Actually this is a very simple and pleasant welcoming ceremony in Botswana. It reminded me of one of the greatest movie scenes ever in the classic film, Zulu. Enjoy both on full screen.
Saturday, June 25, 2011
Friday, June 24, 2011
James Whitey Bolger
GUEST POST "Mike360 on HubPages
I write all kinds of crap and don't care if any of you like it or not."
Why do we glorify thugs and killers?
Time and time again I see shows on television that show violent criminals in a positive light. Most recently I have seen documentaries depicting gang violence as exciting and admirable on the History Channel, (though I quite often see comparable material on several other cable stations as well).
As I'm watching these documentaries, I notice that the camera angles and lighting during the interviews are made to make the interviewee seem powerful and intimidating. The narrator's tone and and language further present the perpetrator as someone who should inspire awe. The narrator's gravely intonations describe how johnny the gangster is "hard core and knows how to outwit local law enforcement. He is among the most dangerous and respected of his organization and he has the scars to prove it."
This kind of shit is part of the problem! Now obviously you and I would not be inspired to become gangsters or drug dealers or serial killers by watching cable tv, but remember this: half of young kids have a below average IQ and/or are highly impressionable especially when it comes to televised images of power. These kids are apt to see this and honestly think, "Wow. Now that guy gets taken seriously. I want to be respected and feared like that and get interviewed on tv while some guy with a raspy voice tells everyone I'm a badass."
I know for a fact that many kids think this way because I have worked in a juvenile detention center and have worked with kids on probation for gang violence. There are tons of kids whose parents are way fucked up and never teach them the most basic things in life. Therefore, they learn everything from there peers, television, and now, the Internet. Glorification of violence and crime in mass media and our society has got to stop.
Take for instance the phrase, "Sexual Predator." How is the word Predator usually used? What sorts of images does it conjure up in people's minds when they hear just the word Predator? It sounds like something badass like a lion or tiger or eagle or shark. There's no way in hell that rapists and pedophiles should be lumped in with respectable animals that we see on National Geographic. They should be called "Sexual Scavengers" or "Sexual Bottom Feeders" or "Sexual Cockroaches." Even those words are too good for them, much less "Predator."
Then there's serial killers and mass murders described as "cold-blooded killers." Well, yes, they probably are cold blooded in a sense, but the way that the phrase is voiced by the narrator implies that this is a good trait to have if you're going to be doing some killing. Just listen to how they say it next time. It sounds like they're trying to sell us insecticide. "Use Raid Wasp Remover! It's a COLD-BLOODED KILLER!"
Glorification of violence and crime is detrimental to our communities and neighborhoods. Criminals do not deserve one ounce of admiration for their depraved and heinous acts. At best, they should be mocked and ridiculed for being a cancer to society.
Our kids need to be shown that respect is given to those who earn it rightfully, not those who snatch it illegitimately and shamefully. Hollywood style glorification should be saved for people who deserve it like those who promote peace, compassion, and wisdom.
We are all part of society, and we are responsible for it's condition.
Mike360
Thursday, June 23, 2011
NATO leadership is supporting a rebellion that includes Islamic terrorists...al-Qaeda-affiliated Libyan Islamic Fighting Group is the “main pillar of the Libyan armed insurrection.”
A new report from two French think tanks concludes that jihadists have played a predominant role in the eastern-Libyan rebellion against the rule of Moammar Qaddafi, and that “true democrats” represent only a minority in the rebellion. The report, furthermore, calls into question the justifications given for Western military intervention in Libya, arguing that they are largely based on media exaggerations and “outright disinformation.”
The sponsors of the report are the Paris-based International Center for Research and Study on Terrorism and Aide to Victims of Terrorism (CIRET-AVT) and the French Center for Research on Intelligence (CF2R). The organizations sent a six-member expert mission to Libya to evaluate the situation and consult with representatives on both sides of the conflict. From March 31 to April 6, the mission visited the Libyan capital of Tripoli and the region of Tripolitania; from April 19 to April 25, it visited the rebel capital of Benghazi and the surrounding Cyrenaica region in eastern Libya.
The report identifies four factions among the members of the eastern Libyan National Transitional Council (NTC). Apart from a minority of “true democrats,” the other three factions comprise partisans of a restoration of the monarchy that was overthrown by Qaddafi in 1969, Islamic extremists seeking the establishment of an Islamic state, and former fixtures of the Qaddafi regime who defected to the rebels for opportunistic or other reasons.
