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Politics : Stockman Scott's Political Debate Porch -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: Jim Willie CB who wrote (9629)	11/19/2002 7:34:39 PM
From: pogbull	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 89467

Jim Puplava Interview of Dr. Marc Faber financialsense.com Excerpt: JIM: Gold and silver are actually a hedge of systemic risk you referred earlier to in our conversation. We talked about some of the possible risks to the financial system, particularly a large U.S. financial institution going under. Also, there is another risk in the U.S. So much of our financial assets, whether it is treasuries, mortgage backed bonds and to some extent the stock market, is owned by foreign investors who have been willing to take their trade dollars that they have earned by trading with us and reinvesting in the U.S. economy. Does that not make the US markets vulnerable to some kind of risk? Are we not vulnerable if foreigners lose confidence in our system? DR. FABER: Yes, that is absolutely correct. I think the U.S. economy basically lives on foreigners' financing economic consumption of the United States to the tune of around $500 billion annually. It's close to $2 billion daily to finance excessive consumption and investment in the United States. I think that is not sustainable. The question is, At what stage will foreigners withdraw? They don’t even have to withdraw, they just have to diminish their purchases of U.S. assets. Inevitably you would have a significant economic slow down in the United States.

To: Jim Willie CB who wrote (9629)	11/20/2002 12:11:33 PM
From: stockman_scott	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 89467

SEC commissioners to weigh tougher rules for auditors By Andrew Countryman Chicago Tribune staff reporter November 19, 2002 Seeking to improve auditor independence, federal regulators Tuesday are expected to propose rules that go well beyond the new corporate reform law, including a ban on paying audit partners for any other services they sell to clients. The Securities and Exchange Commission is scheduled to consider proposals to enforce the Sarbanes-Oxley Act, passed after the recent high-profile corporate meltdowns--most notably Enron Corp.'s bankruptcy and the dissolution of its Chicago-based accounting firm, Andersen. The proposals would limit the services that auditors could provide to publicly traded clients; require rotation of key auditors; enhance the authority of corporate audit committees; and require auditors to retain important documents for five years after an audit. As part of that process, SEC officials said Monday, commissioners will consider whether to go beyond the law's requirements in several important areas. Among them: - Prohibiting accounting firms from linking audit partners' compensation to the selling of non-audit services, a practice that drew fire in the Andersen-Enron affair. - Establishing a "five years on, five years off" rotation for any audit partner working with a client. The law specifically required the rotation for only two employees--the lead partner and the partner responsible for reviewing the audit. It also mentioned no specific cooling-off period. - Requiring greater disclosure of fees paid to auditors, including a description of what services went into audit-related and "other" fees. Companies also would have to provide fee breakdowns for the previous two years in their annual proxy statements, double the current requirement. "What we're trying to do is increase the amount of transparency and comparability" in audit-fee disclosures, said Jackson Day, the SEC's acting chief accountant. Already, the Sarbanes-Oxley law has put stricter limits on the services that auditors can provide to clients--including bans on some lucrative consulting services. But the new proposal, if adopted Tuesday, could further curtail actions that prompted conflict-of-interest charges following accounting scandals at Waste Management Inc., Enron and elsewhere. If commissioners approve the proposals, the new rules wouldn't take effect until after a public comment period. Taking a page from efforts to curb conflicts by Wall Street analysts, SEC lawyer Robert Burns said removing audit partners' rewards when clients buy other services would assure investors that auditors are "not there to be salesmen." Expanding the Sarbanes-Oxley law's five-year limit beyond the top two auditors and mandating a five-year cooling-off period also will help keep auditors and clients from becoming too cozy, Burns said. "It's worth thinking about," he said. "If you really want a fresh perspective ... you may have to rotate more than two partners." Improving auditor independence has been a key part of the reform effort following Enron. The vast fees that businesses paid to their auditors for consulting services raised questions about whether the money was encouraging auditors to go easy on clients when it came to crucial accounting matters. In drafting rules to enforce the law, the commission is stressing that auditors cannot audit their own work, cannot play any managerial role for their clients and cannot be an advocate for their customers, for example, by testifying for them in tax court. An important next step will be for the new accounting oversight board to decide what specific actions fall under the definitions of prohibited services. Under the law, the board can make case-by-case exceptions. Commissioners also are scheduled Tuesday to consider rules requiring auditors to retain key documents for five years after an audit and to prevent a firm from hiring an auditor as an executive for one year. In addition, commissioners are expected to debate measures designed to make audit committees more powerful by requiring that they approve any service provided by an auditor; mandating that auditors report all critical policies to the panel; and letting the committee, not management, rule on any disagreements in accounting decisions. Copyright © 2002, Chicago Tribune

