PBS Newshour: Dubai's Plan to Postpone Paying Debt Shakes World Economy
By Heather Sunday Nov 29, 2009 8:00am
PBS Newshour Nov. 27, 2009--Dubai's Plan to Postpone Paying Debt Shakes World Economy:
JUDY WOODRUFF: World markets were thrown into turmoil today on news of financial trouble in the Persian Gulf city-state of Dubai. Dubai announced that it planned to put off repaying almost $60 billion dollars in debt owed to international banks.
That led to big losses in Asia, worries in Europe, and a rough day for stocks on Wall Street. The markets closed early for the holiday weekend. And the Dow Jones industrial average lost 154 points, to close above 10,309. The Nasdaq fell 37 points, to close at 2,138.
We begin our coverage with a report from Faisal Islam of Independent Television News.
FAISAL ISLAM: For a second day, the collapse of Dubai's property boom has been upsetting markets worldwide. Across Asia this morning, share prices tumbled again. Gold and oil dipped, as traders asked which banks might be exposed. British banks have made significant loans to the United Arab Emirates, of which Dubai is a part. The announcement on Wednesday that a state-owned property company wished to delay the repayment of billions of dollars of debt had raised fears of a new leg to the financial crisis.
The prime minister, visiting the Commonwealth summit in the Caribbean, tried to allay fears today.
How Will Dubai's Shaky Economy Affect the World?.
Margaret Warner talks to economic expert Simon Johnson about how Dubai's weak economy will affect the rest of the world.
Full transcript here.
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Now it looks like everyone has been using funny accounting practices and playing fast and lose with the money. Hell it looks like all of wall street is just like ole bernie maddoff. Just a big ponzzi scheme.
republicanism/conservatism is a mental illness that is killing America. Comming to a country near you!
like they do to their citizens
Why would anyone beiieve we can survive as a nation... Dubai is the hot bed of corruption and crime..
UAE is in control..
-- Halliburton Co. will move its corporate headquarters from Houston to Dubai
http://www.marketwatch.com/story/halliburton-...
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Dubai, home of XE Services (AKA Blackwater) can't pay its $58 Billion debt
http://videocafe.crooksandliars.com/heather/p...
Dubai because it lives its fantasies and makes themeal. Dubai has a history going back to the Jemdet Nasr c
2600 BC as the home of some of the worlds richest pirates. Their contributions to civilization may have included the Indo European language as according to Sargon, their trade connected the ships of Meluhha, Makkan, and Dilmun with the quays of Agade.
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Blackwater launching missions from Karachi’
http://www.dailytimes.com.pk/default.asp?page...
Karachi is the largest city, main seaport and the financial capital of Pakistan, and the capital of the province of Sindh. It is one of the largest cities in the world by population and the 20th largest metropolitan area in the world, in terms of metropolitan population
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Trading With the Enemy
If you want to get around export controls, just sell the product to a front company in Dubai. The middlemen will take it from there.
http://www.forbes.com/free_forbes/2004/0412/0...
On paper the shipment was harmless enough. Sixty-six American-made spark gaps--high-speed electrical switches used in medical devices to break up kidney stones--traveled from the manufacturer in Salem, Mass. late last summer to a buyer in Secaucus, N.J. From there, according to the export declaration, they were to be shipped to their ultimate destination in Cape Town, South Africa. But these spark gaps can also be used to detonate nuclear bombs--and it turned out that the goods were aimed at an end user in Pakistan, with a stopover in Dubai.
Isn't that big of a hit.
Someone will bail them out.
$5 a gallon at some point in the near future.
Will the American citizen wise up and ditch this Global (MONOPOLY) Empire which has destroy our country. It is a fast way of transferring wealth and power to a group of Global Empires , which we be the world order to come. Or is it here???
This is nothing but a hot bed of corruption for the wealthy and criminals. So of course they do a lot of business with the (use to be) American corporations..
The majority of Americans don't care and don't want to know what is going on in the world. Most Americans (an all of the conservatives) you couldn't give them a clue if it came with a $50 bill. So when will the American citizen wise up? We're it, there is no on else joining the party. So what should we do?
before you OD. We paid more in 2009 on he interest alone for our Godzilla debt then the cost of the entire Iraq war.
...and we're still borrowing for all that stimulus and everything else.
But, somehow, we'll end up taking a hit in this.
by the time this gets fixed 50 generations will be permanent debt slaves.
Although at this rate it looks like we may be joining the list of "Mystery's of the Lost Civilizations" club.
I couldn't afford to go there in a 100 years of my income. Wouldn't want to. But if we bail them out...isn't globalization a kick?
