Tag: 4@4

1. The Guardian reports a Draft agreement promises troop withdrawal by 2011.

   US troops will withdraw from Iraq by December 31 2011 and American and British soldiers deployed there in the interim period could face prosecution in Iraq’s courts for serious, premeditated “off-duty” crimes under the terms of a draft status of forces agreement outlined yesterday by officials in Baghdad and Washington.

   “The draft agreement… is intended to replace the UN security council mandate that legitimised the US-led invasion in March 2003, and subsequent occupation…

   It must be ratified by the Iraqi parliament before the end of the year. Passage is far from guaranteed… Some of the deal’s terms may also prove controversial in the US.

2. The Washington Post reports Gen. David Petraeus mounts strategy review to focus On Afghanistan and wider region, including Pakistan, Iran, and Iraq. “The effort in Afghanistan is going to be the longest campaign of the long war,” he said.

   The strategy assessment will begin next month and take 100-days to complete. It’s goal is to create a “new campaign plan for the Middle East and Central Asia… military officials involved said Petraeus is already focused on at least two major themes: government-led reconciliation of Taliban insurgents in Afghanistan and Pakistan, and the leveraging of diplomatic and economic initiatives with nearby countries that are influential in the war.”

Four at Four continues with Bush officials breaking the law, a historic win for Mexican migrant laborers, and a bonus picture.

1. The class war continues with news from NY Times that the “Next Victim of Turmoil May Be Your Salary“. Of course that assumes we all have a salaries, but I’ll let that slide for today.

   What, then, will the next stage of the downturn be about? It is likely to revolve around the worst slump in worker pay since – you knew this was coming – the Great Depression. This slump won’t be anywhere near as bad as the one during the Depression, but it also won’t be like anything the country has experienced in a long time…

   The events of the last several weeks have removed any serious doubt that the economy is in a recession. In a recession, businesses cut back on their workers’ hours, hand out raises that don’t keep pace with inflation and often skip paying bonuses. These cuts in hours and pay are the main way that a downturn affects families, because only a small share of workers actually lose their jobs…

   Every recent recession has brought an effective pay cut of somewhere between 3 and 7 percent for the typical family. The drop typically happens over a period of about three years, lasting longer than the recession officially does, as pay fails to keep up with inflation.

   And in case no one has noticed, the United States of America is going broke because almost no one wants to pay taxes. The LA Times reports our Federal budget deficit hits record $455 billion. “The final accounting for fiscal 2008 produced a larger shortfall than had been projected, reflecting the start of federal efforts to address the economic emergency… The deficit is likely to be even bigger next year as the country copes with the worst financial crisis since the Depression.”

   “The new figure breaks the previous record deficit of $413 billion in 2004 and more than doubles the 2007 deficit of $162 billion. It has focused new attention on government spending, coming just days after the National Debt Clock in New York City ran out of digits to record the overall national debt, which passed $10 trillion.”

Four at Four continues with bank “drama”, emerging economies, and torture.

1. McClatchy Newspapers report according to Iraq’s Sunni vice president, the U.S. and Iraq won’t reach accord on troops this year. “The United Nations mandate that authorizes the U.S. military presence in Iraq will expire on Dec. 31 and without a so-called status of forces agreement, it’s questionable whether the U.S. will have a legitimate right to maintain its troops in Iraq, Vice President Tariq al Hashimi” said. He is concerned violence will increase as the U.N. mandate expires.

   The main point of contention is jurisdiction. Maliki has been pressing for jurisdiction to prosecute U.S. troops when they aren’t on their bases, which the U.S. has so far refused to permit.

   “The impression of the Iraqi people is that American troops from time to time exaggerate their reactions, use excessive force and irresponsible behavior,” Hashimi said. “We would like to put an end to that. When this happens in the future there must be prosecution of those who are exceeding the limit of the authorities given to them.”

