CIA trolled for out of work bankers in New York recruitment drive

These guys have no idea what they’re getting into. First out of work bankers, then out of work corporate executives, then……

CIA seeks laid-off bankers in N.Y. recruitment drive

6.18.09 / Frederick H. Katayama / Reuters

NEW YORK (Reuters) – Laid off from Wall Street? The CIA wants you — as long as you can pass a lie detector test and show that you are motivated by service to your country rather than your wallet.

The Central Intelligence Agency has been advertising for recruits and will be holding interviews on June 22 at a secret location in New York.

“Economics, finance and business professionals, if the quest for the bottom line is just not enough for you, the Central Intelligence Agency has a mission like no other,” one radio advertisement for the agency says.

“Join CIA’s directorate of intelligence and be a part of our global mission as an economic or financial analyst. Make a difference in your career and for your nation,” it says.

Ron Patrick, a spokesman for recruitment and retention at the CIA, told Reuters Television the agency had received several hundred resumes so far from applicants ranging from people just out of graduate school to laid-off bankers.

“It’s going to be a very different use of their skill set than perhaps they’ve used on Wall Street,” Patrick said.

Recruits will have to pass rigorous background and medical checks, as well as a polygraph, or lie-detector test.

Starting salaries range from around $60,000 for a new graduate to $100,000 for somebody with more experience, and top out at $160,000. Generous benefits are included.

Patrick said the agency would welcome worthy applicants from Wall Street, whose reputation has been tarnished by the financial crisis and revelations of lavish lifestyles and multi-million dollar bonuses at banks blamed for the meltdown.

“Typically the people that come to the CIA want to serve the government, they want to serve their countries. It’s a different mindset perhaps than serving a company or serving profit as a bottom line,” he said.

“As long as they can make that attitude switch from profit being the motivator to serving their country, I think they’ll fit in very well with us.”

(Writing by Claudia Parsons; editing by Paul Simao)

Cash strapped Montana town offers to hold Gitmo inmates

Montana town offers to take Guantanamo prisoners

5.29.09 / Matthew Brown / AP

HARDIN, Mont. - On Capitol Hill, politicians are dead-set against transferring some of the world’s most feared terrorists from Guantanamo to prisons on U.S. soil. But at City Hall in this impoverished town on the Northern Plains, the attitude is: Bring ‘em on.

Hardin, a dusty town of 3,400 people so desperate that it built a $27 million jail a couple of years ago in the vain hope it would be a moneymaker, is offering to house hundreds of Gitmo detainees at the empty, never-used institution.

The medium-security jail was conceived as a holding facility for drunks and other scofflaws, but town leaders said it could be fortified with a couple of guard towers and some more concertina wire. Apart from that, it is a turnkey operation, fully outfitted with everything from cafeteria trays and sweatsocks to 88 surveillance cameras.

“Holy smokes – the amount of soldiers and attorneys it would bring here would be unbelievable,” Clint Carleton said as he surveyed his mostly empty restaurant, Three Brothers Pizza. “I’m a lot more worried about some sex offender walking my streets than a guy that’s a world-class terrorist. He’s not going to escape, pop into the IGA (supermarket), grab a six-pack and go sit in the park.”

After Hardin’s six-member council passed a resolution last month in favor of taking the Guantanamo detainees, Montana’s congressional delegation was quick to pledge it would never happen.

Notwithstanding the reputation of Montanans as Second Amendment-loving gun owners, they said that putting terrorists on Montana soil could invite attacks from the detainees’ sympathizers.

“These Gitmo guys, they’re a scary bunch,” said Sen. Jon Tester, a Democrat. “You’ve got to realize what you’re getting into.”

Democratic Gov. Brian Schweitzer said this week that it is every state’s obligation to do its part in addressing terrorism. But he dismissed Hardin’s jail as not up to the task.

A White House spokesman on Thursday declined to comment on Hardin’s proposal and said there has been no decision on what to do with the detainees.

