Upheaval on Wall St. Stirs Anger in the U.N.
 
By NEIL MacFARQUHAR
September 24, 2008

http://www.nytimes.com/2008/09/24/world/24nations.html

UNITED NATIONS — Wall Street and the Bush administration’s record of
financial oversight came under attack at the United Nations on Tuesday,
with one world leader after another saying that market turmoil in the
United States threatened the global economy. 

“We must not allow the burden of the boundless greed of a few to be
shouldered by all,” said President Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva of Brazil in
an opening speech that reflected the tone of the gathering. 

The annual opening of the General Assembly habitually casts a shadow over
New York every September, snarling traffic and tempers. But this year it is
New York, or at least Wall Street, projecting its shadow back across the
United Nations. Virtually every president or monarch from around the globe
made some reference to the financial upheaval, and the looming cloud was
also the buzz of the back corridors. 

With a pillar of American power — its financial leadership — so badly
shaken, there was a certain satisfaction among some of the attendees that
the Bush administration, which had long lectured other nations about the
benefits of unfettered markets, was now rejecting its own medicine by
proposing a major bailout of financial firms. 

But there was also serious concern that the United States had not policed
its markets carefully enough to prevent the damage to its economy and
others, making it much harder to raise money for the world’s most
vulnerable people.

“The global financial crisis endangers all our work,” said the secretary
general, Ban Ki-moon, who used his opening remarks at the General Assembly
to question the reliance on free markets. “We need a new understanding on
business ethics and governance, with more compassion and less uncritical
faith in the ‘magic’ of markets.” 

President Bush, making his eighth and last address to the United Nations,
with which he has had a troubled relationship, sought to reassure world
leaders that his administration was taking “bold steps” to stanch the
economic crisis in the United States, which, he said, “would have a
devastating effect on other economies around the world.”

Amid a long ode to the importance of continuing the fight against terrorism,
he devoted one paragraph to the rescue plan. “We’ve promoted stability in
the markets by preventing the disorderly failure of major companies,” Mr.
Bush said. He noted that many were watching how the United States responded
because economies were “more closely connected than ever before.” 

But for some leaders, the Bush bailout plan seemed hypocritical given the
tough course Washington has often advised struggling nations to take. 

“What you are seeing here is the letting off of some political steam,” said
Mark Malloch Brown, a British cabinet minister and former senior United
Nations official. “They are all remembering the very hard, unforgiving
advice that they got from American financial institutions” to “deflate your
economy, let your banks go to the wall,” he said. “There is a resentment at
what they would see as a further evidence of double standards.”

The General Assembly has long served as a handy megaphone for American foes
like Fidel Castro of Cuba or President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad of Iran — who
this year delivered his standard diatribe against the evils of America and
Zionism. The extraordinary nature of the outpouring on Tuesday, however,
was that it came from some of America’s closest allies and trading partners
— not from those the United States would label political outcasts, but from
mainstream countries in Europe, Asia and Latin America. 

President Nicolas Sarkozy of France described the crisis as the worst
financial mess since the Depression of the 1930s and the financial system
as “insane.” He called for a summit meeting in November to determine how to
address the problems and to develop greater international regulations of
financial markets. Many leaders echoed that latter demand.

Mr. Sarkozy also said that at a news conference he had talked with Wall
Street bankers, but that they claimed not to know who was responsible for
the mess. When banks and hedge funds hand out fat bonuses, they are all
willing to gloat about their success, Mr. Sarkozy said, “but when there are
deficits we don’t know who is responsible.”

During a brief appearance with Pakistan’s new president, Asif Ali Zarbari,
Mr. Bush acknowledged that world leaders gathering in New York had
questioned him about the turmoil and the administration’s response to
it, “wondering whether or not the United States has the right plan to deal
with this economic crisis.”

The American ambassador to the United Nations, Zalmay Khalilzad, said he was
not hearing complaints about the financial crisis at his meetings, and
suggested that the world leaders accepted that the United States was facing
the issue. “We are very agile and we are moving very quickly to deal with
it,” he said. 

Mr. Malloch Brown, the British minister, also noted that if the leaders
lambasting the United States from the podium consulted with their finance
ministers, they would be likely to find them very happy that Washington was
planning a huge bailout. 

Yet doubts were being raised not just at the United Nations but farther
afield, with Germany’s chancellor, Angela Merkel, among the most outspoken.
She said that at last year’s meeting of the Group of 8, she had strongly
urged both the United States and Britain to be more rigorous in supervising
financial activities, and even offered specific proposals to be applied to
banks and other institutions.

But the United States was not interested, she said. She also seemed to
express a certain exasperation that the United States was now asking Europe
for help, after inflicting damage on the rest of the world that could have
been avoided.