   The U.S. government has said that the mandate must be renewed if no agreement is reached, or U.S. forces will withdraw, Hashimi said. But it takes time to pull out more 130,000 troops, presenting a new problem about who’d have jurisdiction during a technically illegal occupation.

   The Washington Post adds that with time running out and Lacking an accord On troops, the U.S. and Iraq seek a Plan B.

   Neither side finds the options attractive. One possibility is an extension of the United Nations mandate that expires at the end of the year. That would require a Security Council vote that both governments believe could be complicated by Russia or others opposed to the U.S.-led war. Another alternative would amount to a simple handshake agreement between Iraqi Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki and President Bush to leave things as they are until a new deal, under a new U.S. administration, can be negotiated…

   U.S. officials do not dispute that the absence of an agreement would probably require an immediate end to combat operations and, at a minimum, confinement to bases on Jan. 1.

   Meanwhile, McClatchy Newspapers report Iraqis are being attacked and killed for returning to their homes. Only a small number of the nearly 5 million Iraqi refugess have made an attempt to return home. Many are being attacked upon their return or having “their homes blown up.”

   Sectarian cleansing has helped to reduce the violence in Iraq to a four-year low, but the small number of returnees who’ve been targeted so far could be a warning that the violence could return, too.

   I wonder if Iraq, like the markets, will implode too before Bush escapes office. The “surge” was designed to buy Bush enough time to get clear, but their are signs of the lid coming off the pot.

Four at Four continues with election day in Canada, Brazil’s dam projects, Paraguay’s landless, protecting forests instead of cutting greenhouse emissions, and a bonus graphic of the stock markets compared under Democratic and Republican administrations.

1. The NY Times reports Senator Barack Obama expands his economic plans to include “proposals to spur new jobs, to give Americans penalty-free access to retirement savings to help them through the downturn, to urge a 90-day moratorium on home foreclosures and to lend money to strapped local and state governments.”

   The main new proposals would:

   – for the next two years, give businesses a $3,000 income-tax credit for each new full-time employee they hire above the number in their current workforce;

   – allow savers with tax-favored Individual Retirement Accounts and 401(k)’s to withdraw 15 percent of those retirement savings, up to a maximum of $10,000, without paying a tax penalty as the law currently requires for withdrawals before age 59 and a half;

   – bar financial institutions that take advantage of the Treasury’s rescue plan from foreclosing on the mortgages of any homeowners who are making “good-faith efforts” to make payments;

   – direct the Treasury and the Federal Reserve to create a temporary facility for loans to state and local governments, similar to the Fed’s new arrangement to loan corporations money by buying their commercial paper, which are the I.O.U.s that help businesses with daily operating expenses like payrolls.

   Meanwhile, McClatchy Newspapers report the U.S. Treasury will buy stock in banks.

   Treasury’s new point man for the bank rescue program, Neel Kashkari, gave his first address on Monday, laying out just how the agency will carry out a $700 billion rescue plan passed by Congress last month. He confirmed taking equity positions in struggling banks is near the top of the list.

   “We are designing a standardized program to purchase equity in a broad array of financial institutions,” said Kashkari, said in remarks prepared for delivery. “As with other programs, the equity purchase program will be voluntary and designed with attractive terms to encourage participation from healthy institutions. It will also encourage firms to raise new private capital to complement public capital.”

   And the NY Times reports European nations move on plans to shore up banks and somewhat ominously —

   “Sometimes it does take a crisis for people to agree that what is obvious and should have been done years ago can no longer be postponed,” the British prime minister, Gordon Brown, said in London in a speech calling for the adoption of a new Bretton Woods-style agreement among major countries. “We must now create the right new financial architecture for the global age.”

Four at Four continues with a shift in the military to an “indirect approach” to counter terrorism, an update from Iraq, and Paul Krugman.

1. Here is some of that Good News from Iraq™ that Laura Bush talked about. The NY Times reports As Fears Ease, Baghdad Sees Walls Tumble.