The jail’s No. 1 promoter, Greg Smith, executive director of Hardin’s economic development agency, said the Two Rivers Detention Center could easily be retrofitted to increase security. And while the town hasn’t had its own police force since the 1970s, Smith said the jail’s well-armed neighbors would constitute an “unofficial redneck patrol.”

While some townspeople welcome the idea as a way to produce jobs and put the jail to use, others worry that it would be too dangerous.

One of the jail’s neighbors, Bill Eshleman – a 72-year-old retired postal worker who said he keeps his .30-06 hunting rifle loaded and ready – said the detainees would invite trouble, and he would rather see them sent back where they came from.

But he joked that his rifle was “very accurate,” and backed up the claim by pointing to a pronghorn antelope head propped along his fenceline, a trophy from last hunting season.

His wife, Clara, squirmed uncomfortably in the face of her husband’s bravado, and said she is dead-set against Hardin becoming America’s Gitmo. As a matter of civic pride, she said she wants to put bad guys in the jail to relieve the town of what has become a community embarrassment.

“But not the Gitmos,” she said. “They’re the worst of the worst.”

Hardin – situated about an hour’s drive from Billings on the edge of the Crow Indian Reservation, not far from the Little Bighorn, where Custer made his last stand – is beset with high unemployment and a poverty rate double the national average. It built the 464-bed jail on spec – that is, with no contracts lined up ahead of time to take prisoners.

Attempts to bring offenders, out-of-state criminals and federal inmates to Hardin have all failed, and the bonds issued to pay for construction are now in default.

Some prison agencies, including the Montana Corrections Department, have said the jail does not meet their design and security standards, in part because of its dormitory-style rooms and lack of an exercise yard. Others said they had no need for the jail or selected a competing proposal.

Inside its concrete walls, orange jumpsuits, rubber sandals and stacks of white tube socks weigh down the shelves of the storeroom. Computers, phones and video monitors line the tables in the control room. In the cafeteria, stacks of plastic trays and cooking utensils wait to be put to use.

Mayor Ron Adams said the jail could generate up to $300,000 a year for Hardin’s coffers if it were to open. That is about 20 percent of the town’s annual budget. It would also create more than 100 jobs.

Some townspeople – whether they like the idea or not – doubt it will come to pass.

“I saw on the news last night that there are only three prisons in the country that could hold them, maximum-security prisons. So what’s this little one-horse deal? There ain’t a chance in hell,” said Bill Moehr, 77, a former cattle ranch manager who lives next to the jail.

Bonnie Kennedy, a 60-year-old convenience store clerk who also lives next door, chuckled when asked if she thought terrorists would be moving in any time soon.

“Like that’s going to ever happen. But it did put us back on the map,” she said. “I can’t say I like it, but it might get us some interest from somebody who could actually use it.”

US municipalities starting to charge for infrastructure costs, police and fire responses

Cities Turn to Fees to Fill Budget Gaps

4.11.09 / David Segal / New York Times

After her sport utility vehicle sideswiped a van in early February, Shirley Kimel was amazed at how quickly a handful of police officers and firefighters in Winter Haven, Fla., showed up. But a real shock came a week later, when a letter arrived from the city billing her $316 for the cost of responding to the accident.

“I remember thinking, ‘What the heck is this?’ ” says Ms. Kimel, 67, an office manager at a furniture store. “I always thought this sort of thing was covered by my taxes.”

It used to be. But last July, Winter Haven became one of a few dozen cities in the country to start charging “accident response fees.” The idea is to shift the expense of tending to and cleaning up crashes directly to at-fault drivers. Either they, or their insurers, are expected to pay.

Such cash-per-crash ordinances tend to infuriate motorists, and they often generate bad press, but a lot of cities are finding them hard to resist. With the economy flailing and budgets strained, state and local governments are being creative about ways to raise money. And the go-to idea is to invent a fee — or simply raise one.

