Geitner: Prepared to regulate hedge funds

It's about time. Regulations and tranparency in financial dealings are a MUST, if we hope to avoid meltdowns like the one in which we currently find ourselves. Of course, what few regulations we had left to keep in-line the functional psychotics who reign supreme on Wall Street after 12 years of Reagan/Bush, 8 years of Clinton, 8 years of Bush and Cheney and 12 years of a Republican lead Congress ('94 -'06) were not enforced by the Bush administration. Laws don't work to protect the peoples' interest, if enforcement of those laws is not encouraged (if not out-right discouraged) by the executive.

A snippet from ABC News:

The administration is proposing that hedge funds and other private pools of capital, including private equity funds and venture capital funds, be required to register with the SEC if their assets exceed a certain size. The threshold amount has yet to be determined, officials said.

The proposal on credit default swaps and other derivatives would require the markets on which they are traded to be regulated for the first time, and for the buying and selling of these instruments to be conducted in ways that will foster greater oversight.

Credit default swaps, which trade in a $60 trillion global market without government oversight, are contracts to insure against the default of financial instruments like bonds and corporate debt. They played a prominent role in the credit crisis that brought the downfall of investment banking giant Lehman Brothers Holdings Inc. last fall and nearly unraveled AIG, forcing the government to provide more than $180 billion in support.

Hedge funds, vast pools of capital holding an estimated $1.5 trillion in assets, operate mostly outside of government supervision. As the market crisis deepened last fall, hedge fund selling was widely cited as one of the reasons for increased volatility that pounded stocks and bonds. Hedge funds also suffered huge losses last year, notably from investments in securities tied to subprime mortgages.

The outline of the regulatory reform was being unveiled a week before President Barack Obama was scheduled to meet for discussions among the Group of 20 major industrialized and developing countries in London to assess what needs to be done to deal with the global financial crisis.

While the administration is pushing other nations to follow the U.S. lead in putting together sizable economic stimulus programs to jump-start global growth, many in Europe are resisting those calls and arguing that the United States needs to do more to toughen financial regulations. They believe the current troubles can be traced to lax regulation in the United States in such key areas as hedge funds and credit default swaps.

Requiring hedge funds to register would open their books to inspection by regulators. The SEC sought that authority several years ago but was stymied by a federal appeals court in 2006.

Hedge funds have grown explosively in recent years while operating secretively. They have lured an increasing number of ordinary investors, pension funds and university endowments — meaning millions of people now unwittingly invest in hedge funds indirectly.

(In accordance with Title 17 U.S.C. Section 107, this material is distributed without profit to those who have expressed a prior interest in receiving the included information for research and educational purposes. I.U. has no affiliation whatsoever with the originator of this article nor is I.U endorsed or sponsored by the originator.)


The Nazis, Fascists and Communists were political parties before they became enemies of liberty and mass murderers.

Iran, Iran, Iran

Iran has been on the neocon's list since before the 2000 election. Little wonder it is out of control by now. The Bushites are running out of time.

Drift into war with Iran out of control, says UN

· Officials back nuclear inspector's warning
· Tehran denounces French extremism in growing row

Julian Borger, diplomatic editor and Angelique Chrisafis in Paris
Tuesday September 18, 2007

The Guardian


Mohamed ElBaradei: 'I would not talk about any use of force.'
Photograph: Samuel Kubani/AFP/Getty Images

The UN's chief nuclear weapons inspector yesterday warned against the use of force against Iran, in what UN officials said was an attempt to halt an "out of control" drift to war.

His outspoken remarks, which drew a parallel between Iran and Iraq, appeared to take aim at the US and Britain. They followed comments on Sunday night by the French foreign minister, Bernard Kouchner, who said: "We have to prepare for the worst," adding "the worst is war".

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"I would not talk about any use of force," Mohamed ElBaradei told reporters at the International Atomic Energy Agency headquarters in Vienna. "There are rules on how to use force, and I would hope that everybody would have gotten the lesson after the Iraq situation, where 700,000 innocent civilians have lost their lives on the suspicion that a country has nuclear weapons."

