Política e economia internacional 2015

[Orion]

Periodicamente volto a este assunto. Mas primeiro, uma notícia introdutória:

A year ago, Mother Jones reported that a House bill that would allow banks like Citigroup to do more high-risk trading with taxpayer-backed money was written almost entirely by Citigroup lobbyists. The bill passed the House in October 2013, but the Senate never voted on it. For months, it was all but dead. Yet on Tuesday night, the Citi-written bill resurfaced. Lawmakers snuck the measure into a massive 11th-hour government funding bill that congressional leaders negotiated in the hopes of averting a government shutdown. President Barack Obama is expected to sign the legislation.

"This is outrageous," says Marcus Stanley, the financial policy director at the advocacy group Americans for Financial Reform. "This is to benefit big banks, bottom line."

The Citi-drafted legislation will benefit five of the largest banks in the country—Citigroup, JPMorgan Chase, Goldman Sachs, Bank of America, and Wells Fargo. These financial institutions control more than 90 percent of the $700 trillion derivatives market. If this measure becomes law, these banks will be able to use FDIC-insured money to bet on nearly anything they want. And if there's another economic downturn, they can count on a taxpayer bailout of their derivatives trading business.

In May 2013, the New York Times reported that Citigroup's proposed language was reflected in more than 70 lines of the House financial services committee's 85-line bill. Mother Jones was the first to publish the document showing that Citigroup lobbyists had drafted most of the legislation.

http://www.motherjones.com/politics/2014/12/spending-bill-992-derivatives-citigroup-lobbyists

Interesses privados escrevem leis que apenas beneficiam quem as escreveu. Isto noutro qualquer país seria categorizado (e criticado) como oligarquia. Mas, excluindo este pormenor, aqui está um excerto de uma conversa entre um político (neste caso uma política) e o CEO do JP Morgan, um dos maiores bancos do mundo:

When the conversation turned to financial regulation and Dimon began complaining about all the burdensome rules his bank had to follow, I finally interrupted. I was polite, but definite. No, I didn’t think the biggest banks were overregulated. In fact, I couldn’t believe he was complaining about regulatory constraints less than a year after his bank had lost billions in the infamous London Whale high-risk trading episode. I said I thought the banks were still taking on too much risk and that they seemed to believe the taxpayers would bail them out -- again -- if something went wrong.

Our exchange heated up quickly. By the time we got to the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau, we weren’t quite shouting, but we were definitely raising our voices. At this point -- early in 2013 -- Rich Cordray was still serving as director of the consumer agency under a recess appointment; he hadn’t yet been confirmed by the Senate, which meant that the agency was vulnerable to legal challenges over its work. Dimon told me what he thought it would take to get Congress to confirm a director, terms that included gutting the agency’s power to regulate banks like his. By this point I was furious. Dodd-Frank had created default provisions that would automatically go into effect if there was no confirmed director, and his bank was almost certainly not in compliance with the those rules. I told him that if that happened, “I think you guys are breaking the law.”

Suddenly Dimon got quiet. He leaned back and slowly smiled. “So hit me with a fine. We can afford it.”

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2015/03/31/elizabeth-warren-jamie-dimon_n_6972182.html

'Hit me with a fine. We can afford it'. E como já escrevi inúmeras vezes, o setor financeiro está acima da lei (arrastando o mundo inteiro para o abismo) não só porque financiam os legisladores mas também conseguem destruir (financeiramente) um país. Quando dá bronca, inevitavelmente as ameaças apocalípticas aparecem (recordando a crise de 2008):



Recentemente houve afirmações ridículas:



Escrevo ridículas porque antes disso:



Por fim:

On Thursday, that trail led to Commerzbank of Germany, which agreed to pay nearly $1.5 billion and dismiss some of its employees to resolve an array of charges in the United States. The case, the latest black eye for a giant global bank accused of sending tainted money through the American financial system, closes the book on several investigations into Commerzbank, one of Germany’s largest lenders.

One strand of the case focused on Commerzbank’s dealings with Iranian companies blacklisted by the United States, showing that the bank processed hundreds of millions of dollars through New York on their behalf. Prosecutors also accused the bank of enabling the Olympus Corporation, the Japanese manufacturer of medical devices and cameras, to orchestrate a huge accounting fraud.

http://www.nytimes.com/2015/03/13/b...billion-to-settle-us-investigations.html?_r=0

Cometer crimes impunemente? Basta ser banqueiro (sénior).

 

[Orion]

 

[Orion]

A new study shows that 69% of people taking antidepressants don't fit the criteria for clinical depression or major depressive disorder (MDD). Research suggests that, instead, they're suffering normal sadness and hardships, which are just part of life.

