ADDIS ABABA, Ethiopia (AP) - The African Union on Friday suspended Madagascar as the international community stepped up the pressure on the increasingly isolated island nation where the army forced the country's president from power.
So they could install a DJ...
France, the former colonial power and Madagascar's biggest donor, condemned the replacement of the nation's president by an army-backed kid politician as a coup and the United States cut all non-humanitarian aid. It was the first time that France had criticized the change of leadership since new leader Andry Rajoelina took power.
Don't worry, they'll apologize soon ...
After months of street protests, Marc Ravalomanana resigned as Madagascar's president Tuesday and placed power in the hands of the military. Within hours, the military announced it was making opposition leader Rajoelina the country's new president.
The backlash against Madagascar began Thursday when countries in the southern Africa region said they will not recognize Rajoelina. The AU's second most important body, the Peace and Security Council, on Friday gave Madagascar six months to restore a constitutional government, probably through elections, said Bruno Nongoma Zidouemba, the council's temporary chairman.
If it does not comply, the AU will consider imposing sanctions on the Indian Ocean island's leaders, Zidouemba told reporters. "The council is of the opinion that what's occurred in Madagascar entered into the definition of an unconstitutional change of government," said Zidouemba, Burkina Faso's ambassador to the AU.
They threw him out, tanks in the streets, parliament suspended... Kinda looks like a coup, doesn't it? But then, they haven't shot him yet...
Wait ...
French President Nicolas Sarkozy told journalists in Brussels that Madagascar's president had been "toppled" and the new leadership's move to suspend parliament was "not positive."
"I regret what happened in Madagascar," French President Nicolas Sarkozy told journalists in Brussels on Friday. "I hold the new leaders responsible for the physical well-being of the former president (Marc Ravalomanana)," Sarkozy said. "Whatever he did, he must be judged if there is need. But you don't take care of business like this." He said that he was not defending Ravalomanana, about whom, "many things can be said."
One of the things that can be said is that he was president and now he's not.
Posted by: Steve White ||
03/21/2009 00:00 ||
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"I been thrown out of better clubs than this."
-- Madagascar to the AU
VENEZUELA'S military has taken control of all the country's major airports and maritime ports, following a recently enacted law handing management of the facilities to the central government.
Soldiers occupied major facilities on Saturday under the legal reform approved by the pro-Chavez parliament, taking over maritime terminals in the opposition stronghold city of Maracaibo in the state of Zulia, the port of Guanta in Anzoategui and others in the states of Carabobo and Nueva Esparta.
"Since this morning we began to reverse the disintegration of national unity," said President Hugo Chavez, referring to the reversal of decentralisation moves 20 years ago that handed authority of ports and airports to state governments.
"We are reunifying the motherland, which was in pieces. This is a very important step."
When Mr Chavez announced the move last week, he threatened to arrest opposition governors if they resisted. Many opponents decried the order as unconstitutional and as an attempt to concentrate all power in Mr Chavez's hands.
Thousands of people took to the streets of Caracas in protest on Friday over the president's jail threats to opposition figures.
MEXICO CITY (AP) - Mexico has sent alleged drug trafficker Vicente "El Vicentillo" Zambada to a maximum-security prison near the capital to be held pending a U.S. extradition request.
Zambada faces a 2003 U.S. indictment on charges of conspiracy to import and distribute cocaine. The U.S. Drug Enforcement Administration says he supervised the unloading of tons of cocaine from ships off the Mexican coast. His father is Ismael "El Mayo" Zambada, considered one of Mexico's top drug lords.
The Attorney General's Office said Friday that Zambada will be held at the Altiplano prison. He was arrested this week in Mexico City.
Posted by: Steve White ||
03/21/2009 00:00 ||
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"Bad boy, Bad boy,
Whatcha going to do,
Whatcha gonna do when they come for you
Posted by: Redneck Jim ||
03/21/2009 12:00 Comments ||
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The Russian army has doubled the deployment of its hi-tech anti-ballistic S-400 missiles in the face of its growing concerns of air attacks. Ummm... Right. By whom? Sweden? Upper Volta?
