Archive for the 'International' Category

TARP watch: bailout FAILOUT

Published
by
tigtog
1 week, 1 day ago
in Disasters, Law, Markets and USA
. 108 Comments

Vote count:

Democrats: 141 Yea, 94 Nay
Republican: 66 Yea, 132 Nay

The Times - Analysis: bailout vote calls Hank Paulson’s bluff

Negotiators had worked all weekend to accommodate some of the doubts of conservative Republicans who objected to such a massive outlay of taxpayer funds on the financial sector. But in the end the largely superficial changes made to the original plan were not enough and more than three-quarters of Republicans voted against. Worse, perhaps, more than a third of Democrats also opposed the measure, which they saw as a handout to rich bankers on Wall Street.

Now, in effect, the politicians have called the bluff of Hank Paulson, the US Treasury Secretary. Since he first proposed the plan ten days ago he has repeatedly warned that its passage was absolutely essential to avoid a complete freezing-up of the US financial system.

Continue reading ‘TARP watch: bailout FAILOUT’

Open Garnaut Review report thread

Published
by
Mark
1 week, 1 day ago
in Climate change, Economics, Energy, Environment, International and Markets
. 63 Comments

It’s out today. LP bloggers will have more during the day as it’s digested, but here’s an open thread for instant analysis and commentary. Please also feel free to link in comments to other posts or articles.

By way of preview, a number of climate scientists have released an open letter to Kevin Rudd (text here):

The Garnaut Review concluded that an emission reduction target for Australia of 25% below 1990 levels by 2020 would be an equitable contribution to the international effort required to achieving this outcome. As a group of Australia’s leading climate change scientists, we urge you to adopt this target as the minimum requirement for Australia’s contribution to an effective global climate agreement.

In Crikey yesterday, Bernard Keane contrasted the apocalyptic prophesies of doom emanating from business with the rather lame reality of the government’s proposals to date.

Nightmare stuff. Imagine how bad it would be the Government had actually proposed a serious effort to reduce our carbon emissions?

As Keane notes in another article, the release of the Treasury modelling today:

should provide a welcome corrective to much of the hysteria generated by modelling commissioned by rentseeking industry groups.

Keane also observes that Garnaut will be talking about adaptation strategies and costs in this report as well.

Note: Related post from dk.au on public opinion, polls and climate change.

Update: The report has now been released and can be downloaded from here.

Update: From Crikey, Bernard Keane on Garnaut at a glance and Clive Hamilton on politics trumping science.

Elsewhere [dk.au]: Barry Brooks is also running an open thread at his blog Climate Dilemma [ht: Peter Wood in comments]

Joshua Gans comments on Chapter 14 (TEEIIs) which he argues is “dramatically superior” to the Green Paper solution of free permits. He also renews his call for border adjustment taxes:

In my opinion, it would be better to bite the bullet and, at least for imports, assess the carbon cost of those imports and tax them. This will get the price signals right and also put pressure on trading partners to put in their own emissions trading schemes so as to avoid that tax.

Is neoliberalism finished?

Published
by
Mark
1 week, 1 day ago
in China, Developing world, Economics, Foreign Elections, Foreign policy, International, Markets, Philosophy, Politics, Sociology, USA and War
. 72 Comments

The question’s in the air at the moment. In the Australian blogosphere, John Quiggin thinks the financial markets crisis has killed it off, while Nicholas Gruen is (rightly in my view) more skeptical. [In response to commenters, Quiggin goes on in another post to define what he means by neoliberalism.]

From my (sociological) point of view, the shorter answer to the question is - no.

In fact, I think the way the question’s posed reflects a number of category mistakes. Continue reading ‘Is neoliberalism finished?’

Can politicians walk and chew gum at the same time?

Published
by
Mark
1 week, 2 days ago
in Climate change, Economics, Energy, Environment, International, Media and Polls
. 5 Comments

The obvious retort to John McCain’s faux suspension of his campaign last week was that Presidents should be able to deal with more than one issue at the same time. That’s obviously true, but it’s also a truism which disguises something - politicians think that the public want their focus predominantly on the crucial issue of the moment (and the media reinforces this with its “narrative” obsession).

