OpEdNews - Article: Obama Wins the Nobel Peace Prize?

OpEdNews - Article: Obama Wins the Nobel Peace Prize?: "For OpEdNews: Rob Kall - Writer I woke up to a text message from CNN that Obama had won the Nobel peace prize. First thought-- 'Why? What did he do to earn it? Extend the Afghan war? Send thousands of storm trooper police to Pittsburgh for G-20? According the the Norwegian Nobel Committee, he's won it for: Announcement The Norwegian Nobel Committee The Nobel Peace Prize for 2009 ...Obama has as President created a new climate in international politics. Multilateral diplomacy has regained a central position, with emphasis on the role that the United Nations and other international institutions can play. ...For 108 years, the Norwegian Nobel Committee has sought to stimulate precisely that international policy and those attitudes for which Obama is now the world's leading spokesman. The Committee endorses Obama's appeal that 'Now is the time for all of us to take our share of responsibility for a global response to global challenges.' http://nobelpeaceprize.org/...%22For the full story click here:

Rep. Boehner Accuses Obama of Subverting Constitution

NEWSMAX.COM

Friday, October 2, 2009 10:27 AM

By: Jim Meyers and David A. Patten

House Minority Leader John Boehner is accusing President Obama of subverting and circumventing the Constitution by appointing so-called czars who are not subject to Senate confirmation or scrutiny. In a wide-ranging interview with Newsmax.TV on Thursday, the Ohio Republican discussed issues ranging from healthcare reform to President Obama’s refusal to engage the GOP leadership in bipartisanship. But Boehner’s most pointed comments came when Newsmax.TV's Ashley Martella asked whether he is concerned that Obama has appointed so many czars – special advisers or envoys who have relatively few restrictions on their authority or salary – most of whom do not have to win confirmation in the Senate, as Cabinet secretaries do. To see the video of Minority Leader John Boehner's assessment of President Obama's proliferation of czars and the status of the healthcare debate, Click here. "I think this whole issue has gotten way out of control in terms of the number of czars that he has and advisers around him," Boehner said. For the full story click here: http://www.newsmax.com/insidecover/boehner_healthcare_reform/2009/10/02/267705.html?s=al&promo_code=8B1B-1

The demise of the dollar

In a graphic illustration of the new world order, Arab states have launched secret moves with China, Russia and France to stop using the US currency for oil trading.

By Robert Fisk

Tuesday, 6 October 2009

In the most profound financial change in recent Middle East history, Gulf Arabs are planning – along with China, Russia, Japan and France – to end dollar dealings for oil, moving instead to a basket of currencies including the Japanese yen and Chinese yuan, the euro, gold and a new, unified currency planned for nations in the Gulf Co-operation Council, including Saudi Arabia, Abu Dhabi, Kuwait and Qatar. Secret meetings have already been held by finance ministers and central bank governors in Russia, China, Japan and Brazil to work on the scheme, which will mean that oil will no longer be priced in dollars. The plans, confirmed to The Independent by both Gulf Arab and Chinese banking sources in Hong Kong, may help to explain the sudden rise in gold prices, but it also augurs an extraordinary transition from dollar markets within nine years. For the full story click here: http://www.independent.co.uk/news/business/news/the-demise-of-the-dollar-1798175.html

Report: Bernanke, Paulson misled on bailouts

Monday, October 5, 2009

Institutions not so healthy

By Sean Lengell Federal Reserve Chairman Ben S. Bernanke and former Treasury Secretary Henry M. Paulson Jr. misled the public about the financial weakness of Bank of America and other early recipients of the government's $700 billion Wall Street bailout, creating "unrealistic expectations" about the companies and damaging the program's credibility, according to a report by the program's independent watchdog. The federal government last October loaned Bank of America and eight other "healthy" financial institutions a total of $125 billion - the initial payout from the Troubled Asset Relief Program, or TARP - in an attempt to avoid a series of major bank collapses that would push the sputtering economy into a free fall or depression. The rationale for giving money to stable banks and not failing ones, regulators said, was that such institutions would be better able to lend money and thus unfreeze tight credit markets - a major factor in last year's Wall Street losses. For the full story click here: http://www.washingtontimes.com/news/2009/oct/05/report-bernanke-paulson-misled-on-bailouts/

US economic decline forges new world order

Agence France-Presse - 10/4/2009 3:15 AM GMT The crisis is redrawing the world map of economic power as the influence of US consumer spending declines and major emerging markets like China and India take the lead, finance chiefs said. "One of the legacies of this crisis may be a recognition of changed economic power relations," World Bank president Robert Zoellick said Friday in Istanbul ahead of annual meetings of the World Bank and the International Monetary Fund. "Recent forecasts show that China and India are helping to pull the global economy out of recession.... A multipolar economy less reliant on the US consumer will be a more stable world economy," he added. Consumer spending accounts for around two-thirds of economic activity in the United States -- by far the world's biggest economy -- and experts say lower spending could have radical effects on the US's world standing. The IMF on Thursday forecast emerging and developing economies would grow 5.1 percent in 2010 -- in contrast with just 1.3 percent in advanced economies. China's economy was projected to grow by 9.0 percent next year and India's by 6.4 percent -- far ahead of 1.5 percent expansion in the US economy. "The American engine is not as strong as it was before," IMF managing director Dominique Strauss-Kahn said in a speech in which he called for emerging markets to be given more say in the IMF's decisions. "Emerging economies are becoming more and more the real partners," he said. In a BBC World debate on the crisis held in Istanbul, Niall Ferguson, a professor of business administration at Harvard Business School in the United States, said: "The crisis has accelerated a shift from west to east." "That means rebalancing not only economically... but rebalancing geopolitically, which I think makes some people nervous," Ferguson said. "For the foreseeable future the US will be growing at a much lower rate while China is in fact growing at a much faster rate," he added. The shift is having far-reaching effects around the world. In Latin America, IMF economists said the crisis is affecting countries differently depending on whether, like Mexico, they are more closely tied to the United States or, like Brazil, they have more links with China. "If it was not for China we wouldn't have seen positive growth in the second quarter in Brazil," Ilan Goldfajn, chief economist at Brazilian bank Itau Unibanco, said at an IMF-organised conference in Istanbul. Goldfajn said the world would now start to "rebalance towards Asia." Marek Belka, head of the IMF's European department, cautioned however that for European countries, "demand from Asia is not enough -- the recovery rests on the shoulders of European consumers and investors." This upheaval is changing institutions too, with the G20 group of developed and emerging economies turning into the main forum for international economic policy and strengthening the IMF as a guarantor of global stability. The IMF has bailed out countries around the world in recent months and its members have tripled its lending resources to 750 billion dollars (515 billion euros). Strauss-Kahn has more ambitious plans yet and is seeking more funding to strengthen the IMF's role as a global lender of last resort. "Our ultimate goal is financial and economic stability," he said in a speech in Istanbul at which he outlined plans to even out global economic imbalances. The G20 summit in the US city of Pittsburgh last month also agreed to give more voting shares to emerging and developing economies in the IMF and the World Bank -- a reflection of the shift in economic power. The World Bank's Zoellick has also argued that developing countries in Southeast Asia, Latin Amercia, the Middle East and Africa should be seen as future "engines of growth" rather than recipients of charity from rich nations. In a recent speech in Washington, Zoellick said: "The old international economic order was struggling to keep up with change before the crisis.... It is time we caught up and moved ahead." Source: http://news.my.msn.com/business/article.aspx?cp-documentid=3621721