Ohio’s governor has proposed a budget with more than 150 new or increased fees, including a fivefold increase in the cost to renew a livestock license, as well as larger sums to register a car, order a birth certificate or dump trash in a landfill. Other fees take aim at landlords, cigarette sellers and hospitals, to name a few.

Wisconsin’s governor, James E. Doyle, has proposed a charge on slaughterhouses that would be levied on the basis of each animal slaughtered. He also wants to more than triple the application charge for an elk-hunting license to $10, an idea that has raised eyebrows because the elk population in the state is currently too small to allow an actual hunting season.

Washington’s mayor, Adrian M. Fenty, has proposed a “streetlight user fee” of $4.25 a month, to be added to electric bills, that would cover the cost of operating and maintaining the city’s streetlights. New York City recently expanded its anti-idling law to include anyone parked near a school who leaves the engine running for more than a minute. Doing that will cost you $100.

“The most dangerous places on Staten Island are the schools at drop-off and dismissal time, when parents are parked three deep in the road,” says James S. Oddo, a City Council member from Staten Island who voted for the measure. “There is a mentality here that Johnny can’t walk 100 feet, he has to be dropped off right at the front of the school — and frankly that’s why Johnny is as pudgy as he is.”

Nothing, it seems, is off the table. In Pima County, Ariz., the County Board of Supervisors increased an assortment of fees, including the cost of AIDS testing. Florida has proposed raising medical visit co-payments for inmates in state prisons. Parking fees at the Honolulu Zoo could rise by 500 percent if a proposal there goes through.

Politicians tend to regard fees as more palatable than taxes, and more focused too. If a state needs to finance an infrastructure to oversee fishing, why shouldn’t fishermen foot the bill? But groups like the nonpartisan Tax Foundation in Washington worry that governments are now using fees to shore up budget shortfalls rather than cover specific costs incurred by specific users.

“When it comes to paying for bananas, you’ve got the market as a mechanism to make sure you’re paying a fair price,” says Josh Barro, a staff economist at the Tax Foundation. “But when it comes to getting your driver’s license renewed, the government has a monopoly, and you have no idea what it costs the state or what it’s doing with the money.”

In some cases, towns say they are merely enforcing rules that have long been on the books. For the first time in years, for instance, officials at Londonderry, N.H., have mailed notices to dog owners reminding them to renew their annual dog licenses, which cost $6.50 apiece, or face a $25 fine. Town leaders think the get-tough approach could raise an additional $20,000, but Meg Seymour, the town clerk, is dreading local reaction. When the town last sent out fine notices, in 2002, the calls to her office were vicious.

“Let’s just say that we’re the ones who take the venting,” she said. “You have no idea.”

If past patterns hold, the new wave of fees is just getting started. Gary Wagner, a professor of economics at the University of Arkansas at Little Rock, was one author of a study of moving-vehicle and parking tickets in North Carolina, covering a 14-year period. He found a strong correlation between a dip in government revenue and a rise in ticket-writing by the police.

“But there’s a lag time,” Mr. Wagner said. “Typically, it’s about a year after the revenues drop that the police start writing more tickets.”

If you date the start of the downturn to last September, the ticket-writing is just getting under way. And New Yorkers can expect more days like the one in mid-March, when the police wrote 9,016 driving-while-phoning tickets within 24 hours, roughly 20 times the usual number.

The “accident response fee” idea could spread, too. A company in Dayton, Ohio, called the Cost Recovery Corporation specializes in setting up collection systems for municipalities that bill for police and fire responses. (The company keeps 10 percent of billings.) Inquiries have tripled in the last year, says the company’s president, Regina Moore.

“What we’re hearing from towns is, ‘The taxpayers are all over us; they don’t want to surrender more tax money,’ ” she said. “And response fees are basically a form of restitution, like paying for a stay in jail.”

Insurance companies loathe the idea, because inevitably customers assume that a crash fee is covered by their policies. (It isn’t, in most cases.) And unlike the pay-to-stay approach to jails, crash fees rarely play well in the media. The mayor of Duluth, Minn., backed off a crash fee proposal shortly after Jay Leno joked about the city, by name, in a “Tonight Show” monologue last year.