“We did what we were supposed to do,” she said in an interview with Münchner
Merkur, a German newspaper. “We adopted a decent E.U. regulation on the
national statute books,” but “when it came to it, the Americans
said, ‘That’s not for us.’ ”

The theme promoted for this year’s General Assembly is the development of
the world’s poorest nations, laid out in eight targets, including universal
primary education and the elimination of maternal mortality, known
collectively as the Millennium Development Goals. 

Mr. Ban had been hoping that member states would renew their commitment to
the tune of $72 billion annually, and evidently the turmoil in the markets
threw that into question. He told a meeting of business executives on the
side of the General Assembly that if the United States could promise $700
billion for Wall Street in one week, then $72 billion should not be such a
stretch. 

There was a certain amount of shellshock left from the wave of bad financial
news, but African leaders in particular were holding out the importance of
continuing aid. 

“You cannot but talk about it,” said Elizabeth Ohene, Ghana’s minister of
state for education, science and sport, trying to remain optimistic that
the huge bailout plan for Wall Street meant there would be plenty of money
to go around. 

It would be far better to invest in the education of children, she told a
luncheon gathering, than to use a bunch of fancy financial engineering to
bail out Wall Street and other global financial centers. “Believe me,” she
said, “it will be much cheaper.”

-- 
Facts are sacred ... but comment is free

Robin T Cox wrote:
> Upheaval on Wall St. Stirs Anger in the U.N.
>
> By NEIL MacFARQUHAR
> September 24, 2008
>
> http://www.nytimes.com/2008/09/24/world/24nations.html
>
> UNITED NATIONS — Wall Street and the Bush administration’s record of
> financial oversight came under attack at the United Nations on Tuesday,
> with one world leader after another saying that market turmoil in the
> United States threatened the global economy.
>
> “We must not allow the burden of the boundless greed of a few to be
> shouldered by all,” said President Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva of Brazil in
> an opening speech that reflected the tone of the gathering.
>
> The annual opening of the General Assembly habitually casts a shadow over
> New York every September, snarling traffic and tempers. But this year it is
> New York, or at least Wall Street, projecting its shadow back across the
> United Nations. Virtually every president or monarch from around the globe
> made some reference to the financial upheaval, and the looming cloud was
> also the buzz of the back corridors.
>
> With a pillar of American power — its financial leadership — so badly
> shaken, there was a certain satisfaction among some of the attendees that
> the Bush administration, which had long lectured other nations about the
> benefits of unfettered markets, was now rejecting its own medicine by
> proposing a major bailout of financial firms.
>
> But there was also serious concern that the United States had not policed
> its markets carefully enough to prevent the damage to its economy and
> others, making it much harder to raise money for the world’s most
> vulnerable people.
>
> “The global financial crisis endangers all our work,” said the secretary
> general, Ban Ki-moon, who used his opening remarks at the General Assembly
> to question the reliance on free markets. “We need a new understanding on
> business ethics and governance, with more compassion and less uncritical
> faith in the ‘magic’ of markets.”
>
> President Bush, making his eighth and last address to the United Nations,
> with which he has had a troubled relationship, sought to reassure world
> leaders that his administration was taking “bold steps” to stanch the
> economic crisis in the United States, which, he said, “would have a
> devastating effect on other economies around the world.”
>
> Amid a long ode to the importance of continuing the fight against terrorism,
> he devoted one paragraph to the rescue plan. “We’ve promoted stability in
> the markets by preventing the disorderly failure of major companies,” Mr.
> Bush said. He noted that many were watching how the United States responded
> because economies were “more closely connected than ever before.”
>
> But for some leaders, the Bush bailout plan seemed hypocritical given the
> tough course Washington has often advised struggling nations to take.
>
> “What you are seeing here is the letting off of some political steam,” said
> Mark Malloch Brown, a British cabinet minister and former senior United
> Nations official. “They are all remembering the very hard, unforgiving
> advice that they got from American financial institutions” to “deflate your
> economy, let your banks go to the wall,” he said. “There is a resentment at
> what they would see as a further evidence of double standards.”
>
> The General Assembly has long served as a handy megaphone for American foes
> like Fidel Castro of Cuba or President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad of Iran — who
> this year delivered his standard diatribe against the evils of America and
> Zionism. The extraordinary nature of the outpouring on Tuesday, however,
> was that it came from some of America’s closest allies and trading partners
> — not from those the United States would label political outcasts, but from
> mainstream countries in Europe, Asia and Latin America.
>
> President Nicolas Sarkozy of France described the crisis as the worst
> financial mess since the Depression of the 1930s and the financial system
> as “insane.” He called for a summit meeting in November to determine how to
> address the problems and to develop greater international regulations of
> financial markets. Many leaders echoed that latter demand.
>
> Mr. Sarkozy also said that at a news conference he had talked with Wall
> Street bankers, but that they claimed not to know who was responsible for
> the mess. When banks and hedge funds hand out fat bonuses, they are all
> willing to gloat about their success, Mr. Sarkozy said, “but when there are
> deficits we don’t know who is responsible.”
>
> During a brief appearance with Pakistan’s new president, Asif Ali Zarbari,
> Mr. Bush acknowledged that world leaders gathering in New York had
> questioned him about the turmoil and the administration’s response to
> it, “wondering whether or not the United States has the right plan to deal
> with this economic crisis.”
>
> The American ambassador to the United Nations, Zalmay Khalilzad, said he was
> not hearing complaints about the financial crisis at his meetings, and
> suggested that the world leaders accepted that the United States was facing
> the issue. “We are very agile and we are moving very quickly to deal with
> it,” he said.
>
> Mr. Malloch Brown, the British minister, also noted that if the leaders
> lambasting the United States from the podium consulted with their finance
> ministers, they would be likely to find them very happy that Washington was
> planning a huge bailout.
>
> Yet doubts were being raised not just at the United Nations but farther
> afield, with Germany’s chancellor, Angela Merkel, among the most outspoken.
> She said that at last year’s meeting of the Group of 8, she had strongly
> urged both the United States and Britain to be more rigorous in supervising
> financial activities, and even offered specific proposals to be applied to
> banks and other institutions.
>
> But the United States was not interested, she said. She also seemed to
> express a certain exasperation that the United States was now asking Europe
> for help, after inflicting damage on the rest of the world that could have
> been avoided.
>
> “We did what we were supposed to do,” she said in an interview with Münchner
> Merkur, a German newspaper. “We adopted a decent E.U. regulation on the
> national statute books,” but “when it came to it, the Americans
> said, ‘That’s not for us.’ ”
>
> The theme promoted for this year’s General Assembly is the development of
> the world’s poorest nations, laid out in eight targets, including universal
> primary education and the elimination of maternal mortality, known
> collectively as the Millennium Development Goals.
>
> Mr. Ban had been hoping that member states would renew their commitment to
> the tune of $72 billion annually, and evidently the turmoil in the markets
> threw that into question. He told a meeting of business executives on the
> side of the General Assembly that if the United States could promise $700
> billion for Wall Street in one week, then $72 billion should not be such a
> stretch.
>
> There was a certain amount of shellshock left from the wave of bad financial
> news, but African leaders in particular were holding out the importance of
> continuing aid.
>
> “You cannot but talk about it,” said Elizabeth Ohene, Ghana’s minister of
> state for education, science and sport, trying to remain optimistic that
> the huge bailout plan for Wall Street meant there would be plenty of money
> to go around.
>
> It would be far better to invest in the education of children, she told a
> luncheon gathering, than to use a bunch of fancy financial engineering to
> bail out Wall Street and other global financial centers. “Believe me,” she
> said, “it will be much cheaper.”
>
> --
> Facts are sacred ... but comment is free