It might not have escaped folks’ attention that Kevin Rudd minimised his focus on climate change at the UN in favour of the plan he and Gordon Brown cooked up for saving the world’s finances. Rudd himself mentioned that it would be difficult to concentrate world leaders’ attention on climate change. This rhetoric also provided him with some convenient cover for disguising the switch in focus for the justification of his trip as it came under opposition attack. But it does raise the broader question of which way Kevin Rudd will jump on climate change and emissions trading - perhaps more in terms of the international negotiations (which however can’t be separated from the domestic politics, with the whole question of the significance and timing of Australia’s ETS being crucial to the “argy bargy”).

The Lowy Institute Poll being released today might pose some dangers ahead. Continue reading ‘Can politicians walk and chew gum at the same time?’

Plan agreed, economy banks saved…

Published
by
Kim
1 week, 2 days ago
in Economics, Markets and USA
. 8 Comments

The details are a bit sketchy but it appears that agreement has been reached on some version of the Paulson bailout plan. Ian Welsh at Firedoglake, whose coverage of all these shenanigans has been first rate, has the lowdown on what it probably means.

Continue reading ‘Plan agreed, economy banks saved…’

John Howard: media tart?

Published
by
Kim
1 week, 3 days ago
in Howardia, Iraq and USA
. 26 Comments

Remember how John Howard said after he lost his seat of Bennelong and the top job that he wouldn’t be providing a running commentary on politics?

He’s over in LA at the moment on his rounds collecting meaningless awards from obscure American right wing think tanks. If you happen to be in the neighbourhood, you could have attended a “gala dinner in Brentwood” with the PM - for only $1000 a plate. But don’t panic if you missed out! His reflections on “Remembering Munich: the Legacy of Appeasement” will be featuring as part of the American Freedom Alliance’s program for another couple of days. I’m sure we’re all proud that Howard has been selected as a recipient of the Winston S. Churchill Medal of Freedom.

While in California, Howard couldn’t resist giving an interview to media start up Pyjamas tv. You can watch it here. Streem reports:

During the interview, Mr Howard touched on the Iraq War, commenting that the media was hesitant to cover it because of improving conditions.

Really? While violence is down, the conditions for “winning the war” stipulated by the Bush administration are very far from being met, according to a very comprehensive article by Peter W. Galbraith in the New York Review of Books.

McCain flip flops

Published
by
Kim
1 week, 3 days ago
in Foreign Elections and USA
. 22 Comments

Joe Conason has a devastating critique on McCain’s “bipartisan” “here to help” “campaign suspended” play at Salon:

His attempts to game this dangerous situation, his waffling between bipartisanship and ideological rigidity, his shiftiness on the real issues and his obvious lack of concentration on the problems that must be resolved — suggest that he is in fact unfit to serve in the office he desires. Once again he has proved that his claim to put country first is hollow. He was more than willing to take America down as he gambled for that prize.

Do feel free to use this thread to reflect on the debate as well.

Continue reading ‘McCain flip flops’

Republicans attempt to scuttle GOP bailout plan

Published
by
Kim
1 week, 4 days ago
in Economics, Foreign Elections, Markets and USA
. 21 Comments

It only gets more surreal.

You can read about the latest at Crooks & Liars and Firedoglake.

None of this is about the economy. It’s about rescuing McCain’s campaign, not Wall Street. But reportedly McCain’s “help” comes down to supporting a proposal by House Republican Leader John Boehner:

That proposal reportedly includes even more deregulation and further tax breaks to the financial sector, plus a prayer that Wall Street can rescue itself if the restraints are removed.

The $700 billion bail out is wildly unpopular in the States, to put it mildly. But not because the American people are taking a stand against regulation.

Update: Hilzoy at Obsidian Wings on how the deal was scuttled. McCain’s lying about his part in it, as is now routine.

Meanwhile

Published
by
Robert Merkel
1 week, 5 days ago
in Afghanistan, International, Iran, Middle East, USA and War
. 16 Comments

George W. Bush - or whomever is actually running the shop - is a rather busy lame duck. As well as the credit crunch, there’s there are all manner of foreign policy challenges which at any other time would be making headlines.

