Recently in Global News Category
London Banker: Systemic Risk, Contagion and Trade Finance - Back to the Bad Old Days
"The recent 93 percent collapse of the obscure Baltic Dry Index - an index of the cost of chartering bulk cargo vessels for goods like ore, cotton, grain or similar dry tonnage - has caused a bit of a stir among the financial cognoscenti. What is less discussed amidst the alarm is the reason for the collapse of the index - the collapse of trade credit based on the venerable letter of credit....
"The combination of the global interbank lending freeze with the collapse of the speculative, leveraged commodity price bubble have undermined both the confidence of banks in the ability of a far-flung peer bank to pay an obligation when due and confidence in the value of the dry cargo as security for the credit if liquidated on default. The result is that those with goods to export and those with goods to import, no matter how worthy and well capitalised, are left standing quayside without bank finance for trade....
"If cargo trade stops, a whole lot of supply chain disruption starts. If the ore doesn't go to the refinery, there is no plate steel. If the plate steel doesn't get shipped, there is nothing to fabricate into components. If there are no components, there is nothing to assemble in the factory. If the factory closes the assembly line, there are no finished goods. If there are no finished goods, there is nothing to restock the shelves of the shops. If there is nothing in the shops, the consumers don't buy. If the consumers don't buy, there is no Christmas."
(Via Crunchy Con.)
Giving Thanks to Those Who Serve - Kathryn Jean Lopez - The Corner on National Review Online
President Bush speaks to the 101st Airborne, the 160th Night Stalkers, and the Green Berets at Ft. Campbell, and reviews their record of achievements in Iraq and Afghanistan.
The Spectator: Melanie Phillips: Is America Really Going to Do This?
"...on the big picture, [McCain] gets it. He will defend America and the free world whereas Obama will undermine them and aid their enemies. Here's why. McCain believes in protecting and defending America as it is. Obama tells the world he is ashamed of America and wants to change it into something else.... McCain understands that an Islamic war of conquest is being waged on a number of diverse fronts which all have to be seen in relation to each other. For Obama, however, the real source of evil in the world is America. The evil represented by Iran and the Islamic jihadists is apparently all America's fault."
Confessions of a politically correct journalist - Crunchy Con
What western reporters wouldn't tell their readers about the ugly realities of life in Africa.
"The correct policy approach to a non-problem is to have the courage to do nothing." The American Physical Society's position on global climate change: "Even if mitigation were likely to be effective, it would do more harm than good: already millions face starvation as the dash for biofuels takes agricultural land out of essential food production: a warning that taking precautions, 'just in case', can do untold harm unless there is a sound, scientific basis for them."
Paul Greenberg :: Townhall.com :: Good News is No News
Why the media silence on the dismantling of al-Qaeda's last urban stronghold in Iraq? Even the New York Times has noticed and so has Barack Obama, in his own odd way: "Last year Barack Obama, who's now cinched his party's presidential nomination, was still arguing that the Surge would fail.... But don't look for any of his anti-Surge statements on Senator Obama's Web site, not any more. They've just been purged. And replaced by a new, more militant stance. To borrow a phrase from Ron Ziegler, Richard Nixon's hapless press secretary: 'This is the operative statement. The others are inoperative.'"
Iraqi Sheik Offers To Take Fight to Bin Laden - June 9, 2008 - The New York Sun
Sheik Ahmed Fateh Khan al-Rishawi, who was part of the tribal rebellion against Al Qaeda in Anbar province in Iraq, offers to help make the same thing happen in Afghanistan: "Al Qaeda is an ideology. We can defeat them inside Iraq and we can defeat them in any country." He has written a "study on Afghanistan and its tribes for the deputy chief of mission at the American embassy in Kabul." (Via Ace.)
JCPA U.S. Policy-Robert Kennedy's 1948 Reports from Palestine
RFK on the scene a month before the birth of Israel: "Under the supposition that, at the finish of the [British] mandate, this was to be their national state, they went to work. They set up laboratories where world-famous scientists could study and analyze soils and crops. The combination of arduous labor and almost unlimited funds from the United States changed what was once arid desert into flourishing orange groves." (Via Little Green Footballs.)
Czech President Vaclav Klaus answers "no" to the four fundamental questions of global warming. "But to argue, as it's done by many contemporary environmentalists, that these questions have already been answered with a consensual 'yes' and that there is an unchallenged scientific consensus about this is unjustified. It is also morally and intellectually deceptive."
Los Angeles Times - China's powerful weakness
Francis Fukuyama considers the Chinese central government's lack of control over local bureaus: "Americans traditionally distrust strong central government and champion a federalism that distributes powers to state and local governments. The logic of wanting to move government closer to the people is strong, but we often forget that tyranny can be imposed by local oligarchies as much as by centralized ones. In the history of the Anglophone world, it is not the ability of local authorities to check the central government but rather a balance of power between local authorities and a strong central government that is the true cradle of liberty." He cites England, pre-revolutionary France, and the Jim Crow South as contrasting examples.
