What’s not to like about a dictator? As many MAGA seem to think there is nothing wrong with having Trump as a dictator, it is obvious they have been persuaded by the Republican Russian-backed propaganda and not thought it through at all.
In the Project 2025 plan Trump and his Republican supporters intend to use as written by Heritage Foundation and 75+ supporting organizations, it would change our merit-based expertise across federal agencies that are legally required to abide by, serve and protect our Constitution into an absolute loyalty pledge to Trump with complete and direct hiring and firing decisions for every federal employee, every federal agency and contractor, every Republican elected official and every member of every US govt institution across all three branches of our government.
Don’t believe it? Go read it. They are training people already to fill 54,000 appointed positions and have outlined the plan that will decimate any other loyalty to our nation, to our laws, to our Constitution and to the people of the United States to supplant it with absolute obedience and loyalty to Trump as an absolute dictator over our nation.
So, thinking about it – What’s not to like about a dictator?
If Trump comes to your daughter’s school and wants to review all the girls in their underwear or in their locker room where they are dressing, then check their teeth like buyers do for horses by sticking his grubby fingers in her mouth to pull up her lips so he can examine her teeth in front of all her friends and his entourage – what’s not to like?
Trump did that to the young women contestants in the Miss America pageant when he was running it. As he said in his deposition to the E. Jean Carroll case, when you’re a celebrity, they let you do it. How much more so – in his version of what a president with absolute power and absolute immunity from consequences, Constitutionality, laws, and no conscience, no morals, no ethics and no empathy for others as he has proven about himself?
The Hole 285: Apprentice Staffer Noel Casler Tells All on Working with Trump (Full Episode HD)
The Hole Podcast (At the 1.58 mark, Noel Casler relates what he saw Trump do with the girls in the pageant, checking their teeth like they were his horses or as buyers do – to horses)
Comedian Noel Casler tells the Celebrity Apprentice Trump tales before his Ramshead Annapolis gig
WNST (around the 43 minute mark, Noel Casler talks about the beauty pageant briefly – but he also relates a lot of other things he witnessed of Trump’s choices that are on the bizarre side and would be horrific once Trump becomes absolute dictator.)
So, what’s not to like about a dictator? With Trump’s ideas about women and the misogyny he has inspired and supported in those around him, in the Republican Party and by MAGA supporters, will he do as Gaddafi and his sons did? From the Washington Post story about Gaddafi and his sons when he was the dictator over Libya –
“…Gaddafi has kept a cadre of about 30 women, known as his Amazonian guard, close by his side since the early 1970s. At times, the women took bullets for Gaddafi — one woman died and two were injured when the Libyan leader was attacked in 1998.
The strongman asked his female bodyguards not only for their protection but also for oaths of virginity, and that they be dressed in camouflage, nail polish, coiffed hair, and heavy mascara.(…)
One woman told the Sunday Malta Times she was blackmailed into joining the unit after the regime told her that her brother had been smuggling drugs into Libya and she would go to jail unless she agreed to join the brigade.
“A pattern emerged in the stories,” the Times reports. “The women would be first raped by the dictator and then passed on, like used objects, to one of his sons and eventually to high-ranking officials for more abuse before eventually being let go.”
Sergewa is also investigating claims that Gaddafi soldiers systematically raped women during the conflict. Some women have come forward saying they were raped by as many as 20 soldiers at a time.
“In one case, a girl, around 18 or so, said she was raped in front of her father. She kept telling him not to look at her,” Sergewa said.
What’s not to like about a dictator? Not being allowed to say no to him, maybe? It not being legal to say no to him, maybe? Not being allowed to tell him anything he disagrees with or doesn’t like, maybe? Not being able to tell him what he needs to hear and only able to tell him whatever he wants to hear, maybe?
What’s not to like about a dictator if Trump as dictator with unbounded power and all of America’s resources at his command as his shitty thinking, whims, pettiness, ambitions, profits are making his decisions without regard for anything else?
And he did that in the case of the Kurds who had been our allies in fighting against ISIS – he withdrew our troops from those allies in a moment without any thought at all about what it might mean, after a phone call from his Turkish master, Erdogan –
Trump declared U.S. troops would step aside for an expected Turkish attack on the Kurds, who have fought alongside Americans for years, but he then threatened to destroy the Turks’ economy if they went too far.
Even Trump’s staunchest Republican congressional allies expressed outrage at the prospect of abandoning Syrian Kurds who had fought the Islamic State group with American arms and advice. It was the latest example of Trump’s approach to foreign policy that critics condemn as impulsive, that he sometimes reverses and that frequently is untethered to the advice of his national security aides.
That was after a phone call from Trump’s friend Erdogan. Wonder if this had anything to do with it –
Trump Towers Istanbul are two conjoined towers in Şişli, Istanbul, Turkey. One of the towers is an office tower, and the other a residential tower, consisting of over 200 residences.[4] The complex also holds a shopping mall with some 80 shops and a multiplex cinema. They are the first Trump Towers built on the European continent.[2] The property developer is Turkish billionaire Aydın Doğan, in a license-partnership with American businessman (later U.S. President) Donald Trump. His daughter Ivanka Trump took part in the promotion and sales of the residences in 2007,[5] 2008[6] and 2009,[5][7] and attended the April 2012 launch with her father Donald Trump and Turkish Prime Minister (later President) Recep Tayyip Erdoğan.[1][8] Many businesses based in Europe and the Middle East occupy the complex, which was designed by Austrian architect Brigitte Weber.[2][3]
What’s not to like about a dictator who makes unilateral decisions not founded on expert advice, nor on experience, nor on knowledge, nor on evidence-based facts, nor on the interests of the United States nor on our national security in complex geopolitical arenas that affect our nation and our future in vast ways?
What’s not to like about a dictator, especially if Trump gets that opportunity despite continuing to be the dumbest person in any room while unable to know which advice is trustworthy, valuable, worthwhile, accurate, based in reality, uses facts, is knowledge based, and then, refusing any advice that is qualified as all of that even when he does know which it is. What’s not to like about that?
During Covid, that was a real problem and created falling dominoes of problems that we didn’t have in the first place as a result of his incompetence, arrogance, pettiness and acting like a unilateral authoritarian lost in the land of conspiracy thinking right in the midst of a life and death pandemic all while refusing to listen to or use the advice of those knowledgeable and competent about it.
So, when every federal employee works at the pleasure of and answerable to only Donald Trump, how many Republicans and Trump supporters will discover they don’t please him either? Will it be like it was for Maria Yovanovitch, the US Ambassador to Ukraine who may have raised Trump’s ire because she had not immediately mounted his photograph prominently and refused to participate in the shady operation Trump’s minion Giuliani was performing for him?
In Kyiv, Yovanovitch spent much of her time trying to cajole Ukrainian officials and businesspeople to move beyond a culture of corruption, an impulse that earned her some influential enemies. In 2019, she fell victim to a smear campaign organized by, among others, corrupt officials in Kyiv, Trump’s lawyer Rudolph Giuliani, and the right-wing media.
Deemed disloyal to Trump—“a stooge,” according to Giuliani—she was summoned back to Washington and summarily fired. Meanwhile, Giuliani and others were trying to get the Ukrainian President, Volodymyr Zelensky, to dig up dirt on Joe Biden and his son Hunter, who had business dealings in Ukraine. Trump, in his fateful telephone call to Zelensky—a crucial milestone in the chain of misdeeds that led to impeachment—said that Yovanovitch was “bad news.”
Yovanovitch, in her testimony to Congress, four months later, said, “Our Ukraine policy has been thrown into disarray, and shady interests the world over have learned how little it takes to remove an American Ambassador who does not give them what they want.”
Why have a dictator, an authoritarian tyrant to run things according to GOP plans?
What’s not to like about a dictator commanding full resources and assets of the United States whose marching orders, ideas, talking points, agendas, short-term goals and actions are coming from Putin whose interests are for Russia, or from Xi whose focus is the best interest of China, or from the Heritage Foundation and the John Birch Society whose interests are purely power and greed lusting for the riches of America to be theirs and theirs alone?
When Trump decides to make all our interstates into toll roads with a private ownership pact that benefits his family and friends with a small kickback to him while breaking the backs of every American citizen and community that has to use them – what’s not to like about him being a dictator at that point?
What’s not to like about a dictator? Would it be that? Would it be when Trump does as he and the Christo-fascists backing him claim they are going to do once he is in office – to take over Democrat-run cities and remake their governance to suit the fascist ideology and Republicans’ lust for power and absolute control over everyone’s lives?
Or, would it be something not to like about a dictator when Trump and the current Republican Party run by the Heritage Foundation, billionaires and Russia end public education for every American child and you have no babysitter nor children who can read, write, speak intelligently, do math, think critically for problem-solving in everyday life, and accomplish productively in their lives with their individual potential?
Trump, the Koch backed organizations serving the Republican Party and Libertarian Party with their marketed label of “conservatism”, Project 2025 and their 75+ supporting organizations, Evangelical Christians and Dominionists – all of whom are serving this fascist remake of America have promised to be rid of the Department of Education, federal funding to schools and public education in the United States to change it into a for-profit schools style education system exclusively. There will be no other option.
What’s not to like about a dictator ending public education that ensures our nation’s population has an intelligence that is educated rather than wasted and without opportunity? In a few years after our nation has only privately held for-profit education, what will daily life be like for most families who can neither afford them nor have children that are accepted into those schools for whatever variety of reasons these schools want to use to discriminate and exclude the majority of children needing education?
Will it require a bribe to get a place in one of these schools along with the tuition, materials fees, student fees, student insurance fees and everything else they may want to charge for? At for-profit schools, will it cost extra money for students to have the opportunity for some classes like science, AP classes, higher math classes, and to participate in schools activities, in sports, in clubs, in school events? Will they even allow girls and young women to participate in any of those if the schools choose to discriminate against them because of the school owners’ religious or political bigotry, misogyny, racism, and prejudices? There would be nothing to prevent it.
What’s not to like about a dictator, I ask my MAGA family members, friends and fellow Americans supporting Trump’s intentions to be that dictator over us? Do you know what it is to have a dictator ruling over the United States with unlimited power, unaccountable to anyone or anything, and (by the inherent destruction of our laws and Constitution by handing one person all of these powers) ownership of every resource, asset and commodity of the United States to use in whatever way he sees fit at any given moment?
‘Nobody is coming to rescue us, it’s on us now’: Andrew Weissmann and Charlie Sykes react to SCOTUS – MSNBC
What’s not to like about a dictator will never be something considered by those supporting Trump as they sport their fandom clothing, flags, bumper stickers, flags with Donald Trump superimposed over the American flag, red MAGA hats, hate-filled memes against every other American and groups of Americans who disagree with them and refuse to support their cult leader Trump with the same falsely-placed patriotic fervor, blind obedience, cultish hero worship and absolute loyalty.
It is time to set aside the politeness, the intellectual explanations, the educated arguments patiently delivered, the societal courtesies that have taught us not to be as rigorously honest, candid and forthright in the things we say and how we say them. It is time to call it what it is.
A fascist authoritarian dictatorship offered and intended by Trump and his remade Republican Party is the opposite of everything the United States is. It is the opposite of everything that Christianity and nearly every other religion teaches. It is the opposite of everything in our Constitution and the opposite of everything that makes up the foundation principles of our nation. It is the opposite of prosperity and the well-being of our nation. It is the opposite of what the majority of Americans want. It is the opposite of what even MAGA Trump supporters would want if they were able to think clearly about it and have the facts about who and what Trump is. He’s told us what he intends to do. It’s not a secret in any way.
Inversely, and most importantly, what is there to like about a dictator? Not a damn thing.
How To Paint Ocean Waves 3 –
By Cricket Diane C. Phillips
Do you remember standing still at the ocean trying to capture every sound and every nuance of light and color dancing on the waves?
Can you feel the spray that lightly touched your face when you walked in the shallow surf where the waves were bouncing with foam nearby?
Have you thought about the feelings of what you were seeing when the ocean waves pulled into the sand near you and tugged their way back out again?
Are you reminded of the vastness of the ocean as you had looked at the horizon with its light haze and depth of surface color in the sea?
When you remember what it was like at the ocean – can you recall its colors, its feeling, the color of the sky and the ways it changed moment by moment?
These are the things you need to know in order to paint ocean waves and capture the feeling of the scenes you remember. The ideas of time and change are all in you – they are in your memories and you can recall them. Every moment at the sea, there is change – there is motion – there is a feeling, an essence and an idea that is captured in your memories. It isn’t only what you felt at the time, or your thoughts, or what was happening in your life at that time. There is something of the sea and the ocean’s spirit and power that is there too.
Sometimes, when I create – there is nothing but a request to my mind for a memory, a feeling or an essence of a time at the ocean. There is a sunset that comes to my mind with a looming storm beyond the horizon whose clouds are catching the last rays of the sun in brilliant colors against a lavender sky. There is a time when I was afraid to stand on the shore because the power of the waves crashing into the sand were so much greater than me and the winds drove the salty spray of the waves into my skin stinging as it came. But the colors – ooh the colors of that moment drove me to distraction to understand their shades and hues and subtleties. The sand felt different, the sea felt distant, though I stood right beside her, and the sky was filled with unusual textures and colors that I would love to describe in paint.
There are intricacies to painting which are like nothing else because from the mind of the artist directly to the mind of the viewer there is no boundary – no wall – no caption or remark to make. It is a direct route of communication without limitation in an immediate, encompassing sense. The best way to describe this is for you to choose a moment to capture in paint, let go of all your pre-conceived notions of how to go about it, let go and paint it. Make it so. Let the paint describe all of what you saw, all of what you experienced and all of what you felt in that moment. Push all the judgements about how it should be done or how it should look – out of your mind and let the paint be an extension of what you know. Then let someone see it and see what they see. There is nothing you can say that will add to their experience with it. The moment they have seen it, something has passed between your mind and theirs directly. Infinitely, genuinely and honestly – they have been given some part of that experience as you remembered it. If you want words for what they have seen – ask them, but often words fail to accurately describe experiences like this and many people fall back on whether they like it or not and try to get you to talk more about it.
Do you remember the sky, the day you stood at the ocean on a summer day? Can you feel the warmth of the sand under your feet and the clean smell of the gentle breeze that brought the sounds of people drifting on it?
Did you ever walk on the beach at night or wade in the water as the sun was sinking below the horizon? Do you remember the sparkly little foam that you kicked halfway across to the moon as you walked in the cool water with the wet sand tugging under your feet at each step? Can you recall what the sky looked like as the moon and stars lit the sea like thousands of tiny diamonds bobbing up and down with each little crest of a wave?
There are thousands of moments in each day and as we stand in the realm of the ocean’s power – her force is evident in seemingly infinite changes within each of those moments to everything surrounding her. The sky isn’t the same from one moment to the next – the colors fade toward the horizon one moment and some other time – the hue is deeper there. The foam on the sand ebbs and flows with the surf, but the reflections in it are never the same. Wet sand, dry sand are definitely different colors – yet, warm sand is many shades and cold sand seems grey whether it is or not.
Set up a horizon on the surface to paint.
Remember a moment to capture.
Define the sky with colors, swirls, textures, clouds and reflected light.
Play in the paint to achieve effects that describe details to include.
Stop touching it – the moment any part of it looks right.
Don’t fix it. Just do another one and each one will get better.
Enhance waves, shadows, contours and specific elements carefully – because it will change what you already have right.
And, last of all – remember – it is perfect because you did it this way today, this time and in capturing this one moment this way. Let it go and do another one.
Happy Painting!
***
May 2011 –
CricketDiane’s New Zazzle Store with products that have original cricketdiane artwork on them – ocean, flowers, paintings, photography, surrealism, weird and unusual, ugly mens’ ties, iPad covers and skateboard decks
Got No Money Guide 2007 Anti-Theft Bumper Stickers – More from 2007
It’s easy to understand that a little sticker on the car or home windows could deter criminals from desiring an end prize that isn’t worth it. Security company logos are used on property all the time to let the bad guys know the risk involved. But, if the thieves only knew . . .
* Before stealing this car – check the gas gauge. Yes, it is on E isn’t it?
* And how much money did you bring with you to stop by the Quicky Mart for gas? If things are bad enough to be stealing this car, you are in for a shock when you stop for gas . . . You know, it doesn’t go without gas, right?
* Apparently “D” doesn’t stand for “Daring to Believe”. I wish I had known that before I bought it and spent all my money to drive it. If you want to steal it, let me know and I’ll send you the payment book, the insurance forms and the maintenance schedule. You can have it all.
* The only air conditioning on this car is rolling down the windows. You might want to know what that rattling sound is under the car. Never mind – go ahead and steal it.
* Isn’t this just the perfect car you’ve always wanted? I felt that way, too. Would you like to know why I don’t feel that way anymore?
* This is a really slow way to make a living – stealing cars. It is NOT a million dollar idea!
* If you knew what the auto mechanic wanted to fix this car – you’d get out of the business of stealing and be a mechanic.
* Next year, I‘m getting a better car – come back later.
* God may forgive you for stealing this car – but you’ll have a hard time forgiving yourself after driving it a week. It’d be a good little car with new rotors, brakes and tires. Well, maybe with that and some other things, too.
* You just made my day. Thanks so much for wanting something I have. And my mom said this car was a worthless piece of – well, never mind what she said.
* I have a bank account I can’t keep a hundred dollars in and you think I have bank cards, credit cards and cash? What drugs are you on – that must be some good stuff. Just off in your own happy little la-la land, aren’t you?
* I have a daughter who is just your type. Leave your name and phone number – we’ll get back to you.
* Don’t worry about stealing the car – our daughter will find it when she’s ready to go somewhere and bring it back to you with no gas in it.
* Just because I look like I’ve got money – it doesn’t make it so. Just ask my mother-in-law.
* Let’s look at this. Stealing isn’t efficient. Hacking is efficient. But neither is efficient compared to being an attorney. Boy, do you need guidance.
* If my credit cards weren’t maxed out – I’d be on vacation. Kinda figures, doesn’t it.
* Take three steps back and get a good look at this car. If that doesn’t make you wanna steal something else, there is nothing I can do for you.