There is a clear overlap between the Islamists and the monarchists, inasmuch as the deposed King Idris I was himself the head of the Senussi brotherhood, which the authors describe as “an anti-Western Muslim sect that practices an austere and conservative form of Islam.” The monarchists are thus, more precisely, “monarchists-fundamentalists.”
The most prominent of the defectors, the president of the NTC, Mustafa Abdul Jalil, is likewise described by the authors as a “traditionalist” who is “supported by the Islamists.” The authors point out that Jalil played an important role in the “Bulgarian nurses affair,” so called for five Bulgarian nurses who, along with a Palestinian doctor, were charged with deliberately infecting hundreds of children with AIDS in a hospital in Benghazi. As chair of the Appeals Court in Tripoli, Jalil twice upheld the death penalty for the nurses. In 2007, the nurses and the Palestinian doctor were released by the Libyan government following negotiations in which French president Nicolas Sarkozy's then wife, Cecilia, played a highly publicized role.
The report describes members of the al-Qaeda-affiliated Libyan Islamic Fighting Group as the “main pillar of the armed insurrection.” “Thus the military coalition under NATO leadership is supporting a rebellion that includes Islamic terrorists,” the authors write. Alluding to the major role played by the Cyrenaica region in supplying recruits for al-Qaeda in Iraq, they add, “No one can deny that the Libyan rebels who are today supported by Washington were only yesterday jihadists killing American GIs in Iraq.”
The full composition of the NTC has not been made public. But, according to the authors, one avowed al-Qaeda recruiter, Abdul-Hakim al-Hasadi, is himself a member of the NTC. (On al-Hasadi, see my March 25 report here.) Al-Hasadi is described by the authors as the “leader of the Libyan rebels.” Although Western media reports commonly say that he is in charge of the defense of his home town of Darnah in eastern Libya, the CIRET-CF2R report suggests that in mid-April, al-Hasadi left Cyrenaica by boat in order to participate in the battle of Misrata. He is supposed to have taken arms and 25 “well-trained fighters” with him. Misrata is in western Libya, a mere 135 miles from Tripoli.
Regarding the effects of western military intervention in support of the rebels, the authors conclude:
Western intervention is in the process of creating more problems than it resolves. It is one thing to force Qaddafi to leave. It is another thing to spread chaos and destruction in Libya to this end and to prepare the ground for fundamentalist Islam. The current moves risk destabilizing all of North Africa, the Sahel, and the Middle East and favoring the emergence of a new regional base for radical Islam and terrorism.
What follows are some further translated highlights from the CIRET-CF2R report. The full report is available in French here.
On the Battle of Misrata:
Little by little, the city is starting to appear like a Libyan version of Sarajevo in the eyes of the “free” world. The rebels from Benghazi hope that a humanitarian crisis in Misrata will convince the Western coalition to deploy ground troops in order to save the population.
. . . During the course of April, the NGO Human Rights Watch published casualty figures concerning Misrata that reveal that, contrary to the claims made in the international media, Qaddafi loyalist forces have not massacred the residents of the town. During two months of hostilities, only 257 persons — including combatants — were killed. Among the 949 wounded, only 22 — or fewer than 3 percent — were women. If regime forces had deliberately targeted civilians, women would have represented around half of the victims.
It is thus now obvious that Western leaders — first and foremost, President Obama — have grossly exaggerated the humanitarian risk in order to justify their military action in Libya.
The real interest of Misrata lies elsewhere. . . . The control of this port, at only 220 kilometers from Tripoli, would make it an ideal base for launching a land offensive against Qaddafi.
On Benghazi and the Cyrenaica Region:
Benghazi is well-known as a hot-bed of religious extremism. The Cyrenaica region has a long Islamist tradition going back to the Senussi brotherhood. Religious fundamentalism is much more evident here than in the western part of the country. Women are completely veiled from head to foot. They cannot drive and their social life is reduced to a minimum. Bearded men predominate. They often have the black mark of piety on their foreheads [the “zebibah,” which is formed by repeated prostration during Muslim prayers].
It is a little-known fact that Benghazi has become over the last 15 years the epicenter of African migration to Europe. This traffic in human beings has been transformed into a veritable industry, generating billions of dollars. Parallel mafia structures have developed in the city, where the traffic is firmly implanted and employs thousands of people, while corrupting police and civil servants. It was only a year ago that the Libyan government, with the help of Italy, managed to bring this cancer under control.