Posted by: Fred ||
03/21/2009 00:00 ||
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Iranian missiles.
Posted by: ed ||
03/21/2009 1:21 Comments ||
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Opposition leaders piled pressure on French President Nicolas Sarkozy Friday to boost low wages and cap executive bonuses after more than a million striking workers marched in anger at the government. Factory and white-collar workers from across the private sector joined a million civil servants Thursday in France's second nationwide strike in two months. Oh, yeah. That'll work. Just boost the minimum wage to $35 an hour and the set maximum salary and benefits for everybody at $75,000 a year. Everybody'll be happy then, won't they?
Posted by: Fred ||
03/21/2009 00:00 ||
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Most people are innately competitive (well, maybe not 'most' in Europe anymore, but some); if pay is disconnected entirely from performance, they will compete to see who can perform the least for the pay given.
Israel''s prime minister-designate, Benjamin Netanyahu, was granted an extra two weeks on Friday to form a government he hopes would be as broad as possible, the presidency said. The hawkish Likud leader wants to avoid giving too much clout to far-right and religious parties and will use the extra time to try to convince the center-left.
Posted by: Fred ||
03/21/2009 00:00 ||
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Mufti Muhammad Sayid Tantawi, the head of the Al-Azhar University in Egypt and one of the most influential clerics in the Sunni Islamic world has proposed that organs of prisoners on death row be used in transplant procedures, the Egyptian newspaper Daily News Egypt reported.
The proposal comes at a time when the Egyptian parliament is debating a new law on organ transplants, much of which has focused on the definition of when a person is dead.
Tantawi was, according to the paper, referring to the 10 men recently sentenced to death after being found guilty of kidnapping and raping a woman.
Parliamentarians opposing the proposal argued that it would be a violation of a person's basic human rights to take his or her organs without consent.
Posted by: Fred ||
03/21/2009 00:00 ||
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He'd say soon afterwards that we'd establish the death penalty for executives who accept bonuses for at least $250,000 from companies who accept large amounts of federal aid.
Posted by: Eric Jablow ||
03/21/2009 9:30 Comments ||
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..cause it's the exec's or the parts from 535 Congresscritters who craftily authorized such bonuses in documents that no one reads and you really don't know where those parts have been. Not exactly a warm fuzzy that those parts won't be subject to FDA recall later.
#5
Yep I remember reading that story. (I do love science fiction, it's a wonderful tool for exploring ideas)
Posted by: Redneck Jim ||
03/21/2009 12:15 Comments ||
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#6
That's what inspired Grom's comment, mom. "The Jigsaw Man", published originally in Dangerous Visions.
Of course, Larry Niven knows all about shady moneymaking. It's in his ancestry. He's the a great-grandson of Edward Doheny, implicated in the old Teapot Dome scandal.
Posted by: Eric Jablow ||
03/21/2009 15:25 Comments ||
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As AIG takes billions of dollars from the federal government to stay afloat, it is suing the government for millions more.
The big insurer is trying to recover $306.1 million of taxes, interest and penalties from the Internal Revenue Service. Among other things, AIG is contesting an IRS determination last year that the company improperly claimed $61.9 million of tax credits associated with complex international transactions. AIG has also asked a court to make the government reimburse it for money spent suing the government.
Given that the government owns 79.9 percent of AIG and has been using taxpayer money to fill a seemingly bottomless hole at the company, the lawsuit might seem like a case of biting the hand that feeds it. But an AIG spokesman said the company has an obligation to press its case. AIG believes it overpaid the IRS, and it "has a duty to its shareholders, including the government and other shareholders, to insure that it pays the proper amount of taxes," spokesman Mark Herr said by e-mail.
Washington tax lawyer Martin Lobel agreed with that assessment. "If in fact they honestly believe that they're entitled to a refund of those taxes, it would be a breach of their fiduciary duty not to" sue, Lobel said. "On the other hand, the sense of entitlement from AIG is awesome," Lobel said.
