Saturday, December 20, 2008
Chinese Workers Clash With Police
In a rare demonstration of public protest, workers in the Dongguan province of China have clashed with police after taking to the streets over unpaid wages and factory closures.
“We haven’t eaten in days,” said one protester, reflecting the increasing desperation of those who either have not been paid or whose jobs have gone.
An estimated 6.7 million Chinese are believed to have been made unemployed since the global financial crisis hit what used to be known as the “World’s workshop”.
A police officer at the demonstration said he understood the protesters’ worries but the law had to be obeyed. Demonstrations are illegal in China. But with unemployment due to hit a new high in the new year, analysts say social stability is now seriously threatened.
- Euronews
Friday, December 19, 2008
Brazil Fighting to Keep Oil Riches
Bloomberg's Jeb Blount reports from Rio de Janeiro:Guilherme Estrella found an undersea lake of oil that may transform Brazil’s economy forever. Now, the exploration chief for Petroleo Brasileiro SA is at the center of a debate over who will profit from it.
At stake is how much of Brazil’s newfound riches will be controlled by the state and how much will end up in the pockets of Exxon Mobil Corp., Royal Dutch Shell Plc and other oil companies hungry for new sources of crude. Estrella wants to make Western oil companies little more than hired help for government-controlled Petrobras, as his company is known.
“Petrobras is our space program,” Estrella, a 66-year-old geologist and socialist, said in a Sept. 23 interview in Rio de Janeiro. “Within it, the company contains the Brazilian nationalist spirit.”
A $110 drop in the price of oil since July may make it tougher for Estrella to get his way. Economies around the world are foundering amid the worst financial crisis since the Great Depression, and it may cost $600 billion to develop Brazil’s deepwater oil deposits, which could be worth $3 trillion at current prices.
Continue here.Madoff Scandal Feeds Outpouring of Anti-Semitism
Dateline USA....
Anti-Jewish commentary is flooding the Internet in the wake of Bernard Madoff's arrest on charges of masterminding the biggest financial fraud in history.
The Anti-Defamation League (ADL) said there had been "an outpouring of anti-Semitic comments on mainstream and extremist Web sites."
Madoff, 70, is Jewish and a prominent member of the powerful US Jewish community. He is alleged to have defrauded investors, including a number of Jewish-related charities, of some 50 billion dollars.
"Site users have posted comments ranging from deeply offensive stereotypical statements about Jews and money -- with some suggesting that only Jews could perpetrate a fraud on such a scale -- to conspiracy theories about Jews stealing money to benefit Israel," the ADL said in a statement.
"Jews are always a convenient scapegoat in times of crisis, but the Madoff scandal and the fact that so many of the defrauded investors are Jewish has created a perfect storm for the anti-Semites," said Abraham Foxman, ADL national director.
"Nowadays, the first place Jew-haters will go is to the Internet, where they can give voice to their hateful ideas without fear of repercussions."
Regarding Madoff, this reporter wonders: what wouldn't the monster have done? In another place and another time, would he have betrayed his fellow Jews by selling them out to the Nazis? Would he have traded in looted Jewish art and valuables during the Holocaust? Would he have collaborated with the Nazis as a phony Jewish community council leader and aided in the Holocaust selection process? Would he have served on the collaborationist Warsaw Ghetto Jewish police force, killing, beating, and betraying starving Jews .... and the Jewish resistance .... only to be shot dead when his service to the Third Reich was no longer needed? Would he have spied on the fighting Jewish underground for the British in pre-State Palestine? Would he have sought Stalin's favor by persecuting Russian Jews?
Probably. The monster Madoff would most likely have done all of the above--and more. He is the most sociopathic member of the American Jewish community to have ever lived.
It defies reason and common sense to think that his wife and children were not somehow part of his criminal scheme.
If you believe that story, this reporter has a bridge in Brooklyn and a tower in Paris that he would like to sell.
UPDATE: Jeff Kearns reports:The options trading strategy Bernard Madoff said he used to help produce profits for 17 straight years would have required at least 10 times the contracts that trade on U.S. exchanges.
Madoff, charged with defrauding clients of his $35 billion asset-management business in a “Ponzi scheme,” invested in Standard & Poor’s 100 Index companies and used options to reduce losses, according to marketing materials for his New York-based investment funds. The total number of S&P 100 options outstanding is enough to guard against losses in only $3.25 billion of trades, data compiled by Bloomberg show.
“It was never done,” Michael Schwartz, chief options strategist at Oppenheimer & Co. in New York and a trader since 1965, said of the strategy. “If he did it on an exchange, we would have heard about it, and if he did it over the counter, the person he bought it from would have hedged it on an exchange.”
The 70-year-old founder of Bernard L. Madoff Investment Securities LLC was arrested Dec. 11 and accused of running an illegal money-management operation. Federal prosecutors say Madoff admitted to stealing $50 billion from clients ranging from movie director Steven Spielberg to real-estate developer Mortimer Zuckerman. The alleged scheme ensnared investors from New York to Lucerne, Switzerland, and Bermuda.
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Saturday, 20 December 2008
Foreign Confidential....
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