Following the disappearance of its main source of revenue and the arrest of a number of its bosses, the local mafia took the lead in financing and supporting the Libyan rebellion. Numerous gangs and members of the city's criminal underworld are known to have conducted punitive expeditions against African migrant workers in Benghazi and the surrounding area. Since the start of the rebellion, several hundred migrant workers — Sudanese, Somalis, Ethiopians, and Eritreans — have been robbed and murdered by rebel militias. This fact is carefully hidden by the international media.
On African “Mercenaries” and Tuaregs:
One of the greatest successes [of Qaddafi's African policy] is his “alliance” with the Tuaregs [a traditionally nomadic population spread over the region of the Sahara], whom he actively financed and supported when their movement was repressed in Mali in the 1990s.
. . . In 2005, Qaddafi accorded an unlimited residency permit to all Nigerian and Malian Tuaregs on Libyan territory. Then, in 2006, he called on all the tribes of the Sahara region, including Tuareg tribes, to form a common entity to oppose terrorism and drug trafficking . . .
This is why hundreds of combatants came from Niger and Mali to help Qaddafi [after the outbreak of the rebellion]. In their view, they were indebted to Gaddafi and had an obligation to do so. . . .
Many things have been written about the “mercenaries” serving in the Libyan security forces, but few of them are accurate. . . .
In recent years, foreigners have . . . been recruited [into the Libyan army]. The phenomenon is entirely comparable to the phenomenon that one observes on all levels of Libyan economic life. There is a very large population of foreign workers in search of employment in the country. The majority of the recruits originally come from Mali, Chad, Niger, Congo, and Sudan. . . .
The information from rebel sources on supposed foreign intrusions [i.e. mercenaries] is vague and should be treated with caution. . . .
On the other hand, it is a proven fact — and the mission was able to confirm this itself — that Tuaregs from Niger came to Tripoli to offer their support to Qaddafi. They did so spontaneously and out of a sense of debt.
. . . It seems that Libyans of foreign origin and genuine volunteers coming from foreign countries are being deliberately confused [in the reports on “mercenaries”]. Whatever the actual number [of foreign fighters], they form only a small part of the Libyan forces.
On the role of the international media:
Up until the end of February, the situation in western Libyan cities was extremely tense and there were clashes — more so than in the east. But the situation was the subject of exaggeration and outright disinformation in the media. For example, a report that Libyan aircraft bombed Tripoli is completely inaccurate: No Libyan bomb fell on the capital, even though bloody clashes seem to have taken place in certain neighborhoods. . . .
The consequences of this disinformation are clear. The U.N. resolution [mandating intervention] was approved on the basis of such media reports. No investigative commission was sent to the country. It is no exaggeration to say that sensationalist reporting by al-Jazeera influenced the U.N.
On the insurrection in Benghazi:
As soon as the protests started, Islamists and criminals immediately took advantage of the situation in order to attack high-security prisons outside Benghazi where their comrades were being held. Following the liberation of their leaders, the rebellion attacked police stations and public buildings. The residents of the city woke up to see the corpses of policemen hanging from bridges.
Numerous atrocities were likewise committed against African workers, who have all been treated as “mercenaries.” African workers were expelled, murdered, imprisoned, and tortured.
On the insurrection in Zawiya (a town in western Libya):
During the three weeks [that the town was controlled by the rebels], all public buildings were pillaged and set on fire. . . . Everywhere, there was destruction and pillaging (of arms, money, archives). There was no trace of combat, which confirms the testimony of the police [who claim to have received orders not to intervene]. . . .
There were also atrocities committed (women who were raped, and some police officers who were killed), as well as civilian victims during these three weeks. . . . The victims were killed in the manner of the Algerian GIA [Armed Islamic Group]: throats cut, eyes gauged out, arms and legs cut off, sometimes the bodies were burned . . .
AINA
The sponsors of the report are the Paris-based International Center for Research and Study on Terrorism and Aide to Victims of Terrorism (CIRET-AVT) and the French Center for Research on Intelligence (CF2R). The organizations sent a six-member expert mission to Libya to evaluate the situation and consult with representatives on both sides of the conflict. From March 31 to April 6, the mission visited the Libyan capital of Tripoli and the region of Tripolitania; from April 19 to April 25, it visited the rebel capital of Benghazi and the surrounding Cyrenaica region in eastern Libya.
The report identifies four factions among the members of the eastern Libyan National Transitional Council (NTC). Apart from a minority of “true democrats,” the other three factions comprise partisans of a restoration of the monarchy that was overthrown by Qaddafi in 1969, Islamic extremists seeking the establishment of an Islamic state, and former fixtures of the Qaddafi regime who defected to the rebels for opportunistic or other reasons.
