO earlier this month, made no mention of his predecessor in yesterday’s statement. Instead, he commented on how Halkbank will work toward Turkey’s “2023 vision” by supporting the import and export activities of small and medium-sized Turkish companies. The year 2023 is the 100th anniversary of the founding of the Turkish Republic and is a symbolic date for Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan’s Justice and Development party.

Shares Unchanged

Halkbank fell 0.4 percent to 11.95 liras as of 3:16 p.m. in Istanbul trading.

“While earnings exceeded our forecast, the quality was weak,” Duygun Kutucu, an analyst at Burgan Yatirim Menkul Degerler AS, said in an e-mailed report. “The decline in the loan-deposit spread and the below-sector fee growth signify a mediocre operating performance.”

Halkbank’s cost of deposits in the fourth quarter increased 50 basis points to 4.8 percent from the third quarter, its earnings presentation showed. The yield it receives on loans remained at 9.4 percent, down from 11.3 percent in the year-earlier period. The lender’s loan-to-deposit ratio was 84 percent, which Elvan Oztabak, head of investor relations, described as a “comfortable level” compared with the industry average of 111 percent.

Deputy General Manager Mehmet Hakan Atilla said on a conference call with reporters the bank hired three external auditors to review its transactions and compliance procedures. “None of them submitted any negative findings or notices,” he said.

Halkbank’s fourth-quarter net income was 741 million liras, little changed from a year-earlier and beating the 682 million-lira mean estimate of 17 analysts surveyed by Bloomberg. Earnings have been better than analysts’ estimates for at least the past eight quarters.

Link:   http://www.bloomberg.com/news/2014-02-17/halkbank-profit-beats-estimates-following-former-ceo-s-arrest.html?cmpid=yhoo.

Abandoning Egypt: Travel Operators Report Further Declines

Feb 11, 2014
 By  By Christina Zander
Source: The Wall Street Journal

 Companies in the European travel business are crossing their fingers for Egypt, after political unrest in late 2013 put another dent in the North African nation’s appeal as a vacation destination.

British travel companies Thomas CookTCG.LN -0.05% and TUITT.LN +1.29%, and Helsinki-based FinnairFIA1S.HE -0.74% all cited slack demand for winter holidays in their most recent earnings calls. “The whole European travel industry was hit by the decline in the Egypt market and we were no exception,” Thomas Cook Chief Executive Harriet Green said in a call Tuesday.

The direct impact could be seen at Finnair, a Nordic carrier with hefty reliance on flights to warmer locales, such as Thailand or Southern Europe. The airline said fourth-quarter leisure traffic sagged 20% compared with the prior year, and a lack of interest in Egypt played “a major part” in the decline.

Finland’s largest airline by passenger numbers posted a net loss of $18.7 million in the fourth quarter, compared with a loss of EUR4.8 million the same period 2012, as sales fell by 8.5% to $767 million.
While many travel companies have avoided Egypt altogether, even customers interested in visiting face complications. Insurers, for instance, have been hesitant to write policies for package tours due to the uncertain situation in the country.

Thomas Cook posted 0.9% drop in sales in the three months ended Dec. 31 to $2.78 billion. Excluding Egypt, first-quarter revenue grew 4.1% compared with the same period a year earlier.

Thomas Cook’s Ms Green said the company was “very encouraged to see people beginning to return, particularly from the U.K., Germany and Russia.”

No such optimism could be detected from Finnair. For 2014, the airline said uncertain economic outlook in Europe and Asia is contributing to weak consumer demand in some of its main markets. The carrier noted in its report for the third quarter that the impact of Egypt cancellations would be reflected in the fourth quarter as well as in the first quarter 2014.

Finnair said Egypt package tour cancellations will also impact the first quarter and the drop in leisure traffic can be seen in the traffic data for January that the company reported last week.

British travel operator TUI also cited Egypt as a challenge. “We had pretty much no customers there during the month of October,” Chief Financial Office William Waggot said in an earnings call last week.  ”And the program for the rest of winter is about 50% down on where we were planning to be.”

- Jana Weigand contributed to this article

Link:   http://blogs.wsj.com/corporate-intelligence/2014/02/11/abandoning-egypt-travel-operators-report-further-declines/?mod=yahoo_hs.