Number 1 cab off the rank is North Korea, who seem to be planning to fire up their nuclear infrastructure again. The Arms Control Wonk seems to think it’s because they’re peeved they haven’t been taken off the list of states that sponsor terrorism. Meanwhile, the US-led, NATO-labelled occupation of Afghanistan is sailing into rather interesting times. The pursuit of militants near - and possibly over - the Afghanistan-Pakistan border isn’t exactly thrilling the Pakistani government or the army. So much so, in fact, that they’ve started firing on NATO (which I assume means American) helicopters.

Whomever wins the US Presidency in November is going to have a pretty full slate.

UPDATE: I can has good grammar when I wantz… :)

Candidatus interruptus

Published
by
Phil
1 week, 5 days ago
in Elections, Foreign Elections, Politics and USA
. 40 Comments

I’m still scratching my head over this bit of political crazy.

John McCain has launched his second Hail Mary pass in a month. On Wednesday he called for a suspension of the presidential campaign—no events, no ads, and no debate Friday—so that he and Barack Obama can head to Washington to forge a bipartisan solution. Even more than his selection of Sarah Palin as running mate, this gambit feels like a wild improvisation someone in the McCain team mapped out on his chest: OK, you run to the fire hydrant, cut left, and then when he gets to the Buick, John, you heave it.

First John McCain picks one of the least qualified people in American political history as his VP running mate, now this.

It’s not looking like solid decision making by a supposedly serious Presidential candidate and what’s worse is that he now wants to postpone the debates of the VP candidates into the hazy future. Why? Because it’s becoming increasingly obvious that his handpicked running mate just isn’t up to handling the pressures and rigors of a campaign.

Today’s events call into question his decision making capabilities. John McCain is looking like a befuddled old man, unable to start a task and finish it; attempting to short circuit the hard work required of an issue or event with a stunt that garners nothing but short term political mileage.

Electoral systems and gender equity

Published
by
Paul Norton
1 week, 5 days ago
in Elections, Politics, USA and Women
. 26 Comments

Barack Obama’s defeat of Hillary Clinton for the Democratic Presidential nomination evoked a range of opinions about the extent to which sexism was a factor in Senator Clinton’s loss, and about if and when the US will ever elect a female president. The selection of Sarah Palin as John McCain’s running mate has brought another angle to these debates. This is not surprising.

However, it would be a mistake to focus exclusively on whether Clinton and/or Palin as individuals have been hard done by due to sexism in American political culture and the wider socio-cultural milieu – important as these issues are - and neglect to discuss political-institutional factors affecting the level of women’s political representation in the US and other liberal democracies.

Some of these political-institutional factors are obviously gender-political in nature. However in this post I want to argue that a political-institutional factor that is not overtly gender-political in nature has also been quite significant in enhancing political opportunities for women in some countries and constraining them in others. This is the electoral system used to elect a country’s parliament or equivalent.
Continue reading ‘Electoral systems and gender equity’

Revisiting the Act of Settlement

Published
by
Robert Merkel
1 week, 6 days ago
in Australiana, International and Law
. 35 Comments

According to The Guardian, the British government is apparently proposing to revise the Act of Settlement, which governs succession to the British throne. In essence, the proposal seeks to remove the primacy of male heirs over female ones. Secondly, it aims to remove the provision requiring the monarch to be a Protestant, and requiring their spouse not to be Catholic. The impetus for the change (aside from the sheer ridiculousness of these requirements in 2008) is likely the realization that William and Kate might put the tabloids out of their misery, get hitched, and start a family soon. If there’s to be a change in the line of succession so that their first-born, regardless of gender, is next in line, would best be done beforehand.

What makes it of direct relevance to Australia is that “Any change in legislation would, among other things, require the consent of member nations of the Commonwealth.” That is, because the Australian monarchy is legally a separate creature to the British one, we’d have to pass our own amendments to the Australian version of the Act.

The biggest political issue raised by the changes in Britain - the role of the various national Anglican churches in the modern UK - is not an issue here given that Australia does not have an established church. However, it will be interesting to see how the Australian government deals with this one - and, more to the point, the reminder that the republican issue is still around - if the UK government does indeed act to make the change.