There is a clear overlap between the Islamists and the monarchists, inasmuch as the deposed King Idris I was himself the head of the Senussi brotherhood, which the authors describe as “an anti-Western Muslim sect that practices an austere and conservative form of Islam.” The monarchists are thus, more precisely, “monarchists-fundamentalists.”
The most prominent of the defectors, the president of the NTC, Mustafa Abdul Jalil, is likewise described by the authors as a “traditionalist” who is “supported by the Islamists.” The authors point out that Jalil played an important role in the “Bulgarian nurses affair,” so called for five Bulgarian nurses who, along with a Palestinian doctor, were charged with deliberately infecting hundreds of children with AIDS in a hospital in Benghazi. As chair of the Appeals Court in Tripoli, Jalil twice upheld the death penalty for the nurses. In 2007, the nurses and the Palestinian doctor were released by the Libyan government following negotiations in which French president Nicolas Sarkozy's then wife, Cecilia, played a highly publicized role.
The report describes members of the al-Qaeda-affiliated Libyan Islamic Fighting Group as the “main pillar of the armed insurrection.” “Thus the military coalition under NATO leadership is supporting a rebellion that includes Islamic terrorists,” the authors write. Alluding to the major role played by the Cyrenaica region in supplying recruits for al-Qaeda in Iraq, they add, “No one can deny that the Libyan rebels who are today supported by Washington were only yesterday jihadists killing American GIs in Iraq.”
The full composition of the NTC has not been made public. But, according to the authors, one avowed al-Qaeda recruiter, Abdul-Hakim al-Hasadi, is himself a member of the NTC. (On al-Hasadi, see my March 25 report here.) Al-Hasadi is described by the authors as the “leader of the Libyan rebels.” Although Western media reports commonly say that he is in charge of the defense of his home town of Darnah in eastern Libya, the CIRET-CF2R report suggests that in mid-April, al-Hasadi left Cyrenaica by boat in order to participate in the battle of Misrata. He is supposed to have taken arms and 25 “well-trained fighters” with him. Misrata is in western Libya, a mere 135 miles from Tripoli.
Regarding the effects of western military intervention in support of the rebels, the authors conclude:
Western intervention is in the process of creating more problems than it resolves. It is one thing to force Qaddafi to leave. It is another thing to spread chaos and destruction in Libya to this end and to prepare the ground for fundamentalist Islam. The current moves risk destabilizing all of North Africa, the Sahel, and the Middle East and favoring the emergence of a new regional base for radical Islam and terrorism.
What follows are some further translated highlights from the CIRET-CF2R report. The full report is available in French here.
On the Battle of Misrata:
Little by little, the city is starting to appear like a Libyan version of Sarajevo in the eyes of the “free” world. The rebels from Benghazi hope that a humanitarian crisis in Misrata will convince the Western coalition to deploy ground troops in order to save the population.
. . . During the course of April, the NGO Human Rights Watch published casualty figures concerning Misrata that reveal that, contrary to the claims made in the international media, Qaddafi loyalist forces have not massacred the residents of the town. During two months of hostilities, only 257 persons — including combatants — were killed. Among the 949 wounded, only 22 — or fewer than 3 percent — were women. If regime forces had deliberately targeted civilians, women would have represented around half of the victims.
It is thus now obvious that Western leaders — first and foremost, President Obama — have grossly exaggerated the humanitarian risk in order to justify their military action in Libya.
The real interest of Misrata lies elsewhere. . . . The control of this port, at only 220 kilometers from Tripoli, would make it an ideal base for launching a land offensive against Qaddafi.
On Benghazi and the Cyrenaica Region:
Benghazi is well-known as a hot-bed of religious extremism. The Cyrenaica region has a long Islamist tradition going back to the Senussi brotherhood. Religious fundamentalism is much more evident here than in the western part of the country. Women are completely veiled from head to foot. They cannot drive and their social life is reduced to a minimum. Bearded men predominate. They often have the black mark of piety on their foreheads [the “zebibah,” which is formed by repeated prostration during Muslim prayers].
It is a little-known fact that Benghazi has become over the last 15 years the epicenter of African migration to Europe. This traffic in human beings has been transformed into a veritable industry, generating billions of dollars. Parallel mafia structures have developed in the city, where the traffic is firmly implanted and employs thousands of people, while corrupting police and civil servants. It was only a year ago that the Libyan government, with the help of Italy, managed to bring this cancer under control.