 

 

 

 

 

 

BOMBSHELL: Dead JPM bankers “Knew each other and had uncovered something”

February 13, 2014
Silver Doctors
Source: Osnet Daily

Wednesday we reported that another JP Morgan banker has been found dead, as the latest banker to meet a sudden and untimely demise is Ryan Henry Crane, the Executive Director in JPMorgan’s Global Equities Group.

Today, Steve Quayle’s banker source “V”, who predicted that a wave of banker hits was imminent when the very first bankers began dropping last week, has dropped a bombshell regarding the death of Ryan Henry Crane.

V states that Crane oversaw all of the trade platforms and worked closely with Gabriel Magee of JPM’s London desk (who fell 32 stories off the JPM London roof moments after texting his g/f he would be home shortly), and that the pair had access to the exact same info.

V concludes Crane & Magee: “Knew each other and had uncovered something“.

V’s update on the latest JPMorgan banker to turn up dead is below:

From Steve Quayle’s banker source “V”

One other thing he was the head at the program trading desk. Meaning he over saw all of the trades and was familiar with all of the software (trade platforms) that these trades were done in. This job works closely with guess what? That’s right the London desk and who died last week in London? That’s right Gabriel Magee the one who jumped off the 33rd floor. What was his post? Head of IT and trade platforms meaning he had access to info that Ryan Henry Crane would have.
They knew each other and uncovered something they were about the same age and these hits happen when two big announcements by JPM.
1. They are out of commodities, and
2.  The wholesale selling of their HQ downtown to the Chinese.
“V” The Guerrilla Economist

Link: http://osnetdaily.com/2014/02/bombshell-dead-jpm-bankers-knew-each-other-and-had-uncovered-something/.

U.S. trade bank launches operations in Myanmar

February 6, 2014
By David Brunnstrom
Source: Yahoo News

 

WASHINGTON (Reuters) - The Export-Import Bank of the United States said it launched operations in Myanmar on Thursday, a move to support U.S. exporters against competitors and help reintegrate the country into the world economy.

Fred Hochberg, chairman of the U.S. government lending agency, said the announcement would send "a strong signal that we are committed to strengthening economic ties with Burma as the nation continues its transition."

"This decision ... will improve trade flows between our two countries and help reintegrate Burma into the global economy," he said in a statement, adding that it would also open an important new market for U.S. exports and support American jobs.

The U.S. move follows the launching of political and economic reforms in Myanmar since 2011 when a military government stepped aside and the country started to move away from nearly half a century of army rule and international isolation.

A senior bank official, briefing reporters in a conference call, said its decision was made possible by a lifting of U.S. sanctions and the end of a year-long moratorium on relending that followed a big debt write-off by the Paris Club of creditor countries.

Another bank official said there were "exciting opportunities" in Myanmar for U.S. exporters of agricultural commodities, in the transportation sector, and in infrastructure, including power, mining and agricultural equipment.

The bank said it would be able to provide export-credit insurance, loan guarantees and direct loans for export sales.

It would also be able to offer short-term insurance for sovereign transactions with repayment terms of 180 days or less, and up to 360 days for capital goods.

Medium-term insurance, loan guarantees and loans were also available for sovereign transactions with terms up to five years, along with capital guarantees to help U.S. exporters or their suppliers obtain funds to produce or buy goods or services for export.

The bank would be able to provide long-term support for trade, provided there were financing arrangements to eliminate or externalize country risks, it said.

The first bank official said the aim was to create a level playing field for U.S. exporters trying to compete with foreign firms that were backed by export credit agencies.

"There has been a lot of interest expressed on the part of a lot of different U.S. companies who would like to be able to compete in the marketplace," he said.

Asked about continuing concerns over human rights in Myanmar, the first bank official said the bank had taken into account the political and social environment, but "in the narrow context ... of repayment risk."

A senior U.S. official said the United States continued to engage the Myanmar government on events in the western Rakhine state, where the United Nations and rights groups have said that at least 40 minority Muslims were killed by security forces and majority Buddhist civilians in mid-January.

The United States said last month it was deeply disturbed by the reports, and the U.S. official said Washington had reiterated a call for a "credible and independent investigation".

(Reporting by David Brunnstrom; Editing by Stephen Powell)

Mediterranean gas fields: potential spark for regional conflicts

04 February 2014
 Mohamed Mahdi
Source: Middle East Monitor

Natural gas resources in the Mediterranean Sea will become a principal reason for conflicts in the region between Israel and its allies on the one hand and the neighbouring Arab countries on the other, experts forecast.