In Winter Haven, the accident response fee seemed to leaders to be a reasonable way to help finance the police and fire departments, but so far only 20 percent of the $32,000 that has been billed to at-fault drivers has been collected.

“We chose not to contract out the collection part of this, and frankly, because of staff cuts, we don’t have enough people to handle all the paperwork,” says Joy Townsend, the city’s communications officer. “We’re now evaluating how cost-effective this program is.”

Ms. Kimel, the S.U.V. driver in Florida, will not make the numbers look any better. She has no idea whether the city will come after her for that $316 bill, but she doesn’t care.

“I’m not paying,” she said, “because it isn’t fair.”

SEC considering limiting stock short selling

SEC is floating options to limit short sales

4.8.09 / Marcy Gordon / AP

WASHINGTON – U.S. federal regulators are floating several options for reining in the practice of short-selling stocks, as investors, corporations and lawmakers clamour for restrictions on moves they say gutted vulnerable companies and worsened the market’s downward spiral.

Members of the Securities and Exchange Commission are meeting Wednesday to vote on new rules restricting short-selling, in which traders try to profit from a stock’s decline by selling borrowed shares. Several proposals are expected to be put forward for public comment.

The agency could settle on one plan and formally approve it sometime after the comment period.

It marks the second time in less than a week that financial relief measures pressed by Congress were taken up by overseers. Last Thursday, the independent Financial Accounting Standards Board gave companies more leeway in valuing assets and reporting losses.

Both sets of changes would especially benefit banks and other financial institutions, whose balance sheets have been battered in the financial crisis and whose stocks have often been targeted by short sellers.

The SEC’s move is the first major initiative by the agency under Chairman Mary Schapiro, who was appointed by President Barack Obama and assumed the position in January.

Short-selling is legal and widely in use on Wall Street. The practice involves borrowing a company’s shares, selling them, then buying them back when the stock falls and returning them to the lender. The short seller pockets the difference in price.

Proponents of short-selling say it can make markets more efficient, bring in more capital and raise warning signs about weak or badly managed companies. But companies and regulators maintain that the practice widened the scope of the financial crisis and contributed to the collapse in value last fall of a number of bank stocks – as well as the demise of investment bank Lehman Brothers.

As the market has plunged, pressure has been building from investors and Congress for the SEC to reinstate the so-called uptick rule, which it abolished in 2007. The rule was established in 1938 during the Depression that followed the 1929 market crash. Those pushing for its restoration say the absence of the rule has fanned volatility in the market, prompting bands of hedge funds and other investors to target weak companies with an avalanche of short-selling.

Professional short sellers and some analysts, on the other hand, have warned of possible negative consequences of restricting short-selling, maintaining that such a move could actually distort – not stabilize – edgy markets.

The uptick rule requires short sellers to wait to sell shares until a stock trades at a price at least slightly above its previous trading price. The idea is to install “a bit of a speed bump in a declining market,” Schapiro told reporters on Monday.

Schapiro confirmed that another option being considered, in addition to reinstating the uptick rule, is a sort of “circuit breaker” for stock prices. That approach would force short sellers to sell shares above the going market rate when they execute a short trade – it would only go into effect after a stock price has had a sharp decline by a certain amount.

Gun sales soaring up across US in response to series of shootings

Gun Sales Up in Binghamton and U.S.

In the City Home to Tragic Shooting and Across the U.S., Gun Sales Are Up

4.3.09 / Alice Gomstyn & Scott Mayerowitz / ABC News

In Binghamton, N.Y., and across the country, firearms sales have been among the few bright spots within the recession-battered economy.

But the shooting that took the lives of 14 people — including the gunman himself — at a Binghamton civic center today is adding fresh fuel to the fiery debate between those calling for more gun regulations and those who argue that today’s gun laws are tough enough.