Following the disappearance of its main source of revenue and the arrest of a number of its bosses, the local mafia took the lead in financing and supporting the Libyan rebellion. Numerous gangs and members of the city's criminal underworld are known to have conducted punitive expeditions against African migrant workers in Benghazi and the surrounding area. Since the start of the rebellion, several hundred migrant workers — Sudanese, Somalis, Ethiopians, and Eritreans — have been robbed and murdered by rebel militias. This fact is carefully hidden by the international media.
On African “Mercenaries” and Tuaregs:
One of the greatest successes [of Qaddafi's African policy] is his “alliance” with the Tuaregs [a traditionally nomadic population spread over the region of the Sahara], whom he actively financed and supported when their movement was repressed in Mali in the 1990s.
. . . In 2005, Qaddafi accorded an unlimited residency permit to all Nigerian and Malian Tuaregs on Libyan territory. Then, in 2006, he called on all the tribes of the Sahara region, including Tuareg tribes, to form a common entity to oppose terrorism and drug trafficking . . .
This is why hundreds of combatants came from Niger and Mali to help Qaddafi [after the outbreak of the rebellion]. In their view, they were indebted to Gaddafi and had an obligation to do so. . . .
Many things have been written about the “mercenaries” serving in the Libyan security forces, but few of them are accurate. . . .
In recent years, foreigners have . . . been recruited [into the Libyan army]. The phenomenon is entirely comparable to the phenomenon that one observes on all levels of Libyan economic life. There is a very large population of foreign workers in search of employment in the country. The majority of the recruits originally come from Mali, Chad, Niger, Congo, and Sudan. . . .
The information from rebel sources on supposed foreign intrusions [i.e. mercenaries] is vague and should be treated with caution. . . .
On the other hand, it is a proven fact — and the mission was able to confirm this itself — that Tuaregs from Niger came to Tripoli to offer their support to Qaddafi. They did so spontaneously and out of a sense of debt.
. . . It seems that Libyans of foreign origin and genuine volunteers coming from foreign countries are being deliberately confused [in the reports on “mercenaries”]. Whatever the actual number [of foreign fighters], they form only a small part of the Libyan forces.
On the role of the international media:
Up until the end of February, the situation in western Libyan cities was extremely tense and there were clashes — more so than in the east. But the situation was the subject of exaggeration and outright disinformation in the media. For example, a report that Libyan aircraft bombed Tripoli is completely inaccurate: No Libyan bomb fell on the capital, even though bloody clashes seem to have taken place in certain neighborhoods. . . .
The consequences of this disinformation are clear. The U.N. resolution [mandating intervention] was approved on the basis of such media reports. No investigative commission was sent to the country. It is no exaggeration to say that sensationalist reporting by al-Jazeera influenced the U.N.
On the insurrection in Benghazi:
As soon as the protests started, Islamists and criminals immediately took advantage of the situation in order to attack high-security prisons outside Benghazi where their comrades were being held. Following the liberation of their leaders, the rebellion attacked police stations and public buildings. The residents of the city woke up to see the corpses of policemen hanging from bridges.
Numerous atrocities were likewise committed against African workers, who have all been treated as “mercenaries.” African workers were expelled, murdered, imprisoned, and tortured.
On the insurrection in Zawiya (a town in western Libya):
During the three weeks [that the town was controlled by the rebels], all public buildings were pillaged and set on fire. . . . Everywhere, there was destruction and pillaging (of arms, money, archives). There was no trace of combat, which confirms the testimony of the police [who claim to have received orders not to intervene]. . . .
There were also atrocities committed (women who were raped, and some police officers who were killed), as well as civilian victims during these three weeks. . . . The victims were killed in the manner of the Algerian GIA [Armed Islamic Group]: throats cut, eyes gauged out, arms and legs cut off, sometimes the bodies were burned . . .
AINA
Can Government End Anything Anymore?
Freedoms perhaps but not much else.
We start wars we can't seem to finish. We create agencies that grow beyond the reasons and boundaries of their original inception. Food stamps which started as a supplement to surplus food now are distributed to 40,000,000 people. Social Security is a growing and gargantuan redistribution system disguised as a pension plan.
We can't seem to end military occupation anywhere. We are still in Kosovo, Europe, where mission creep expanded to policing smugglers and human traffickers. It is no wonder Obama doesn't know how to end a war.
Perhaps he should consult his supporters on Wall Street who have considerable expertise in ending businesses and industries and closing operations down promptly. Of course, the bankers and financial guys insist it is all about compensation. Do we need to award $10,000,000 bonuses to generals and government department heads to incentivize ending anything?
