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To: Maurice Winn who wrote (65683)6/29/2005 5:16:15 PM
From: Moominoid  Respond to of 74559
 
No, they didn't think they would stay over there, they need them to help fund pork barrel projects in their districts :)

Did the USA and Congress think that US$ could just be printed, sent overseas, goods would be shipped to the USA and the dollars would just stay "over there" somewhere?



To: Maurice Winn who wrote (65683)6/29/2005 9:37:34 PM
From: shades  Read Replies (1) | Respond to of 74559
 
"I suppose they thought that Chinese would just use their US$ to go on trips to Disneyland and watch US movies and stuff. Of course some of the US$ will go on buying CDMA cyberphones, but people only need 3 or 4 of those."

They are stealing the movies and your CDMA technology - why buy what you can STEAL?

I have asked several local developers and realtors here in the clearwater area where are all the asians buying up property - I asked several local tour people where all all the asian coming to see mickey mouse and the florida beaches and take diving trips with the manatees? Or maybe buy some Persistant Dali paintings.

They said they dunno - germans and brits and russians and mexicans are flooding in but those slants actually think that money is worth something more than a day at epcot or a nice time getting eat by sharks at the florida beach during red tide.

I go to some of the more expensive restaurants, the mexicans working the floor and kitchen, germans and brits ordering the food next to the yankees - but not a slant in sight. Couple local thai restaurants, have to get some latinos to do the work - no thais coming in - for shame too because I want to repeat slagles success.

Yesterday at sams wholesale I saw a russian family, asked him how long he had been here (and unlike the mexicans I meet he could actually speak english) - said about a year - liked it very much - he could never buy those EXTRA LOW bulk prices back home in russia - the family was loading up on the mega bulk packages of food - I said DUDE - you don't have to buy like that in america - this is the land of plenty - half that stuff will go stale before you can eat it all - then I read that link from the tsunami how when children starve they horde thier whole life - being wasteful.

Now unlike most of the american guys with kids in the store who were toting them - he made his wife tote both kids and do all the cart pushing and picking up groceries - like he was supervising you know.

He had a cute seemingly beat down wife and 2 kids - I predict about another year of good western american excess for her before she gets tired of his BS and goes independant - either that or he better start toting the kids.



To: Maurice Winn who wrote (65683)7/1/2005 2:04:37 AM
From: elmatador  Respond to of 74559
 
Eplay/Maurice: Clever, rich or both—almost every country in the world has some sort of programme to attract desirable migrants.

Mobility business

Jun 30th 2005
From The Economist print edition
economist.com

Bureaucrats are tightening rules on passports for the wealthy and talented

CLEVER, rich or both—almost every country in the world has some sort of programme to attract desirable migrants. The only exceptions are “weird places like Bhutan” says Christian Kalin of Henley & Partners, which specialises in fixing visas and passports for globe-trotters. Competition is fierce and, as with most things, that lowers the price and increases choice. Britain has two programmes, one for the rich—who have to invest £750,000 ($1.36m) in actively traded securities—and one, much larger, for talented foreigners.

Both have worked well. Unlike some other countries, Britain does not make applicants find a job first: with good qualifications, they can just turn up and look for work. That helps keep Britain's economy flexible and competitive. But now a bureaucratic snag is threatening the scheme.


The problem comes with anyone wanting to convert his visa into “indefinite leave to remain” (Britain's equivalent of America's Green Card). This normally requires four years' continuous residence in Britain. After a further year, it normally leads to British citizenship.

The law defines continuous residence sensibly. Business trips and holidays don't count, if the applicant's main home is in Britain. As a rule of thumb, an average of 90 days abroad was allowed each year. But unpublished guidelines seen by The Economist are tougher: they say that “none of the absences abroad should be of more than three months, and they must not amount to more than six months in all.” Over the four years needed to qualify, that averages only six weeks a year.

For many jet-setters, this restriction is a career-buster. Six weeks abroad barely covers holidays, let alone business travel. Alexei Sidnev, a Russian consultant, has to turn down important jobs because he cannot afford any more days abroad. If applicants they travel “too much”, their children risk losing the right to remain in Britain.

Roger Gherson, who runs a specialist immigration law firm, reckons that, including such dependents, the new rule could affect 750,000 people. “Panic will reign in Canary Wharf [in London's financial district] when they start implementing this,” he says. Next week his firm is going to court to try to have the guidelines ruled illegal. They came to light in a case involving a wealthy foreigner who runs an international property business. His application for permanent residency was rejected in April, though in the previous four years he had been abroad for only 351 days, and never for more than 90 days at a stretch.