Johann Hari here
in 100 years. (Of course the elites will have fled to safe havens - - Tasmania - South America)
http://www.overworkedandunderpaid.org/jiminch...
with that of an American homeowner that weathered an uninsured serious illness and can't make his mortgage payment. Oh lordy, I pray, make me too big to fail also.
When Americans lose their home the real estate companies and foreign citizens can buy them at a profit to them..
And like before Americans will become dependent and renters in their own countries..
Why would foreign countries want to change the Free trade laws , they have received over 8 million American jobs and about all of our manufacturing plants..
A nation that can not manufacture their own products and grow their own food is a nation which can not survive...
There is one thing to do , but Americans have lost their will to standup and defend their democracy and freedom except on the keyboards...
If you have not learn by now that our elective officials are brought and paid for by the Global Giants they you have you head in the sand.. In fact most of our elected officials are in the top percent of the wealthy of our country and they are "not" going to cut their throats with the legislation they pass..
So the easy way out is to blame others and let it go at that...
Just wait until America defaults on its debt.
There is no way in h... we can afford this world wide war and invasion of other countries in the name of terror and democracy..
America has made democracy an evil name to most countries overseas..
"If this were a dictatorship, it would be a heck of a lot easier, just so long as I'm the dictator," Bush "joked". Repeated three times on three different occasions.
There must be a powerful group in control because Obama ,Emanuel and the democrats are following the same footsteps as the previous administration in their destruction of our country..
And of course the destruction of the middle east country..
We are in a self destruct mode and we are over a cliff and falling..
The Capitalist Class, the upper 1% in wealth, from 2004 figures here, own 34.3% of the wealth.
They own the vast majority of the stock. The lower 90% own something like 4%. Most of that in pensions, 401k and what have you.
When the analysts come on financial shows and talk 'small investors', they are talking about those trading LESS than ten thousand shares at a time. That is the hoi polloi.
The inequality in wealth distribution in America is far greater than the inequality in income. Yet wealth has far more meaning.
How much is enough, one million, ten million, one hundred million, one billion, ten billion?
I say one million should be plenty.
The top 1% own 71% of all the assets now.
Linky poo…
The world economy is based on servicing the middle-upper class and above. I guess with the trickle-down theory of economics- in a drought, those on the bottom die.
I call that the Ark theory
Although it could be updated to the Titanic.
Exceptin' in either case it's a tad difficult to drown in a drought.
Although it could be updated to the Titanic
+1
See my comment on class here which is much influenced by the work of MIchael Zweig in the Working Class Majority.
Zweig with Bill Moyers here
Yet except for the estate tax which applies only to the Oligarchs when they die with their hundreds of millions, we tax income.
The Oligarchs get another free ride with a capital gains tax, capital gains being where they make most of their income, being a fraction of the income tax.
Of the fraud and deception that riddles our economic system---when people become seduced by the prospect of short term big money at the expense of long term solvency---your house of cards will collapse eventually and you get what you deserve. There is no such thing as something for nothing.
Dubai tried to be to the world’s banking and finance infrastructure what Delaware is to corporations in the U.S. – a haven with lax laws, no extradition, and a free-for-all mentality. They used initial windfalls from their success to build up real-estate that now goes unused and empty.
Other countries are defaulting bigger on their debt (see Iceland), but none has had more arrogance and hubris in their zeal for profit and show. Also, like insurance companies and most banking institutions, they contribute very little. They’ve been trying to attract crooks (hello Halliburton), and in the process have become crooked.
Economic discussions are distorted by references to GDP which includes all manners of things we would be better not counting as 'product'.
Poisons going up our smokestacks, poisons going into our rivers and financial poisons in the phony balance sheets of our corporations.
GDP numbers from the Bureau of Economic Analysis here
Better understanding comes from considering wealth, in the US in 2008 it shrank from $62 trillion to $50 trillion.
That was $8 trillion lost in property values and $4 trillion in equities, half of which has been regained.
The property values have not bottomed.
The great problem for us is the shadow banking system of unregulated derivatives which are contracts with notional valuations (the face value) of greater than $600 trillion.
That is what is called leverage, upsetting that apple cart even a little is what causes the system to short circuit.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8yRdDnrB5kM
This is odd.
That's not the story the Journal had locally here in the Dallas area.
For a minute I thought I missed watching it, but then I never miss watching Bill Moyers.
I can't quite recall what it was about, but it was full of black and white clips concerning a story in our historical past.
You wouldn't want to confuse all them Texans with facts would you?
Here it is:
http://www.pbs.org/moyers/journal/blog/
I thought it interesting when she said the Tarzan books influenced her as a girl.
It's like I probably know more than average about Egyptian Mythology (not so much their actual history), due at least in part to having watched those crappy "Lon Chaney" Mummy sequels as a kid.