However, Natural Society website suggests that the problem is not entirely the fault of the patients. It points out that, "An astonishing 70 percent of the panel members of psychiatric bible, known as the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders, reported having financial relationships with pharmaceutical companies. About 57 percent reported ties in the previous edition. This is just one reason pharmaceuticals are sweeping the nation."

http://www.businessinsider.com/70-of-people-on-anti-depressants-arent-clinically-depressed-2015-4

Em fotos, o Irão antes da revolução religiosa:

http://www.businessinsider.com/iran-before-the-revolution-in-photos-2015-4?op=1

 

[Orion]

 

[Orion]

Há uns tempos publiquei um artigo que abordava a ligação entre a família Bush e os nazis. Aqui vão mais uns artigos interessantes:

http://www.haaretz.com/jewish-world/jewish-world-news/1.643691

http://www.swissinfo.ch/eng/swiss-firms-practiced-forced-labour-in-nazi-era/2400974

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-srv/national/daily/nov98/nazicars30.htm

 

[Orion]

Voltando à Ucrânia:

Ukraine’s Interpol-wanted leader of extremist group Right Sector, Dmitry Yarosh, has been appointed as an adviser to the country’s Chief of General Staff. He has agreed to legalize thousands of fighters as an assault team subordinate to the regular army.

http://rt.com/news/247001-ukraine-army-adviser-yarosh/

Esta notícia também apareceu num jornal alemão (recomendo google tradutor):

http://deutsche-wirtschafts-nachric...mist-jarosch-wird-berater-der-armee-fuehrung/

As milícias de extrema direita (neo-nazis) são oficicalmente parte do exército (já faziam parte mas enfim. Há que consolidar a unidade do país acordando com as diversas fações/oligarcas). Como mero exemplo:

President Petro Poroshenko dismissed the billionaire governor of a strategic eastern region who had helped in the fight against Russian-backed separatists, deepening a rift that could test the beleaguered country’s political stability.

http://www.wsj.com/articles/ukraine-ousts-regional-leader-kolomoisky-1427265254

E voltando a um artigo que já publiquei:

http://www.theguardian.com/world/2015/mar/05/ukraine-women-fighting-frontline

O que significa 1488?

If you were at a German soccer game and saw fans holding up the numbers 14 and 88 in cardboard numerals, you might imagine them to be, say, the shirt numbers of fans' favorite players. But you'd be wrong. In fact, the numbers hold a much more sinister meaning: They are actually neo-Nazi symbols.

According to Weiss, the number 14 is a reference to the so-called "14 Words," a phrase coined by the American white separatist David Lane ("We must secure the existence of our people and a future for white children"). The meaning behind "88" -- often found in conjunction with 14 -- is slightly more complicated. Here, the number eight stands for the eighth letter of the alphabet, forming "HH" -- an abbreviation for "Heil Hitler," a phrase which is banned in Germany. Similarly, the number 28 signifies "BH," standing for "Blood and Honour," a far-right network that was banned in Germany in 2000.

http://www.spiegel.de/international...ecret-meaning-of-neo-nazi-codes-a-770820.html

Não é interessante que os ocidentais apoiem a mesma ideologia que foi demonizada há apenas 70 anos?

 

[Orion]

New figures show that inflation in Ukraine during the first quarter of this year increased 20.3 percent compared to the January-March period in 2014, and that last month alone it rose by 45.8 percent.

The National Bank of Ukraine has forecast inflation running at between 26 to 34 percent for 2015.

The State Statistics Service noted that the figures do not include "occupied Crimea and Sevastopol, and also areas where antiterrorism operations are being conducted" referring to the Donetsk and Luhansk regions in eastern Ukraine, which are largely under the control of pro-Russian separatists

http://www.rferl.org/content/ukraine-inflation-increase/26941547.html

Por outro lado...

The Russian ruble has hit 55.3 to the dollar Monday, its highest value this year. The currency has become the best performer during the first three months of the year, after it finished 2014 as one of the biggest losers.

The ruble gained above one percent against the US dollar, standing at 55.3 and at 60.8 to the euro at the closing on Moscow Exchange on Monday. Oil prices have been one of the driver’s for the ruble’s climb through the day. Brent May futures rose to $56.36 a barrel, up about 3 percent on Saudi Arabia’s decision to raise its crude sale prices for Asia. WTI traded at $50.48 a barrel.

http://rt.com/business/247145-ruble-winner-gains-economy/

 

[Orion]

Há pouco tempo publiquei uma reportagem da Al-Jazeera acerca das tensões étnicas na Macedónia. Complemento com uma notícia de ontem:

A atual crise política e institucional na Macedónia vai prolongar-se e não deve ser excluído um "cenário à Kosovo", com a secessão das regiões de maioria albanesa, disse hoje à Lusa um investigador e comentador político sérvio.