   Market by market, square by square, the walls are beginning to come down. The miles of hulking blast walls, ugly but effective, were installed as a central feature of the surge of American troops to stop neighbors from killing one another.

   “They protected against car bombs and drive-by attacks,” said Adnan, 39, a vegetable seller in the once violent neighborhood of Dora, who argues that the walls now block the markets and the commerce that Baghdad needs to thrive. “Now it is safe.”

   The slow dismantling of the concrete walls is the most visible sign of a fundamental change here in the Iraqi capital.

   Except that’s not the whole story. McClatchy Newspapers explained Assassinations are replacing car bombs in Iraq.

   U.S. and Iraqi officials are seeing a shift in violence in Iraq from mass car bombings to assassinations using magnetic bombs, weapons with silencers and bicycle bombs. As provincial elections approach, some officials worry that assassinations will increase as political parties try to eradicate their competitors.

   “Some of the organizations that are seeking political power are resorting to intimidation and violence,” said Maj. Gen. Michael L. Oates, the commander of the Army’s 10th Mountain Division, whose area of command includes most of southern Iraq. “So you’ll see individual bombs used against a prominent member of a party. I personally think we will see an uptick of that type of violence as we go into the election cycle because . . . the way some people deal with political tension here is to eliminate the other parties by using violence.”

   And sure enough, the NY Times reports a day earlier that a Roadside bomb in Baghdad killed a Shiite legislator. “The legislator, Saleh al-Ugaili, had just left his home in Sadr City and was on the way to Parliament inside the fortified Green Zone when his unarmored sport utility vehicle hit the bomb, according to several witnesses. Mr. Ugaili suffered severe head injuries and died at the hospital. A passer-by on a motorbike was also killed, and two of the official’s companions were wounded. The attack happened near a busy traffic circle known to locals as Al Hamza, almost 200 yards from an Iraqi Army checkpoint.”

   As a result of the assasination, the LA Times reports Shiite fighters clash with Iraqi, U.S. troops in Baghdad.

   Clashes between Shiite Muslim militants and U.S. and Iraqi troops erupted in east Baghdad on Thursday night when groups loyal to anti-U.S. cleric Muqtada Sadr accused Washington of orchestrating the assassination of a popular lawmaker…

   Baha Araji, a lawmaker with Sadr’s bloc, accused the Iraqi military of lapses in security and suggested two reasons that the assassins may have targeted Uqaili’s convoy: as punishment for the Sadr bloc’s opposition to renewing a security agreement extending the U.S. troop presence in the country, and to weaken the bloc’s representation in parliament in the upcoming elections…

   In other developments Thursday, a bomb exploded near a minibus in Baqubah, about 35 miles northeast of Baghdad, killing a Sunni Arab fighter with the Awakening movement that has worked with U.S. troops against Islamic militants. His wife, daughter and son were also killed.

   A bomb detonated near a restaurant in Tall Afar, killing two people, including a police officer.

   Sorry Laura. I still think you’re full of crap subprime mortgage backed derivatives.

Four at Four continues with tribal wind power efforts, oysters in New York City waterways, and an agreement to protect Sumatra’s rainforest.

1. Here’s a good sign. The Hill reports Bush starts preparing for transition. George W. Bush has “signed an executive order directing his staff to start preparing for” his successor. The Washington Post adds that by “creating a special council to govern the transition to a new administration in January, marking another major step toward the end of Bush’s eight tumultuous years in office.” Bush issued the order 26 days before the election.

   The transition team will be “chaired by White House Chief of Staff Joshua B. Bolten and will include at least 14 other senior officials, among them the attorney general, the national intelligence director and the national archivist.” According to CBS News, “President Clinton issued a similar Executive Order on presidential transition to his successor… though his came after the election, on Nov 27, 2000.” Bush has created such a disaster leaving the United States in such a mess that he wants to escape responsibility as soon as possible. He’s jumping the gun on the transition. Only 102 days left of Bush.