We start wars we can't seem to finish. We create agencies that grow beyond the reasons and boundaries of their original inception. Food stamps which started as a supplement to surplus food now are distributed to 40,000,000 people. Social Security is a growing and gargantuan redistribution system disguised as a pension plan.
We can't seem to end military occupation anywhere. We are still in Kosovo, Europe, where mission creep expanded to policing smugglers and human traffickers. It is no wonder Obama doesn't know how to end a war.
Perhaps he should consult his supporters on Wall Street who have considerable expertise in ending businesses and industries and closing operations down promptly. Of course, the bankers and financial guys insist it is all about compensation. Do we need to award $10,000,000 bonuses to generals and government department heads to incentivize ending anything?
Wednesday, June 22, 2011
“The whole story of the global economy is that there’s too much supply of everything and insufficient global demand”
That is a Problem
HONG KONG (MarketWatch) — China’s era of rapid economic growth is drawing to a close, with a great moderation now inevitable, according to economist and author Richard Duncan.
“I don’t think [China] will be able to achieve their current rates of growth in the next five years,” Duncan told MarketWatch in a telephone interview from Bangkok.
Among reasons for the changes, he said, Beijing won’t be able crank up credit growth further without inflicting self-damage, nor is its export-led growth model viable as the taps tighten on worldwide easy money.
Duncan believes it’s only government life-support in the form of deficit spending that’s kept the global economy from falling into a depression since the 2008 credit crisis, and if the slowdown spreads as he expects, China won’t have an easy time shielding its economy from a slump in consumer demand.
“The whole story of the global economy is that there’s too much supply of everything and insufficient global demand,” said Duncan.
China managed to avoid a recession thanks largely to rapid credit growth, as its state-controlled banks expanded their loan books by 60% over a 24-month period.
Meanwhile, millions of Chinese factory workers who were laid off during the crisis were eventually hired back as global trade slowly normalized.
Duncan isn’t so sure that China can look to rapid credit growth this time if there’s a another serious slowdown, or that global trade will recover without a protectionist backlash, as economies such as the U.S. and Europe suffer high unemployment.
China “will be singled out by the U.S. and forced to stop growing its trade surplus ... and that will be the death blow to China’s era of rapid economic growth,” Duncan said.
Huge trade surpluses with the U.S. were among factors in China’s bubble-like economic growth over the past decade, Duncan said.
Banks
According to Duncan, China’s banking system is just beginning to grapple with the aftereffects of its previous round of easy credit.
“It’s like guy who drank a gallon of Red Bull,” he said, describing a post-credit-binge hangover now settling over the economy. “It [China] has the choice of letting the credit wear off and being extremely sick, or drinking two gallons.”
Much of the credit pumped into the economy was channeled into building empty skyscrapers or other non-productive assets now getting “heavier and heavier” in terms of problem loans within the banking system, Duncan said.
In fact, the toxic-loan problems could just be emerging. Reuters reported last month that the central government would take responsibility for $463 billion of loans extended to local-government financing vehicles for infrastructure projects.
If true, Societe Generale says the bailout would amount to 1.5 times the size the U.S government’s Troubled Asset Relief Program (TARP) plan to rescue banks in 2008, if adjusted for the smaller size of China’s economy.
“It is more than likely that China has one-and-a-half times the 2008 crisis ahead of it,” said SocGen strategist Dylan Grice.
Meanwhile, recent gains in wages won’t translate into higher domestic demand as some economists had hoped, said Duncan, who believes the higher salaries are part of an overall inflationary trend triggered by the surge in bank lending, and are set to fall back as the stimulus wears off.
“I don’t really see anything that makes me optimistic,” Duncan said.
He said that factory wages could fall dramatically as they did when nearly 20 million migrant workers were laid off as production lines shuttered during the crisis.
QE2 withdrawal
There’s no question the U.S. economy will slow once the Federal Reserve winds down its daily bond-buying program on June 30, Duncan said.
Asset prices will come under further pressure, with equity and commodities poised for more declines, eventually taking bond prices down too, as liquidity conditions tighten, he said.
Gold prices should outperform other assets classes, helped by currency debasement worries as it becomes clearer that more quantitative easing is needed, Duncan said.
As a result, he believes the Fed may be unveil a third round of quantitative easing, likely in the fourth quarter, in an effort to turn the coming slowdown into more of soft patch.