The Home Office insists that the rules have not changed since 2001. That would confirm Mr Gherson's suspicion that the new policy has come in by accident, probably as a result of zeal or carelessness by mid-ranking officials. Their attitude is at odds with the stance of the government, which has been trying for years to make the system more user-friendly for the world's elite. It even moved processing of business residency cases from a huge office in Croydon, notorious for its slowness and hostility to would-be immigrants, to a new outfit in Sheffield.

But lawyers such as Mr Kalin are in no doubt of the risk Britain is running. America, he says, is already losing out in the global talent market because of its “painful and humiliating” immigration procedures. If Britain's rules stay tight, he says, foreigners will go elsewhere. Likely beneficiaries are Ireland and Austria, European Union countries whose residency visas and passports confer the same convenience as British ones, with less hassle



To: Maurice Winn who wrote (65683)7/1/2005 2:06:25 AM
From: elmatador  Read Replies (1) | Respond to of 74559
 
Brazil To Break Patent, Allow Generic Production of Antiretroviral Kaletra Unless Abbott Lowers Price of Drug
01 Jul 2005

Brazilian Health Minister Humberto Costa on Friday informed Abbott Laboratories that it will break the company's patent on the antiretroviral drug Kaletra within 10 days unless the company lowers the price of the drug 42% to $1.17 per pill, London's... Financial Times reports. If the patent is broken, generic drug manufacturers could begin producing versions of the drug, which is a combination of the antiretrovirals lopinavir and ritonavir (Bowe/Colitt, Financial Times, 6/25). Costa at a news conference on Friday said researchers at the state-run laboratory Farmanguinhos could produce a generic version of Kaletra for 68 cents per pill, saving the country $54 million each year. Brazil said its decision to break the patent would be based on national and international trade legislation allowing compulsory licenses for drug production as a matter of public interest or during national emergencies, the Wall Street Journal reports (Moffett/Won Tesoriero, Wall Street Journal, 6/27). Costa said that the Kaletra patent is of public interest, adding that if the patent is broken, it would be the first time Brazil has broken a patent on any drug and the first antiretroviral patent to be broken worldwide (Pariz, Reuters, 6/24).

Abbott Reaction
However, Abbott said the Brazilian government does not have a legal basis to issue a compulsory license in the case, adding that the company already sells Kaletra to Brazil at the lowest price anywhere outside of Africa, the New York Times reports (Benson, New York Times, 6/25). "A compulsory license is not in the best interest of Brazilian patients because it puts the government's desire to cut health care spending ahead of patients' need for new and better treatments," according to an Abbott statement (Azzoni, AP/Yahoo! News, 6/24). The company did not say how it would respond to Brazil's ultimatum, but did say it is willing to work with the government to find a "mutually agreeable solution." However, the negotiations could put the Brazilian government at odds with the Bush administration, which during trade negotiations has been pushing Brazil to increase protection of intellectual property rights, according to the Times .

Brazil Negotiating on Other Antiretrovirals
Brazil also is negotiating price reductions for Merck's efavirenz and Gilead's tenofovir, the Times reports (Benson, New York Times, 6/25). Brazil's National STD/AIDS Programme already manufactures and distributes generic versions of antiretrovirals, providing them at no cost to all HIV-positive people in the country. The program ignores all patents issued before 1997, when Brazil signed an intellectual property law in order to join the World Trade Organization. The government over the past three years repeatedly has said it might break patent laws in order to negotiate price reductions with pharmaceutical companies (Kaiser Daily HIV/AIDS Report, 6/3). Brazilian HIV/AIDS advocates said the lower antiretroviral drug prices are needed because the number of HIV-positive people receiving the drugs at no cost is projected to increase from 170,000 currently to 215,000 in 2008 (Wall Street Journal, 6/27). "The government will keep taking steps to give the public access to AIDS drugs," Costa said, adding, "We want to guarantee access to new drugs" (Smith, Bloomberg, 6/24). Brazil's Ministry of Health estimates that 600,000 HIV-positive people live in the country (BBC News, 6/25).

"Reprinted with permission from kaisernetwork.org kaisernetwork.org. You can view the entire Kaiser Daily HIV/AIDS Report, search the archives, or sign up for email delivery at www.kaisernetwork.org/dailyreports/hiv.. The Kaiser Daily HIV/AIDS Report is published for kaisernetwork.org, a free service of The Henry J. Kaiser Family Foundation . © 2005 Advisory Board Company and Kaiser Family Foundation. All rights reserved.