Sunday, February 22, 2009

Hillary Clinton visited China - "Rights" (?)

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Amnesty International and a pro-Tibet group voiced shock Friday (Feb 20) after US Secretary of State Hillary Clinton vowed not to let human rights concerns hinder cooperation with China.

Paying her first visit to Asia as the top US diplomat, Clinton said the United States would continue to press China on long-standing US concerns over human rights such as its rule over Tibet.

"But our pressing on those issues can't interfere on the global economic crisis, the global climate change crisis and the security crisis," Clinton told reporters in Seoul just before leaving for Beijing… Read more at AFP, Washington
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Sunday, February 15, 2009

Restructuring US Banks & Slaying Zombie Institutions

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Why is Obama Reluctant to Kill the Zombie Banks Threatening Our Economy?

The battle lines over how to deal with the banking crisis have been drawn. On the one side are those who know what needs to be done. On the other are those who know what needs to be done -- but won't admit it. Because it is against their self-interest.

Unlike the conflict over the stimulus package, this is not an ideological fight. This is a battle between the status quo and the future, between the interests of the financial/lobbying establishment and the public interest.

What needs to be done is hard but straightforward. As
Martin Wolf of the Financial Times sums it up: "Admit reality, restructure banks and, above all, slay zombie institutions at once." … Arianna – Huffington Post, New York, + FrankKalder’s Huffpost comment
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Wednesday, February 4, 2009

Summary of Arianna Huffington’s WEF Davos Blogs

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The most recent Huffpost blogs by Arianna Huffington, who had participated in the WORLD ECONOMIC FORUM in Davos (Switzerland) [~video, 7 min.], were thoroughly evaluated and commented on.

A comprehensive summary of the pertinent FK comments [~
FK Profile] at THE HUFFINGTON POST as well as in the GLOBAL HAPLIFNET was furnished at the blog Haplif Governance.
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Sunday, February 1, 2009

Davos ’09: Crises Roadmap from the World Economic Forum

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Brown: World Bank, IMF 'out of date'


British Prime Minister Gordon Brown has called on world leaders to set about reforming international financial institutions to prevent a repeat of the circumstances that led to the current financial crisis.

Gordon Brown said governments were dealing with the "first financial crisis of the global age."


Speaking to CNN's Christiane Amanpour during a session Saturday, Jan. 31, at the World Economic Forum, Brown said leaders would have failed unless they used the crisis to build a "greener, more digital and more highly skilled economy."

Brown also said the world needed a new Bretton Woods agreement, referring to the 1944 conference that laid the foundations of the post-World War II economic order by creating the World Bank and the International Monetary Fund.

"We've got to be far bolder and far more imaginative," Brown said. "We want to create a global society. But we need to have global institutions that work and the problem is the institutions we built 60 years ago are out of date."

With world financial ministers due to gather in London in April for the G20 summit, Brown said governments were dealing with the "first financial crisis of the global age." CNN Interview
+ Video (8 min.)

Global Economic Charter

Chancellor Angela Merkel of Germany called Friday, Jan. 30, for the creation of an international economic body, similar to the United Nations Security Council, to help avert the kind of wrenching financial crisis currently engulfing the world. International Herald Tribune


No Answer To Global Meltdown?


Nobel Peace Prize winner Muhammad Yunus, founder of the Grameen Bank in Bangladesh and the father of microcredit, saw a silver lining in the financial crisis.

"It's not just disappointment and frustrations," he told AP. "This is the greatest moment we have because things need to be changed, it's as simple as that. We don't want to go back to the same normalcy that we're coming from. We will create a new normalcy which will stay and keep on moving and change the world." Washington Post\AP

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