In his 2009 book “The Corruption of Capitalism,” Duncan forecast the U.S. would run large annual deficits in an effort to prop up its economy in the wake of the housing bubble, much as Japan has done since its credit bubble popped in the late 1980s.
Some economists think China too may see to drink that second gallon of Red Bull to keep its economy from suffering.
China’s central bank will expand credit by 8 trillion yuan to 8.5 trillion yuan ($1.23 trillion to $1.31 trillion) this year, up from its earlier loan-growth target of 7 trillion yuan to 7.5 trillion yuan, according to Standard Chartered forecasts released last week.
The credit will help boost growth to around 9% to 10% next year, the bank said.
“The worse the news out of the U.S. is, the quicker and more meaningful the loosening will be,” wrote Standard Chartered’s Economist Stephen Green in Shanghai in a note.
Chris Oliver is MarketWatch's Asia bureau chief, based in Hong Kong.
HONG KONG (MarketWatch) — China’s era of rapid economic growth is drawing to a close, with a great moderation now inevitable, according to economist and author Richard Duncan.
“I don’t think [China] will be able to achieve their current rates of growth in the next five years,” Duncan told MarketWatch in a telephone interview from Bangkok.
Among reasons for the changes, he said, Beijing won’t be able crank up credit growth further without inflicting self-damage, nor is its export-led growth model viable as the taps tighten on worldwide easy money.
Duncan believes it’s only government life-support in the form of deficit spending that’s kept the global economy from falling into a depression since the 2008 credit crisis, and if the slowdown spreads as he expects, China won’t have an easy time shielding its economy from a slump in consumer demand.
“The whole story of the global economy is that there’s too much supply of everything and insufficient global demand,” said Duncan.
China managed to avoid a recession thanks largely to rapid credit growth, as its state-controlled banks expanded their loan books by 60% over a 24-month period.
Meanwhile, millions of Chinese factory workers who were laid off during the crisis were eventually hired back as global trade slowly normalized.
Duncan isn’t so sure that China can look to rapid credit growth this time if there’s a another serious slowdown, or that global trade will recover without a protectionist backlash, as economies such as the U.S. and Europe suffer high unemployment.
China “will be singled out by the U.S. and forced to stop growing its trade surplus ... and that will be the death blow to China’s era of rapid economic growth,” Duncan said.
Huge trade surpluses with the U.S. were among factors in China’s bubble-like economic growth over the past decade, Duncan said.
Banks
According to Duncan, China’s banking system is just beginning to grapple with the aftereffects of its previous round of easy credit.
“It’s like guy who drank a gallon of Red Bull,” he said, describing a post-credit-binge hangover now settling over the economy. “It [China] has the choice of letting the credit wear off and being extremely sick, or drinking two gallons.”
Much of the credit pumped into the economy was channeled into building empty skyscrapers or other non-productive assets now getting “heavier and heavier” in terms of problem loans within the banking system, Duncan said.
In fact, the toxic-loan problems could just be emerging. Reuters reported last month that the central government would take responsibility for $463 billion of loans extended to local-government financing vehicles for infrastructure projects.
If true, Societe Generale says the bailout would amount to 1.5 times the size the U.S government’s Troubled Asset Relief Program (TARP) plan to rescue banks in 2008, if adjusted for the smaller size of China’s economy.
“It is more than likely that China has one-and-a-half times the 2008 crisis ahead of it,” said SocGen strategist Dylan Grice.
Meanwhile, recent gains in wages won’t translate into higher domestic demand as some economists had hoped, said Duncan, who believes the higher salaries are part of an overall inflationary trend triggered by the surge in bank lending, and are set to fall back as the stimulus wears off.
“I don’t really see anything that makes me optimistic,” Duncan said.
He said that factory wages could fall dramatically as they did when nearly 20 million migrant workers were laid off as production lines shuttered during the crisis.
QE2 withdrawal
There’s no question the U.S. economy will slow once the Federal Reserve winds down its daily bond-buying program on June 30, Duncan said.
Asset prices will come under further pressure, with equity and commodities poised for more declines, eventually taking bond prices down too, as liquidity conditions tighten, he said.
Gold prices should outperform other assets classes, helped by currency debasement worries as it becomes clearer that more quantitative easing is needed, Duncan said.
As a result, he believes the Fed may be unveil a third round of quantitative easing, likely in the fourth quarter, in an effort to turn the coming slowdown into more of soft patch.
In his 2009 book “The Corruption of Capitalism,” Duncan forecast the U.S. would run large annual deficits in an effort to prop up its economy in the wake of the housing bubble, much as Japan has done since its credit bubble popped in the late 1980s.