This would be similar to the conflict over water resources in the region, and would reshape regional and international alliances on a primarily economic basis.

Natural gas fields located in the Mediterranean Sea are of growing importance to the region, in particular Israel, for the gas' use as a low cost source of electricity, economists agreed.

Reserves recently discovered in the eastern Mediterranean region represent a golden opportunity and valuable wealth for the entire region including Egypt, Israel, Turkey, Cyprus, Lebanon, Syria and Palestine. This may lead to conflicts and fierce competition as each country tries to acquire the largest portion of this natural wealth, particularly in light of the absence of a clear agreement on the maritime borders of their respective economic zones.

Israel recently intensified its military and strategic cooperation with Greece and Cyprus. Analysts interpreted this as a sign of prospective tripartite strategic partnership among the three nations aiming at monopolising the massive gas resources in the eastern Mediterranean and forcibly appropriating them at the expense of Arab countries and Turkey.

Sources revealed Israeli Minister of Defense Moshe Ya'alon signed a warships deal with Germany to protect gas fields and installations in the Mediterranean.

Economic expert Maher Al-Tabaa asserted that Israel seeks to extend its control over Palestinian resources, including gas fields, due to their strategic importance. Al-Tabaa cited tireless efforts by Israel to freeze the agreement held between the Palestinian Authority and the British Gas Group to explore gas in the field adjacent to Gaza shores.

Al-Tabaa highlighted genuine Israeli fears of potential attacks on its gas fields and mines in the sea, which prompted it to protect them with modern military arsenal. He added it is highly likely that gas would ignite new conflicts, particularly the wells located on joint borders in Gaza, Lebanon, or Egypt.
He interpreted the gas agreement between Egypt and Israel as an attempt by the latter to drain Egyptian gas fields, to guarantee its superiority in the region.

Al-Tabaa said that the current status of the natural gas field located off the Gaza shores remains "ambiguous", eight years after the agreement with the British company was frozen. He pointed out that the agreement in its current status partially guarantees the Palestinian Authority's rights in the gas well.

The strategic natural gas inventory in the Israeli-controlled fields is estimated at 950 billion cubic meters (bcm), which would guarantee a return of $60 billion (£36.8 billion) for the Israeli budget over the next two decades.

A number of Israeli security officials are concerned about the possibility of militant attacks from Sinai or Gaza targeting the newly discovered gas fields in the eastern Mediterranean. Perhaps these concerns explain the Israeli government's decision to assign Unit 13 in its naval forces the responsibility of protecting natural gas fields and exploration operations in the Mediterranean.

Global conflict

Economic expert Omar Shaaban points out that natural gas started to emerge as a major element in the ongoing conflicts in a number of regions. He says natural gas might be one of the reasons of the war in Syria and one of the international community's motives behind intervention in this matter.

Shaaban asserted that the economic element has overtaken the security and political elements as a factor of reshaping global and regional alliances. He cited the gas imports agreement signed by the Energy Authority in Ramallah to supply natural gas over a period of twenty years for the energy power plant which is yet to be established as proof of this.

Moreover, he stressed the keenness of Israel to secure its stockpiles of natural gas and protect its fields and wells from any potential attacks, pointing to the existence of a real dispute over a number of gas wells in the Mediterranean between Israel, Lebanon and Cyprus.

Shaaban predicted that the International Tribunal for the Law of the Sea would interfere to settle the ownership of disputed gas fields, ruling out that Israel would allow any company to work on these fields based on an agreement with the Lebanese government and its intention to explore gas in those fields.
Shaaban highlighted the ongoing negotiations between Israel and Palestine to purchase natural gas discovered off the Gaza shores, amidst the media cover-up imposed by Palestinian leadership.

Natural gas fields are considered one of the most important marine resources discovered by Israel 10 years ago. Israeli economists estimated the value of those resources at tens of billions of US dollars, which will revive the Israeli economy as a result of the expected revenues.

Throughout the past five years, a number of gas fields have been discovered in the Mediterranean. They include Aphrodite, Tamar, and Leviathan fields. The Tamar field was discovered in 2009. It is located 50km (31m) to the west of Haifa, and contains 250 bcm of natural gas. Experts say that the Tamar field would be sufficient for Israel's needs for 20-30 years.