* Did you see that little ding in the bumper I put in it last week? You wouldn’t think going over one of those parking stubs would twist the frame and ding up the fender, would you? By the way, when you steal this car, you need to know the steering is a little loosey-goosey, too. Don’t ask. . .
* Somebody already ripped the tag off this car which wasn’t legal anyway because I didn’t have the money to go to the tag office and get the sticker for it. But that’s okay, I think the insurance was due at the same time.
* Have you considered that pimping a ride doesn’t mean using mine to do it?
* If you don’t have any money today – obviously – then after stealing this car and driving it a month – you’ll be in the same boat that I’m in.
* You just thought you were broke. Try having my lifestyle.
* The first Tuesday of next month, our house is being sold on the courthouse steps. The light bill is overdue by two months and the water was turned off yesterday. Now – let’s think this through. Do you really think the finance company will let you keep this car after you steal it? We’ve been hiding it from the repo man for months. Good luck.
* This house would be protected by a guard dog but you have to feed them.
* When we had money, we spent it the same day for beer, cigarettes and putting gas in the car. You might want to reconsider your options.
* Our dope man is our best friend. Guess where all our money is? Let us know and we’ll hook you up. Yes, his place does have an alarm system but you can get around that.
* Would you consider a barter? You can have all our credit cards and we’ll take your car.
* No, that is not a jump rope holding the car door on. It might look that way, but as long as you don’t open that door . . .
* If you break into this house, be careful where you step. Our dog hasn’t been out of the house for a week. The vet said Bebe won’t be contagious in a few more days. She is a little aggravated, though.
* We are not liable for any injuries arising from your attempt to steal from us.
* We took the best class in tae kwon do. It’ll be nice to have a chance to practice. Go for it.
* When you got up this morning, what were you thinking? Have you noticed the gas prices lately? What would make you think we have any money?
* There is a penny jar in the top cabinet. Have at it.
* Did you see all that fancy underwear from the mall in my lingerie drawer when you were hunting for money? Do you know what $35 will buy at the Mall?
* We had money until we went by Home Depot this morning. You should not watch those home improvement shows, if you want to have any money in the bank.
* We have two teenagers with cellphones. Do you have any idea what this means?
* Financially incompetent since the divorce. Ask my ex-husband.
* We spent more on the x-box than anything else. If you’re here to steal, take it. Maybe my grown children will move out.
* Global warming notwithstanding, you might want to get the fuel pump fixed if you steal this car. Or, do you believe walking is doing your part for the environment?
* Everything we own needs fixing. If it isn’t broken, needs painting or needs to be replaced, my husband got it in the divorce. Let me get you his address.
* Our car gets three miles to the gallon.
* Take it easy. This is not one of your best ideas. Our house note is behind because we only had enough money to give the IRS and buy groceries. There’s a can of tuna in the cabinet, help yourself.
* Our tv isn’t worth what we paid for it. We still have a vcr from 1980 something. I don’t know what there is steal. I haven’t been to Wal-Mart in over two months.
* I don’t have a laptop. My cellphone needs minutes bought for it because I’m out of minutes. There isn’t a loaf of bread in the house and if you steal anything here – you’re on your own. It probably needed replacing ten years ago.
* Would you believe our tv still has rabbit ears?
* I used to have a good attitude until I was laid off or down-sized or whatever they’re calling it now. You really DON’T want to get in the car with me. Take my word for it – I am psychotic.
* This property protected by permanent hostility towards anybody with money – this includes you. Since you’ve been stealing to make a living – you obviously have more money than I do.
* Tremendously aggravated taxpayer within. Be a hero. Go ahead, I’ve got nothing better to do.
* We ordered a pizza with our last thirty dollars. Try again next week.
* Grossly underpaid, overtaxed and stressed out.
* My psychiatrist says I’m at the breaking point. Steal from me at your own risk. I won’t necessarily go postal on you.
* You could get a real job easier than this. I know you already realize stealing is a lot harder than it looks. A lot of jobs give you money just to show up on time. You apparently know how to do that.
– cricketdiane
***
NEW ENTRIES – 2010 –
* Let me get you a map to Wall Street.
* There could be a job in this – have you thought about how to write up those skill sets for a Blackwater Ops interview? Do you know how much they make?
* Our daughter already broke off the key in the front door. If you steal this car, you’ll have to crawl across the passenger seat to get in just like we do. Yes, the insurance does still cost the same. They don’t cover that, actions by daughters are considered an act of God.
* Before you break our windshield to get in this car – please know that it has an 8-track “stereo” sound system – yes, that was 8-track. Don’t know what that is? Come find me and I’ll explain it to you. It wasn’t bought yesterday.
* Our car is good looking on the outside, yes it is. And, it can be driven at least eight blocks before it needs oil put in it to go. If you’re stealing it – you might want to plan to stop in a little less than two miles or well, you don’t mind walking. Never mind.
* We call this the fart-mobile for a reason.
* If you want a job where theft is legal, let us give you the name of our realtor, the car dealer that sold us the payments on this thing and the insurance company that is charging everything we own to insure it. There’s your job.
***
* When I think of a robber on the town, stealing this car – it is a moment of gratitude in an otherwise merciless day. That would solve so many problems.
* Go for it. Our payment book is in the dashbox.
* If you find any change in the seats, please leave it for the previous owners. That would be us. And, we need it which is why there are no electronics in this car – not even the ones that came with it.
* Do not try to roll down the back window. Do not try to use the brakes by tapping them real hard. Do not open the back door on the right side. And, definitely don’t get excited if your driver side door doesn’t open. It is a good car – have it.
* We’ve been wanting to go back to the dealership and take this car back. The repo man wouldn’t even come get it. Please don’t leave without it.
* Our daughter’s boyfriend bought a neat electronic toy for this car and then he broke up with our daughter and none of the electronics in this car have worked since. You might want to open the hood and beat the solenoid with a hammer so it will start. There’s a hammer in the trunk.
* Does this look like a Ferrari to you? Those must be some good drugs.
* Can I help you with this? There is a car around the corner that took my parking place at the grocery last week. Call me and I’ll let you know where they are parking today.
* I would be upset about you stealing my car, but it really has a low place on the list that of things that have gone wrong lately. Yesterday, the mechanic told me that I could buy a new engine for this car, but he refused to explain why it needed it. My whole week has gone that way. He wanted $1,500 to tell me that – you are soooo in the wrong business.
* You may think that is a GPS thingy on the dash – it isn’t. That came from the dollar store to hold a pencil and paper so we could write down what the map says – that’s the closest to a GPS they sell at the dollar store.
* I own no laptop. There is no fancy cd player in this vehicle. In fact, there is hardly any vehicle in this vehicle. Unless you want some aluminum cans to recycle from under the seat, I don’t know what’s worth breaking into it.
* Well, I do want to congratulate your initiative. You might want to go get a book on car values from the library before you head out next time.
by cricketdiane
(02-15-11)
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More Got No Money Guides to Home Security, Personal Safety and Anti-Theft Devices for Cars – Bumper Stickets and other Safety Measures – cricketdiane
#ClimateFact: Since the 1980’s we’ve lost almost 2/3rds of the volume of sea ice that used to be in the Arctic http://bit.ly/1pIsO9o
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Ohio bill drops one attack on science education, picks up another
Recently, we covered a bill that was introduced in Ohio to deemphasize teaching the scientific process and open the door for people to object to scientific instruction on political grounds. While under consideration, the text of the bill has been modified considerably. Gone is the language about politics, and in its place is a provision that uses language promoted by a think tank that supports intelligent design.
As I’ve thought about this and about our nation giving $3.5 million dollars a day to Egypt, along with no telling how much else for a brutal dictatorship to be kept in power all this time, and after hearing the Republican comment on the news several days ago about how the protesters in Egypt had “bought into Obama’s rhetoric from his speech when he was there” and were acting on it – and having seen enough to know that the amount of money per day being paid out to Egypt and other countries with the same kinds of regimes is far in excess of that –
I just keep thinking about the words in the Pledge of Allegiance – and the US Constitution and the Bill of Rights and the Oath our legislators, presidents, secretaries of agencies, staff of agencies, administration officials and foreign policy committees take – and the words keep rolling around in my mind.
Did they think those things were just “rhetoric”?
– cricketdiane
***
The current version of the Pledge of Allegiance reads:[1]
I pledge allegiance to the flag of the United States of America, and to the republic for which it stands, one nation under God, indivisible, with liberty and justice for all.
To be honest, the part I always had trouble with was that “indivisible” thing. I had trouble learning to spell it and trouble when I was younger, learning what it meant. How could I have had so much trouble understanding, “a thing which cannot be divided, is never to be divided, is to forever be one great thing together.” That is how it was explained where it finally made sense to me. I was about 5 years old, maybe younger when I must have asked thirty or forty adults, every time I had the chance, “what does indivisible mean?”
But, the part I didn’t have any trouble with understanding was that last part that says, “with Liberty and Justice for all,” and the fact that I was giving my “”oath,” (my full and complete commitment throughout the full course of my life,) to something greater than myself. The pledge of allegiance isn’t just something we stand and say in a classroom somewhere or before an event of some kind. Those moments standing with our hands over our hearts, heads up, singing our national anthem before football games or baseball games and other events, isn’t a meaningless display of “rhetoric” – that we believe in freedom sometimes for some people in some places under some conditions. That isn’t right.
“With Liberty and Justice For All” doesn’t mean nothing. In the hands and decisions of our legislators and past presidents, it may have meant nothing, but they were wrong. They were just plain wrong when they thought that and acted on it that way.
I understand that we live in a world of contrasts, of conflicting ideologies and disparate perspectives. I get that. But, when choices are made about how our nation uses our resources that we have individually given into a pool to serve our common good, we didn’t send those resources to Washington for other nations to use as a bank account.
“The Statue of Liberty isn’t called that by virtue of political rhetoric”
It is said that when you don’t stand for something, you will fall for anything. I think that needs to be expanded a bit to include this, “when the principles that you stand for aren’t applied properly, the results will indicate it. They won’t match up.”
When money is given to Israel and Egypt, (among others) and then used to brutalize people, it does not match up with the principles of democracy, liberty, freedom, human rights, civil rights, inalienable rights, universal human rights, dignity, value for human life, responsibility, equality, and America’s tenets of every single document underwriting our laws and beliefs.
Further, when that money is being used to sponsor brutality and the elite hoarding of resources in these nations, it is also not doing the things elsewhere that do underwrite our values. It is not making a level playing field in free market economies, it is not supporting our own economic foundations either, it is not ensuring our own domestic strengths, it is not being used to benefit our own people and nor is it supporting our own national interests.
It doesn’t match up.
Online, I can go and see the vast sums of money that is being appropriated, has been appropriated, has been sent, spent or just plain went wherever it went. I can go in person and find the vast reams of paper that have printed text, charts, graphs, logs of what the money did and what it was supposed to do, reports, final reports, declassified “secret” documents, and various other physical documentation of how our money was used. I can, (as anyone can), follow a trail to see whose hand appropriated it, argued for it and eventually, find out why that was done in that way by that person or the group who were backing them.
We have people and resources that can do that and are doing that all the time, even before having the internet widely available. There have been some legislators and even Presidential administration members that have found themselves in just as much trouble as many business leaders for the “insider trading” of our dollars and resources among the world’s nations and industries.
But, at its heart is the very thing I started talking about in this post and the post I made yesterday, (about Egypt and the money that has and is going to their ruling dictator and his cronies to brutalize their citizens and profit at their and our expense along with their Washington lobbyists paid to help them do it). The heart of why America’s leaders have in complicity made the wrong choices about what to do with our money and our resources is exactly the things that we’ve all heard them say. They have believed that those words in our Constitution, Bill of Rights, Pledge of Allegiance and other oaths to our nation, in our laws, in our founding principles, are just rhetoric – something to be used in a speech to get the job or to get the seat in Congress or to have the opportunities to be elected or in the case of businesses, to have expanded business profits and “sweet deals.” And to them, these tenets of America are just something to sound good when speaking before the cameras in a televised snippet on the news or in a speech somewhere around the world, or somewhere in the US, because it sounds good and people want to believe that these things matter.
The truth is, these things are being used as “rhetoric” by speechmakers because they know people have, or will, hire elected officials to stand up for these things, not because they are rhetoric but because applying these principles upon which our nation is founded means something to us.
That old saying about following the money and you can see what is important and who is behind it (and why), holds true. What will we find this time as we all see across the entire populations and leaders of the world, what America has done with our money for the last thirty years? What does it prove was important to our leadership who made those decisions and the parties who backed them?
What does it say about our business and corporate leaders? What does it say about our nation and our political leaders and those decision-makers who made these choices? And, what does it say has been done in our name, as the American people who are the bedrock and foundation of our nation?
Did the Washington, London and Geneva groups of decision-makers really believe they were buying “stability” with our resources? As they wined and dined themselves at our expense, and people were being beaten to death all across the world as a direct result of the power those financial and military resources gave, did those decision-makers really believe sponsoring police brutality, denial of human rights, destruction of families and communities, keeping vast multitudes of people in poverty, abuse of people throughout the world (and throughout the US, for that matter) was the “right thing to do”?
Is that right? That’s what they believed . . .?
That’s what they did.
That is what they did with our money and resources.
That is what they did with their decisions and their office of power.
That is what they did at our expense with our name and the money from our pockets.
That is what they chose.
That is what they wanted.
That is what they thought was right.
And, now I’m asking –
“Why?”
Why could that even have appeared to be right?
There is no “stability” from it. Those are not even the kinds of decisions that create stability, stable economies, stable nations, or stable societies. Those kinds of things didn’t work historically to create stability when decisions were made to brutalize populations and keep them impoverished, denying opportunities to many for the hoarding of resources by a few. It never worked. It doesn’t work this time, either. And, for the same reasons it didn’t offer stability in historic examples of it, these were known factors for the very results that would be likely by those making the decisions about it.
So, again – I’m asking, “why?”
Was it like the Wall Street bunch who thought they could simply get out before it all went to hell?
Did they think that if they put enough resources into place, that they could quash any rebellions of people rising up demanding their rightful participation in society such that the historic evidence of results could be waylaid?
Were none of the applications of education made to the decisions at hand when they were making them?
Did the decision-makers think it was all just a matter of rhetoric and perception management?
Hmmmm………..
$3.5 million dollars a day for people to be beaten to a bloody pulp, tortured, abused, denied access to make a living, denied employment, denied their fundamental human rights, denied a place in the society to which they were born and to which they belong, and to make money for the rich and the richer and the richest, while keeping vast populations too poor to even have food, shelter, water, education and opportunity.
How dare you use America to do that.
And, don’t even say that I don’t understand.
I’ve already noticed that our business community and political leadership don’t believe in communist societies until it is time to get free labor or nearly free labor or cheap labor or not have to deal with unionized labor –
And, I’ve already noticed that our leaders and decision-makers have been pretty loosey-goosey about what they see as nothing but “rhetoric” when they are feeding caviar to their friends around the world on our dime –
And, it is pretty obvious where they got the money they are using to feed to their rich friends around the world, including in Egypt and Israel and Jordan and every damn where else –
State after State across the US have budget deficits. The Federal government says they cannot do this and cannot do that because cuts have to be made. Party candidates and representatives scream for the nation to be fifty sovereign separate entities and to remove all Federal domestic spending to “balance the budget.” Homeless people across the US in numbers that are staggering have few, if any opportunities. Vast unemployment across the US and inequity of resources has left millions without opportunities or access to make better lives for themselves.
Massive foreclosures on homes, many of which are being demolished now – are razed to the ground by communities given money to buy them but not money to save them for the families that had owned them, have devastated our nation at every level. Vast numbers of businesses, retailers, corporations, and long established companies have gone into bankruptcy, closed their doors or re-organized by closing multiple locations in their organizations.
Resources once in place for factories and businesses to produce things, including the production and factory line equipment have been sold for nearly nothing to countries around the world and now do not exist in our own country to use. It is no longer a matter of re-tooling a factory for production, the equipment, dies, production line, manufacturing robotics, specialty manufacturing processes and equipment would all have to be built or contracted from another country to be built “from scratch,” even to make a startup producing anything.
Patents and intellectual property once in the control and management of the US and for our citizens’ employment opportunities, and for our business profits to be made – have now been stripped from companies that were either sold to other nations or offered in “fire sales” to raise needed money without resulting in saving the companies who did it that way.
Well, I would say –
At the rate of hundreds of billions of dollars going out every single day to the rest of the world from our States coffers and our Federal tax dollars, and with hundreds of billions of dollars a day going also to these same places from everywhere any other resources exist, from the UN, the UK, the EU, from every agency of the US and state governments, from the IMF, and from vast business / industry groups as well –
These are lists of retailers which have gone under in the US only in 2008-2009.
***
A note from a website about arms sales from the US – (and appropriations for it) –
When countries designated by the State Department’s Human Rights Report to have poor human rights records or serious patterns of abuse are factored in, 20 of the top 25 U.S. arms clients in the developing world in 2003—a full 80%—were either undemocratic regimes or governments with records of major human rights abuses.
(also from that page – about US foreign military aid and other funds flowing out of the US coffers to foreign nations)
It has become more difficult to get more recent data, since the FAS stopped presenting their analysis in 2006. Ever since, it is necessary to go to the source data from the US State Department. The State Department is not consistent year-by-year in its data presentation. Entities change, departments change, and file names change. Each year presents a new puzzle, as to how to find the data. (etc.)
One third of ALL US AID
goes to Israel and Egypt.
These 2 countries receive
one-third of the total
aid, the majority of which
pays for armaments.
Yet, neither is a “developing” country.