http://www.noticiasaominuto.com/mundo/371368/crise-na-macedonia-pode-implicar-um-cenario-a-kosovo

E hoje:

Belgrade denounced the statement of Albania’s Prime Minister Edi Rama on Tuesday that the unification of his country and Serbia’s majority-Albanian former province of Kosovo is “inevitable,” whether it happens through membership of the EU or not. “We warn the Republic of Albania to stop banging the war drums, to devote itself fully to respecting its international and good-neighborly obligations,” Serbian presidential adviser Marko Djuric said. Serbian Prime Minister Aleksandar Vucic said on Twitter that Albania and Kosovo would “never unite,” asking Albanian leaders “to stop inciting instability in the region.” Many Serbs regard Kosovo as the cradle of their nation and Orthodox Christian faith. Kosovo seceded in 2008, a move Serbia has not recognized.

http://rt.com/news/line/2015-04-07/#85717

É mesmo isso que se precisa. Mais uma guerra nos balcãs.

 

[Orion]

A crise económica deixou marcas profundas na economia mundial, devendo o potencial de crescimento de economia, embora em recuperação, ficar abaixo do período antes da crise no médio prazo, diz o Fundo Monetário Internacional. No entanto, o declínio nas economias desenvolvidas começou bem antes da crise. A solução, segundo o FMI, passa por mais investimento em infraestruturas, Educação e Investigação e Desenvolvimento.

http://observador.pt/2015/04/07/fmi...o-em-infraestruturas-educacao-e-investigacao/

Mas mais relevante:

Living standards may only rise slowly due to an aging population and lower capital and productivity growth, the International Monetary Fund said Tuesday in a grim look at the world economy.

The report on lower potential growth comes ahead of next week’s spring meetings of the IMF and World Bank, and provides an unsettling backdrop for a global economy that’s seen a tough first quarter in the U.S., continued difficulties in Europe and signs of slowing in China.

The IMF says the rapid pace of productivity growth in the late 1990s and early 2000s — fueled by the information-communication-technology boom — is unlikely to be restored in advanced countries. In emerging economies, the returns from education and innovation are unlikely to be as large as they were initially.

http://www.marketwatch.com/story/in...prerecession-levels-2015-04-07?dist=afterbell

 

[Orion]

The U.S. government started keeping secret records of Americans' international telephone calls nearly a decade before the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks, harvesting billions of calls in a program that provided a blueprint for the far broader National Security Agency surveillance that followed.

For more than two decades, the Justice Department and the Drug Enforcement Administration amassed logs of virtually all telephone calls from the USA to as many as 116 countries linked to drug trafficking, current and former officials involved with the operation said. The targeted countries changed over time but included Canada, Mexico and most of Central and South America.

Federal investigators used the call records to track drug cartels' distribution networks in the USA, allowing agents to detect previously unknown trafficking rings and money handlers. They also used the records to help rule out foreign ties to the bombing in 1995 of a federal building in Oklahoma City and to identify U.S. suspects in a wide range of other investigations.

The now-discontinued operation, carried out by the DEA's intelligence arm, was the government's first known effort to gather data on Americans in bulk, sweeping up records of telephone calls made by millions of U.S. citizens regardless of whether they were suspected of a crime. It was a model for the massive phone surveillance system the NSA launched to identify terrorists after the Sept. 11 attacks. That dragnet drew sharp criticism that the government had intruded too deeply into Americans' privacy after former NSA contractor Edward Snowden leaked it to the news media two years ago.

The DEA program did not intercept the content of Americans' calls, but the records — which numbers were dialed and when — allowed agents to map suspects' communications and link them to troves of other police and intelligence data. At first, the drug agency did so with help from military computers and intelligence analysts.

The DEA used its data collection extensively and in ways that the NSA is now prohibited from doing. Agents gathered the records without court approval, searched them more often in a day than the spy agency does in a year and automatically linked the numbers the agency gathered to large electronic collections of investigative reports, domestic call records accumulated by its agents and intelligence data from overseas

http://www.usatoday.com/story/news/2015/04/07/dea-bulk-telephone-surveillance-operation/70808616/

Como mera curiosidade, aqui deixo uns dados que indicam o efeito do QE (ou ameaça dele) nas bolsas.

Economias com QE (resultados desde o início do ano - Year To Date):

-Portugal:

-Alemanha:

-França:

-Espanha:

-Itália:

Economias com QE terminado (e já com as cotadas sobrevalorizadas):

-EUA:

-Reino Unido:

 

[Orion]

 

[Orion]

Quase metade dos europeus que integram as fileiras ‘jihadistas’ na Síria e no Iraque são franceses, revela um relatório, precisando que o número de cidadãos franceses que partiram para estes territórios ronda os 1.500.

