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Strategies & Market Trends : 2026 TeoTwawKi ... 2032 Darkest Interregnum -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: marek_wojna who wrote (55894)	10/6/2009 3:45:38 AM
From: Maurice Winn	1 Recommendation Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 217740

Marek, each worker has a value at any particular time. I have done very hard work for low pay. I sweated very heavily in dirty, noisy, dangerous conditions. That was just the price of things then. Nobody made me take any particular job. "Sweat shops" is a silly term implying that everyone should have lovely air-conditioned employment with glide time and wall to wall benefits. You have fallen for the dogma that the poor workers are hard done by and that's how the evil capitalists get their wealth. In fact, the main wealth creation is in actual creativity. There needs to be some capital to enable those created things to be designed, produced and made available to hordes. Great Britain was the leader in the industrial revolution along with common law and other attributes which made them the natural leaders with the ability to spread more than the other European colonial empires who did have some industrial capacity and ability to spread out around the world. China more pro free market than any other country? For a start, the currency isn't freely tradable. That's hardly "free market". Yes, it's really bothersome: <Does it bother you they achieve it without millions being killed during the transformation and opening to the world? > It would be much better if hundreds of millions of them would die lingering painful deaths after decades of poverty before the transformation. Boiling in oil would be good. I'd even give up the huge QCOM royalties from all those people for the pleasure of seeing such suffering. Better than I can imagine? I can imagine really good things. Maybe you didn't read about my Made in China intercontinental and city transport systems. Faster? Do you mean it has already been done? <Oh yes they will have their Oracle, Qualcomms, Microsofts, Boeings faster and better than you can imagine because they not bound like Japanese by the treaties signed at the time when they lost the war and they were not negotiable. > They have had 60 years of glorious freedom so you'd think things would be phenomenal by now. With none of those Japanese treaties, you'd think they would be far ahead. Imagine having those Japanese treaties - hang on a minute, if those treaties are so bad, how come Japan is so vastly economically advanced? Mqurice

To: marek_wojna who wrote (55894)	10/6/2009 6:19:31 AM
From: elmatador	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 217740

Angola, whose oil-rich government is highly corrupt, without stringent conditions that require the opening up of the country's oil industry to public scrutiny, the anti-corruption watchdog Global Witness said today (Monday 5th October) ahead of the IMF’s Annual Meeting in Turkey. IMF risks condoning corruption with new loan to Angola By agency reporter 5 Oct 2009 The International Monetary Fund (IMF) should not go ahead with plans for a multi-million dollar loan to Angola, whose oil-rich government is highly corrupt, without stringent conditions that require the opening up of the country's oil industry to public scrutiny, the anti-corruption watchdog Global Witness said today (Monday 5th October) ahead of the IMF’s Annual Meeting in Turkey. The IMF said last month that it is negotiating the terms of a 27-month Stand-By Arrangement (a type of loan facility) to help Angola cope with the fiscal impacts of low oil prices. A press report says the loan facility could be as large as $890 million. Angola is one of the two top oil-producing countries in sub-Saharan Africa but most of its people still live in dire poverty. Investigations by Global Witness have raised serious concerns about corruption in Angola over the last decade. The United States, a major consumer of Angolan oil, said in an official report last year that governmental corruption is "widespread" in the country. "Angola has earned tens of billions of dollars from the oil price boom but that money has brought little benefit to Angola's impoverished people. The IMF has a public duty not to bail out a corrupt government without requiring much greater transparency in return," said Gavin Hayman, Campaigns Director of Global Witness. The IMF first raised the alarm about the management of Angola's oil revenues in the late 1990s. Angola was discussing a loan with the IMF in 2007 but abruptly ended the talks - partly, in the view of many observers, because the IMF was insisting on more transparency in Angola's opaque oil sector. "The IMF should use the influence it has over Angola to push for greater transparency in the oil sector. Without transparency, there is no way of ensuring that Angola's oil wealth is benefiting the people, rather than being siphoned off or wasted by venal and self-serving elites" said Hayman. Global Witness is writing to the executive directors of the IMF to ask them not to approve a loan unless Angola agrees to open up its oil sector to public oversight. Global Witness' key concern is that the Angolan government, notably the Finance Ministry, publishes a lot of data about oil revenues earned by the country. The data is full of gaps and inconsistencies says Global Witness, and does not appear to be audited. This makes it almost useless for understanding what has actually happened to the oil money. Sonangol, the state oil company and the true centre of power in the Angolan economy, remains highly opaque. It does not publish its audited accounts or any significant data about its operations. The system for granting oil companies access to Angola's oil reserves is also highly opaque. In August, Global Witness revealed that Sonangol had cleared the way to oil rights for a private company whose shareholders include a person with the same name as Sonangol's own chairman. Global Witness is calling on the IMF to insist, in return for any loan, that the Angolan government publishes fully audited and credible oil revenue data, publishes Sonangol's accounts and stops giving access to oil rights to private companies of questionable ownership.