Four at Four continues with whale-killing sonar at the Supreme Court, oil prices and slavery in Dubai, and plans by the European Union to use the financial crisis as justification to ditch commitment to address the climate crisis.

1. With “Ignoring Reality Has a Price“, the NY Times attempts to analyze how bad of a hole we’re in. “All told, the Federal Reserve has pumped $800 billion into the financial system” and that doesn’t include buying short-term debt, nor does it include “any of the money the Treasury Department is laying out, like the $700 billion bailout fund or the $200 billion” to prop up Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac.

   After 14 months of crisis, the federal government – meaning you and me – has put serious money on the line. As a point of comparison, the entire annual federal budget is about $3 trillion.

   Just how are we going to pay for all this?

   The short answer is that the budget problems the country seemed to have a year ago are now even worse. Next year’s deficit (relative to the economy’s size) will probably be the biggest since 1992, and maybe since 1983. Taxes will have to rise or government spending will have to fall, if not both. Trying to contain the mess created by a bubble no doubt costs serious money.

   And it gets worse from there. I think we Americans are really going have to take a look at our defense spending on offensive war capacity and make serious cutbacks. Our failing economy no longer can support having the largest (by serveral factors) armed force in the world.

Four at Four continues with a federal judge ordering 17 men released from Guantanamo Bay, an update from Afghanistan, and news that we’ve stopped evolving and why that’s a good thing.

1. The Washington Post reports Studies lift hopes for Great Lakes wind turbine farms. The Michigan State University Land Policy Institute “analyzed wind potential in the Great Lakes and found that 30,000 turbines off Michigan’s coasts could produce 321,000 megawatts of energy.”

   But it is unlikely that the 100,000 wind turbines needed will ever rise from the Great Lakes off Michigan’s shores, “because of the cost and environmental and other considerations.”

   The production estimate of 321,000 megawatts cited in the Michigan State study includes turbines at all depths. Existing offshore wind turbines are in water 197 feet deep or less. At that depth, the study says, 103,000 megawatts could be generated with 33,861 turbines. Concerns about environmental impacts and opposition from residents would significantly reduce that potential. But, said study co-author Soji Adelaja, that still means a lot of potential wind power.

   The drawbacks are not stopping some communities from acting. In Ohio, Cuyahoga County has proposed a “wind farm in Lake Erie several miles from Cleveland”. The county is preceeding with an ongoing $1+ million study on the project’s feasibility. “If the study continues to yield positive findings, construction of two to 10 wind turbines and a research station could start in about two years.”

Four at Four continues with a Yahoo employee in India being a suspected terrorist, The resurgence of Latin in NY schools, and Seattle’s sidewalk cafes.

1. CNN reports Paulson names bailout chief. Treasury Secretary Henry Paulson had appointed Neel Kashkari to oversee the $700 billion dollar bailout. “Kashkari, a former executive at Goldman Sachs, is the assistant Treasury secretary for International Economics and Development.”

   The Deal Journal blog at the Wall Street Journal has some background in Meet Neel Kashkari: The Man With the $700 Billion Wallet. “The full appointment would need Senate confirmation, which is unlikely to come given the short remaining tenure in this Administration. The move essentially puts a new title on what Kashkari he has been doing since he joined Treasury in 2006-examining the consequences of an economic housing fallout.”

   Kashkari… is an Indian-American who has a few things in common with Paulson… Both are former Goldman Sachs bankers, though Kashkari, at 35 years old, is much younger and was just a vice president-level banker in Goldman’s San Francisco technology banking effort when Paulson tapped him to join Treasury. Both also are Midwesterners. Kashkari grew up in Stow, Ohio, and earned a bachelor’s and master’s degree in engineering from the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign. Paulson was raised in Barrington Hills, Ill. And both sport similar hairstyles- or lack thereof…

   Kashkari didn’t take a conventional route into banking. He started out as an aerospace engineer… He earned an M.B.A. at the University of Pennsylvania’s Wharton School of Business…

   Paulson likes to surround himself with people he’s comfortable with: people, mostly, from Goldman Sachs… Kashkari’s appointment is another example of how deep those Goldman Sachs ties go. In fact, Paulson himself was recruited by a former Goldman Sachs banker: former White House Chief of Staff Josh Bolten.