From Billionaires For Bush

Business proposition from Secretary Paulson

Dear American:

I need to ask you to support an urgent secret business relationship
with a transfer
of funds of great magnitude.

I am Ministry of the Treasury of the Republic of America. My country
has had crisis
that has caused the need for large transfer of funds of 800 billion
dollars US.
If you would assist me in this transfer, it would be most profitable
to you.

I am working with Mr. Phil Gram, lobbyist for UBS, who will be my
replacement as
Ministry of the Treasury in January. As a Senator, you may know him as
the leader
of the American banking deregulation movement in the 1990s. This
transactin is 100%
safe.

This is a matter of great urgency. We need a blank check. We need the
funds as quickly
as possible. We can not directly transfer these funds in the names of
our close
friends because we are constantly under surveillance. My family lawyer
advised me
that I should look for a reliable and trustworthy person who will act
as a next
of kin so the funds can be transferred.

Please reply with all of your bank account, IRA and college fund
account numbers
and those of your children and grandchildren to
wallstreetbailout@treasury.gov so
that we may speedily transfer your commision for this transaction.
After I receive
that information I will respond with detailed information about
safeguards that
will be used to protect the funds.

Yours Faithfully Minister of Treasury Paulson
___________________________________________________________

Seriously though,

This week the White House is trying to push through the biggest
financial theft
in world history with nary a stitch of debate. They're asking for a
blank check
for over 1 trillion dollars to bail out George Bush's Wall
Street cronies who created this economic crisis in the first place.

If this passes, we can forget about any money for environmental
protection, to counter
global warming, for education, for national healthcare, to rebuild our
decaying
infrastructure, for alternative energy.