Watch a special edition of “20/20″ on guns in America anchored by Diane Sawyer Friday, April 10, at 10 p.m. ET

According to a study from the University of Evansville in Indiana, at least 16 mass murders — the deaths of at least five people in a single incident — were committed in the United States since last year.

“We had 10 dead in Alabama, eight dead in North Carolina, 10 dead in California, including two police officers, 12 dead, reportedly today, in Binghamton and our political leaders say we should just enforce the laws on the books,” Peter Hamm, a spokesman The Brady Campaign to Prevent Gun Violence, said Friday afternoon. “The laws on the books are not working.”

Meanwhile, gun owners and merchants, including those in the Binghamton area, maintain that existing U.S. and state laws are tough enough.

“Every time there’s an incident involving a shooting of any kind, automatically the cry goes out that we need tougher gun laws and more gun laws,” said Chuck Sherwood, the owner of Timbercreek Sportsmanshop in the town of Maine, N.Y., about 14 miles from Binghamton. “All we need to do is enforce what we have now.”

Notwithstanding today’s tragedy, gun sellers like Sherwood are among the few business owners in the country experiencing boom times. Sherwood said his sales are up 40 percent over this time last year.

Overall, pistol permits have soared in New York’s Broome County, which is home to Binghamton. The county sheriff’s office has already issued 107 permits in the first three months of the year. Last year, the office issued 237 for the entire year.

“We’re going to blow the 2008 number out of the water,” sheriff’s deputy Brian Curtis said.

Nationally, the picture is much the same.

In the past six months, the FBI’s National Instant Criminal Background Check System processed 8.1 million requests from would-be gun buyers (who are required by federal law to undergo background checks before purchasing firearms), a 27 percent jump from 6.3 million requests processed during the same period a year before.

In November, December and January, gun maker Smith & Wesson saw the sales of its handguns and tactical rifles climb 25.9 percent, compared to the same period last year, according to filings with the Securities and Exchange Commission.

Sturm, Ruger and Co. reported a $48 million backlog in orders as of Dec. 31 and a 42 percent increase in sales in 2008.

The jump in fire arms sales, some say, has its roots in both the slumping economy and concerns about future gun-buying restrictions.

During tough economic times, part of what motivates gun patrons are fears that the country’s social order could break down in the face of continued economic decline, said Ilya Shapiro, a senior fellow in constitutional studies at the Cato Institute, a libertarian think-tank.

“There are certain segments of society that probably feel we’re headed for a big depression and it will be every man for himself and you’re going to have to scavenge for your own goods in a time of social breakdown, one of these kind of post-apocalyptic dystopias that many movies have been made about,” Shapiro said.

Another factor motivating gun buyers, Shapiro and others say, is concern that the Obama administration will eventually establish tougher regulations on gun purchases.

It’s about the “ability to have it before it gets overregulated,” said Emil Masata, a member of the board of directors of the Binghamton Gun Club. “The gun laws are so prohibitive now for the most part, it’s a joke.”

As for concerns about any changes that Obama would implement to federal gun laws, the fact is that most gun regulations are made at the local level, Shapiro said.

He said he doesn’t think today’s incident, at least, will lead to tighter regulations.

“Whenever there is a story of a big shooting, it hits the media cycle for a while. Maybe some legislators will start proposing things but unless there is a pattern that develops, I don’t know,” he said. “There are a lot of gun laws on the books already.”

Local currencies spreading across America

Communities print own currencies to keep cash flowing

4.6.09 / Marisol Bello / USA Today

A small but growing number of cash-strapped communities are printing their own money.

Borrowing from a Depression-era idea, they are aiming to help consumers make ends meet and support struggling local businesses.

The systems generally work like this: Businesses and individuals form a network to print currency. Shoppers buy it at a discount — say, 95 cents for $1 value — and spend the full value at stores that accept the currency.

Workers with dwindling wages are paying for groceries, yoga classes and fuel with Detroit Cheers, Ithaca Hours in New York, Plenty in North Carolina or BerkShares in Massachusetts.