A note from an earlier blog post about – “innovating in America”
In fact, imagine what happens when I want to create a business. As an example – There is a need that I see for a person to be able to go into any store and buy something which would show up at another store in another state or another location across town. I know their computers are tied together and they are part of the same corporate entity. But, I also know that they are sometimes franchise stores, that their inventory systems are not necessarily the same in every state and that their financial systems do not integrate from store to store. I think this could be fixed with a bit of software which could be designed and then sold to the store’s corporate headquarters to do this job for them. It would serve their customers. It would serve my needs and my family’s needs when we want to buy groceries or formula for for a daughter or son or grandbaby or friend or someone somewhere in some other state. It would allow us to purchase a fan or heater or air conditioner here where we live that they could go to their local store and simply pick up to have it right now on the same day. We could buy tires for their car when the tires are so bald that they aren’t safe anymore and pay for them to be picked up near the college where they are living or in the state where they decided to runoff to in order to have some freedom from us.
It is true, that between what I know and what other people who can do programming know, that we could create the software to do this. That is a fact. It is a good innovation. That is also a fact. I can even write a business plan to show how it would make money and project revenues for it with something less than a lie and fairly close to the reality of what costs it would have and sales it could make. However, then what happens?
And, the text from that blog entry goes on to explain some of what happens and the insurmountable obstacles which have been placed in the way of anyone in America creating their own business –
But what happens if it is the King of Saudi Arabia, or Mr. Netanyahu, or Mr. Mubarak and his goon squads – Hmmm……. Let’s see. Despite the fact that they can both personally, and economically from their own nation’s resources start up such a business, or provide the capital for it to be accomplished – they call America and get the money that I couldn’t even access one millionths of one tenth thousandths of a micro-fraction of one percent of – in order to do it, when in fact, for the price of the caviar they throw away from their tables alone, just about all of Georgia’s state budget could be provided for our entire population to prosper for several years.
Hmmm…………
***
Well, what do I want to do about this?
Let me think.
Yes, I’ve thought of some things –
One, of course – is to do nothing and let America fall to its indentured servitude in slavery to its Mid-Eastern and Asian masters. The leaders we’ve had and their viewpoints and decisions sold us to them and now here we are . . .
Two, would be to bring a class-action suit against the appropriations members who have decided to consistently give our money away to ruthless and already well-funded dictators against every known law and principle our nation has. That is certainly a possibility that would hold them individually and collectively responsible for what they’ve done. It would have to reach back at least thirty years and include the advisors and their political backers who told them to do it that way in antithesis of everything our nation stands for. And maybe add “collusion” with those dictators and corporate interests involved, in the charges.
Hmmm…….
Yes, that would be good.
At the very least, the world would see that the American people do not agree with things being done that way and let the people around the world know that we do stand up for what is right. I doubt that it would fix anything, though.
Third, I could start a business somewhere else rather than in the US, especially since this is so typical of life in the US during the last thirty years of my adult lifetime, and I have no way to change it –
Rubenstein said Louima is a victim of perhaps one of the worst examples of police brutality in the history of this country.
Louima’s case led to a major shakeup of the New York Police Department. Charges against him were later dropped. ( . . . )
After Louima’s arrest in 1997 for a scuffle outside a nightclub, Volpe assaulted him in the patrol car and later sodomized him with a broomstick handle inside the 70th Precinct station house. Louima suffered severe internal injuries.
Houston’s mayor and police department were on the defensive Friday, two days after graphic video came out showing several police repeatedly kicking and beating a 15-year-old burglary suspect as he lay on the ground.
Fourth, we could all get together as Americans and demonstrate as they are doing in Egypt –
It is certainly possible, but it looks like to me that multitudes have been protesting these kinds of things for years upon years at every occasion and it has yet to yield even one modicum of difference in it.
Fifth, ahhh – even better –
There could be a class action styled suit brought to the international courts for breach and defiance of international laws by decisions and financial appropriations made by our previous leadership including the Senators and Congressmen who made those choices. Many of those laws were insisted upon and written by the United States leadership for the rest of the world to follow, so they obviously knew them when they made those decisions.
Again, at the very least, the rest of the world would know that America’s citizens did not agree with doing things that way, nor did we agree with brutal dictatorships that they were sponsoring with our financial resources.
And, of course, sixth would be –
could be, anyway – to hunker down like the right wing militia types are screaming for us all to do and get enough gold, physical protection and friends who think the same way about it to try and survive it all as it is . . .
but, gold doesn’t buy anything in America for regular Americans trying to get food, or shoes, or pay the utility bills, or get water when it is needed to drink, or just about anything else required – and as much as I believe in guns and the right to have them and to carry them, I’ve never noticed them to be an appropriate nor handy option at the point of needing to defend myself against sure physical assault or danger. Those are really just expensive and stupid toys to most of the people who have them in this day and time. And, friends who think as those right wing people do are part of the reason we are where we are right now in as big a mess as we are in – I don’t think having them any one bit closer to me is what would make my life better or safer.
So, Seventh could be –
Building something that I could sell to those jackasses in the Middle East and elsewhere to get our money back. That is one possibility but it could be that it was part of what they were trying to do when they sold all those military arms to those places in the first place. It looks as though, our national resources were appropriated to go to those countries by the millions of dollars a day, and then some companies, in particular military hardware companies, went over there, sold them those even more dangerous “toys” and as a consequence, funded their companies’ profitability. I suppose, that is what they told themselves they were doing anyway.
And, while I can certainly see how that worked out – still, there are some who are working to do it that way, from Wal-Mart to PepsiCo among others. And, President Obama did say for us to out-innovate them, out-maneuver them and out-do them in typical American fashion as we have been prone to do on multiple occasions in our history. That might work . . .
I could take my little, “order a patent” form and sell it around the world through brokering deals on our patents. They are selling them around the world anyway. Hmmm………
Then, these countries could make the things wherever they sit – oh wait, they are already doing that, from tanks to helicopters, handguns to 50mm rifles, chemical and biological weapons to sodapop and air cleaners . . . No use in brokering licenses at this point, then. And, what can’t be done that way is getting reverse engineered anyway. So, hmmm…… again.
Well, a number Eight choice of what I could do about all this might be –
To at least make sure my children know what matters in America – having cosmetically enhanced big tits and shopping to get designer handbags whether they are homeless or not. And, knowing who to bet on in the Super Bowl, including the commercials. That is the important thing.
I’m guessing they already know how to get drunk and just not worry about it, like most of the rest of America does. And, at least that is considered psychologically healthy in our society. Most of our leaders are running around the world partying to their heart’s content and on any given day, most of America is “wired” or drunk too. At least, they will know how to fit in, and never notice the crap going on around them.
I still think they should at least change the Barney song on kiddie tv to reflect that the only good use of any American child, adult or citizen, generally is to “not be special.” At least it would be honest.
At most, I think there should be a national campaign to let people know that they are not important in America, that there are no freedoms or rights from brutality, and that our Constitutional guarantees of such things simply are no more than rhetoric to those we have charged with positions of leadership in our country over the last thirty years. And, that is why police brutalize us on our own streets and halfway around the world, as well as in countries we have funded with our hard-earned dollars.
Nope, that wouldn’t be right – it would possibly remove hope and that may be the last remaining shred of what people have.
There would have to be a Ninth choice of what I could do –
I could let my imagination run wild a bit and see what it comes up with – like something designed that would literally melt the gun that is in the hands of someone about to use it . . . .
That would be an interesting possibility but it wouldn’t get our money back from those who have it nor would it get the constant flow of our funds to dictators who are brutalizing their people to stop.
It also wouldn’t re-route any of those funds to our national domestic needs and uses. But, it would be nifty to see armed combatants have nothing but ooze in their hands where a gun used to be – before they can even shoot with it at somebody.
It would make me feel better, anyway.
I don’t think that “sensitivity training” would stop any of the police brutality we have on our own streets, or to keep the use of our funding, training and police equipment, (and military equipment) to brutalize and torture people elsewhere from happening. At one time, I had thought that anger management courses being required of all police personnel for their own anger issues would be of help, but then having been reminded of the fact that “absolute power corrupts absolutely” (roughly paraphrased,) it occurred to me that it just wouldn’t be enough to do any good. And, besides – we’ve been taking fairly normal people and training them to be psychotic in the ways they deal with others in order to do police things, and military things and espionage things, and detective things and other things of that nature. (and most of them may not have been real “normal” and respectful of others in the first place, but they certainly wouldn’t have been after the kind of training we’ve been paying for them to have.)
What if,
all the heads of state, US and international leaders and every single person involved in giving our money to Egypt to brutalize people were required to spend three months in an Egyptian jail at the hands of those brutal beatings every day by their secret police that our leaders have been funding for thirty years – would it change their minds about whether it matters or not and whether those “human rights things’ are just a matter of rhetoric?
Is it that, in the plush surroundings of mahogany clad rooms with elegant gold gilded furnishings where every mete and measure of their whims, needs and desires are satiated with immediacy from the finest selection of everything available on the planet, the idea of “human rights’ is simply an intellectual discussion for debate to entertain and while away the hours?
Or, is it that they are just chasing the party? I had thought about this earlier, that Bautista in Cuba was propped up to keep the party available in America’s playground (although Americans weren’t the only ones partying there), and by party – I mean, the casinos, the drunken orgies, the opportunity to have prostitutes who will engage in whatever twisted perversions businessmen and government leaders desire – in fact, prostitutes of even young ages of both sexes available to them for nearly nothing, the most extreme forms of gambling from full contact lethal sports between people and all types of animals, to other twisted games of chance upon which to bet, opportunities to have “sweet deals” and inside contracts on business dealings, and the kickbacks and bonuses from those things along with the nearly free flow of drugs that they desire from cocaine to smoking hashish (to relax.) Could it be that wherever we, as Americans and as international citizens, have seen leaders and power brokers maintain oppression of the local people, there has gone hand-in-hand, a use of that population to serve the needs, whims and desires of a few in ways that are irresponsible, unconscionable, twisted and perverse, considered by them to be entertaining or satiating in some way, and against what would be considered sane social norms were it done in any other place?
There is a solution to that.
We could return these countries to their local populations to run, stop funding military weapons to them and use that money for ourselves instead as our nation is in dire straits, and create one place appropriate to party where the whole world agrees for them to go and do that. It could be created in such a way that no one under the age of thirteen would be allowed into it ever. And, only those below twenty-five whose parents agreed to sell them for that use could be offered in that environment (since that is what they are doing already). And, all the twisted extreme forms of gambling, lethal sport fighting, and sex could just go on day and night and night and day and then nobody would have to be repressed, obsessed, oppressed, beaten half to death or killed to get it, keep it or have it available.
Or we could make sure all our businessmen are eunuchs before sending them anywhere to make deals or lobby Washington. I don’t know, its just a thought.
Maybe my imagination is not the best places to find choices of solutions. It finds some extremes as options that seem at least nearly as appropriate as what is being done already. But, all the above concept would do, would be to confine to one place, that which is unacceptable to be happening anywhere already, yet is happening in many places around the world to serve the whims and perversions of the rich, of the wealthy business leaders and government officials that are running to those places as it is. It wouldn’t really fix anything or make it better for the nations where it is happening, in the US where it is happening, nor the people who have been forced to endure it.
Maybe there needs to be a tenth option –
Well, we could all just get in there and be criminals, too. This is how some people are doing it and there are many examples of how this is working, sometimes well and sometimes not. I would say that Bernie Madoff showed us how to do it well, he lived well, he enjoyed his life and so did the family he made. The brutal dictators of many foreign countries have done it well, as have the Bush clan and their friends – a little close to the line at times but overall – they’ve gotten away with it.
And, the bankers and Wall Street groups have found ways to make it legal to steal from everybody. We could all just do that, too – in the ways they’ve already shown us. They’ve gotten away with it as well. And, people like them just fine. That, of course is the typical “join ’em” philosophy, which it looks like any number of people in the world have managed to do without consequence, maybe it is the “American way”.
There have, in fact – only been a few instances where that didn’t work out so well. Even during Prohibition, vast sums of money and power were accumulated and until they started shooting each other in the streets every other day, very few people in America even cared.
I don’t much like the tenth option. It is possible and as much as I or anyone else could do it that way, it seems like a lot of trouble to go through without changing much of anything for the better, but maybe I’m wrong. At the very least, those people are in positions of power and people listen to them and do things the way they want them done, including interpreting our Constitution to suit themselves and their own perspectives about what is important.
But, I don’t like it.
I will try one more time to think of something I could do about all this – hopefully, more effective than the things I’ve considered already – there would have to be some other choices –
* I could write about it – did that.
* I could give up and not doing anything about it – tried that.
* I could tell others about it and see if they will do anything about it – yeah, well, it didn’t matter to them either, but maybe I didn’t work with the right people who give a damn about it or know what to do.
* I could build something that would help, which was a choice in the above group of options – have done that.
* I could do any or all of the things on the list above whether I liked them, or thought much of them or not – well, maybe.
* And, I could bring into the world something that would help – I’m working on that.
* Or, I could create a solution or a set of solutions that doesn’t exist already – that would work.
Hmm…….
Well, that certainly was fun.
I’m still disgusted by what our previous thirty years of officials, agency members and elected leaders have done with my money and my family’s money and my neighbor’s money and my state’s money and my nation’s money and my children’s money and our opportunities and the opportunities I would have had in my lifetime and that they would’ve had in their lifetimes – [*that sheer and absolute contempt for what they did and how they did it, might just never change.]
Federal Lanham Act Remedies for False Advertising –
1. Historical Background –
Section 43(a) of the Lanham Act prohibits any false description or representation of goods. Although this section was originally construed narrowly, to reach only “passing off” and other behavior resembling trademark infringement, modern cases regard the statute as providing a federal remedy against false advertising.
2. Standing: Who May Invoke Section 43 –
A plaintiff seeking injunctive relief under § 43(a) must show a likelihood of economic injury due to the defendant’s conduct in order to be entitled to relief. If the plaintiff seeks damages, it must demonstrate an actual loss of sales (and / or loss of revenue, my note – actual money, but can include lost opportunity costs.)
3. What Constitutes a False Description or Representation –
Any falsehood with a tendency to mislead or deceive is actionable under section 43(a), provided it is material. The plaintiff need not prove that the defendant acted intentionally.
(from – “Capsule Summary”)
pp. 20 – 21, also pp. 148 – 150
Unfair Trade Practices & Intellectual Property,
author – Roger E. Schechter,
Black Letter Series, West Publishing Co., St. Paul, Minn.; 1986
Hmmmm . . . . – wonder if those laws still exist? After watching the Goldman Sachs hearings in the Senate committee yesterday, when investors are told that a thing is good investment securities, when they know it is not – isn’t that applied to laws like this? Or rather, aren’t laws like this applied to situations like that?
I found another section of this book which had this sentence – “Nonetheless, some courts will impose a duty to pay if the equities of the situation require it to prevent unjust enrichment.” – What constitutes “unjust enrichment”?
English unjust enrichment law is a developing area of law in unjust enrichment. Traditionally, work on unjust enrichment has been dealt with under the title …
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/English_unjust_enrichment_law – Cached – Similar
***
English unjust enrichment law is a developing area of law in unjust enrichment. Traditionally, work on unjust enrichment has been dealt with under the title of “restitution“. Restitution is a gain-based remedy, the opposite of compensation, as a loss-based remedy. But the event it responds to is the “unjust enrichment” of one person at the expense of another.
Hazell v. Hammersmith and Fulham LBC [1992] 2 AC 1. Banks paid councils a lump sum (for Islington, £2.5m). The councils then paid the banks back at the prevailing interest rate. Banks paid councils back a fixed interest rate (this is the swap part). The point was that councils were gambling on what interest rates would do. So if interest rates fell, the councils would win. As it happened, interest rates were going up and the banks were winning. Islington was due to pay £1,354,474, but after Hazell, it refused, and waited to see what the courts said. At first instance Hobhouse J said that because the contract for the swap scheme was void, the council had been unjustly enriched with the lump sum (£2.5m) and it should have to pay compound interest (lots) rather than simple interest (lots, but not so much). But luckily for local government, three law Lords held that Islington only needed to repay with simple interest. There was no jurisdiction for compound interest. They said this was because there was no ‘resulting trust’.
Westdeutsche Landesbank Girozentrale v Islington LBC [1996] AC 669, the council had no authority to enter into a complex swap transaction with the German bank. So the House of Lords held that the council should repay the money they had been lent and a hitherto unknown ‘unjust’ factor was added to the list. Birks argued that the better explanation in all cases is an ‘absence of basis’ for the transfer of property. Searching through or adding to a list of open ended unjust factors simply concludes on grounds of what one wishes to prove, grounds that ‘would have to be constantly massaged to ensure that they dictated an answer as stable as is reached by the shorter ‘non basis’ route.’ (Birks (2005) 113)
The following eleven categories are examples of “unjust factor” (or what Peter Birks argued could be unified under one principle of a basis of a right being absent) which may ground a claim of restitution for unjust enrichment.[1]
Unjust enrichment is a developed and coherent field in continental civil law systems. Continental lawyers say someone is unjustly enriched when there is no basis for their possession or title to some right or property. A more correct way of saying it is that someone has been “unjustifiedly enriched”. In German, the term is Ungerechtfertigte Bereicherung (§812 BGB) and in France the term is Enrichissement sans cause. English lawyers, however, have been accustomed to identify an “unjust factor”. The difference between “unjust factors” and “absence of basis” as a unifying principle has generated a lot of debate, particularly since Peter Birks changed his mind in his second edition of Unjust Enrichment (2005) in the Clarendon Law Series, and argued that the continentals had got it right.
The two leading theorists that have revived unjust enrichment were Lord Goff, who produced Goff and Jones on Restitution and Professor Peter Birks.
Black Letter Series, West Publishing Co., St. Paul, Minn.; 1986
(excerpt – )
To constitute “unfair” conduct, an advertisement or commercial practice must pose a risk of substantial, unmitigated, unavoidable consumer injury.
(further – )
These advertisements may be deceptive, however, if analyzed under the historic definition of that term. Under the classic test, an advertising claim is deceptive if it has any tendency to deceive a significant number of consumers.
(also found on pp. 225 – )
2. True. The original version of the statute [VIII. Federal Trade Commission Regulation of Unfair and Deceptive Practices] only dealt with “unfair methods of competittion.” The 1938 Wheeler-La Amendment added the “unfair and deceptive acts and practices” language.