There has been a string of reports out of Washington that the Bush administration is running out of patience with diplomacy and is intensifying its plans for air strikes as a means of halting Iran's disputed nuclear programme.

UN officials said Mr ElBaradei, an Egyptian diplomat who was awarded the Nobel peace prize in 2005, was attempting to slow down what seemed to be an accelerating march to war.

"There's a strategic reason for doing these things," one official said. "He really is alarmed. He sees this thing going out of control. The feeling around here is that this looks like the run-up to the Iraq war."

Last month, the French president, Nicolas Sarkozy, sparked a heated political debate in Paris when he called the Iranian stand-off "the greatest crisis" of current times, saying the world had "a catastrophic alternative: an Iranian bomb or the bombing of Iran".

Following Mr Kouchner's comments, Tehran yesterday denounced France's stance on the nuclear issue, which has toughened since Mr Sarkozy's election in May. Iran's state-owned news agency IRNA published an editorial accusing Paris of "extremism" and pandering to Washington. "The new occupants of the Elysée want to copy the White House," it said, accusing Mr Sarkozy of taking on "an American skin".

Iran insists on its right to run a comprehensive nuclear programme, including the enrichment of uranium, which it says is intended for peaceful electricity generation.

The US has called a meeting of senior European and Russian officials in Washington on Friday to discuss the deepening crisis over Iran. Britain, the US and France are likely to push for more sanctions over Iranian defiance, while Russia and China are expected to resist, pointing to a deal Mr ElBaradei struck with the Iranian government last month, in which Tehran agreed to answer unresolved questions over its nuclear programme.

The US, Britain, France and Germany complained to Mr ElBaradei that they had not been consulted and that the agreement did not mention the UN Security Council's demand that Iran suspend uranium enrichment while its programme is assessed. In their eyes, the deal gave Tehran a means of stalling new sanctions while continuing to produce nuclear fuel.

France is determined that if the UN is unable to agree on a new round of sanctions against Iran, the European Union should impose its own. Mr Kouchner said leading French companies such as Total and Renault had been urged not to sign new contracts with Iran, and he flew to Moscow to try to persuade Russia to accept a toughening of the embargo.

Meanwhile, the French prime minister, François Fillon, yesterday tried to play down the talk of war, saying that everything must be done to avoid a conflict, but he added that Mr Kouchner was right to stress the danger and seriousness of the Iranian stand-off.

A British official said yesterday that when the French foreign minister had raised the spectre of a conflict, he was "stating the obvious".

"The worst case scenario is a war with Iran, but meanwhile we are seeking a diplomatic solution," the official said.

The French Socialist leader François Hollande yesterday called for an immediate parliamentary debate on Iran, demanding to know if the government had new intelligence on Iran's nuclear intentions.

After talks with Mr Kouchner in Paris yesterday, the Dutch foreign minister Maxime Verhagen said the Netherlands would support EU sanctions if the UN Security Council failed to agree to new measures.

Mr ElBaradei, the director general of the IAEA, has been increasingly at odds with Washington and London, who believe he is straying beyond his job description and freelancing as an independent statesman.

(In accordance with Title 17 U.S.C. Section 107, this material is distributed without profit to those who have expressed a prior interest in receiving the included information for research and educational purposes. I.U. has no affiliation whatsoever with the originator of this article nor is I.U endorsed or sponsored by the originator.)

The Nazis, Fascists and Communists were political parties before they became enemies of liberty and mass murderers.

The world is going to hell in a hand-basket, and my country seems to be leading the way.

This should make every American furious, if not nauseous or both!

There is no damned excuse for this.

The end of American Empire is being talked around the media and the NET. Perhaps that will be the redeeming blesssing in all of this, but not without a fight, I am afraid.

The NeoCons are hell bent.