This is a historic moment. We need to act now while we can influence
the debate.

Let's rally against the bailout in the heart of the financial
district!

Gather at 4pm, this Thursday, Sept. 25 in the plaza at the southern
end of Bowling
Green Park in New York City, which is the small triangular park that
has the Wall
Street bull at the northern tip.
(Not in New York City? Organize a rally in your neck of the woods.)

      What: Say NO to the Wall Street bailout
      When: Thursday, September 25:  4pm
      Where: Southern end of Bowling Green Park, in the plaza area
      What to bring: Banners, noisemakers, signs, leaflets, etc.

Do whatever you can for this historic event and contact all your
groups and friends.
This proposed financial bailout is without precedence and we have to
stop it!
We have everything we need to create a large, peaceful, loud
demonstration.

Together, let's get started.

- Seriously yours,
Billionaires For Bush



ﯯ뻻ﯯ뻻ﯯ뻻 You received this message because
wolfbat359a@mindspring.com
is a member of the mailing list originating from
info@billionairesforbush.com. To
unsubscribe from all mailing lists originating from
info@billionairesforbush.com,
send an email to info@billionairesforbush.com with "remove" in the
subject
line.

Robin T Cox wrote:
> Upheaval on Wall St. Stirs Anger in the U.N.

>  African leaders in particular were holding out the importance of
> continuing aid. 
> 
> “You cannot but talk about it,” said Elizabeth Ohene, Ghana’s minister of
> state for education, science and sport, trying to remain optimistic that
> the huge bailout plan for Wall Street meant there would be plenty of money
> to go around. 
> 
> It would be far better to invest in the education of children, she told a
> luncheon gathering, than to use a bunch of fancy financial engineering to
> bail out Wall Street and other global financial centers. “Believe me,” she
> said, “it will be much cheaper.”

That damn near about says it all.
With finance problems more than enough of our own, the 3rd world beggars 
continue to want to live off our backs - Which is itself a major, major 
factor in this meltdown.
What unmitigated gall and complete lack of shame it must take to demand 
continued handouts at a time like this.

Jesse wrote:

> Robin T Cox wrote:
>> Upheaval on Wall St. Stirs Anger in the U.N.
> 
>>  African leaders in particular were holding out the importance of
>> continuing aid.
>> 
>> “You cannot but talk about it,” said Elizabeth Ohene, Ghana’s minister of
>> state for education, science and sport, trying to remain optimistic that
>> the huge bailout plan for Wall Street meant there would be plenty of
>> money to go around.
>> 
>> It would be far better to invest in the education of children, she told a
>> luncheon gathering, than to use a bunch of fancy financial engineering to
>> bail out Wall Street and other global financial centers. “Believe me,”
>> she said, “it will be much cheaper.”
> 
> That damn near about says it all.
> With finance problems more than enough of our own, the 3rd world beggars
> continue to want to live off our backs - Which is itself a major, major
> factor in this meltdown.
> What unmitigated gall and complete lack of shame it must take to demand
> continued handouts at a time like this.

Then no doubt you'll be delighted to know that while your government is
asking you and your fellow citizens to stump up $700 billion to bail out
Wall Street, they are also planning to give away $660 million a year for
the next 5 years to Jordan.

http://www.mathaba.net/rss/?x=607130

-- 
Facts are sacred ... but comment is free

Robin T Cox wrote:
> Jesse wrote:
> 
>> Robin T Cox wrote:
>>> Upheaval on Wall St. Stirs Anger in the U.N.
>>>  African leaders in particular were holding out the importance of
>>> continuing aid.
>>>
>>> “You cannot but talk about it,” said Elizabeth Ohene, Ghana’s minister of
>>> state for education, science and sport, trying to remain optimistic that
>>> the huge bailout plan for Wall Street meant there would be plenty of
>>> money to go around.
>>>
>>> It would be far better to invest in the education of children, she told a
>>> luncheon gathering, than to use a bunch of fancy financial engineering to
>>> bail out Wall Street and other global financial centers. “Believe me,”
>>> she said, “it will be much cheaper.”

>> That damn near about says it all.
>> With finance problems more than enough of our own, the 3rd world beggars
>> continue to want to live off our backs - Which is itself a major, major
>> factor in this meltdown.
>> What unmitigated gall and complete lack of shame it must take to demand
>> continued handouts at a time like this.
> 
> Then no doubt you'll be delighted to know that while your government is
> asking you and your fellow citizens to stump up $700 billion to bail out
> Wall Street, they are also planning to give away $660 million a year for
> the next 5 years to Jordan.
> 
> http://www.mathaba.net/rss/?x=607130

If you are trying to inform me that there is not much difference at all 
between the average African and the average Jordanian, I already know that.