I just looked at the headline again, it said it was the Leher News Hour, not Moyers, who often has such interviews.
I was probably looking at computer porn at the time or something, or chatting here.
Do we still give tax breaks to corporations who relocate their HQ to a tax haven?
"Forgive us Oh Lord our Debts as we don't forgive those who Debt against us..."
It's church on Sunday and Darwinism the other 6 days of the week.
Don'tcha mean Unsocial Darwinism?
Social Darwinism is when you feel justified in harming those beneath your station, Unsocial Darwinism is feeling justified in harming not only those at your station, but sawing the station out from beneath your own feet.
So like those Warner Brother cartoons, they just sort of hang there for a moment grinning confidently, until they notice they're standing in empty heights, they then hold up a little sign saying, "Help," as they then plummet to earth.
That's kind of what wee willy krystolnacht's grin reminds me of, Wylie Coyote.
Here's an interesting piece:
http://www.forbes.com/2006/05/03/cz_forbes_05...
I guess the Sheik will always have poetry to fall back on.
Does Dubai follow Sharia law?
Brings a whole new meaning to giving yourself a hand.
Since we all know the wealthy interests will be bailed out first, and the lesser interests later, if at all, I wonder if this could spark yet another wave of Islamic fundamentalism that will sweep the dispossessed in the region?
Just as the US working class. Losing their jobs, plenty of time to be angry.
i seem to recall that no dubai subject actually "labors." from africa, to east asia, laborers are enticed to come to dubai for work, only to be treated like slaves. they are trapped in dubai, mistreated, and kept as far away from tourists/dubai subjects as is possible.
That rings a bell.
I remember hearing about such mistreatment of workers during the boosh years, as an under-reported story in the "liberal" MSM.
But I guess I thought that was a segment of the manpower, not the entirity of them.
I guess I was more focused on the slave labor being used to build the mammoth embassy in Iraq, which was also coming out at the same time as an under-reported story.
Whatever happened to that behemoth anyway?
The embassy is more like a fortress and hardly sends a message of warm diplomacy. “What kind of embassy is it when everybody lives inside and it’s blast-proof, and people are running around with helmets and crouching behind sandbags?” said Edward Peck, the former US ambassador to Iraq when the embassy was first being constructed.
The company that was contracted to build the embassy was First Kuwaiti General Trading & Contracting (FKTC). It’s run by Mohammad I. H. Marafie, “a member of one of the most powerful mercantile families in Kuwait,” according to CorpWatch. “FKTC’s general manager and co-owner, Wadih al-Absi jets back and forth to the United States, dreaming of magazine covers celebrating his rise to a global player in large-scale engineering and construction… FKTC is one of the many Middle East companies that collectively ship tens of thousands of cheap day laborers to Iraq’s war zones where they are paid just dollars a day.”
In 2006, David Phinney reported: “Several other contractors that competed for the embassy contracts… believe that a high-level decision at the State Department was made to favor a Kuwait-based firm in appreciation for Kuwait’s support of the invasion and occupation of Iraq. ‘It was political,’ said one contractor.”
FKIT has been plagued by allegations from whistleblowers who worked on the embassy that say the company “brought workers, mostly South Asians and Filipinos, to Baghdad under false pretenses, then abused and threatened them while there.” The company, predictably, denies those charges.
http://kanan48.wordpress.com/2009/10/23/iraq-...
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/...
At the biggest developments, knots of workers in coveralls of matching colors waited for company buses, their vacant stares greeting the traffic of a city where occupation is often stratified by race: Asian laborers, Lebanese and Western managers, Emirati owners. A proposed subway that will begin operating in 2010 will reserve one of five cars for VIPs.
"We're here to earn money, not for happiness," Amin said. "No one comes to this country for happiness."
Most of the hundreds of thousands of low-skilled workers are from India and other South Asian countries, with strong union traditions. Episodes of unrest began last year over living conditions, low pay and hazardous workplaces. At Amin's site, two Indian painters had died a few days before, when ropes holding their platform aloft snapped. In the worst outburst, as many as 3,000 workers rioted in March at the site of Burj Dubai, wrecking cars, computers and construction equipment.
Amin's and Miah's complaints echoed others': The company seized their passports when they entered the country, their pay comes months late, complaints can lead to deportation, and they make too little to offset the $175 they pay every month for rent and food.
"The law doesn't protect us," Miah said. "The government looks after the companies, and the companies don't care about us."
They remain because coming home poor would shame them in the eyes of their families and villages, they said. They were expected to make enough to buy land and a house, take care of their families and pay for their siblings' educations. "My hopes haven't come true," Amin said. "The dream that I had is still just a dream."
an economy that produces nothing, that has profited from financial transactions and a bloated real estate market crashes... why does this sound familiar?
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