To: Jim Willie CB who wrote (9629)	11/21/2002 1:06:24 AM
From: stockman_scott	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 89467

Spain begins legal action over tanker slick by agencies in galicia and london www.londontimes.com The Spanish Government has begun legal action over the environmental damage caused by the oil tanker Prestige, which leaked 6,000 tonnes of oil off the Spanish coast before sinking yesterday. The Development Ministry in Madrid has said it had notified the ship's insurers, London Steamship, that a case was being filed against the company, the ship, its owner and its captain. The Government has demanded a deposit of €60 million (£38.2 million) from the company as a guarantee against a possible future fine or compensation claim. The Government has also presented its case to the International Oil Pollution Compensation Fund in London. The tanker's Greek captain, Apostolus Maguras, has been charged in Spain with disobeying authorities and harming the environment. There have been no new leaks from the tanker since it broke in two and sank, according to Arsenio Fernandez de Mesa, the government representative in Galicia. "We're controlling the evolution of the slicks both where the tanker sank as well as the around the coast of Galicia," he said. But the chances of an ecological nightmare grew as salvage experts said it was unlikely millions of gallons of oil trapped on the ocean floor off Spain could ever be recovered and might seep into the ocean over time. Lars Walder, of Dutch-based company Smit, which led the salvage operation, said the vessel was now two miles down on the Atlantic ocean floor and that although his company has the specialist equipment to to pump out oil in such environments he is unlikely to try. More on the clean-up The clean-up operation continued in Galicia today against the oil slick which is about 150 miles long and 15 miles wide. Ecologists rushed distressed sea birds coated in tar to a rescue centre in the regional capital of La Coruña, and hundreds of Navy officials joined volunteers on some beaches, shovelling and even vacuuming up thick black sludge. Tony Blair and Alistair Darling, the Transport Secretary, today discussed the loss of the Prestige. The Prime Minister's spokesman said that they agreed to press the International Maritime Organisation to ensure that the agreement on phasing out single hull vessels was enforced on time. The Government intends to raise the issue at next month's EU summit in Copenhagen. The spokesman again rejected any suggestion by the Spanish government that the disaster had been caused by the failure of the authorities at Gibraltar to inspect the vessel properly. He said the Prestige had only called once at the port to refuel in the last five years. The ship had no history of major safety problems and had been inspected as recently as last month in St Petersburg according to the American Bureau of Shipping, a Houston, Texas-based firm that validates a ship's structural and mechanical fitness. "At the time of this incident, the Prestige was fully in compliance with all of our requirements," said Stewart Wade, an ABS vice president. A spokesman for the Greek ship manager Universe Maritime Ltd, complained that the ship's travels far off shore during the past week had exposed it unduly to storms. The ship is owned by the Liberian-registered company Mare Shipping Incorporated. But it will be represented in the damage claims process by Universe Maritime Ltd, said a spokesman for the latter, Stephen Askins. Mare Shipping's office is in Monrovia, but through the ship's managers the firm is eager to work with Spanish authorities, insurance companies and international maritime insurance funds that activate when major oil spills occur, Mr Askins said. "There is no suggestion that the owner, as a small Liberian company, would be expecting people to try to find it in Liberia and register their claims," he said.