(and on pp. 228)
4. True. Such statutes have been applied against defendants who were making casual sales of used goods.
(and therefore, why shouldn’t it be applied to investment firms, banks, hedge funds and others in the investment community who engaged in deceptive and misleading practices that would’ve been illegal in any other context, including as the laws and statutes are applied to regular Americans being involved in casual sales of goods that were unlikely to have created the huge ramifications that the Wall Street players caused, my note.)
Unjust enrichment is a legal term denoting a particular type of causative event in which one party is unjustly enriched at the expense of another, and an obligation to make restitution arises, regardless of liability for wrongdoing.
Liability under the principle of unjust enrichment is wholly independent of liability for wrongdoing. Claims in unjust enrichment do not depend upon proof of any wrong. However, it is possible that on a single set of facts a claim based on unjust enrichment and a claim based on a wrong may both be available. A claim based on unjust enrichment always results in an obligation to make restitution. A claim based on a wrong always results in an obligation to make compensation, but may additionally result in an obligation to make restitution and on the other hand it will result in an obligation to make reimbursement which will allow the normal citizen to the courts for its wrongdoing which it never intended to do so. For discussion of restitution for wrongs, see the page on restitution.
At common law, a claim based on unjust enrichment can be submitted to five stages of analysis. These can be summarized in the form of the following questions:
Was the defendant enriched?
Was the enrichment at the expense of the claimant?
There are two established approaches to this issue. Traditionally, common law systems such as those of England and the US have proceeded on the basis of what may be termed the ‘unjust factor’ approach. Traditionally, civil law systems such as those of France and Germany have proceeded on the basis of what may be termed the ‘absence of basis’ approach. More recently, many common law systems have showed signs of a possible move towards the ‘absence of basis’ approach (see for example the law of North Dakota in the section on the United States below). Both approaches will be discussed.
The ‘unjust factors’ approach requires the claimant to point to one of a number of factors recognized by the law as rendering the defendant’s enrichment unjust. English law clearly recognises at least the following unjust factors:
‘Absence of consideration’ is particularly controversial because the cases that support its existence as an unjust factor can also be used to support the view that English law has begun to favour the ‘absence of basis’ approach (see next paragraph).
The ‘absence of basis’ approach does not deal in individual unjust factors. Instead it seeks to identify enrichments with no legitimate explanatory basis. Imagine that A contracts with B that A will pay $150 up front for B to clean his house. A pays the money. B’s enrichment has a legitimate explanatory basis – he was paid under a valid contract. However, let us now change the example and assume that the contract was in fact void. This is discovered after A has paid the money but before B cleans the house. B’s enrichment no longer has a legitimate explanatory basis so B must repay the $150 to A.
Notice that in the example just given, exactly the same conclusion would be reached using the ‘unjust factors’ approach. Under that approach, A would not be able to point to an unjust factor provided that the contract was valid, but could point to the unjust factor of total failure of consideration once we assume that it was void. In the vast majority of cases, a properly developed ‘unjust factors’ approach and a properly developed ‘absence of basis’ approach will reach the same result.
[edit] What remedies are available to the claimant?
It is necessary to distinguish personal remedies from proprietary remedies. A personal remedy asserts that the defendant must pay the claimant a sum of money. By contrast, a proprietary remedy asserts that some property in the defendant’s possession belongs to the claimant, either at common law or in equity. There are several arguable examples in the English case law of the courts giving a proprietary remedy in an unjust enrichment claim. However, some commentators maintain that, in English law, unjust enrichment only ever triggers a personal remedy.
There are several reasons why it may be important for the claimant to seek a proprietary rather than a personal remedy. The most obvious is that showing that one is entitled to a proprietary interest in some property means that one need not compete with the defendant’s unsecured creditors in the event of his insolvency. It is also generally accepted, although with little justification, that a claimant who is entitled to a personal remedy only will be restricted to simple interest, while a claimant who is entitled to a proprietary remedy can get compound interest. The availability or non-availability of a proprietary remedy may also have consequences for limitation periods and for the conflict of laws.
English law gives effect to restitutionary proprietary interests (assuming that it does at all) through a number of devices. One of these devices will be discussed and another two will be mentioned briefly.
It doesn’t matter if you are a “market maker” or not, such as Goldman Sachs and about 2000 others are – they still can’t store explosives under their desks because they must abide by the laws which apply to that just as we all do, and they still can’t engage in failing to meet OSHA standards for a work place, nor can they be exempted from the regulations, statutes and laws governing the rest of us and the business laws that generally apply to everything.
I know yesterday during the hearings, the term “market maker” was used as a declaration of why “we get to get away with doing it this way, by law – because we qualify as a market maker.” That doesn’t mean everything else in the law and in international law doesn’t apply to them. It does not exclude their businesses, their business participation, their business practices and decisions, their business processes and their marketing practices from the laws governing everything else.
An Icelandic 1000-krónur note. The value of the Icelandic króna declined significantly during 2008.
Economic growth in Iceland, Denmark, Norway and Sweden from 2000 to 2007. Iceland is in red.
The 2008–2010 Icelandic financial crisis is a major ongoing economic crisis in Iceland that involves the collapse of all three of the country’s major banks following their difficulties in refinancing their short-term debt and a run on deposits in the United Kingdom. Relative to the size of its economy, Iceland’s banking collapse is the largest suffered by any country in economic history.[1]
In late September 2008, it was announced that the Glitnir bank would be nationalised. The following week, control of Landsbanki and Glitnir was handed over to receivers appointed by the Financial Supervisory Authority (FME). Soon after that, the same organisation placed Iceland’s largest bank, Kaupthing, into receivership as well. Commenting on the need for emergency measures, Prime MinisterGeir Haarde said on 6 October, “There [was] a very real danger … that the Icelandic economy, in the worst case, could be sucked with the banks into the whirlpool and the result could have been national bankruptcy.”[2] He also stated that the actions taken by the government had ensured that the Icelandic state would not actually go bankrupt.[3] At the end of the second quarter 2008, Iceland’s external debt was 9.553 trillion Icelandic krónur (€50 billion), more than 80% of which was held by the banking sector.[4] This value compares with Iceland’s 2007 gross domestic product of 1.293 trillion krónur (€8.5 billion).[5] The assets of the three banks taken under the control of the FME totaled 14.437 trillion krónur at the end of the second quarter 2008.[6]
The financial crisis has had serious consequences for the Icelandic economy. The national currency has fallen sharply in value, foreign currency transactions were virtually suspended for weeks, and the market capitalisation of the Icelandic stock exchange has dropped by more than 90%. As a result of the crisis, Iceland is currently undergoing a severe economic recession; the nation’s gross domestic product decreased by 5.5% in real terms in the first six months of 2009.[7] The full cost of the crisis cannot yet be determined, but already it exceeds 75% of the country’s 2007 GDP. Outside Iceland, more than half a million depositors (far more than the entire population of Iceland) found their bank accounts frozen amid a diplomatic argument over deposit insurance. German bank BayernLB faces losses of up to €1.5 billion, and has had to seek help from the German federal government. The government of the Isle of Man will pay out half of its reserves, equivalent to 7.5% of the island’s GDP, in deposit insurance.
( . . . )
On 24 October, it emerged that Norway’s semi-public export credit agencyEksportfinans had made a complaint to Norwegian police concerning the alleged embezzlement of 415 million Norwegian kroner (€47 million) by Glitnir since 2006. The Icelandic bank had acted as an agent for Eksportfinans, administering loans to several companies: however Eksportfinans alleges that, when the loans were paid off early by borrowers, Glitnir kept the cash and merely continued with the regular payments to Eksportfinans, effectively taking an unauthorized loan itself.[81]
Stock market
The value of the OMX Iceland 15 from January 1998 to October 2008
OMX Iceland 15 closing prices during the five trading weeks from September 29, 2008 to October 31, 2008
Trading in shares of six financial companies on the OMXNordic Iceland Exchange was suspended on 6 October by order of the FME.[82] On Thursday 9 October, all trading on the exchange was frozen for two days by the government “in an attempt to prevent further panic spreading throughout the country’s financial markets”. The decision was made to do so due to “unusual market conditions”,[83] with share prices having fallen 30% since the start of the month.[84] The closure was extended through Monday 13 October due to continuing “unusual market conditions”.[85]
The market reopened on 14 October with the main index, the OMX Iceland 15, at 678.4, which corresponds to a plunge of about 77% compared with 3,004.6 before the closure.[84] This reflects the fact that the value of the three big banks, which form 73.2% of the value of the OMX Iceland 15,[86] had been set to zero.[87] The values of other equities varied from +8% to –15%.[88] Trading in shares of Exista, SPRON and Straumur-Burðarás (13.66% of the OMX Iceland 15) remains suspended. After a week of very thin trading, the OMX Iceland 15 closed on 17 October at 643.1, down 93% in króna terms and 96% in euro terms from its historic high of 9016 (18 July 2007).
Trading in the shares of two financial services companies, Straumur–Burðarás and Exista, resumed on 9 December: together the companies account for 12.04% of the OMX Iceland 15. The values of the shares in both companies dropped sharply, and the index closed at 394.88, down by 40.17% on the day. Trading in shares in SPRON and Kaupthing remains suspended, at prices of ISK 1.90 and ISK 694.00 respectively.[89]
Sovereign debt
Ratings of Icelandic sovereign debt
(long-term foreign currency)
The four credit rating agencies which monitor Iceland’s sovereign debt all lowered their ratings during the crisis, and their outlook for future ratings changes is negative.[90] The Icelandic government had a relatively healthy balance, with sovereign debt of 28.3% of GDP and a budget surplus of 5.5% of GDP (2007).[91] Debt is now 90 percent of GDP with a budget deficit.[92]
In addition, the value of foreign currency bonds which mature in the remainder of 2008 is only $600 million, and foreign currency debt service in 2009 is only $215 million,[93] well within the government’s ability to pay. However the agencies believe that the government will have to issue more foreign currency bonds, both to cover losses as the banks’ overseas operations are liquidated and also to stimulate demand in the domestic economy as Iceland goes into recession.[94]
A team of experts from the International Monetary Fund (IMF) arrived in Iceland at the start of October 2008 for talks with the government. Industry MinisterÖssur Skarphéðinsson was said to be “favourable” to help from the IMF to stabilise the króna and to allow interest rates to be lowered.[95]
(etc.)
On 24 October, the IMF tentatively agreed to loan €1.58 billion.[103] However the loan had still not been approved by the Executive Board of the IMF on 13 November.[104] Apparently, UK and the Netherlands had halted IMF’s aid to Iceland as the Icesave dispute had not been resolved.[citation needed] Due to the delay Iceland found itself caught in a classic catch-22 situation, loans from other countries could not be formally secured until the IMF program had been approved. The Icelandic government spoke of a $500M (€376M) gap in the funding plans. Dutch finance ministerWouter Bos stated that the Netherlands would oppose the loan unless agreement was reached over deposit insurance for Landsbanki customers in the Netherlands.[105]
The IMF-led package of $4.6bn was finally agreed on 19 November, with the IMF loaning $2.1bn and another $2.5bn of loans and currency swaps from Norway, Sweden, Finland and Denmark. In addition, Poland has offered to lend $200M and the Faroe Islands have offered 300M Danish kroner ($50M, about 3% of Faroese GDP).[106] The Icelandic government also reported that Russia has offered $300M.[107] The next day, Germany, the Netherlands and the United Kingdom announced a joint loan of $6.3bn (€5bn), related to the deposit insurance dispute.[108][109]
Causes
In 2001, banks were deregulated in Iceland.[110] This set the stage for banks to upload debts when foreign companies were accumulated.[110] The crisis unfolded when banks became unable to refinance their debts. It is estimated that the three major banks hold foreign debt in excess of €50 billion,[4] or about €160,000 per Icelandic resident, compared with Iceland’s gross domestic product of €8.5 billion.[5][111] As early as March 2008, the cost of private deposit insurance for deposits in Landsbanki and Kaupthing was already far higher (6–8½% of the sum deposited) than for other European banks.[112] The króna, which was ranked by The Economist in early 2007 as the most overvalued currency in the world (based on the Big Mac Index),[113] has further suffered from the effects of carry trading.[114]
Coming from a small domestic market, Iceland’s banks have financed their expansion with loans on the interbank lending market and, more recently, by deposits from outside Iceland (which are also a form of external debt). Households also took on a large amount of debt, equivalent to 213% of disposable income, which led to inflation.[115] This inflation was exacerbated by the practice of the Central Bank of Iceland issuing liquidity loans to banks on the basis of newly-issued, uncovered bonds[116] — effectively, printing money on demand.
In response to the rise in prices — 14% in the twelve months to September 2008,[9] compared with a target of 2.5% — the Central Bank of Iceland has held interest rates high (15.5%).[10] Such high interest rates, compared with 5.5% in the United Kingdom or 4% in the eurozone for example, have encouraged overseas investors to hold deposits in Icelandic krónur, leading to monetary inflation: the Icelandic money supply (M3) grew 56.5% in the twelve months to September 2008, compared with 5.0% GDP growth.[117] The situation was effectively an economic bubble, with investors overestimating the true value of the króna.
As with many banks around the world, the Icelandic banks found it increasingly difficult or impossible to roll over their loans in the interbank market, their creditors insisting on repayment while no other banks were willing to make fresh loans. In such a situation, a bank would normally have to ask for a loan from the central bank as the lender of last resort. However, in Iceland the banks were so much larger than the national economy that the Central Bank of Iceland and the Icelandic government could not guarantee the repayment of the banks’ debts, leading to the collapse of the banks.[118] The official reserves of the Central Bank of Iceland stood at 374.8 billion krónur at the end of September 2008,[119] compared with 350.3 billion krónur of short-term international debt in the Icelandic banking sector,[4] and at least £6.5 billion (1,250 billion krónur) of retail deposits in the UK.[120]
The Icesave logo, advertising it as “part of Landsbanki, Reykjavik, Iceland”
The situation was made worse by the fact that Icesave was operating as a branch of Landsbanki, rather than as a legally independent subsidiary. As such, it was completely dependent on the Central Bank of Iceland for emergency loans of liquidity, and could not turn to the Bank of England for help. The UK Financial Services Authority (FSA) was aware of the risk, and was considering imposing special liquidity requirements on Icelandic deposit-taking banks in the weeks before the crisis.[121] However the plan—which was never implemented—would have forced the Icelandic banks to cut interest rates or stop taking new deposits, and might even have sparked the sort of bank run it was designed to prevent. The Guernsey authorities were also planning on bringing in restrictions on foreign banks operating as branches and on transfers of funds between Guernsey subsidiaries and parent banks (“parental upstreaming”).[122] Landsbanki operated in Guernsey through a legally independent subsidiary.
The existence of a bank run on Landsbanki accounts in the UK in the period up to 7 October seems confirmed by a statement from the bank on 10 October, which said “Landsbanki Íslands hf. transferred substantial funds to its UK branch during this time to fulfil its Icesave commitments.”[123] The transfer of funds from Landsbanki Guernsey to Heritable Bank,[42] a Landsbanki subsidiary in the UK, also suggests a bank run in the UK. A transfer of “substantial funds” from Iceland to the UK would have been a significant downward push on the value of the króna, even before the effects of any speculation.
The current economic climate in the country has affected many Icelandic businesses and citizens. With the creation of Nýi Landsbanki, the new organisation which replaces the old Landsbanki, around 300 employees will lose their jobs due to a radical restructuring of the organisation which is intended to minimise the bank’s international operations. Similar job losses are expected at Glitnir and Kaupthing[134] The job losses can be compared with the 2,136 registered unemployed and 495 advertised vacancies in Iceland at the end of August 2008.[9]
Other companies have also been affected. For example, the private Sterling Airlines declared bankruptcy on 29 October 2008. The national airline Icelandair has noticed a significant slump in domestic demand for flights. However, the airline states that year-on-year international demand is up from last year. Guðjón Arngrímsson, a spokesman for the airline, said “we’re getting decent traffic from other markets… we are trying to let the weak [króna] help us.” He has also stated that it is impossible to predict whether the company will be profitable this year.[135]Morgunblaðið, an Icelandic newspaper, is cutting some jobs and merging parts of its operations with the media corporation 365. The newspaper 24 stundir has ceased publication due to the crisis, resulting in the loss of 20 jobs.[135]
Importers are particularly hard hit, with the government restricting foreign currency to essential products such as food, medicines and oil.[136] The €400 million loan from the central banks of Denmark and Norway is sufficient to pay for a month’s imports,[9] although on 15 October there was still a “temporary delay” which affected “all payments to and from the country”.[137]
The assets of Icelandic pension funds are, according to one expert, expected to shrink by 15–25%.[138] The Icelandic Pension Funds Association has announced that benefits will in all likelihood have to be cut in 2009.[139] Iceland’s GDP is expected by economists to shrink by as much as 10% as a result of the crisis, putting Iceland by some measures in an economic depression.[140]Inflation may climb as high as 75% by the end of the year.[141]
Unemployment had more than tripled by late November 2008, with over 7000 registered jobseekers[142] (about 4% of the workforce) compared to just 2136 at the end of August 2008.[9] As 80% of household debt is indexed and another 13% denominated in foreign currencies,[143] debt repayment is going to be more costly. Since October 2008, 14% of the workforce have experienced reductions in pay, and around 7% have had their working hours reduced. According to the president of the Icelandic Federation of Labour (ASÍ), Gylfi Arnbjörnsson, these figures are lower than expected. 85% of those currently registered as unemployed in Iceland stated that they lost their job in October, after the economic collapse.[144]
**
Outside Iceland
Over £840 million in cash from more than 100 UK local authorities was invested in Icelandic banks.[146] Representatives from each council are meeting to try to persuade the Treasury to secure the money in the same way that customers’ money in Icesave was fully guaranteed.[146] Of all the local authorities, Kent County Council has the most money invested in Icelandic banks, currently £50 million.[146]Transport for London, the organisation that operates and coordinates transport services within London, also has a large investment at £40 million.[146] Local authorities were working under government advice to invest their money across many national and international banks as a way of spreading risk. Other UK organisations said to have invested heavily include police services and fire authorities,[146] and even the Audit Commission.[147] It is hoped that about one-third of the deposited money will be available fairly rapidly, corresponding to the liquid assets of the UK subsidiaries: liquidation of other assets, such as loans and offices, will take longer.[148]
In an emergency sitting of Tynwald on 9 October, the Isle of Man government raised compensation from 75% of the first £15,000 per depositor to 100% of £50,000 per depositor.[149] The Chief Minister of the Isle of Man, Tony Brown, confirmed that Kaupthing had guaranteed the operations and liabilities of its Manx subsidiary in September 2007, and that the Manx government was pressing Iceland to honour this guarantee.[150] Depositors with Landsbanki on Guernsey found themselves without any depositor protection.[151]
On 11 October, an agreement was reached between the Icelandic and Dutch governments on the savings of about 120,000 Dutch citizens. The Icelandic government will cover the first €20,887 on savings accounts of Dutch citizens held by Landsbanki subsidiary Icesave, using money lent by the Dutch government. The total value of Icesave deposits in the Netherlands is €1.7 billion.[152] At the same time, Iceland and Britain reached an agreement on the general contours of a solution: Icesave deposits in the UK total £4 billion (€5 billion) in 300,000 accounts.[153] The figure of €20,887 is the amount covered by the Icelandic Depositors’ and Investors’ Guarantee Fund (DIGF; Tryggingarsjóður in Icelandic):[154] however, the DIGF had equity of only 8.3 billion krónur at the end of 2007,[155] €90 million at the exchange rates of the time and far from sufficient to cover the Dutch and British claims.