Some economists think China too may see to drink that second gallon of Red Bull to keep its economy from suffering.
China’s central bank will expand credit by 8 trillion yuan to 8.5 trillion yuan ($1.23 trillion to $1.31 trillion) this year, up from its earlier loan-growth target of 7 trillion yuan to 7.5 trillion yuan, according to Standard Chartered forecasts released last week.
The credit will help boost growth to around 9% to 10% next year, the bank said.
“The worse the news out of the U.S. is, the quicker and more meaningful the loosening will be,” wrote Standard Chartered’s Economist Stephen Green in Shanghai in a note.
Chris Oliver is MarketWatch's Asia bureau chief, based in Hong Kong.
Tuesday, June 21, 2011
Monday, June 20, 2011
We Really Need Someone Named Fareed Zakaria Advising Us to Scrap the Constitution
Zakaria was born in Mumbai (then Bombay), Maharashtra, India, to a Konkani Muslim family. His father, Rafiq Zakaria, was a politician associated with the Indian National Congress and an Islamic scholar. His mother, Fatima Zakaria, was for a time the editor of the Sunday Times of India.
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CNN
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CNN
Is it time to update the U.S. Constitution?
We all know how Americans revere the constitution, so I was struck by the news that tiny, little Iceland is actually junking its own constitution and starting anew using an unusual - some would say innovative - mechanism.
The nation decided it needed a new constitution and it's soliciting ideas from all of Iceland's 320,000 citizens with the help of Facebook, Twitter and YouTube. This social media method has worked. Ideas have been flowing in. Many have asked for guaranteed, good health care. Others want campaign finance systems that make corporate donations illegal. And some just want the country to makeshark finning illegal.
There is a Constitutional Council. It incorporates some of these ideas, rejects others, but everything is done in plain sight on the web. As one member of the Constitutional Council said, the document is basically being drafted on the Internet.
Now, why do they need a new constitution anyway? Well, after Iceland was crippled in recent years by the economic crisis, they all wanted a fresh start. And, anyway, they felt the document was old and outdated, drafted all the way back in 1944.
Now, you might be tempted to say that Iceland doesn't have any reasons to be proud of its political traditions in the manner that the United States does. Well, think again.
Iceland is home to the world's oldest parliament still in existence, the Althing, set up in 930 A.D. The rocky ledge on which they gathered represents the beginnings of representative government in the world. So Iceland has reasons to cherish its history, and yet it was willing to revise it.
By contrast, any talk of revising or revisiting the American constitution is, of course, seen as heresy. The United States constitution was, as you know, drafted in a cramped room in Philadelphia in 1787 with shades drawn over the windows. It was signed by 39 people.
America at the time consisted of 13 states. Congress had 26 senators and 65 representatives. The entire population was about one percent of today's number - four million people.
America was an agricultural society, with no industry - not even cotton gins. The flush toilet had just been invented.
These were the circumstances under which this document was written.
And let me be very clear here, the U.S. constitution is an extraordinary work, one of the greatest expressions of liberty and law in human history.
One amazing testament to it is the mere fact that it has survived as the law of the land for 222 years.
But our constitution has been revised 27 times. Some of these revisions have been enormous and important, such as the abolition of slavery. Then there are areas that have evolved. For example, the power of the judiciary, especially the Supreme Court, is barely mentioned in the document. This grew as a fact over history.
But there are surely some issues that still need to be debated and fixed.
The electoral college, for example, is highly undemocratic, allowing for the possibility that someone could get elected as president even if he or she had a smaller share of the total national vote than his opponent.
The structure of the Senate is even more undemocratic, with Wisconsin's six million inhabitants getting the same representation in the Senate as California's 36 million people. That's not exactly one man, one vote.
And we are surely the only modern nation that could be paralyzed as we were in 2000 over an election dispute because we lack a simple national electoral system.
So we could use the ideas of social media that were actually invented in this country to suggest a set of amendments to modernize the constitution for the 21st Century.
Such a plan is not unheard of in American history.
After all, the delegates in Philadelphia in 1787 initially meant not to create the Constitution as we now know it, but instead to revise the existing document, the Articles of Confederation. But the delegates saw a disconnect between the document that currently governed them and the needs of the nation, so their solution was to start anew.
I'm just suggesting we talk about a few revisions.
Anyway, what do you think? Should we do this? And if we were to revise the U.S. Constitution, what would be the three amendments you would put in?
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