Ed Collom, a University of Southern Maine sociologist who has studied local currencies, says they encourage people to buy locally. Merchants, hurting because customers have cut back on spending, benefit as consumers spend the local cash.

“We wanted to make new options available,” says Jackie Smith of South Bend, Ind., who is working to launch a local currency. “It reinforces the message that having more control of the economy in local hands can help you cushion yourself from the blows of the marketplace.”

About a dozen communities have local currencies, says Susan Witt, founder of BerkShares in the Berkshires region of western Massachusetts. She expects more to do it.

Under the BerkShares system, a buyer goes to one of 12 banks and pays $95 for $100 worth of BerkShares, which can be spent in 370 local businesses. Since its start in 2006, the system, the largest of its kind in the country, has circulated $2.3 million worth of BerkShares. In Detroit, three business owners are printing $4,500 worth of Detroit Cheers, which they are handing out to customers to spend in one of 12 shops.

During the Depression, local governments, businesses and individuals issued currency, known as scrip, to keep commerce flowing when bank closings led to a cash shortage.

By law, local money may not resemble federal bills or be promoted as legal tender of the United States, says Claudia Dickens of the Bureau of Engraving and Printing.

“We print the real thing,” she says.

The IRS gets its share. When someone pays for goods or services with local money, the income to the business is taxable, says Tom Ochsenschlager of the American Institute of Certified Public Accountants. “It’s not a way to avoid income taxes, or we’d all be paying in Detroit dollars,” he says.

Pittsboro, N.C., is reviving the Plenty, a defunct local currency created in 2002. It is being printed in denominations of $1, $5, $20 and $50. A local bank will exchange $9 for $10 worth of Plenty.

“We’re a wiped-out small town in America,” says Lyle Estill, president of Piedmont Biofuels, which accepts the Plenty. “This will strengthen the local economy. … The nice thing about the Plenty is that it can’t leave here.”

China gearing up for summer of discontent

China Is Gearing Up For A Summer Of Discontent

4.4.09 / Martin McCauley / Stirring Trouble Internationally

he Communist Party of China (CPC) is facing an unprecedented challenge to its leadership. The People’s Armed Police (PAP), the regular police, the state security service and other agencies are preparing to deal with a summer of discontent. The authorities are expecting demonstrations, riots and other ‘mass disturbances’ involving millions of unemployed workers and farmers. More resources are being devoted to monitoring the activities of Chinese dissidents living abroad, including those in the United States.

The Central Commission on Political and Legal Affairs (CCPLA), the most important law enforcement agency in China, is busy tightening security in order to ensure that ‘angry and disaffected elements’ do not threaten the stability of the state. Officially only 4.2 per cent of the labour force is unemployed but this does not include about 20 million of migrant workers. They are not included in labour statistics and hence do not qualify for social security benefits. The real level of unemployment in China may be as high as 10 per cent.

Prime Minister Wen Jiabao has underlined the importance of three ‘guarantees’: economic growth; the standard of living; and social and political stability. The police and the courts have been given a task of pre-empting unrest and deal aggressively with manifestations of opposition and disorder. Greater emphasis is devoted to gathering intelligence so that Beijing is better informed. Many more law enforcement units would be needed.

The CCPLA underlines the need to utilise the ‘tools of proletarian dictatorship’: the People’s Liberation Army (PLA), the PAP and the police. Although the main task of the 2.4 million strong PLA is to defend the country against foreign attack, the CPC has lately been stressing the need to use of the PLA to ensure domestic security.
Part of the 14.9 per cent increase in the military budget is to be spent on measures that would ensure social and economic stability in the country. Hitherto the PAP were mainly responsible for providing law and order. The revelation that the PLA is to become more closely involved in matters of domestic security reveals the seriousness of the perceived threat to social harmony.
Earlier this year tens of thousands of PLA and PAP officers were deployed in Tibet. Their main task was to pre-empt demonstrations to mark the 50th anniversary of the Tibetan uprising of March 1959. The anniversary passed without seruioustrouble but only beasceu of massive security presence there.

