Filed under: Western Europe | Tags: british, debt, iceland, icesave, imf, netherlands
Are you a banker? Do you believe predatory international loans are sacrosanct and above reproach? Does the thought of national economic sovereignty and independence make you shudder in terror?– If you answered “no” to these questions, then today can be counted as a victory for you.
Congratulations to the Icelandic peoples in rejecting outrageous preconditions from London and the Hague. This is a precedent to all nations under control of international debts. Go for moratorium!
Sky News:Iceland Rejects Icesave Bank Payback Plan
Icelanders have rejected a plan to pay back the British Government for money it lost over the collapse of the Icesave bank in 2008.
Over 93% percent of voters cast ballots opposing the £3.5bn deal to compensate the British and the Dutch state, initial results showed.
Both nations reimbursed citizens who lost money when Landsbanki and its internet banking scheme Icesave folded.
“This result is no surprise,” Prime Minister Johanna Sigurdardottir said.
“Now we must turn to the task of finishing the negotiations on Icesave.”
The propsed deal would require each person to pay around £90 a month for eight years, and many Icelandic taxpayers say they cannot afford it.
However, the rejection of the deal could jeopardise Iceland’s credit ratings, making it harder to access much-needed funding to fuel an economic recovery.
The island is grappling with a 9% unemployment rate, a 7% annual inflation rate and an economy that is still shrinking.
It was unclear how many of the 230,000 registered voters cast a ballot, but public television reported a turnout rate of around 55% an hour before polls closed.
Meanwhile, around 1,000 protesters gathered in downtown Reykjavik to demand a better say over the plans.
Last-minute talks broke down this week, despite Britain and the UK saying they had offered more favourable terms, including a significant cut on the interest rate in the original deal.
Despite stalled talks and the rejection in the referendum, Iceland’s government said it still believed it could strike a deal.
“The government of Iceland is confident that a solution acceptable to all parties can be achieved,” it said in a statement.
Filed under: China / SE Asia | Tags: china, dalai lama, jiaboa, obama, prc, taiwan, yuan
In a few short months Barack Obama has bungled and bumbled any strategic advantage the U.S may have possessed in international diplomacy and has seriously jeopardized long-term relationships with all 4 major powers of the East. Departures with India on Copenhagen, missile shields threatening Russia and China and loss of support in Japan among the new government are just a sample of the diplomatic missteps which have occurred. Even if the Obama administration’s disposition wasn’t militaristic and threatening, which it certainly is, their arrogant diplomatic behavior is enough alone to drive support away from the U.S on the international level. In this arena, the Chinese are clear in their assertion that the U.S has “grossly violated the norms governing international relations.”
Reuters: China foreign minister says U.S. ties “disrupted”
Business Week: China Says U.S. ‘Entirely’ to Blame for Strained Ties
Roman Tomberg: Stalemate in China-US Relations
This winter has been a cold one for China-US relations. So many serious disagreements between the two countries have not surfaced simultaneously for decades: the US is exerting unprecedented pressure on China to revalue the Yuan, a cyber war erupted between Google and the Chinese administration, Washington intends to sell weapons worth $6.4 bn to Taiwan, China dumped US bonds worth $34.2 bn, both sides threaten to introduce punitive import tariffs, and US President B. Obama received 14th Dalai Lama Tenzin Gyatso in the White House. In the past China and the US avoided taking harsh measures against each other serially, but evidently things have changed beyond recognition over the past several months.
Notably, the round of tensions came as a surprise – just recently US analysts used to churn out totally different predictions concerning the relations with China. US economist and the director of Peterson Institute for International Economics Fred Bergsten coined the term G-2 as the new global economy formula in his The United States and the World Economy (2005). In the early 2009, the concept was upheld by such US foreign politics gurus as former Secretary of State H. Kissinger and former White House National Security Adviser Z. Brzezinski. Their idea was that China should shoulder the burden of global hegemony jointly with the US, which implied that Obama’s Administration would be steering a course generally benign to the country. Continue reading
Duty Now For The Future 