O relatório, da responsabilidade do Senado francês, refere que este número de saídas representa um aumento de 84% em relação a janeiro de 2014.

http://observador.pt/2015/04/08/qua...-europeus-na-siria-e-no-iraque-sao-franceses/

While the fear of religious extremists has reached a new high since the terrorist attacks in Paris last week, you might be surprised to learn how many instances of terrorism in the EU over the past five years were actually religiously motivated.

According to statistics from Europol, less than two per cent of all recorded acts of terror were perpetrated with religious motivations, with an even smaller number being committed by Muslim extremists.

Estimates suggest only around two per cent of all terrorist attacks were committed by Islamic groups or individuals.

The reason for this is that the majority of terrorist activity concerns ethno-nationalist organisations, who often commit acts of terrorism that have low, if any, casualty rates, meaning they do not get extensive news coverage.

http://metro.co.uk/2015/01/15/the-n...igiously-motivated-will-surprise-you-5023616/

Data from the last five years (2010-2014) of terrorist attacks in Europe (Picture: Europol / Metro)

O que o ISIS tem de curioso é a sua grande organização/máquina de propaganda. Coisa que a Al-Qaeda, por exemplo, não tinha. Estão em todas, Youtube, Twitter, Facebook. Como é que deram o 'salto'?

Outra notícia interessante é esta:

http://www.washingtonpost.com/world...97676c-cc32-11e4-8730-4f473416e759_story.html

Os generais do Saddam fazem parte da liderança do ISIS. O que até faz sentido. Os países árabes sabiam quem contactar após os EUA terem dispensado as forças de segurança.

 

[james]

[QUOTMacedônia e post: 482958, member: 3817"]Há pouco tempo publiquei uma reportagem da Al-Jazeera acerca das tensões étnicas na Macedónia. Complemento com uma notícia de ontem:



http://www.noticiasaominuto.com/mundo/371368/crise-na-macedonia-pode-implicar-um-cenario-a-kosovo

E hoje:



http://rt.com/news/line/2015-04-07/#85717

É mesmo isso que se precisa. Mais uma guerra nos balcãs.[/QUOTE]

Há pouco tempo publiquei uma reportagem da Al-Jazeera acerca das tensões étnicas na Macedónia. Complemento com uma notícia de ontem:



Isso não e novidade .

A Macedônia , a par da Bósnia , são as duas regiões da antiga Jugoslávia onde os conflitos étnicos não foram ainda completamente resolvidos .

Predomina uma especie de " paz podre " , onde qualquer coisa fora da normalidade pode reacender novamente o rastilho .

 

[Orion]

E depois dos alemães... os franceses:

France’s intelligence chief has questioned NATO’s claims of Russia preparing to attack Ukraine as their agents failed to spot any activities signaling this - either before or after the crisis began.

A statement by the chief of France’s military intelligence, General Christophe Gomart, was published on the National Assembly’s website.

“NATO announced that the Russians were about to invade Ukraine. But, according to French intelligence, there is nothing to corroborate this hypothesis – we determined that the Russians were deploying neither command posts nor logistical facilities, including field hospitals, needed for a military incursion,” General Gomart told a parliamentary hearing.

http://rt.com/news/248877-france-ukraine-russian-military/

O paragrafo original:

Général Christophe Gomart. Nous avons d’excellentes relations avec le commandant suprême allié Transformation (SACT) et les notes de renseignement de la DRM alimentent d’ailleurs la réflexion de l’OTAN. En septembre prochain, le général Denis Mercier va succéder au général Jean-Paul Paloméros à ce poste.

La vraie difficulté avec l’OTAN, c’est que le renseignement américain y est prépondérant, tandis que le renseignement français y est plus ou moins pris en compte – d’où l’importance pour nous d’alimenter suffisamment les commanders de l’OTAN en renseignements d’origine française. L’OTAN avait annoncé que les Russes allaient envahir l’Ukraine alors que, selon les renseignements de la DRM, rien ne venait étayer cette hypothèse – nous avions en effet constaté que les Russes n’avaient pas déployé de commandement ni de moyens logistiques, notamment d’hôpitaux de campagne, permettant d’envisager une invasion militaire et les unités de deuxième échelon n’avaient effectué aucun mouvement. La suite a montré que nous avions raison car, si des soldats russes ont effectivement été vus en Ukraine, il s’agissait plus d’une manœuvre destinée à faire pression sur le président ukrainien Porochenko que d’une tentative d’invasion.

http://www.assemblee-nationale.fr/14/cr-cdef/14-15/c1415049.asp

 

[camrov8]

http://cnsnews.com/news/article/oregon-man-sentenced-30-days-jail-collecting-rainwater-his-property
so mesmo no states