Because the dispute pits the government against a company that has essentially become a ward of the government, the only clear winners are likely to be lawyers, legal experts said. The legal expenses could consume millions of dollars, they said.
"You're dealing with yourself, and you're paying a lawyer to do it. It seems kind of bizarre," said an international tax lawyer who spoke on condition of anonymity because he was not authorized to comment publicly.
Lawyers at the firm Sutherland Asbill & Brennan, which is representing AIG, did not respond to an interview request. For partners of similar stature to those representing AIG, fees can run $700 to $900 per hour, said Dan Binstock, managing director of BCG Attorney Search, a legal recruiter.
#1
A very interesting article in the Washington Post about who is currently employed by AIG, and why they were given retention bonuses. Exerpt:
Who wants to hear a wealthy financier complain? And yet, within those walls off Danbury Road lies a deep sense of betrayal -- first by their former colleagues, now by their elected leaders.
The handful of souls who championed the firm's now-infamous credit-default swaps are, by nearly every account, long since departed. Those left behind to clean up the mess, the majority of whom never lost a dime for AIG, now feel they have been sold out by their Congress and their president. "They've chosen to throw us under the bus," said a Financial Products executive, one of several who spoke on condition of anonymity, fearing reprisals.
They say what is missing from this week's hysteria is perspective. The very handsome retention payments they received over the past week were set in motion early last year when the firm's former president, Joe Cassano, was on his way out the door. Financial Products was already running into trouble on its risky credit bets, and the year ahead looked grim. People were weighing offers from other firms, and AIG executives feared that too many departures could lead to disaster.
So AIG stepped in with an offer to employees of Financial Products. Work through all of 2008, and you'd get a lump payment in March 2009. Stick around through 2009, and you'll get paid through 2010. Almost all other forms of compensation -- bonuses, deferred payments and the like -- have vanished.
"People are trying to do the right thing," the same Financial Products executive said. "Guys have worked their [tails] off to try to get value for the taxpayer. This isn't money that's being advanced to us. People have performed the work and done it exactly as we asked them to do."
It would be impractical at best, dangerous at worst, to get rid of everyone at Financial Products. If everyone leaves, Pasciucco said, "you don't have people that really, truly understand the book [of business]. We're still big enough that that matters." If they did walk out the door, who would volunteer to work at the Chernobyl of the financial world? And what would become of the mammoth portfolio that remains? "It would become the biggest naked position on Wall Street," one longtime Financial Products executive said, "and everybody would exploit it."
#2
No apology required, TW. It's understandable that people got hot about this.
Unfortunately, it served admirably to detract attention from the massive and horrific bill that passed the House at the end of the week. And by stirring up hatred and anger at 'the rich' it plays right into Obama's goals, I fear.
#5
If you've never been in a house that's collapsing, you really don't understand what is asked of those who remain to make sure it collapses gently. While no one's life is immediately threatened as with true first responders, it really makes a difference who sticks around and how motivated they are. And when you're talking billions of dollars, that makes a difference to widows and orphans, groups we've heard little about lately. Yet, when I started in banking, we often spoke of them and our responsibility to them. I fear those days are returning.
Connecticut Attorney General Richard Blumenthal said documents given to his office from American International Group Inc. (AIG) reveal that the company paid $218 million in bonuses, higher than the $165 million in bonuses previously disclosed, the Associated Press reported Saturday.
AIG spokesman Mark Herr declined to comment on Saturday, according to the AP.
Blumenthal's office received the documents late Friday after issuing a subpoena. The documents show that 73 people received at least $1 million apiece, and five of those got bonuses of more than $4 million, Blumenthal said.
#1
Does anyone else smell anything... or is it just me. May I suggest DoJ and the FBI follow the money for a month or two. I might be very interesting to see exactly where it has gone.
#2
You really do have to ask if AIG is not just a front for a criminal enterprise.