   Doesn’t putting a person with only 6 years of financial experience in charge of $700 billion ring any Iraq-type alarm bells!?

   Meanwhile, the NY Times reports the Credit crisis drives stocks down sharply. The Dow dipped below 9,600 points before pulling back.

   In Washington, executives of Lehman Brothers were testifying before the House Oversight and Governmental Reform Committee. The NY Times reports Lehman managers are portrayed as irresponsible. “One Lehman document among thousands reviewed by the House committee showed that four days before the bank filed for bankruptcy protection, Lehman’s compensation committee was asked to grant $20 million in ‘special payments’ for three executives who were leaving”.

Four at Four continues with extinction projections, planning for climate refugees, and Iraq still not safe.

1. The NY Times reports the U.S. sheds 159,000 jobs, making September the 9th straight monthly drop in employment and “the worst month of retrenchment in five years”. 760,000 jobs have been eliminated in the U.S. since the beginning of 2008, according to the Labor Department. “Most economists have concluded that, even in the rosiest outlook, the economy will continue to struggle well into next year.”

   “This is an economy in recession, and every dimension of the report confirms that,” said Ethan S. Harris, an economist at Barclays Capital. “This has been preceded by a slow-motion recession. Now we’re going into the full-speed recession that will last somewhere between three and five quarters.”

   In their coverage of the drop in employment, the LA Times reports, “The bad employment report was expected to heighten pressure on Congress to pass an economic rescue package designed to ease the credit crunch that has frozen Wall Street and shut off credit flows to businesses across the country.”

   A story from Bloomberg news suggests the earlier Paulson-Bernanke Steps Created ‘Big Ripples’ that lead to the rescue. “The $700 billion rescue that the U.S. House considers today reflects the unintended consequences of decisions made by Treasury Secretary Henry Paulson and Federal Reserve Chairman Ben S. Bernanke since March.“

   Each decision to bail out or not created more instability, leading to further runs on securities firms, banks and insurers.

   “Every time you tinker with this delicate system even small changes can create big ripples,” said Dino Kos, former head of the New York Fed’s open-market operations and now a managing director at Portales Partners LLC in New York…

   The Treasury is gambling that the $700 billion plan now being debated in Congress will kick-start capital markets and lending. If the government is a buyer of mortgage securities, they will trade higher, Paulson told Congress. If the banks are cleansed of bad assets, they will find new capital and the cycle of lending will start again.

   Investors say once again the government’s big-footing in the financial markets could create more problems than it solves.

   Officials “have designed a financial bailout plan that is not only misdirected, but may further exacerbate problems in the housing market,” says Eric Hovde, chief investment officer at Hovde Capital LLC, which manages $1 billion in financial services stocks. “Just as foreclosure sales are pressuring housing prices today, government sales will only make matters worse.”

   The House passed the Wall Street bailout by a 263-171 vote. McClatchy Newspapers report Maybe $64 million for Washington D.C. politicans explain the bailout vote.

   Since 2001, eight of the most troubled firms have donated $64.2 million to congressional candidates, presidential candidates and the Republican and Democratic parties, according to data from the nonpartisan Center for Responsive Politics…

   Both political parties have become beholden to Wall Street.

   How the bailout will positively impact job creation and rescue the U.S. economy remains to be seen. Personally, I am highly skeptical.

Four at Four continues with the military consequences to shipping U.S. manufacturing jobs to China, what the Republicans are up to in the final weeks of the presidential campaign, Canada’s Green Party, and a rather depressing story about penguins.