Source: AlEstqlal 

Link: http //www.middleeastmonitor.com/resources/reports-and-publications/9589-mediterranean-gas-fields-potential-spark-for-regional-conflicts.

Myanmar president approves law on central bank autonomy

Jul 11, 2013
Source: Reuters

(Reuters) - Myanmar's president has signed a law giving the central bank more autonomy from the Finance Ministry and opening the way for development of the fledgling banking sector.

State-owned MRTV television reported the enactment by President Thein Sein late on Thursday and said details would be published in newspapers on Friday.

But there was nothing in any of Friday's papers, including the New Light ofMyanmar, a state daily that carries official announcements.

The law is part of a series of economic and political reforms pushed through by the quasi-civilian government of Thein Sein, in office since nearly half a century of military rule ended in March 2011.

Rules governing the central bank have to be adopted within three months of the law coming into force.

"In fact, rules and regulations have already been drawn up. So we can expect them to emerge very soon," Win Hteik, a senior central bank official, told Reuters.

He said the governor and three deputy-governors would in future be nominated by the president and approved by parliament.

He also said the regulations could include details of how joint-venturebanks could be set up with foreign lenders.

Foreign banks are not allowed to operate in Myanmar at present, and when they are allowed in, they will initially only be able to run joint ventures with local banks.

The date for their entry has not been set, although more than 30 foreign banks already have representative offices.

The website of the existing Central Bank of Myanmar, which is part of the Finance Ministry, says its aim is "to preserve the internal and external value of the Myanmar currency".

Helped by the International Monetary Fund, the central bank introduced a managed float of the kyat in April 2012 as part of the unification of the exchange rate system.

It first floated at 818 per dollar, a level in line with the black market at the time but which the IMF and economists said was overvalued. Since then, the kyat has fallen and the central bank's daily reference rate was set at 980 on Thursday. (Reporting by Aung Hla Tun; Writing by Alan Raybould; Editing by Nick Macfie)

Link:http://www.reuters.com/article/2013/07/12/myanmar-economy-idUSL4N0FI0MB20130712?feedType=RSS&feedName=rbssFinancialServicesAndRealEstateNews&rpc=43

European Union Backs Down on China Tariffs

June 4, 2013
By JAMES KANTER and KEITH BRADSHER
Source: The New York Times

BRUSSELS — The European Union moved on Tuesday to impose tariffs of 11.8 percent on solar panels from China, only one-quarter of the expected level, as an intensive Chinese diplomatic effort over the past week appeared to result in Brussels officials backing down.

Karel De Gucht, the union’s trade commissioner, said that the tariffs would bounce up in early August to 47.6 percent if the government in Beijing does not remedy what the European Union contends is a systematic effort by Chinese firms to sell solar panels in Europe below the cost of making them, a practice known as dumping.

“The ball is in China’s court,” he said, referring to negotiations expected over the next two months. The period of the lower tariff “is a window of opportunity of 60 days,” he said. But windows “can also shut,” he warned.

Earlier, the trade commissioner had indicated he would stand firm behind recommended duties of as high as 47.6 percent in order to defend the credibility of European Union trade rules. But pressure had been mounting on him to back off.

Premier Li Keqiang of China bypassed Mr. De Gucht during a visit to Germany last week and persuaded Chancellor Angela Merkel to call for further negotiations. He then went over Mr. De Gucht’s head on Monday night with a phone conversation with the European Commission president, José Manuel Barroso.

Mr. Li warned that China was ready to retaliate if the European Union took action. The state-run Xinhua news agency said that Mr. Li had warned Mr. Barroso that “there would be no winners in a trade war.”

The solar panels represent one of the largest categories of Chinese exports to the European Union, worth more than 6 percent of China’s exports to the Continent.

“Our action today is an emergency measure to give lifesaving oxygen to a business sector in Europe that is suffering badly from this dumping,” Mr. De Gucht at a news conference in Brussels.

“This is not protectionism,” insisted Mr. De Gucht, adding that the United States had also applied duties to Chinese solar exports. China was carrying out “dumping that has the potential to destroy an important industry within Europe if we do not act today,” he said.

He said Chinese exporters had captured 80 percent of European Union’s market share, and he suggested that “massive overcapacity” in China had led the Chinese to flood the European market. China is “producing today one and half times the amount of solar panels the world needs,” he said.