This is a letter from Maurice Greenberg, the US founder of AIG. (Unfortunately I can't access the link because our Australian government appears to have joined that long list of free speech advocates like Saudi Arabia, China, Zimbabwe, UAE etc and decided to ban Wikileaks) Many blame the financial problems on the legal problems AIG began having as a result of a number of government investigations alleging fraud and other inproprieties which went all the way to the office of its then chairman, Maurice Greenberg. These problems placed such a focus on AIG's activities that it created a level of required transparency and fear of getting caught, which many believe forced the company to be less active and willing to cheat its way out of these problems. A manner of doing business it learned with its core activity of denying legitimate insurance claims and then pressuring its insureds, their witnesess and anyone else coming to their support while trying to intimidate judges and insurance commissioners. So who began all this? In may 2001 an insurance claimant and shareholder by the name of Cesar Balbin stepped into the annual shareholders meetings. For the first time ever in the company's history, AIG was publicly accused and exposed for criminal and civil racketeering activities including: extortion, blackmale, claims fraud, theft of company equity and so on. Balbin, knew the company was fragil. The ball of snow he started came down hill and grew as it did. It took with it the chairman, billions of dollars and led to a greater transparency and fear that possibly contribuited to inaction by many at AIG to participate in its typically less that legal and proper activities required to keep the company afloa
#3
Meh. I'd look three times at anything Blumenthal says. He has all of the aggressiveness, ego, and political ambition of Elliot Spitzer, but half the intelligence.
White House insists the red ink won't swamp its costly agenda
President Barack Obama's budget would generate unsustainably large deficits averaging almost $1 trillion a year over the next decade, according to new estimates released Friday.
The new Congressional Budget Office figures predict Obama's budget will produce $9.3 trillion worth of red ink over 2010-2019. That's $2.3 trillion worse than the administration predicted in its budget just last month.
Worst of all, CBO says the deficit under Obama's policies would never go below 4 percent of the size of the economy, figures that economists agree are unsustainable. By the end of the decade, the deficit would exceed 5 percent of gross domestic product, a dangerously high level. More at link
Posted by: ed ||
03/21/2009 00:55 ||
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What unsustainable means is at some point the USD goes into freefall, inflation goes up and up. We are not talking 5% or 10% per annum, we are talking 5% or 10% a month. World trade collapses. China descends into chaos. Etc.
#4
Anonymoose, where's the punchline? Oh, wait, it's a non-stop joke on all of us. Now I get it. (Chuckles knowingly, segue into soft tears for the USA that used to be)
#5
$9.3T + $1.8T(2009) = $11.1 trillion.
That is almost tripling national public debt from $6.5 trillion. On top of that, Social Security and Medicare will soon begin their draw downs, exposing the $3.3 trillion debt hidden in the FICA trust fund. By the time Barak Obama is done, taxpayers' debt load will look like Italy's and the dollar worth as much as the old Lira.
Posted by: ed ||
03/21/2009 12:42 Comments ||
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My grandfather carried his DAILY wage home in a cartwheel. On the way home and before he could stop to buy some bread his salary had lost most of its value.
THAT'S Inflation, folks
Posted by: European Conservative ||
03/21/2009 16:57 Comments ||
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#7
Good perspective, European Conservative. Only, I think we call it a wheelbarrow. (A cartwheel is the wheel of a cart or a small wagon.)
$9.3T + $1.8T(2009) = $11.1 trillion.
That is almost tripling national public debt from $6.5 trillion.
Doubling, ed. Still not a good thing, though. We'll see whether President Obama gets anything close to the budgets he plans to ask for, over the next few years... and it will be interesting to see how much of the current budget and stimulus package actually gets spent.
#8
Oh yes wheelbarrow of course.
Of course the reasons for that inflation weren't quite the same.
But once inflation starts running away it's hard to catch it.
Posted by: European Conservative ||
03/21/2009 17:28 Comments ||
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#9
This is only the tip of the sh*tburg, folks. When you add up all the obligations, like social security, medicare, prescription drugs, etc etc, there is no way on God's green earth that it can be sustained. We are well and truly f**ked.