The cost of deposit insurance in the UK is not completely clear as of November 2008. The Financial Services Compensation Scheme (FSCS) paid around £3 billion to transfer deposits from Heritable Bank and Kaupthing Singer & Friedlander to ING Direct, while the UK Treasury paid an additional £600 million to guarantee retail deposits that were higher than the FSCS limit.[156] The Treasury also paid out £800 million to guarantee Icesave deposits that were higher than the limit. A loan of £2.2 billion to the Icelandic government is expected to cover the claims against the Icelandic DIGF relating to Icesave, while the exposure of the UK FSCS is expected to be £1–2 billion.
The crisis also prompted the Ministry of Foreign Affairs to reduce its foreign aid to developing nations, from 0.31% to 0.27% of GNP. The effect of the aid cut was greatly amplified by the falling value of the krona, leading the Icelandic International Development Agency (ICEIDA) to see its budget fall from $22 million to $13 million. Since Iceland’s foreign aid is targeted in sectors for which the country has particular expertise (e.g. fisheries, geothermal power), the cutbacks will have a substantial impact in countries which receive Icelandic aid – most noticeably in Sri Lanka, where ICEIDA is pulling out altogether.[157]
On February 27, 2009, the Wall Street Journal reported that Iceland’s new government is trying to raise $25 million by selling its ambassadorial residences in Washington, New York, London and Oslo.[158]
On August 28, 2009, Iceland’s parliament voted 34-15 (with 14 abstentions) to approve a bill (commonly referred to as the Icesave bill) to repay the United Kingdom and the Netherlands more than $5 billion lost in Icelandic deposit accounts. Initially opposed in June, the bill was passed after amendments were added which set a ceiling on the repayment based on the country’s Gross Domestic Product. Opponents of the bill argued that Icelanders, already reeling from the crisis, should not have to pay for mistakes made by private banks under the watch of other governments. However, the government argued that if the bill failed to pass, the UK and the Netherlands might retaliate by blocking a planned aid package for Iceland from the International Monetary Fund (IMF). Under the deal, up to 4% of Iceland’s Gross Domestic Product (GDP) will be paid to the UK, in sterling terms, from 2017-2023 while the Netherlands will receive up to 2% of Iceland’s GDP, in euro terms, for the same period.[159] Talks between Icelandic, Dutch and UK ministers in January of 2010 dubbed as “Icesave” did not result in any specific actions being agreed upon. [160]
Criminal investigation
In April 2009, Iceland’s state prosecutor hired Eva Joly, the Norwegian-French investigator who led Europe’s biggest ever fraud investigations into bribery and corruption at oil group Elf Aquitaine, as special consultant to a 20-member ”economic crime team” to “investigate suspicions of criminal actions in the period preceding the collapse of the Icelandic banks” which may involve several Iceland’s business and banking leaders.[161] Joly stated that the investigation will require a minimum of 2–3 years to build up enough evidence to secure prosecutions.[133]
In an interview Joly stated that:
“Finding proof will start at home in Iceland, but my instinct is that it will spread. If there are things relevant to the UK we will get in touch with the Serious Fraud Office. If there are things relevant to Germany we will get in touch with their authorities. In Iceland, there is more than enough for a starting point for the investigation, given all the talk about market manipulation and unusual loans. If these are proved they are embezzlement and fraud. The priority is tracing any flow of assets from the banks and getting them back.”[133]
The investigation is expected to focus on a number of questionable financial practices engaged in by Icelandic banks:
Almost half of all the loans made by Icelandic banks were to holdings companies, many of which are connected to those same Icelandic banks.
Money was allegedly lent by the banks to their employees and associates so they could buy shares in those same banks while simply using those same shares as collateral for the loans. Borrowers were then allowed to defer paying interest on the loan until the end of the period, when the whole amount plus interest accrued was due. These same loans were then allegedly written off days before the banks collapsed.
Kaupthing allowed a Qatari investor to purchase 5% of its shares. It was later revealled that the Qatari investor “bought” the stake using a loan from Kaupthing itself and a holding company associated with one of its employees (i.e. the bank was, in effect, buying its own shares).[133]
Scrutiny of Icelandic business leaders
Since the crisis began, many of Iceland’s business leaders, who had previously been considered financial gurus who greatly developed Iceland’s economy, are now under intense public scrutiny for their roles in causing the financial crisis:
Jón Ásgeir Jóhannesson and Jóhannes Jónsson, the owners of the Baugur Group retail empire, which includes Hamleys, House of Fraser, The Oasis Centre and a large portion of Iceland’s media. Jón Ásgeir, who had been known as the “popstar businessman” due to his shaggy golden mullet, has become the subject of a satirical video on YouTube set to the theme of the movie The Godfather. In addition, a former mistress later revealed details of his “playboy lifestyle” during a trial that found him guilty of false accounting (which prompted the Baugur Group to relocate to the United Kingdom).
Reportedly, all of those under scrutiny are now rarely seen in public and some have apparently left the country. They are also reportedly the subjects of an ongoing investigation to determine if any of their business practices warrant criminal prosecution.[133]
Statements from former politicians
Former Prime Minister Davíð Oddsson has claimed that Iceland needs to investigate “unusual and unconventional loans” given by the banks to senior politicians during the years before the crisis.[133]
Björn Bjarnson, the former Minister for Justice and Ecclesiastical Affairs, has started a blog detailing the problems with the business sector and the efforts to cover them up. This was cited as an example of how politicians and businessmen, who traditionally held a tight grip over the Icelandic media, have lost this control and that dozens of similar blogs have been created. Björn stated that:
“I have written a lot about problems in the business sector over the last 14 years, and I can only compare some parts of it to Enron. Here companies have been playing a game, using the media and publishing to make themselves look good. We only hope that the foreign media will soon begin to understand what has been going on.”[133]
Some of the 6000 protesters in front of the Alþingishús, seat of the Icelandic parliament, on 15 November 2008.
Parts of the Icelandic public have arranged protests against the Central Bank, the Parliament and the government’s alleged lack of responsibility before and after the crisis, attracting between 3000 and 6000 people (1–2% of Iceland’s population) on Saturdays.[164]
And a little about the Freedom of Information Act and financial firms –
§ 38:249 (US Code)
K. Eighth Exemption: Reports by Financial Institutions
1. In General
§ 38:249 (US Code) Introduction
5 USCS § 552(b) (8) provides an exemption from FOIA disclosure for matters that are contained in or related to examination, operating, or condition reports prepared by, on behalf of, or for the use of an agency responsible for the regulation or supervision of financial institutions.
Accordingly, a number of federal offices and agencies, including the Treasury Department, the Comptroller of the Currency, the Federal Reserve System, and the Pension Benefit Guaranty Corporation have promulgated regulations affirmatively applying Exemption 8 to relevant information in their possession.
Some regulations, however, such as those of the Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation, may contain provisions for the discretionary release of reports that are otherwise exempt.
As stated in the legislative history of the FOIA, Exemption 8 is designed to insure the security and integrity of financial institutions, since the sensitive details collected by government agencies which regulate financial institutions could cause great harm if they were to be indiscriminately disclosed. A major concern is that the disclosure of such reports containing frank evaluations of investigated banks might undermine public confidence in the soundness of such institutions and cause unwarranted runs on banks.
A secondary purpose behind the enactment of Exemption 8 is to safeguard the relationship between the banks and the supervising agencies. There was concern that if bank examinations are freely made available to the public and to the banks’ competitors, the banks will be less likely to give the agencies their full co-operation – (which they don’t do now, my note).
The courts have indicated that Exemption 8, like the other FOIA exemptions, must be narrowly construed, but this does not mean that the plain meaning of the language of the exemption can be overlooked.
Practice pointer: Although reports prepared by bank regulatory bodies are beyond the scope of FOIA disclosure, such reports might nevertheless be subject to discovery in the course of litigation.
Exemption 8 does not create independently any evidentiary privilege, its effect being only to permit the withholding of such information from the public generally.
If, however, the federal banking agency forbids the bank to disclose a report of an examination without agency approval, discovery of examination reports must be sought from the agency and not from the bank as part of pretrial discovery in litigation involving the bank. (or financial investment, financial brokerage, stock market records, or investment “auction” facility, my note).
(from pp. 256 – 257, 15 Fed Proc, L Ed; )
§ 38:250. What “financial institutions” are governed by
Exemption 8?
The term “financial institution” has been interpreted to include banks and other related institutions.
Thus, two sets of federal regulations, those of the Comptroller of the Currency and the Federal Reserve System, indicate that the exemption is applicable to reports relating to the affairs of any bank or affiliate thereof, bank holding company or subsidiary, broker, finance company, or any person engaged, or proposing to engage, in the business of banking, extending credit, or managing or controlling banks.
It has been held that examination reports of federal savings institutions are also exempt from disclosure. Although some fears have been expressed that if Exemption 8 is construed literally, the records relating to a closed bank will be perpetually sealed, it has been held that such records come within the scope of Exemption 8, at least where the bank has only recently been closed and where the records have not yet been turned over to GSA.
One question is whether national securities exchanges are considered to be “financial institutions” within the meaning of Exemption 8.
In one case, a Securities and Exchange Commission staff study on an off-board trading problem raised by a rule of the New York Stock Exchange, as well as of the transcripts made and documents received by the SEC in the course of its investigation, were held not? to be exempted from FOIA disclosure by reason of Exemption 8.
But it has been held that an SEC report regarding an inspection of one of the lesser stock exchanges is exempt as pertaining to a financial institution.
(and from pp. 259, 15 Fed Proc, L Ed)
§ 38:252 Other exempt information
Other types of information that have been held to be exempted from disclosure under 5 USCS § 38:252 (b) (8) include reports of the Comptroller of the Currency concerning the policies of a national bank, reports of FDIC examiners, and reports of the Federal Home Loan Bank Board concerning the financial conditions of savings associations.
Information concerning disciplinary proceedings involving specific stock exchange members, since it is of value to SEC supervision of the stock exchange, is protected by Exemption 8.
(from)
Freedom of Information
Federal Procedure, Lawyers Edition; 1990
§ 38:249 (US Code)
§ 38:250 (US Code)
§ 38:252 (US Code)
Volume 15, § 38:1 – 38:600
So much for the concept of transparency. It seems that is simply a term to be used in public displays of political arena working and not an application used in fact, in process, nor in financial services processes.
– cricketdiane
***
Conflict of Laws –
Entry, pp. 1085, Vol. 4, Encyclopedia Britannica, 1978
The law of conflict of laws has to do with the resolution of problems that result from the fact that there exists in the world a multiplicity of different sets of courts and different systems of private laws; that is, law dealing with relations between persons. As the earth is presently organized, its surface is divided among nations that are independent of each other and that have no world government above them. Each of these nations maintains its own set of courts in complete independence of every other nation, and each nation has its own set of laws, written or unwritten.
The Law of Conflict of Laws: Function and Sources –
While in such countries as France, Sweden, Peru, or Japan, one single system of law obtains for the whole country, diversity exists in many others, especially nations organized upon a federal pattern, such as the United States, Canada, and, to a minor degree, West Germany, Switzerland, Mexico, or Soviet Union [today, Eastern European nations and Russia]. ( . . . )
Even in countries whose political structure is of the unitary rather than the federal pattern, differences can be found. In the United Kingdom, for example, considerable difference exist between the laws of England, Scotland, the Isle of Man, the Channel Islands, and Northern Ireland. (I’m not sure the extent to which that is true today, my note).
Diversity of laws exists frequently between a country and its colonies. (etc.)
Diversity of laws develops where a country is divided. (etc.)
Diversities of law within one country may also exist on an ethnic or religious basis. (etc.)
Because of the spread of Western civilization over the entire planet, the laws of modern nations, at least insofar as they are concerned with relations between private individuals, present a considerable measure of uniformity. (to some extent, my note).
They are sufficiently different, however, to make it important to know to what situations one ought to apply the law of one country, state, region, or group rather than that of another, especially when dealings are carried on between persons of different law units.
This question of determining which of the world’s numerous laws is the proper one to apply in a particular situation is in itself a legal question.
Those rules of law by which such questions of choice of law are determined constitute a major part of that field of the law that is known as private international law or the law of conflict of laws.
Other parts of this field of the law are concerned with the problem of jurisdiction — that is, the problem of determining in what cases the courts of a particular country or state are, or are not, to go into action — and, furthermore, with the problem of stating what weight, if any, is to be given in one country or province to the judgments and other decisions of the courts or other agencies of other countries or provinces.
In countries adhering to the French legal tradition it is customary to regard as parts of private international law also those rules that deal with nationality and with the legal position of aliens and nonresidents.
In accordance with usage in countries of the English legal tradition, however, the present article will be limited to jurisdiction, foreign judgments, and choice of law.
The name private international law, which is generally used in countries of European-continental tradition, and occasionally also in England, seems to indicate that it is a part of international law — that is, that system of law that is superior to all sovereign states and that, at least in theory, is uniform throughout the world.
This view was commonly held for many centuries, and when the name private international law was coined in the 19th century it was meant to signify that the supranational body of international law consisted of two parts, public and private international law.
While the former would determine the proper conduct of sovereign nations toward each other in both peace and war, the latter would, in a uniform way, tell all nations in what cases their courts ought or ought not to take jurisdiction, under what conditions foreign judgments were to be enforced or otherwise recognized, and in what cases the laws of one nation were to be applied rather than those of another.
(etc.)
pp. 1087, Vol. 4 (same entry – Conflict of Laws)
In the United States, the Constitution provides that “full faith and credit shall be given in each state to the public acts, records and judicial proceedings of every other state.”
Under this clause, the states, and by statute, the territories, are obliged mutually to enforce their money judgments and to recognize the res judicata and law-changing effects of their judicial acts, provided the state by which the judgment was rendered was acting within the scope of its jurisdiction as defined by the Supreme Court of the United States.
The only other defenses that might be raised are grave irregularity of the proceedings in which the judgment was obtained and, in certain cases, lack of finality.
In countries that follow the general principles of the common law, a foreign judgment usually is willingly enforced and otherwise recognized unless (1) the country by which it was rendered lacked jurisdiction according to the notions prevailing in the place where recognition is sought, or (2) the proceedings in which the judgment was obtained were tainted with fraud or were otherwise grossly unfair, or (3) the recognition or enforcement of the foreign judgment would seriously interfere with an important public policy of the country or state where recognition or enforcement is sought.
In addition to these requirements, most civil-law countries (except, of course, those few in which foreign judgments as such are not enforced at all) also demand that reciprocity with the country whose judgment is sought be recognized. (. . . )
Nowhere will a foreign judgment be enforced or recognized unless the country by which it was rendered had jurisdiction to do so under the notions obtaining where recognition is sought. These limits are sometimes wider, however, than those that a country will concede to others for the exercise of their jurisdictions.
(etc.)
pp. 1088, Vol 4
The greatest difficulties have arisen in the field of contract. Many courts and writ have held that problems of the law of contract are generally to be decided under the law of the place where the contract was made.
Under a refinement of this theory (1978, my note), problems concerning performance are to be decided under the law of the place where the contract was to be performed.
But where is a contract made when it was concluded by the exchange of letters between Tokyo and Paris, or San Francisco and Chicago? Where is the contract of sale to be performed when the seller has to obtain the goods in New Orleans and ship them from New York to Amsterdam, and the buyer, a business firm in Oslo, has to pay the price at a bank in London?
furthermore, what intrinsic connection with the parties’ relationship does the place of contracting have at all, if, as frequently happens, the contract was made at a place at which quite accidentally the parties’ minds met. Should German law really be applied to a contract concluded by a Dane and an Italian while they were flying over Germany in an airplane?
The view most widely followed by the courts of both civil-law and common-law countries is that problems concerning an alleged contract are to be decided in accordance with that law which the parties expressly agreed to be applicable, or which is recognizably that law upon the basis of which the parties negotiated and made their contract.
Theoretical objections to this practical view still carry some weight, especially in the United States. Where no particular law can be discovered as the one upon the basis of which the parties transacted their business, detailed differentiations must be made depending on the kind of contract in question (sale, insurance, transportation, contract for services, suretyship, etc.) and on the particular problem to be decided.
Although the field of contract is the most important for international and interstate trade, it is the one beset with the most uncertainties as to choice of law. Fortunately, the substantive laws do not widely differ from one another, and business has learned to avoid many of the difficulties through resorting to arbitration and appropriate drafting. Through skillful draftsmanship the experienced international lawyer can prevent many of the difficulties that can so easily arise under private international law.
(out of the order offered in the text – but important here)
The notion that the courts of a country should ever have to decide problems under foreign law rather than invariably deciding all problems coming before them under the law of their own country is by no means self-evident.