In a nod to the heavy lobbying in Europe against the duties, Mr. De Gucht said “cheap and plentiful seems great, but ultimately this will lead to a race to the bottom” where “everyone loses.”

Western governments and trade associations have long contended that Beijing has helped several Chinese industries take over global markets through a combination of huge loans from state-owned banks, extensive government research programs, protection of the domestic Chinese market from imports and sometimes even industrial espionage.

China’s rapid expansion in renewable energy, a national priority, has long been cited as an extreme example.

China went from a negligible player in the solar panel industry as recently as 2006 to the dominant world producer now, with two-thirds or more of global manufacturing capacity in the sector following $18 billion in loans from state banks.

That expansion contributed to the bankruptcy of or capacity cutbacks at a score of American and European solar companies in the last three years. Chinese solar panel companies have also suffered lately from overcapacity, with Suntech Power of Wuxi, China, putting its main operating unit into bankruptcy in March.

Li Junfeng, a senior Chinese government energy policy maker who is also the president of the Chinese Renewable Energy Industries Association, expressed delight when told that the European Union had sharply lowered its target for the preliminary tariffs.

“That’s really good news,” said Mr. Li, a senior energy official at the National Development and Reform Commission, China’s main economic planning agency. “At 11 percent, the Chinese companies can do very good business — it doesn’t affect them very much.”

The European Union’s decision to impose much lower initial duties than expected could greatly reduce the incentive for the Chinese government to offer concessions in further negotiations.

Yet individual Western companies, in the solar industry and other sectors, have been very wary of taking any public stand against China, which has become the world’s largest market in industries ranging from steel to cellphones to automobiles. Chinese officials have considerable discretion in issuing factory permits, export licenses and even visas for visiting executives, making most companies leery of publicly voicing any criticism whatsoever of China or any support for trade actions against it.

Mr. De Gucht has become so frustrated with the unwillingness of European companies to publicly support any trade action against China that he said last month that he was prepared to launch a trade case against China on certain kinds of telecommunications equipment even without the public support of any European companies in the sector.

SolarWorld, a German company, has brought anti-dumping and anti-subsidy cases against China in the United States and the European Union in the past two years. But its executives waited to file the cases until the company was already financially struggling. SolarWorld is also unusual in that it is not a diversified company but dependent on a single narrow sector in which China’s market is still a small although growing share of global demand.

On Tuesday, Milan Nitzschke, a vice president of SolarWorld, a German company that is part of the coalition of European firms that filed the anti-dumping case with the European Commission in July 2012, said in a telephone interview, “I’m not against giving a time window for negotiations, but China has to move.”

A settlement should require the Chinese to make “an agreement on prices and volumes, so that there is not dumping onto the market,” Mr. Nitzschke, who is also president of EU ProSun, the European coalition.

Mr. Nitzschke also said that European Union countries, including Germany, would be more willing to support higher duties if China failed to negotiate in good faith during the next few months.

The European Union, like the United States, designates China as a nonmarket economy, which means that anti-dumping penalties are calculated under special rules that almost always produce very high tariffs -- unless political leaders intervene.

Solar panel production is in some ways a chemicals industry, as much of the cost of a panel lies in the materials that are used to assemble them. Senior executives at two of the world’s largest chemicals companies expressed misgivings on Tuesday about any kind of showdown with China over the solar industry, following the pattern of individual companies being reluctant to endorse trade actions against China.

Thomas M. Connelly Jr., the executive vice president and chief innovation officer at DuPont, said Tuesday before the announcement in Brussels that his company was worried that the uncertainty caused by trade cases was hurting investment in solar panels and in renewable energy industries more broadly. He specifically criticized Europe’s plans to impose tariffs, saying in a telephone interview from Beijing that, “These kinds of trade actions are unhelpful.”

Martin Brudermüller, the vice chairman of BASF, the German chemicals giant, expressed concern about the potential for escalation in the trade dispute. “A tit-for-tat policy will more destabilize than help us,” he said when asked about the dispute during a news conference in Hong Kong on BASF’s ambitious investment plans in China and elsewhere in Asia. The news conference was held several hours before the European announcement.

Read more: http://www.nytimes.com/2013/06/05/business/global/european-union-backs-down-on-china-tariffs.html?_r=0&adxnnl=1&partner=yahoofinance&pagewanted=all&adxnnlx=1370358310-udAHamMTEdZnP7u00OD7sA