1. In the proving ground for Internet spying, the NY Times reports Surveillance of Skype messages has been found in China. “Canadian human-rights activists and computer security researchers has discovered a huge surveillance system in China that monitors and archives certain Internet text conversations that include politically charged words.”

   Researchers in China have estimated that 30,000 or more “Internet police” monitor online traffic, Web sites and blogs for political and other offending content in what is called the Golden Shield Project or the Great Firewall of China…

   The list includes words related to the religious group Falun Gong, Taiwan independence and the Chinese Communist Party, according to the researchers. It includes not only words like democracy, but also earthquake and milk powder. (Chinese officials are facing criticism over the handling of earthquake relief and chemicals tainting milk powder.)

   The list also serves as a filter to restrict text conversations.

   And make no mistake, if the Chinese government can snoop text messages, then the U.S. government will not be far away.

   In 2005, … the National Security Agency was monitoring large volumes of telephone and Internet communications flowing into and out of the United States as part of the eavesdropping program, intended to hunt for evidence of terrorist activity, that President Bush approved after the Sept. 11 attacks.

Four at Four continues with another deadly day in Iraq, bailout grows by $110 billion in tax cuts, and the HIV virus found to be 100 years old.

1. Our involvement in Afghanistan is not going to end prettily. The AP reports Top U.S. general in Afghanistan wants more troops ASAP. Gen. David McKiernan wants more troops and other aid “as quickly as possible” because, in my assessment, NATO is losing the occupation.

   Speaking to Pentagon reporters, the head of NATO forces in Afghanistan said there has been a significant increase in foreign fighters coming in from neighboring Pakistan this year – including Chechens, Uzbeks, Saudis and Europeans. And he said he needs the more than 10,000 additional forces he has requested, in part, to increase his military campaigns in the south and east where violence has escalated.

   While the AFP adds General says reconciling with Taliban a political decision. McKiernan has now called “for enlisting tribes to help pacify the country and did not rule out reconciliation with ousted Taliban leader Mullah Mohammad Omar.”

   “Asked whether dealing with the man who harbored Al-Qaeda leader Osama bin Laden was beyond the pale, McKiernan said, ‘I think that’s a political decision that will ultimately be made by political leadership.'” So, will more U.S. troops really help then?

   Meanwhile the LA Times reports that a Trio of warlords blamed for surge in Afghanistan violence.

   The escalating insurgency in Afghanistan is being spearheaded by a trio of warlords who came to prominence in the CIA-backed war to oust the Soviets but who now direct attacks against U.S. forces from havens in Pakistan, according to U.S. military and intelligence officials.

   Militant groups led by the three veteran mujahedin are behind a sharp increase this year in the number and sophistication of attacks in Afghanistan and pose a major challenge to President Bush’s hope of stabilizing the country by deploying thousands of additional troops…

   The three warlords are Mullah Mohammed Omar, the former leader of the Taliban government in Afghanistan; Gulbuddin Hekmatyar, an Islamic hard-liner who briefly served as prime minister in the 1990s before ordering his forces to bomb the Taliban-run capital; and Jalaluddin Haqqani, a onetime Taliban Cabinet minister whose tribal group has accounted for some of the most brazen attacks this year.

   U.S. officials said there was little evidence of substantial collaboration among the three, though there are indications that despite their past differences, they communicate and occasionally share information and resources.

   The warlords are generally not blamed for a surge of violence in Pakistan. Instead, they are seen as exporters of violence to Afghanistan…

   The three warlords have long-standing ties to Pakistan’s powerful spy service, the Inter-Services Intelligence agency, which U.S. officials have accused of collaborating with insurgent groups and tipping them to American strikes.

   The Taliban does not fight alone against NATO forces in Afghanistan.

Four at Four continues the Fall of Wall Street’s dominance, Palin’s Big Oil-backed vendetta against polar bears, and trainspotting.