It has its rationale mainly in the thought that it would be unjust to teh parties concerned if a problem were decided under a law that they did not know might cover their situation when they began the transaction that led to the subsequent litigation. (but does not apply to false advertising, misrepresentation, fraud and other illusory, illegal, fraudulent, corrupt, unfair, unscrupulous or criminal business practices, my note, because even at a very basic level, those engaging in it know by its nature to be wrong and likely to fail the merits of any legal test of acceptable practices. – cricketdiane)
(further, on pp. 1088, Vol 4 – Conflict of Laws)
The necessity to apply the law of a foreign country or province, however, constitutes an inconvenience to the court and the parties. Although judges are familiar with the law of their own country, they cannot be expected to be familiar with the laws of the whole world. (but they can read at least as good as I can, my note.) Foreign law must therefore be especially pleaded and proved, often at considerable inconvenience and expense.
European and American scholars of the late 19th centuries attempted to reduce the whole field of choice of law to a few principles that could be expressed in a small number of highly generalized maxims.
Their results, however, proved impractical. Since the problems of choice of law are almost as manifold as those of substantive private law, these efforts turned out to constitute oversimplifications.
Mid-20th-century writers and courts regard it as their task to elaborate patiently those detailed rules of narrow application that are necessary to do justice to the infinite variety of actual life.
Some U.S. scholars also stress the interests of states to implement their policies over divergent policies of other states. The results of the manifold efforts can be found in the works listed in the bibliography. Here no more can be done that state some overall approaches, which must not be regarded as rules of immediate applicability. (their note, not mine.)
(also out of order from the text – )
In their general approach to the problem of jurisdiction, the common-law countries still proceed from the long-obsolete notion that no civil suit could be commenced in any way other than by the defendant’s arrest by the sheriff. Consequently, an action can still be brought in any place in which the defendant is personally served with process, (or in which they own property or have conducted business, my note), even though he may be there only for a few minutes to change airplanes.
In modern times it has come to be widely held, however, that personal service upon the defendant is no longer an indispensable requirement of jurisdiction and that an individual may be sued in the country or state of his residence, even if the summons is not personally pressed upon him. a corporation can always be sued in the country or state in which it has been incorporated.
(and, also out of order – but very interesting – )
As another example, the courts of New York regard themselves as an “inconvenient forum” for suits between nonresidents concerning a tort committed outside New York.
With few exceptions, Anglo-U.S. courts will not try controversies concerning title to, or trespass upon, land situation outside the state. (my note, but this changes when it involves money, securities, exchange of securities, fraud, fraudulent business practices, currency manipulation or currency forms as the property in question.)
(etc. – lots more good information here, but I need to lookup something else.)
(from)
Encyclopedia Britannica, 1978
pp. 1085 – 1088; Vol. 4, “Conflict of Laws”
***
Essentials of Business Law, Second Edition –
1984, 1986, West Publishing Company, St. Paul, Minn.
authors – Smith, Mann, Roberts
pp. 700 – 701, 702 – Part Nine, Regulation of Business
Figure 39 – 3 Restraints of Trade
Restraint – Standard
Price fixing … Per se illegal
Market allocations … Horizontal: per se illegal
Vertical: rule of reason
Group boycotts … per se illegal
Tying arrangements … per se illegal (* if seller has power in tying product or a not insubstantial amount of interstate commerce is affected in the tied product.)
However, in the text –
Monopolies –
Economic analysis indicates that a monopolist will use its power to limit production and increase prices. Therefore, a monopolistic market will produce fewer goods at a higher price than a competitive market. Addressing the problem of monopolization, Section 2 of the Sherman Act prohibits monopolies, attempts to monopolize, and conspiracies to monopolize.
Thus Section 2 prohibits both agreements among businesses and, unlike Section 1, unilateral conduct by one firm.
Monopolization –
Although the language of Section 2 appears to prohibit all monopolies, the courts have not interpreted it in that manner. Rather, they have required that in addition to the mere possession of market power there also must be either the unfair attainment of the monopoly power or the abusive use of that power once attained.
It is extremely rare to find an unregulated industry with only one firm, so the issue of monopoly power involves defining what degree of market dominance constitutes monopoly power. Monopoly power is the ability to control prices or to exclude competitors from the marketplace. The courts have grappled with this question of monopoly power and have developed a number of approaches, but the most common test is market share.
A market share greater than 75 percent generally indicates monopoly power, while a share less than 50 percent does not. (but what constitutes the actual market base is subjectively determined, my note). A 50 to 75 percent share is inconclusive (1986).
Market share is the fractional share possessed by a firm of the total relevant product and geographic markets, but defining the relevant markets is often a difficult and subjective project for the courts.
The relevant product market, as demonstrated in the case which follows (at the bottom of pages 701 – 702), includes products that are substitutable for the firm’s product on the basis of price, quality, and adaptability for other purposes. For example, although brick and wood siding are both used in buildings as exteriors it is not likely that they would be considered as part of the same product market. On the other hand, Coca Cola and Seven-Up are both soft drinks and would be considered part of the same product market.
(etc.)
The relevant geographic market is the territory in which the firm sells its products or services. This may be at the local, regional, or national level. (or in the cases we have today – in the international arenas, my note.)
For instance, the relevant geographic market for the manufacture and sale of aluminum might be national, whereas that of a taxi company would be local. The scope of the relevant geographic market will depend on such factors as transportation costs, the type of product or services, and the location of competitors and customers.
If sufficient monopoly power has been proved, it must then be shown that the firm has engaged in unfair conduct. The courts have not yet agreed on what constitutes unfair conduct (that is not true even when it was written and certainly not now – my note).
One judicial approach is that a firm possessing monopoly power has the burden of proving that it acquired such power passively or that it had the power “thrust” upon it. An alternative view is that monopoly power, when combined with conduct designed to exclude competitors, violates Section 1. a third approach requires monopoly power plus some type of predatory practice, such as pricing below marginal costs (among others, my note.)
(from – )
Essentials of Business Law, Second Edition –
1984, 1986, West Publishing Company, St. Paul, Minn.
authors – Smith, Mann, Roberts
pp. 700 – 701, 702 – Part Nine, Regulation of Business
***
excerpt from “Operations Management, Strategy and Analysis” by Krajewski, Ritzman: 1993, Addison-Wesley Publishing Co.
(pp. 296 – 299: also pp. 300 about diseconomies of scale, found below first reference passages and Managerial Practice 8. 1 “The Agony of Too Much – And Too Little – Capacity”)
Capacity is the maximum rate of output for a facility. The facility can be a work station or an entire organization. The operations manager must provide the capacity to meet current and future demand or suffer the consequences of missed opportunities.
Capacity plans are made at two levels. Long-term capacity plans, which we describe in this chapter, deal with investments in new facilities and equipment. These plans look at least two years into the future, but construction lead times alone can force much longer time horizons.
Currently, U.S. investment in new plant and equipment is $550 billion annually (1986). Service industries account for more than 64 percent of the total. Such sizable investments require top-management participation and approval because they are not easily reversed.
Short-term capacity plans, which we discuss in later chapters, are constrained by long-term plans. Short-term plans focus on work-force size, overtime budgets, inventories, (short-term capital plays, etc., my note), and the like, rather than on capital investment decision.
Capacity planning is central to the long-term success of an organization. Too much capacity can be as agonizing as too little, as Managerial Practice 8. 1 demonstrates. When choosing a capacity strategy, managers have to consider questions such as, should we have one large facility or several small ones? Should we expand capacity before the demand is there or wait until demand is more certain? A systematic approach is needed to answer these and similar question and to develop a capacity strategy appropriate for each situation.
Measuring Capacity
Capacity planning requires a knowledge of current capacity and its utilization. A statistic often used to indicate the degree to which equipment, space, or labor (or throughput of product, my note) is currently being utilized is the average utilization rate, calculated as follows:
Average Utilization Rate = Average Output Rate divided by Capacity
and expressed as a percentage. The average output rate and the capacity must be measured in the same terms, that is, time, customers, units, or even dollars.
(etc.)
Output Measures – are the usual choice of product-focused firms. Nissan Motor Company confidently states its capacity to be 450,000 vehicles per year at its Tennessee plant. Capacity is well understood as an output rate because customization is low.
For multiple products, however, the capacity measure must recognize the product mix. For example, ( . . . )
Input Measures – are the usual choice of process-focused firms. For example, managers of a job shop think of capacity as machine hours or number of machines. Just as product mix can complicate output capacity measures, so also can demand complicate input measures.
Demand, which invariably is expressed as an output rate, must be converted to an input measure. Only after making the conversion can a manager compare demand requirements and capacity on an equivalent basis.
(pp. 297 – Managerial Practice 8. 1)
The Agony of Too Much and Too Little Capacity
Too Much Capacity –
The commercial real estate market in most major U.S. cities is sick, (1993) caused in part by the recession in the early 1990s. At the same time many tenants, especially those in the financial industry, are undergoing restructurings expected to cut demand for office space for years to come.
The vacancy rate of office space is 26 percent in Miami, Oklahoma City, Phoenix, and Dallas alike; it is 20 percent nationwide. Values have declined as much as 30 percent in some markets, and the capacity glut hurts everyone. For example, the CenTrust Tower in Miami, a 47-tower building built by a failed thrift for $165 million, was recently sold for only $38 million.
To make matters worse, the real estate industry is suffering from a virus becoming known as the “rollover risk.” Tenants from well-planned and pricey buildings are being lured to cheaper, empty buildings.
With the exception of the credit squeeze, rollover risk may be the single greatest obstacle to the recovery of the real estate market.
“There isn’t a tenant in Washington who pays the rent who isn’t getting two calls a week from brokers asking the tenant to break the lease and move into cheap space elsewhere,” says a banking consultant in Washington, D.C. “The entire market is being cannibalized.”
Too Little Capacity –
In the late 1980s the world’s airlines re-equipped their fleets and vied to buy a record number of commercial passenger jets. Orders for Boeing, Airbus, and McDonnell Douglas surged to more than 2600 planes.
Douglas alone had a backlog of some $18 billion in firm orders for its MD-80 and new MD-11 widebody. That’s enough to keep its plant fully utilized for more than three years.
Despite the number of orders, Douglas’ commercial aircraft division announced a startling loss, Airbus had yet to make money, and even the mighty Boeing fought to improve subpar margins.
The large number of orders caused many problems. For one, Douglas’ suppliers in the metal forging industry were unable to keep pace with sales. Another problem was with its own work force: In two years, Douglas’ work force doubled, but training periods were abbreviated and the new hires were much less productive than seasoned employees.
Plant managers tried to keep on schedule by pushing planes along the assembly process, even if all the work at one particular station had not been completed.
Work was also subcontracted to other plants, including a sister plant that makes combat planes and a leased plant owned by the U.S. Air Force.
Because of the capacity shortage, costs skyrocketed and profits plummeted. By the start of the 1990s, the capacity pressure was relieved because American had cut back on the hypergrowth strategy that had set the pace for the entire airline industry in the 1980s.
Sources: “Office Buildings, Under Pressure Already, Face Threat to Their Leases,” Wall Street Journal, September 27, 1991; and “Planemakers Have It So Good, It’s Bad,” Business Week, May 8, 1989.
(from pp. 297, Operations Management, Strategy and Analysis, 1993)
***
Diseconomies of Scale –
New Rules Breed Wasteful Mergers – Law in the News pp. 705, Part Nine – Regulation of Business, Essentials of Business Law, Second Ed., 1986
inset –
New Rules Breed Wasteful Mergers by Herman Schwartz
Public policy is always fertile ground for irony. Today, for example, the economic landscape is strewn with merger fiascos, but current antitrust policy toward these combinations is increasingly lenient. “economic efficiency” is now the “only goal” of merger policy, according to a former Justice Department official.
As a result, the merger wave of the 1980s surges ahead, reachinng a new peak last week with the Allied Corporation’s $5 billion plaanned union with the Signal Companies, the largest industrial merger ever (outside the oil industry).
This preoccupation with economic efficiency ignores Congressional intent and judicial precedent. The legislative history of the antitrust laws contains almost no mention of efficiency, production or price. Rather, there is an insistent Jeffersonian concern for the small entrepreneur – for social, not economic reasons.
Thus, the Supreme Court has always ruled that efficiencies cannot save an otherwise illegal merger.
(etc.)
Steel mergers were supposed to “rationalize” a sick industry. But LTV, for example, is having so much trouble digesting Republic that, even though LTV’s own steel sales rose substantially in the first quarter of 1985, it lost $156 million and operated less efficiently than the other top steelmakers; before the merger LTV had been among the most efficient.
Elsewhere, the once-voracious ITT will spin off 12 industrial technology acquisitions in its third major asset sale in eight months, with more to follow. G.E. has shed Utah International, after a loss of perhaps $3 billion.
Du Pont’s acquisition of Conoco was described by one market analyst as “dead weight pulling Du Pont down all the time.” And the history of railroad mergers like that of Penn Central (permitted in the name of “efficiency”) is dismal: in 1979, Forbes magazine concluded that 14 out of 17 rail mergers were unsuccessful.
At least some of these deals would have been blocked by an antitrust policy more consistent with Congressional intent and established law. ( . . . )
(etc.)
One merger consultant estimated that 70 percent fail.
(out of order in the content of the article – )
Nevertheless, when the Administration (1985 article, my note), took office, William F. Baxter, then the Assistant Attorney General in charge of anti-trust, promptly redrew Federal guidelines to ease restrictions on mergers between competitors. The guidelines further legitimized virtually any “vertical” merger — between customer and suppliers — or between companies in neither a directly competitive nor supply relationship.
Soon, deals — such as the proposed Allied-Signal merger — were proposed “that never would have been . . . before the Reagan Administration took office,” as one businessman put it. (etc. Last June, the Antitrust Division further softened the guidelines.
Experience shows that the supposed benefits of a merger are often illusory.
( . . . ) Today, Mobil is trying to spin off Montgomery Ward, after pouring over $600 million into it, and is taking a $500 million charge against earnings. Exxon has written off a $1.3 billion investment in Reliance Electric. . . . And Arco’s divestiture of its refining and retailing operations shows that vertical integration may yield not efficiencies, but trouble.
(etc.)
pp. 705, Essentials of Business Law, 2nd Ed.
inset article from New York Times Company, 1985
***
Managerial Considerations in Job Design and Work Measurement pp. 279 – 281, Operations Management, Strategy and Analysis
Compensation Plans –
Compensation plans based on work measurement typically involve incentive schemes. Those used most often are piece rate and individual incentive plans.
Piece Rate Plans – piece rate is a compensation plan based on the number of units processed during a day or week. (my note – that is whether it is stocks, bonds, investment “deals”, seams in a pair of blue jeans or what management must specify as a “fair day’s work.” – that last part came from the text.)
Individual Incentive Plants – sometimes, incentive plans are used to motivate workers. Such plans reward output that exceeds a predetermined base level. (etc.)
Quality and Compensation Plans – the purpose of incentive pay is to encourage high levels of output from employees. However, a high rate of output may be achieved at the expense of quality. What is the advantage to a company if a worker produces at 115 percent of standard but has a 20 percent defective rate?
In Chapter 3, when we discussed total quality control, we argued that quality at the source is critical for achieving world-class quality performance. Incentive plans that do not recognize and reward quality may not motivate the worker to produce high-quality goods.\
Two basic approaches are used to recognize quality in incentive pans. The first is the autocratic approach, which docks the worker’s pay for defective production or requires the worker to repair all defects at a lower rate of pay.
The second is the motivational approach, which is based on the concept of extra pay for extra effort. (etc.)
Many variants (including game theory popular in the last twenty-five years whereby the extreme levels of compensation, rewards, perks and bonuses of the executives are used as a motivating carrot for all mid-level performs who would be enticed to think they could have that eventually too, my note) of the motivational approach of including quality in work measurement are used in practice. the important point is that quality should be clearly recognized when compensation plans are being developed.
(Apparently, there also needs to be a standard set for what represents “quality” especially in the financial investment industries – because not every deal qualifies as “the deal” nor should it be, as exemplified by yesterday’s Senate hearings with the mid-level management / decision makers of the Wall Street investment firm, Goldman Sachs, – 04-27-10, Senate investigations committee.)
***
The financial crisis of 2007–present is a crisis triggered by an insolventUnited States banking system.
It has resulted in the collapse of large financial institutions, the bailout of banks by national governments and downturns in stock markets around the world. In many areas, the housing market has also suffered, resulting in numerous evictions, foreclosures and prolonged vacancies.
It contributed to the failure of key businesses, declines in consumer wealth estimated in the trillions of U.S. dollars, substantial financial commitments incurred by governments, and a significant decline in economic activity.[2]
Many causes have been proposed, with varying weight assigned by experts.[3] Both market-based and regulatory solutions have been implemented or are under consideration,[4] while significant risks remain for the world economy over the 2010–2011 periods.[5]
And on pages 300 – 301 of the same book – Operations Management, Strategy and Analysis, 1993 -in the section titled “Economies of Scale”
there is also – Diseconomies of Scale
. . . Historically, many organizations have subscribed to the concept of economies of scale. The concept seems simple: Increasing a facility’s size (or scale) decreases the average unit cost.
But in reality, it’s not at all simple. At some point a facility (or business, corporation, bank or conglomerate, my note) becomes so large that diseconomies of scale set in. Excessive size can bring complexity, loss of focus, and inefficiencies, which raise the average unity cost. (etc.)
muckety map - good example of diseconomies of scale - AIG / Goldman Sachs / Wall Street bailouts
(Figure 8.1 found on page 300 of the book below – not really applicable)
Figure 8.1 also shows a second dimension to the concept. Not only is there an optimal size for a facility but also an optimal operating level for a facility of a given size. Economies and diseconomies of scale are represented not just between cost curves but also within each one.