The People’s Armed Police units are to be expanded and trained to deal more effectively with unrest. For the first time, the head of the PAP was elected to the CCPLA. Local PAP commanders have also been made members of regional Committees on Political and Legal Affairs.

The present measures are a continuation of those that were taken last year. After the riots in Tibet in 2008 the Chine government launched a ‘people’s war’ against ethnic ‘separatists’. Beijing residents were then mobilised to ensure the security of the Olympic Games. Over a million of the capital’s residents aided the PAP, police and a myriad of other agencies to police the Games. Last month over 600,000 people in the capital helped to boost security during the annual meetings of the National People’s Congress (the parliament) and the Chinese People’s Political Consultative Conference.

Great efforts have been made to improve coverage by CCTV cameras. Over a million cameras will be installed in the Pearl River Delta region alone by the end of this year. The region is one of the most affected by the economic downturn as most enterprises are oriented towards exports. Police there have exhorted enterprises to devote more attention to security. They are to recruit more internal security staff to ensure that doors, gates and locks are in good order. More alarms and CCTV cameras should be acquired. Guandong providence has set up a special unit of about a thousand police officers, security guards and militias to act in emergencies.

The main task of the courts is to ‘defuse contradictions’ arising from the economic downturn. Demobilised soldiers and PAP officers are to be recruited for fast track training as judges and prosecutors in the central and western provinces of China.

A major problem which remains is the quality of law enforcement agencies at the local level. Last month, on Hainan Island (on the southern tip of China), a youth was beaten to death by a gang from a neighbouring village. This led to a three day of clashes between the two villages. The villagers also attacked local police and security staff. They stated that they had lost faith in the local law enforcement agencies because they were ‘corrupt and protected criminals’.Corruption remains and ever present problem in China. The deputy head of the Supreme People’s Court has been arrested. He is the most senior judge to have ended up in a police cell. His case has been rumbling along for over six months. Such is the situation that about a dozen telephone numbers have been made available to citizens to inform on corrupt judges, police and prosecutors.

The fear is that corrupt memebers of the security forces and the judiciary may exacerbate the situation and ignite an already tense situation. No wonder Beijing is worried.

Gordon Brown hails creation of New World Order at G20 summit

Where did a G20 come from? All these countries suddenly included in the G club. Just another step up to easing in the mainstream acceptance of the planned world government.

New world order hailed after rescue

4.2.09 / Virginmedia News

Experts are digesting the G20’s “historic” trillion-dollar bid to pull the world out of recession after Gordon Brown hailed the creation of a “new world order”.

After two days of intense talks with his fellow leaders, the PM claimed victory, saying: “This is the day the world came together to fight back against the global recession, not with words but a plan for global recovery and reform.

“The decisions, of course, will not immediately solve the crisis, but we have begun the process by which it will be solved.”

US President Barack Obama was effusive in his praise for Mr Brown’s chairmanship, and branded the outcome “a turning point in our pursuit of global economic recovery”.

There had been fears of tensions with French president Nicolas Sarkozy and German chancellor Angela Merkel. In the event, both proclaimed themselves satisfied, having secured tough curbs on tax havens and hedge funds.

Mr Sarkozy said “a page has been turned” on the “Anglo Saxon” financial model, while Mrs Merkel said it represented “a very, very good, almost historic compromise”. But there were no firm commitments to a new fiscal stimulus – which many believed Mr Brown and Mr Obama were hoping for.

The key plank of the deal is an injection of 1.1 trillion dollars of additional resources for the International Monetary Fund and other international institutions – the biggest increase in their history, according to Mr Brown.

Mr Brown said new rules on bankers’ remuneration – establishing “sustainable compensation schemes” – would mean “no more rewards for failure”.