We should see that they find their way to hell, and fast. As a matter of fact, we should make it the goal for the rest of our lives to send them to hell and grind their miserable faces in the brimstone.

Published on Friday, January 12, 2007 by OneWorld.net

EU Urged to Lead on Human Rights as U.S. Loses Moral Authority

by Haider Rizvi

NEW YORK - The Bush administration's failure to address international human rights concerns has prompted an unusual call from one of the world's leading human rights organizations.

With U.S. credibility undermined by the use of torture and detention without trial, the European Union must fill the global leadership void on human rights, New York-based Human Rights Watch said Thursday in releasing its World Report 2007.

"Since the U.S. can't provide credible leadership on human rights, European countries must pick up the slack," said the organization's executive director Kenneth Roth, who observed that instead, "the European Union is punching well below its weight."

The organization urged European countries to overcome bureaucratic obstacles that leave its leaders "mired in procedures," effectively tying the hands of those seeking a tougher approach to serious rights abuses.

The call came on the day that marked five years since the United States started sending terrorism suspects to Guantanamo Bay, the U.S. military base located in Cuba.

The authors of the 556-page report, which documents worldwide violations of human rights, said the U.S. abuses against detainees in Washington's so-called "war on terror" remained a major concern, as the Bush administration continued to defend torture by referring to it as "an alternative set of [interrogation] procedures."

Though a few prisoners have been released, more than 600 people are still locked up in the Guantanamo camp, where many have complained of severe torture and inhumane and degrading treatment at the hands of their captors.

Human Rights Watch and many other rights advocacy groups made fresh calls for the closure of the camp Thursday, noting that it was "long past time" to either bring to trial or set free the detainees who remain there.

Last October, when the international community and human rights organizations demanded fair trials for the prisoners, the Republican-led U.S. Congress flatly refused to entertain such requests.

But with the change of leadership in the Congress, it seems organizations like Human Rights Watch may find some reason to be hopeful about their demands.

"The U.S. Congress must act now to remedy the worst abuses of the Bush administration," said Roth. "Without firm and principled congressional action, the loss of U.S. leadership will likely persist."

Responding to a question Wednesday, new UN chief Ban Ki-moon, like his predecessor Kofi Annan, refused to accept the Bush administration's line of reasoning on indefinite detentions.
"(The) prison at Guantanamo should be closed," he told reporters at his first-ever formal news conference. Ban is due to meet Bush at the White House next week.

In addition to its criticism of U.S. behavior, authors of the Human Rights Watch report said worldwide many human rights challenges were in need of urgent action.

That includes the killing of innocent civilians in Iraq as a result of sectarian violence and frequent abuses of human rights by repressive regimes in Burma and Turkmenistan.

While deploring the persistence of dictatorships in Saudi Arabia and Syria, the authors note that China is "moving backwards" and there has been no end to crack downs against non-governmental organizations in Russia and Egypt.

The report is also highly critical of human rights violations of various descriptions in Zimbabwe, Sri Lanka, Afghanistan, Colombia, Israel, and Lebanon.

Noting that no situation is "more pressing" than the bloody crisis in Darfur, where estimates of the dead range from 200,000 to nearly half a million, the report chastised the UN Security Council for its inaction.

"Civilians in Darfur are under constant attack, and the conflict is spilling across Sudan's borders," said Roth, "yet the five permanent members of the Security Council managed little more than to produce stacks of unimplemented resolutions."

The report's authors said they noted "some positive developments" coming out of the global South, including African leaders' support for the trials of former Liberian president Charles Taylor and Chad's Hissene Habre. They also praised Latin American support for the International Criminal Court.

However, they also urged southern democracies to "do more" to protect human rights, such as breaking with abusive regional leaders to play a "more constructive role" at the UN Human Rights Council.

"Because many new democracies of the South have emerged from periods of extreme repression, whether colonialism, apartheid, or dictatorship, they could have special moral authority on human rights," Roth said. "But few have shown the consistency and commitment to emerge as real human rights leaders."

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