The alternative (NZ election)

Published
by
Idiot/Savant
1 week, 6 days ago
in Elections, Foreign Elections, International and Politics
. 8 Comments

Seven weeks out, and the New Zealand election campaign has yet to really get under way. While the date has been announced, Parliament is still sitting (under urgency, to get through a raft of Treaty settlement legislation and administrivia which really needs to be dealt with), and the campaign proper won’t begin until it rises (which is likely to happen late tomorrow night, or maybe Friday afternoon). In the meantime, and in the absence of policy announcements, campaign scandals and such, I’m left with nothing to talk about but the broad issues.

Deborah has already covered what Labour has done in government over the last nine years. If re-elected, Labour will likely continue to govern in the same vaguely left-wing, incrementalist style, slowly extending employment rights and the welfare state as money becomes available. So in this post, I thought I’d look at the alternative: what would National do if they form a government? Continue reading ‘The alternative (NZ election)’

Bring back Bill Clinton (the last dog isn’t dead yet)

Published
by
Kim
1 week, 6 days ago
in Economics, Foreign Elections, Markets and USA
. 24 Comments

I’m going to go out on a limb here.

Bill Clinton is the only genuine political talent that creaking heap of donkeys, the beloved Democratic Party, has produced in an age. Damn that Twenty-Second Amendment.

Obama plays it safe yet again, basically following the line of least resistance by endorsing the Paulson bailout plan with some meaningless caveats. There were calls in the States for Obama to actually return to the Senate and get involved in the legislative process over the “plan”, which would be a useful contrast with what firedoglake correctly characterises as McCain’s “empty babbling on the economy”. That might be a smart move particularly given his very thin legislative record.

But, nope.

What we get is propaganda about “post-partisan solutions”. The Democratic candidate who won’t even speak the D Word, let alone the L Word. Continue reading ‘Bring back Bill Clinton (the last dog isn’t dead yet)’

The elephant in the room (or on Wall Street)

Published
by
Kim
2 weeks ago
in China, Foreign policy, Markets, Media and USA
. 17 Comments

In an interview where he displayed to the full his immense self-regard, and incidentally engaged in his now customary tease about his future in politics, Peter Costello was asked by Tony Jones to comment on his warnings during the election campaign last year about financial tsunamis from China. He didn’t exactly address that front on, but he did comment that Asian sovereign wealth funds were providing a force for stability in world financial markets. That’s intriguing, because Ian Welsh at Firedoglake highlights what isn’t being openly discussed in the political reaction to the proposed Paulson bailout of Wall Street, in the context of the Japanese company Namura acquiring a 20% equity stake in Morgan Stanley after Henry Paulson’s announcement:

Investors, and especially foreign investors, want to know that if they buy in again, they’re protected. Since they aren’t going to be allowed to buy up the US’s financial sector for pennies, that means they need to know that prices will be maintained so they aren’t buying pigs-in-a-poke.

Which is also why the Paulson or Dodd bailout is still on the books. Because if the US doesn’t bail out its own financial sector (by borrowing money it doesn’t have) then the only people with enough money are foreign sovereign funds and large investors. And they willbail it out for cents on the dollar at fire sale prices. The end result is that New York would definitively no longer be the world’s financial center. Odds on favourite to be the new one? Dubai. London doesn’t want it (they want to be middlemen). Tokyo can’t quite do it. Shanghai isn’t ready.

But Dubai is raring to go. And that’s one real reason why Congressional leaders and Wall Street CEOs are panicking. If Wall Street isn’t bailed out by Congress, the executives will all be either working for Chinese and Arabs, or they’ll be out on the street, drowning their sorrow in their 50 feet yachts drinking $100,000 dollar bottles of whine. Er, wine.

What the US government is really seeking to do (among other things) is to engage in its own version of state capitalism in order to fend off the accelerating shift of power from America to Asia. And that’s one of the motivations they don’t particularly want to foreground, because the US taxpayer will be footing the bill. Make no mistake, this is just as much about geopolitics as finance.

Continue reading ‘The elephant in the room (or on Wall Street)’