As the output rate approaches a facility’s best operating level, economies of scale are realized. Beyond that level, diseconomies set in.
pp. 300 – 301, Operations Management, Strategy and Analysis
Swedish banking rescue, a systemic crisis in the early 1990s which cost the Swedish taxpayer 4% of GDP in the short term (much of the money was later recovered)
Savings and loan crisis in the United States in the 1980s and 1990s, costing $125 billion to the U.S. taxpayer (about 2% of GDP)
Crédit Lyonnais, a French state bank which almost failed in 1993, costing the French taxpayer €16 billion (about 1% of GDP)
Washington Mutual, formerly the largest savings and loan association in the United States, intervened by the U.S. government in September 2008
Darien scheme, a historical failure of overseas expansion, resulting in the loss of one-fifth of the wealth of Scotland at the end of the seventeenth century
My Note – I had another chart or two about these general concepts and some online information that I found awhile back, however – by the time I find it in my computer – it could be awhile. Therefore, I’m going to take a break, start a new blog entry and check online for the ones I was trying to find, which would have to be easier.
– cricketdiane
***
Share in GDP of U.S. financial sector since 1860 - must not include derivatives - Leonard N. Stern School of Business at New York University - Thomas Philippon, The future of the financial industry
Derivatives were suggested to be over $600 Trillion dollars – I don’t think that is included in the GDP . . .
(of anywhere, now that I think about it, my note) – cricketdiane
The FDIC is often appointed as receiver for failed banks. This page contains useful information for the customers and vendors of these banks. This includes information on the acquiring bank (if applicable), how your accounts and loans are affected, and how vendors can file claims against the receivership. Failed Financial Institution Contact Search displays point of contact information related to failed banks.
This list includes banks which have failed since October 1, 2000.
AIG Decides to Keep Unprofitable Mortgage Insurer (Update1)
February 12, 2010, 04:20 PM EST
AIG, which was rescued in September 2008 after losses from bad bets tied to housing markets, posted a $1.43 billion operating loss from mortgage insurance in the first nine months of 2009 as U.S. foreclosure filings climbed to a record. The company said in November that it tapped the Treasury Department line within its $182.3 billion rescue package for about $4.2 billion, in part to restructure United Guaranty.
Feb. 12 (Bloomberg) — American International Group Inc., the insurer divesting assets to repay a government bailout, opted to keep its money-losing U.S. mortgage guarantor after selling Canadian and Israeli subsidiaries of the unit.
AIG made a “recent decision” to hold onto Greensboro, North Carolina-based United Guaranty, Arlene Isaacs-Lowe, a Moody’s Investors Service analyst, wrote yesterday in a research note. AIG executives told her of the move within the past few months, Isaacs-Lowe said today in an interview.
United Guaranty was founded in 1963 and sold to AIG in 1981. The business generated $2.8 billion in operating income and $600 million in dividends for AIG in the eight years prior to the housing slump, the company has said.
United Guaranty was ranked the fourth-largest U.S. mortgage insurer in the first six months of 2009, behind No. 1 MGIC Investment Corp., Radian Group Inc. and PMI Group Inc., according to Inside Mortgage Finance, a trade journal. All the firms were unprofitable in the first nine months of 2009.
Essent Guaranty Inc., backed by investors including Goldman Sachs Group Inc. and JPMorgan Chase & Co., became the first newcomer to the U.S. mortgage-guaranty business since the housing collapse, leaving it unburdened by policies sold in 2005 and 2006 when underwriting standards were lower.
Until 2007, private mortgage policies had been among the most profitable types of coverage sold by insurers. From 2004 to 2006, members of the Mortgage Insurance Companies of America reported a profit margin of at least 35 cents for every dollar they collected in premiums. Auto insurers made less than 5 cents on every dollar in 2006, according to A.M. Best Co.
Last week offered some sobering news on the housing market: Even with broad government support for housing, data from the National Association of Realtors showed that the median price of single-family homes continued to decline in 2009. RealtyTrac, an online marketer of foreclosed properties, said foreclosure filings rose by 15 percent in January compared with a year ago.
Foreclosure is generally a long process, with multiple filings as delinquent borrowers fall ever further behind. What is most ominous about the latest RealtyTrac numbers is that nearly 88,000 people had their homes repossessed in January, a 31 percent increase from a year ago. The big jump indicates that many foreclosures that were in process in 2009 are now beginning to move to repossession and, eventually, auction. With more than four million homes in that pipeline, the foreclosure crisis shows no sign of abating.
[ . . . ]
There is an emerging consensus among financial experts and policy makers that the key to successful modifications is to reduce the amount of the borrower’s loan balance, rather than merely reducing the monthly payment. The goal is to lower the payment while restoring equity, thus giving borrowers both the means and the incentive to keep up with their payments.
Administration officials have resisted that approach, in part because they believe it would be too expensive. Another obstacle is the lenders themselves. In general, a lender is unwilling to take losses by reducing principal unless the owners of the second mortgage on a home also take a hit. For banks that own the second mortgages, such losses would be huge — something they clearly would prefer not to face up to.
Banks’ unwillingness to take losses on second mortgages may also be holding up so-called short sales, in which a lender agrees to retire a first-mortgage debt by taking the proceeds from the sale of the home, even when the amount is less than the mortgage balance.
The number of Americans who owed more than their homes were worth was virtually nil when the real estate collapse began in mid-2006, but by the third quarter of 2009, an estimated 4.5 million homeowners had reached the critical threshold, with their home’s value dropping below 75 percent of the mortgage balance.
They are stretched, aggrieved and restless. With figures released last week showing that the real estate market was stalling again, their numbers are now projected to climb to a peak of 5.1 million by June — about 10 percent of all Americans with mortgages.
“We’re now at the point of maximum vulnerability,” said Sam Khater, a senior economist with First American CoreLogic, the firm that conducted the recent research. “People’s emotional attachment to their property is melting into the air.”
Suggestions that people would be wise to renege on their home loans are at least a couple of years old, but they are turning into a full-throated barrage. Bloggers were quick to note recently that landlords of an 11,000-unit residential complex in Manhattan showed no hesitation, or shame, in walking away from their deeply underwater investment.
[ . . . ]
It would cost about $745 billion, slightly more than the size of the original 2008 bank bailout, to restore all underwater borrowers to the point where they were breaking even, according to First American.
Using government money to do that would be seen as unfair by many taxpayers, Mr. Barr said. On the other hand, doing nothing about underwater mortgages could encourage more walk-aways, dealing another blow to a fragile economy.
With prices now down by about 30 percent, underwater borrowers fall into two groups. Some have owned their homes for many years and got in trouble because they used the house as a cash machine. Others, like Mr. Koellmann in Miami Beach, made only one mistake: they bought as the boom was cresting.
Guy D. Cecala, publisher of Inside Mortgage Finance magazine, says he does not hear much sympathy from lenders for their underwater customers.
“The banks tell me that a lot of people who are complaining were the ones who refinanced and took all the equity out any time there was any appreciation,” he said. “The banks are damned if they will help.”
David Rosenberg, the chief economist of the investment firm Gluskin Sheff, wrote recently that borrowers were not victims. They “signed contracts, and as adults should also be held accountable,” he wrote.
Of course, this is not necessarily how Wall Street itself behaves, as demonstrated by the case of Stuyvesant Town and Peter Cooper Village. An investment group led by the real estate giant Tishman Speyer recently defaulted on $4.4 billion in debt that it had used to buy the two apartment developments in Manhattan, handing the properties back to the lenders.
Moreover, during the boom, it was the banks that helped drive prices to unrealistic levels by lowering credit standards and unleashing a wave of speculative housing demand.
[ . . . ]
Mr. Koellmann applied last fall to Bank of America for a modification, noting that his income had slipped. But the lender came back a few weeks ago with a plan that added more restrictive terms while keeping the payments about the same.
“That may have been the last straw,” Mr. Koellmann said.
For the truth is that lack of fiscal discipline isn’t the whole, or even the main, source of Europe’s troubles — not even in Greece, whose government was indeed irresponsible (and hid its irresponsibility with creative accounting).
No, the real story behind the euromess lies not in the profligacy of politicians but in the arrogance of elites — specifically, the policy elites who pushed Europe into adopting a single currency well before the continent was ready for such an experiment.
Consider the case of Spain, which on the eve of the crisis appeared to be a model fiscal citizen. Its debts were low — 43 percent of G.D.P. in 2007, compared with 66 percent in Germany. It was running budget surpluses. And it had exemplary bank regulation.
But with its warm weather and beaches, Spain was also the Florida of Europe — and like Florida, it experienced a huge housing boom. The financing for this boom came largely from outside the country: there were giant inflows of capital from the rest of Europe, Germany in particular.
The result was rapid growth combined with significant inflation: between 2000 and 2008, the prices of goods and services produced in Spain rose by 35 percent, compared with a rise of only 10 percent in Germany. Thanks to rising costs, Spanish exports became increasingly uncompetitive, but job growth stayed strong thanks to the housing boom.
Then the bubble burst. Spanish unemployment soared, and the budget went into deep deficit. But the flood of red ink — which was caused partly by the way the slump depressed revenues and partly by emergency spending to limit the slump’s human costs — was a result, not a cause, of Spain’s problems.
(etc. – he claims that the single currency Euro has created the problem – – I don’t agree, but it does mean that some options for currency adjustments are not available to use for fixing the situation as a result of the single currency – my note)
My Notes – Who decided that the value and costs of property, including basic shelter / housing would be at a price far beyond the reach of any real wages made in a year or in five years of a citizen’s efforts?
When was that created and was it by the natural laws of supply and demand at the time or was it constructed with intention?
And, what has it become now / as a natural outgrowth of housing values having exceeded the real income of the majority of our population, along with the uses of mortgages as an asset class to be bought and sold and leveraged against – what do we have now as a result of this huge disparity between income and housing costs?
What happens when banks are allowed to borrow at 0% interest from our Treasury using our money, although they are a bad credit risk in every respect at the time they are allowed to borrow many millions at 72 to 1 (or more) against every dollar of assets they pretend to have? (and at asset valuations they pretend are at a level that was taken before the economic downturn)?
Not only are people walking away from their upside down mortgages, they are also not being employed in any reasonable period of time after being dumped by companies whose only interest was to pad the bottom line for a short period of time to inspire conditional confidence in their stock shares?
What happens when people realize that they are not going to be employed anytime in the next five years, are not going to be able to own another house in their lifetimes, watch their children not have access to a higher education because the money intended for it was returned to them depleted of over 75% of its initial value, and begin to understand the disparity of return on their time and efforts if and when companies do choose to hire them back?
Who was it that decided the next natural progression in the economic foundation of our country would drop manufacturing and replace it with money making money industries? Who decided that it would be a strong, healthy foundation for our economic future? What bunch of ninnies came up with that?
So, now that companies do not have to profit or to be profitable in the primary business model under which their business operates, but simply have to manipulate investment portfolios to their advantage, what real value do those companies (and state budgets and Wall Street firms) have to the employment base, in interactive services and products available to the benefits of our population, and in our longterm financial growth as a nation?
When large corporate and institutional players are the only ones basically manipulating the markets, the stock markets, the commodities markets, the futures and speculative plays marketplaces, and international economies and markets, what actual real values exist for any of the things being traded?
Just as when in 2008, the speculative increase in the oil futures drove prices up to record profits for those speculators and their firms, entire industries across the United States suffered massive losses as they covered the extra costs of those oil prices at the consumer level. But, the entire play was no more than a manipulated construct. It wasn’t the real value of the commodity in any sense but it was passed along to the consumers, including throughout the increased business costs passed along secondarily to consumers.
And, what value do those speculators have and the profits they skimmed off that play when their time, effort, talents, resources, and availability of cash isn’t used for anything productive that enhances the overall economic foundation and future of the United States? It isn’t being used to underwrite alternative energy options, it isn’t the speculators that are inventing something which solves real problems in our communities nor that solves climate change causes nor do those resources make our companies more solvent and more competitive. What good do they do?
When housing mortgages are packaged and sold, then resold and a number of financial products are made based on them, including the credit default swaps, the mortgage insurance products, leverages are made against them in huge loan packages based on their value, then what real value do they have going forward? Are they real? Are they a pretense with no more value than what someone in Wall Street or the backrooms of a banking firm somewhere says that they have? Are they real capital formation, or are they in fact, not worth the paperwork they are printed on? What trade actually exists on them in any solvent form once people across the world in every aspect of our society and financial systems are aware that the values are unfairly being manipulated and don’t exist in the real world?
Trickle down economics is a failed economic policy from the Reagan years and beyond Greenspan’s idea of an unregulated economy – at what point do the Wall Street firms and gigantic banking conglomerates realize the basis of their comparative valuation structures have re-valued real assets somewhere below zero? Why don’t they know that now? Losses that required a loan over $180 Billion dollars for AIG seem to be a clear indication of what that means. As they have tried to sell off assets, which have borne little of their estimated and accounting values – it would indicate the disparity that exists between the real economy, the real values and their perceptions of values? Why does it not tell them anything that makes sense to them in a broader understanding of what they are doing?
To me, it indicates that using a “money making money” basis for our overall economic foundation is not a sound choice, among other things. It also shows me that the integral factors of trading values are manufactured and not real.
Over the course of all these elements put together, it tells me that our economy and our economic growth, our economic foundation, our economic future, it set out over air with no real foundation whatsoever. The basic relationships that should exist to maintain a stable structure of values for the purposes of comparison and realistic values being set to actual assets, values, housing, properties, corporations, loans, loan products or whatever financial instruments does not exist in any actual sense.
It also shows me that the rules do not exist for either the values nor for the plays that can be made with them which makes the system more like a polished poker game of bluffing than a real market or any other monetary concept of actual values.
What happens when those banks, financial firms, investment banks, investment houses, stock brokerages, financial investment funds, insurance companies acting as hedge funds, and other exaggerated examples of financial imprudence get to play by a set of rules which offers large grants, loans and offsets when they are insolvent, defaulting on loans, exemplify a bad credit score and a bad credit risk, whose past behavior indicates bad choices and even tremendous bad judgments and bad plays, insider trades, conflicts of interest and abuse of their fiduciary trust?
What basis of economic growth and what new understanding of fiduciary trust does that become when those same people and institutions are refusing credit to anyone whose credit score resembles what they had when they used and continue to use the American taxpayer’s money and our National Treasury to cover their losses?
(An implicit obligation of the United States means what now?)
– cricketdiane, 02-15-10
I watched as the economic forecasters and analysts continued to say it is all better now, the same way they said in 2008 that we weren’t in a Recession (while not being willing to even use the word in many cases). Either they don’t know what the hell they are doing or they are lying about what they do know. I’m not sure which it is, but to continue paying analysts and advisors whose sole intent is to propagate lies in the name of instilling a falsely founded confidence in a system whose values are distorted, at best – is beyond me to understand.
The economic models that I understand are dimensional and well-founded in larger pictures of integrated values. When the Reagan administration cronies and Republican administration policy makers decided to fudge the numbers throughout statistical data sets that they had to collect and make public by law, it did not change the facts. The unemployment numbers inclusively are not the numbers published by the US Labor Department as a result of the changes made by Republican administrators, however – it didn’t change the facts on the ground in this country. And, since everyone making analyses knows that those employment and unemployment numbers have been divided into unnatural categories of data and statistically manipulated by that division, they should know better than to assume the rate of unemployment is anywhere close to 10% in the United States. Even adding the admitted unemployment figures across every state, yields a figure much higher on any given date and even those do not include those citizens who are in our prisons at the moment, put in mental hospitals for some reason, having to work part-time when they can’t afford to live at that rate, retired by having to go back to work because their pensions have been stolen by Wall Street, and those who have not continued to collect unemployment benefits but are still unemployed. The real loss in consumer buying power can be significant enough that even China knew to put its focus on other markets that don’t include the United States.
Don’t tell me that everything is all okay now – that isn’t even close to the truth.
***
***
If nobody can afford to buy a house except those people who “flip houses” – then what is a house really worth?
If 90% of the bread produced goes unsold and into the trash bin, then what is a loaf of bread worth? Is it really worth the $4.29 that is being charged for that loaf of bread?
– cricketdiane
(everything from my notes on down are my thoughts about it – understandably I still have more questions that are unanswered – I will study it some more.)
On Tuesday, January 12, 2010, a major earthquake struck southern Haiti. Many U.S. residents and organizations are generously donating food, water, medicines, and other supplies to aid in the relief efforts. In order to facilitate the movements of these goods, we offer the following guidance that applies to any goods not requiring a license, such as food, clothing, and medicines.
Schedule B Numbers
There are four Schedule B numbers that can be used when exporting humanitarian goods. Those numbers are found in Chapter 98 of the Schedule B book, under subheading 9802.
9802.10.0000 Food products
9802.20.0000 Medicinal and pharmaceutical products
9802.30.0000 Wearing apparel (including footwear and headwear)
9802.40.0000 Donated articles, not elsewhere specified
Any shipment valued over $2,500 per Schedule B number or that requires a license must be filed in the AES. However, if the shipment is valued less than $2,500 per Schedule B number and does not require a license, then the low value exemption (NOEEI FTR 30.37(a)) can be used. In this case, food, clothing, and medicines do not require a license; however, medical equipment and tools may require an export license.
The Export Information Code to be reported is “CH” for shipments of goods donated for relief or charity.
The value to be reported is the market value. If that value is not known, estimate how much you would receive if you sold the goods. The value should be consistent with the goods being exported, to avoid confusion and possible delays with U.S. Customs & Border Protection officers at the port of export.
There are different ways to file your export information. The most common is to report through the Census Bureau’s free Internet based filing system calledAESDirect. We have provided training videosto help you get started with AESDirect. Another option is to file with a forwarder or agent who may be more familiar with export licensing and regulations.
U.S. Exports to China
November Trade Data Released
Posted by Global Reach on January 12, 2010 06:02:16 AM 0
By Fay
Monthly Overview:
The Nation’s international trade deficit in goods and services increased to $36.4 billion in November from $33.2 billion (revised) in October. The increase in the deficit occurred as exports rose less than imports. The rise in exports was the seventh consecutive monthly increase.