Liberal Democrat Treasury spokesman Vince Cable said the summit “stopped the rot” in the global economy but more had to be done to boost trade and tackle tax havens.

He told BBC Breakfast that world leaders had realised they needed to act together to deal with the worldwide recession.

Ex-World Bank chief economist calls for global solution to economic crisis

Stiglitz Calls for Global Solution to Crisis

Nobel Prize-winning economist Joseph Stiglitz argues that the only way to fix the world’s economic crisis is to act globally. Speaking at the Development Policy Forum in Berlin on Monday he said the reform of the world’s financial institutions wasn’t going fast enough.

3.10.09 / Der Spiegel

The World Bank’s finding sounds very dramatic: According to a report issued by the international organization on Sunday, the global financial crisis is particularly hurting developing countries. The study adds that poor countries are often heavily dependent on exports, have no financial reserves and are not being issued any loans. As a result, these countries have no way to fight back against the financial crisis.

According to Robert Zoellick, the head of the World Bank, the only solution to this problem is to foster close cooperation between industrialized countries, international financial institutions and private companies. “The global crisis demands a global solution,” Zoellick says. “We need investments in security networks, in infrastructure and in small and medium-sized companies in order to create jobs and avoid social and political unrest.”

According to Joseph Stiglitz, however, the winner of the 2001 Nobel Prize in economic sciences, the solution lies elsewhere. Speaking at a Development Policy Forum held Monday in Berlin’s Federal Ministry of Economic Cooperation and Development, Stiglitz proposed a more fundamental reform of the world’s financial institutions, saying the current tempo of reform is “too slow.”

Stiglitz is a man who knows what he’s talking about. The mild-mannered American with the meticulously trimmed beard was one of Bill Clinton’s chief economic advisers in the 1990s and former chief economist at the World Bank from 1997 to 2000 (until he resigned in protest).

Stiglitz explained that, in his opinion, today’s institutions are not adapted to today’s issues. Too many countries are left on the sidelines (at events such as the G-8 and the G-20 meetings) or have too little say (at institutions such as the IMF and the World Bank). As a result, these institutions lack a certain degree of legitimacy. “The UN is the only institution that can push through the necessary measures,” Stiglitz said. He also suggested that the United Nations and a world economic council, such as the one Chancellor Angela Merkel proposed in early February at the World Economic Forum meeting in Davos to be an economic analogue to the UN Security Council, should help engineer a global financial system.

For Stiglitz, such suggestions aren’t meant to be seen as pipe dreams. In fact, as he sees it, the crisis offers an opportunity to turn his proposals into reality. Stiglitz currently chairs the commission of experts charged by the UN to investigate possible reforms to the international monetary and financial system. In early June, the commission is scheduled to submit its proposal at a UN conference. As Stiglitz describes them, the proposals need to be radical because: “We need a new start.”

G20 protestors break Royal Bank of Scotland windows, enter building, clash with police

G20 Protesters Smash into Bank, Clash with Police

4.1.09 / Voa News

Demonstrators in London protesting against the G20 summit smashed windows and briefly entered the Royal Bank of Scotland Wednesday, before riot police with truncheons and shields pushed them back.

Protesters also tried to storm the Bank of England, whose windows were covered with plywood in anticipation of violence.

The clashes broke out as world leaders prepared to open their crisis talks on the global economic downturn. Thousands of demonstrators filled the narrow streets of the City of London, the banking and financial center of the British capital, for what organizers called “Financial Fools Day” protests.

Police also blocked crowds from marching on the London Stock Exchange and other financial institutions. Reporter Tom Rivers told VOA the protesters appeared to be a mix of anarchists, anti-capitalists and environmentalists.

The Times newspaper described the British capital as “Fortress London.”

Some of the demonstrators came away bleeding from their clashes with the police, who wore bright yellow jackets to identify themselves in the crowds. Authorities say about 2,500 uniformed officers are assigned to security duty for the G-20 summit, with many more deployed to protect the world leaders and international officials attending the meetings.