Posted by: Alaska Paul ||
03/21/2009 19:29 Comments ||
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#10
Perhaps Barry is doing us a favor by accelerating the process. I thought it would be another 1`0 years. Better sooner than later.
#11
If there is any good news, it is that several European countries (Italy, Spain, Greece) are closer to the edge of the debt precipice and will go over into spiralling debt and hyperinflation sooner.
WASHINGTON, March 20 (Reuters) - U.S. congressional budget experts on Friday offered a darker economic and budget outlook, projecting a breathtaking $1.8 trillion deficit this year, which could complicate President Barack Obama's efforts to win passage of his $3.55 trillion budget for 2010.
Bambi's first year deficit is larger than the first seven years of Dubya's administration, combined.
The Congressional Budget Office's projected deficit for the 2009 fiscal year ending on Sept. 30 would amount to 13.1 percent of expected gross domestic product -- a level not seen since World War Two.
When, it should be noted, we were fighting a war. A big war in which about 1,200 America men were dying every day. In contrast today we're blowing all the money on ... well, what exactly we don't know. The stimulus fund isn't stimulating and the stabilization money isn't stabilizing.
In January, the budget office had forecast a $1.2 trillion deficit for fiscal 2009. The CBO also forecast a deeper economic downturn this year, projecting a contraction of 3 percent in 2009 before the economy begins to recover in next year. The budget experts at CBO forecast the deficit would ease to almost $1.4 trillion in fiscal 2010 -- or 9.6 percent of forecast GDP.
The CBO eviscerates every projection and argument Bambi's team made last month.
Since Obama took office in January, his administration has been shoveling out trillions billions of dollars in a bid to reverse a steep downward spiral in the U.S. economy and prop up the struggling financial system.
"Although the economy is likely to continue to deteriorate for some time," the CBO said, the government's $787 billion economic stimulus package "and very aggressive actions by the Federal Reserve and the Treasury are projected to help end the recession in the fall of 2009."
The CBO projected that following its forecast steep economic contraction this year, the economy will grow 2.9 percent next year and 4 percent in 2011. In January, CBO had forecast the economy to shrink 2.2 percent this year before growing 1.5 percent in 2010 and 4.2 percent in 2011.
Posted by: Steve White ||
03/21/2009 00:00 ||
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Note there is no estimate of gov revenues. Everyone knows they will be bad, but no one knows how bad, and are probably being over estimated. So the deficit will get bigger.
#2
Obama's only been in office 2 months. The $1.8 trillion deficit is just the starting figure.
Posted by: ed ||
03/21/2009 0:50 Comments ||
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#3
These numbers will sort themselves out through inflation, dollar depreciation...don't worry about it...relax you guys..its only money...it would be much worse if we didn't spend the money to revive the economy, and clean up the mess, spend less on defense and 'health care' which seems like a waste as much of it is for reducing excess weight and plastic surgery...The very worst that can happen is that America will follow in the foot steps of Argentina...a currency crisis, debt restructuring, forgiveness..and we'll be whole again, just like any other family with a subprime mortage...
A multi-volume chronology and reference guide set detailing three years of the Mexican Drug War between 2010 and 2012.
Rantburg.com and borderlandbeat.com correspondent and author Chris Covert presents his first non-fiction work detailing
the drug and gang related violence in Mexico.
Chris gives us Mexican press dispatches of drug and gang war violence
over three years, presented in a multi volume set intended to chronicle the death, violence and mayhem which has
dominated Mexico for six years.
Rantburg was assembled from recycled algorithms in the United States of America. No
trees were destroyed in the production of this weblog. We did hurt some, though. Sorry.
MEXICO CITY (AP) - Mexico has sent alleged drug trafficker Vicente "El Vicentillo" Zambada to a maximum-security prison near the capital to be held pending a U.S. extradition request.
WASHINGTON, March 20 (Reuters) - U.S. congressional budget experts on Friday offered a darker economic and budget outlook, projecting a breathtaking $1.8 trillion deficit this year, which could complicate President Barack Obama's efforts to win passage of his $3.55 trillion budget for 2010.