Selected Highlight:
U.S. exports to China in November ($7.3 billion) were a record high, beating the record set last month ($6.9 billion) by $469 million. While the last two months have been record highs the year-to-date exports to China ($61.2 billion) are still down from last year ($64.6 billion). Check back next month to see if December exports manage to climb high enough to make the 2009 figures beat 2008 Below are a few commodities driving the export figures:
* Soybeans have more than accounted for the increase in exports to China for the last two months. Soybean exports to China totaled $2.0 billion this month, 27% of U.S. total exports to China. This increase is being caused in part by a shortage of soybeans in Argentina due to a drought.
* Semiconductor exports to China are down by $1.5 billion so far this year, accounting for almost half of the year-to-date decrease in exports to China. Semiconductor exports to China are still considerable totaling $4.6 billion through November; they are the second largest commodity export to China, behind soybeans with $7.5 billion. Aircraft is the third largest export to China at $4.5 billion.
* You can find more commodity by country detail our website.
U.S. Exports to China
Read more: November Trade Data Released
Welcome to Electronic Export Filing
Welcome to Export Regulations
Posted by Global Reach on January 6, 2010 05:12:54 AM 9
By Omari
In the world of exporting, it’s important to be proactive, instead of reactive. Not knowing is not an excuse Whether you are a small business, first time exporter, or a large multinational corporation, you are in control of your company’s compliance as it pertains to exporting laws and requirements.
As the Trade Ombudsman for the U.S. Census Bureau, I travel the nation and work with all types of companies involved in the exporting process. I offer advice and clarifications on the Foreign Trade Regulations (FTR), solutions to problems regarding the Automated Export System (AES) and assist with a wide range of other topics. However, one of the most important messages I convey is that the Foreign Trade Division (FTD) of the U.S. Census Bureau is available to assist you with your exporting questions and concerns. Our goal is to provide you with tools and resources to maintain export compliance. We reach out to the trade community through various methods to provide a better understanding of your roles and responsibilities in the export transaction. Our outreach efforts include, but are not limited to:
Read more: Welcome to Export Regulations
« Global Reach Main Page
* Foreign Trade Web Site
* About Global Reach
* Blogger Biographies
* Comment Policy
301-763-6959
E-mail: nick.orsini@census.gov
Commodity Analysis Branch
Paul Herrick
Branch Chief
800-549-0595
(Menu Option 2)
Classification Systems, Schedule B changes; Data analysis and review; Obtaining Harmonized Commodity Code for Imports and Exports: Non-Durable Goods (Food, animals, wood, chemicals,plastic articles, textiles and wearing apparel, linens and minerals) or Durable Goods: (Metals, machinery, vehicles, measuring and testing equipment, furniture and miscellaneous manufactured articles)
E-mail: paul.e.herrick@census.gov
** PLEASE include your full telephone number (area code, country code, etc.) with your message ***
Special Projects Branch
Glenn Barresse
Branch
Chief
301-763-3629
State data; Profile of U.S. exporters
E-mail: glenn.a.barresse@census.gov
Methodology Research & Quality AssuranceBranch
Debra Coaxum
Branch
Chief
301-763-7036
E-mail: debra.l.coaxum@census.gov
Process Coordination Staff
Matthew Pryzbocki
All staff members not listed:
Any staff member not specifically listed above can be located using the U.S. Census Bureau’s staff search.
E-mailing contacts: The link on each of the contact names is set up to open your browser’s e-mail program, open a new message and address that message. If you click on that link and nothing happens (i.e. no blank message opens), manually open your e-mail program and use the e-mail address listed under NOTES.
(from – )
The goods data are compiled from the documents collected by the U.S. Customs and Border Protection and reflect the movement of goods between foreign countries and the 50 states, the District of Columbia, Puerto Rico, the U.S. Virgin Islands, and U.S. Foreign Trade Zones. They include government and non-government shipments of goods, and exclude shipments between the United States and its territories and possessions, transactions with U.S. military, diplomatic and consular installations abroad, U.S. goods returned to the United States by its Armed Forces, personal and household effects of travelers, and in-transit shipments. The General Imports value reflects the total arrival of merchandise from foreign countries that immediately enters consumption channels, warehouses, or Foreign Trade Zones. Imports for Consumption measure the total of merchandise that has physically cleared through Customs either entering consumption channels immediately or entering after withdrawal for consumption from bonded warehouses under Customs custody or from Foreign Trade Zones.
For imports, the value reported is the U.S. Customs and Border Protection appraised value of merchandise; generally, the price paid for merchandise for export to the United States. Import duties, freight, insurance, and other charges incurred in bringing merchandise to the United States are excluded.
Exports are valued at the free alongside ship (f.a.s) value of merchandise at the U.S. port of export, based on the transaction price including inland freight, insurance and other charges incurred in placing the merchandise alongside the carrier at the U.S. port of exportation.
Monthly data include actual month’s transactions as well as a small number of transactions for previous months. SITC and country detail data are not revised monthly. These data are revised annually to eliminate carry-over (that portion of the monthly statistics that arrives too late for inclusion in the transaction month) and to include errata (corrections to the published monthly data).
Methods of Classification
*
Schedule B
The export statistics are initially collected and compiled in terms of commodity classifications in the Schedule B, Statistical Classification of Domestic and Foreign Commodities Exported from the United States. Schedule B is a U.S. Bureau of the Census publication and is based on the Harmonized Commodity Description and Coding System (Harmonized System).
*
Harmonized Tariff Schedule of the United States Annotated for Statistical Reporting Purposes (HTSUSA)
The import statistics are initially collected and compiled in terms of commodity classifications in the Harmonized Tariff Schedule of the United States Annotated for Statistical Reporting Purposes (HTSUSA) [Not a Census web site], an official publication of the U.S. International Trade Commission. The HTSUSA is the U.S. import version of the Harmonized System.
*
Standard International Trade Classification (SITC)
The SITC is a statistical classification of commodities designed by the United Nations. It is designed to provide the commodity aggregations needed for purposes of economic analysis and to facilitate the international comparison of trade by commodity. The Harmonized System and SITC Revision 3 are interrelated. For more details, see What is the SITC classification system? at: http://www.census.gov/foreign-trade/www/sec2.html#sitc.
*
End-Use Classification
The HTSUSA and Schedule B classifications are summarized into six principal end-use categories and further subdivided into about 140 broad commodity groupings. These categories are used in developing seasonally adjusted and constant dollar totals. The concept of end-use demand was developed for balance of payments purposes by the Bureau of Economic Analysis.
Steel 201 Remedy in Effect
To facilitate positive adjustment to competition from imports of certain steel products, in March 2002 the President signed into law a relief program for the domestic steel industry. This program has come to be known as Steel 201 named after Section 201 of the Trade Act of 1974. For more information on Section 201 Steel Products, see the United States Trade Representative (USTR) steel section at: http://www.ustr.gov/sectors/industry/steel201/background.htm [Not a Census web site].
U.S./Canada Data Exchange and Substitution
The data for U.S. exports to Canada are derived from import data compiled by Canada. The use of Canada’s import data to produce U.S. export data requires several alignments in order to compare the two series.
* Coverage — Canadian imports are based on country of origin. U.S. goods shipped from a third country are included. U.S. exports exclude these foreign shipments and excludes certain Canadian postal shipments.
* Valuation — Canadian imports are valued at point of origin in the United States. However, U.S. exports are valued at the port of exit in the United States and include inland freight charges, making the U.S. export value slightly larger. Canada requires inland freight to be reported.
* Reexports — U.S. exports include reexports of foreign goods. Again, the aggregate U. S. export figure is slightly larger.
* Exchange Rate — Average monthly exchange rates are applied to convert the published data to U.S. currency.
* Other — There are other minor differences which are statistically insignificant, such as rounding error.
Canadian Estimates
Effective with January 2001 statistics, the current month data for exports to Canada contain an estimate for late arrivals and corrections. The following month, this estimate will be replaced, in the press release tables only, with the actual value of late receipts and corrections. This estimate will improve the current month data for exports to Canada and treat late receipts for exports to Canada in a manner more consistent with the treatment of late receipts for exports to other countries.
SOURCE: U.S. Census Bureau, Foreign Trade Division, Data Dissemination Branch, Washington, D.C. 20233
MY Note –
See all of these tables for each year through 2009 from 1985 on the link below the charts. There is no real trade imbalance until the H.O.P.E. tariff incentives and a variety of economic development funds poured into Haiti from the United States and International communities.
– cricketdiane
**
Trade with Haiti : 1994
NOTE: All figures are in millions of U.S. dollars, and not seasonally adjusted unless otherwise specified.
Month
Exports
Imports
Balance
January 1994
14.9
7.0
7.9
February 1994
13.5
8.2
5.3
March 1994
18.1
10.8
7.3
April 1994
14.3
8.2
6.1
May 1994
8.4
12.6
-4.2
June 1994
7.0
1.7
5.3
July 1994
4.2
0.1
4.1
August 1994
2.7
0.2
2.5
September 1994
5.0
0.0
5.0
October 1994
20.9
0.9
20.0
November 1994
45.3
4.2
41.1
December 1994
50.1
4.8
45.3
TOTAL
204.4
58.7
145.7
‘TOTAL’ may not add due to rounding.
Table reflects only those months for which there was trade.
MORE DATA: Data for all countries are available online in a zipped Excel file. [Excel] or the letters [xls] indicate a document is in the Microsoft® Excel® Spreadsheet Format (XLS). To view the file, you will need the Microsoft® Excel® Viewer available for free from Microsoft®. This symbol indicates a link to a non-government web site. Our linking to these sites does not constitute an endorsement of any products, services or the information found on them. Once you link to another site you are subject to the policies of the new site.
FTD Web News
What is required for me to ship charity goods to Haiti?
From GLOBAL REACH: “In order to facilitate the movements of these goods, we offer the following guidance that applies to any goods not requiring a license, such as food, clothing, and medicines.” (January 22, 2010)
NEW EXPORT TRAINING VIDEOS!!!
– Training videos on topics such as the Foreign Trade Regulations, AESDirect, NAFTA, Taxes/Tariffs, Commodities, etc. now available!
Source: FTDWebMaster, Foreign Trade Division, U.S. Census Bureau, Washington, D.C. 20233 Location: MAIN: STATISTICS:COUNTRY DATA: TRADE BALANCE Created: 12 January 2010 Last modified: 12 January 2010 at 08:32:14 AM
My Note – there are some obvious disparities in the numbers between raw materials shipped in and completed metric tons shipped out of Haiti. (That disparity is irreconcilable in its numbers among other things including the amount of money sent by the United States Departments of Commerce and Foreign Trade offices through economic development programs and funding grants along with those from the UN and international community for the same purpose. Obviously, the final target of improving the infrastructure, education, adult education, hospitals, roads, schools and general quality of and safety of life for Haitians was abrogated, diverted for private interests or something . . . I’m not sure what, but I do know there is precedent for clawbacks on that money through US treaties and International law. This includes going to the Grand Cayman and Swiss banks, the hedge funds and investment brokerage groups to relieve them of manipulating the previous windfalls of economic and charitable money for Haiti and to insure that it isn’t diverted or hijacked for profiteering and embezzlement this time.
– cricketdiane, 01-23-10
But there’s more –
***
eHam.net – Amateur Radio (Ham Radio) Community
Earthquake Net Frequencies — 7045, 3720 kHz:
from CQ / WorldRadio Online Newsroom on January 12, 2010
View comments about this article
Earthquake Net Frequencies — 7045, 3720 kHz:
All radio amateurs are requested to keep 7045 kHz and 3720 kHz clear for possible emergency traffic related to today’s major earthquake in Haiti.
International Amateur Radio Union (IARU) Region II Area C Emergency Coordinator Arnie Coro, CO2KK, reports that as of 0245 UTC on January 13, nothing had been heard from radio amateurs in Haiti, but that the above frequencies were being kept active in case any Haitian hams manage to get on the air, and in case of other related events in surrounding areas, including aftershocks and a possible tsunami.
The following is from an e-mail from CO2KK:
A few minutes after the earthquake was felt in eastern Cuba’s cities, the Cuban Federation of Radio Amateurs Emergency Net was activated, with net control stations CO8WM and CO8RP located in the city of Santiago de Cuba, and in permanent contact with the National Seismology Center of Cuba located in that city.
Stations in the city of Baracoa, in Guantanamo province, were also activated immediately as the earth movements were felt even stronger there, due to its proximity to Haiti. CO8AZ and CO8AW went on the air immediately , with CM8WAL following. At the early phase of the emergency, the population of the city of Baracoa was evacuated far away from the coast, as there was a primary alert of a possible tsunami event or of a heavy wave trains sequence impacting the coast line at the city’s sea wall …
Baracoa could not contact Santiago de Cuba stations on 40 meters due to long skip after 5 PM local time, so several stations in western Cuba and one in the US State of Florida provided relays. CO2KK, as IARU Region II Area C Emergency Coordinator, helped to organize the nets , on 7045 kHz and also on 3720 kHz, while local nets in Santiago de Cuba and Baracoa operated on 2 meters.
As late as 9,45 PM local time 0245 UTC we have not been able to contact any amateur or emergency services stations in Haiti.
Amateurs from the Dominican Republic, Puerto Rico, Venezuela were monitoring the 40 meter band frequency, that I notified to the IARU Region II executive Ramon Santoyo XE1KK as in use for the emergency, requesting that 7045 kHz be kept as clear as possible …
We are still keeping watch on 7045 kHz hoping that someone in Haiti may have access to a transceiver and at least a car battery to run it.
All information that has so far come from the Cuban seismologists tell us of a very intense earthquake, and also of the possibility of other events following.
Following the advice of the geophysicists, we are keeping the 7045 and 3720 kiloHertz frequencies active until further notice.
Member Comments:
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Earthquake Net Frequencies — 7045, 3720 kHz:
by N2KI on January 13, 2010 Mail this to a friend
Does anyone in the affected area know to be transmitting on the target frequencies?
Earthquake Net Frequencies — 7045, 3720 kHz:
by W8VZM on January 13, 2010 Mail this to a friend
Any stateside organizations handling health and welfare inquiries into Hati? I have a friend who is unable to get through on phone of course. I have recently relocated and do not have HF up at this time.
Earthquake Net Frequencies — 7045, 3720 kHz:
by WA2FDU on January 13, 2010 Mail this to a friend
SALVATION ARMY TEAM EMERGENCY RADIO NETWORK
SATERN
North American Command
Chicago
Full Alert Level DELTA III for Haiti Earthquake Emergency. All nets active. 14.265 MHz Primary Daytime. 7265 and 3977.7 KHz evening and night
RE: Earthquake Net Frequencies — 7045, 3720 kHz:
by KB3HOG on January 13, 2010 Mail this to a friend
LETS GET OFF OUR CHAIRS, OPEN OUR POCKETS AND OUR HEARTS AND HELP THESE POOR PEOPLE IN HATI.
Low-Tech Radios Connect Some Haitians:
DX News — ARRL DX Bulletin #3:
K4TWJ Update:
This Week on the Radio:
Dominican Hams Attempt to Install Repeaters in Haiti:
* Security Council
* Economic & Social Council
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* International Court of Justice
* Secretariat
The UN and . . .
* Civil Society
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* CyberSchoolBus
* Please note:
All PDF documents are marked and open in a new window.
The Charter established six principal organs of the United Nations: the General Assembly, the Security Council, the Economic and Social Council, the Trusteeship Council, the International Court of Justice, and the Secretariat. The United Nations family, however, is much larger, encompassing 15 agencies and several programmes and bodies.
Organizational chart PDF file | UN System locator
General Assembly
The following Bodies report directly to the General Assembly.
* Committee of Experts on the Transport of Dangerous Goods and on the Globally Harmonized System of Classification and Labelling of Chemicals http://www.unece.org/trans/danger/danger.htm
* Intergovernmental Working Group of Experts on International Standards of Accounting and Reporting
N/A Expert Bodies composed of members serving in their personal capacity
(1) The United Nations Peacebuilding Commission has a direct reporting relationship with the Security Council and the General Assembly, and non-subsidiary relationship with the Economic and Social Council and the Office of the Secretary-General.
(2) The UN Drug Control Programme is part of the UN Office on Drugs and Crime.
(3) The IAEA reports to the Security Council and the General Assembly (GA).
(4) The CTBTO Preparatory Commission and OPCW report to the GA.
(5) UNDEF’s Advisory Board recommends funding proposals for approval by the Secretary-General.
(6) UNFIP is an autonomous trust fund operating under the leadership of the United Nations Deputy Secretary-General.
UNIDO focuses its resources and expertise to support developing countries and economies in transition in their efforts to achieve sustainable industrial development.
As a technical cooperation agency, we design and implement programmes focused on three thematic priorities, which directly respond to global development priorities. These priorities are:
Poverty reduction through productive activities
UNIDO seeks to enable the poor to earn a living through productive activities, thus to find a path out of poverty. The Organization provides a comprehensive range of services customized for developing countries and transition economies, ranging from industrial policy advice to entrepreneurship and SME development, and from technology diffusion to sustainable production and the provision of rural energy for productive uses. Through this thematic priority, UNIDO mainly addresses MDG1, MDG3 and MDG8. More…
Trade capacity-building
Developing countries are benefiting from increasingly participating in the global trading system. Thus, strengthening their capacity to participate in global trade is critical for their future economic growth. Especially after their accession to the WTO, their technical ability to enter into global production and value chains is key for their successful participation in international trade.
UNIDO is one of the largest providers of trade-related development services, offering customer-focused advice and integrated technical assistance in the areas of competitiveness, trade policies, industrial modernization and upgrading, compliance with trade standards, testing methods and metrology.
Through this thematic priority, UNIDO mainly addresses MDG1, MDG3 and MDG8. More…
Environment and Energy
Energy is a prerequisite for poverty reduction. Still, fundamental changes in the way societies produce and consume are indispensable for achieving global sustainable development. UNIDO therefore promotes sustainable patterns of industrial consumption and production.
As a leading provider of services for improved industrial energy efficiency and sustainability, UNIDO assists developing countries and transition economies in implementing multilateral environmental agreements and in simultaneously reaching their economic and environmental goals. Through this thematic priority, UNIDO mainly addresses MDG1, MDG7 and MDG8. More…