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Política e Economia Política / Front National.... Puf..

« em: 2015-12-13 20:13:55 »

National Front collapses in France's regional runoff election

Marine Le Pen's extreme rightist National Front failed to break through and win power in France's regional elections on Monday.

Marine Le Pen's far-right National Front collapsed in French regional elections Sunday after dominating the first round of voting, according to pollsters' projections.

Le Pen had been riding high after extremist attacks and an unprecedented wave of migration into Europe, and the party came out on top in six of France's 13 newly drawn regions in the first-round vote a week ago. But projections by France's major polling firms suggested that failed to translate into any second-round victories.

Three polling agencies projected Le Pen and her niece both lost their bids to run two French regions. Ipsos, Ifop and TNS-Sofres projected that Le Pen won around 42 per cent of the vote in the Nord-Pas de Calais region, compared with about 57 per cent for conservative Xavier Bertrand.

Le Pen's niece, Marion Marechal-Le Pen, was projected to win about 45 per cent in the southern Provence-Alpes-Cote d'Azur region. Conservative Nice Mayor Christian Estrosi was projected to win about 55 per cent.

The Socialists pulled their party out of both races and it appears that many voters cast ballots to prevent the once-pariah National Front from gaining power.

The polling agencies base their projections on actual vote count in select constituencies. Official results are expected early Monday.

Turnout figures were 7 per cent higher than for the previous regional elections in 2010, with 50.4 per cent of those eligible to vote casting ballots by 2 p.m ET, three hours before polls were to close in big cities, according to the Interior Ministry. The second-round turnout at the same time five years ago was 43. 4 per cent.

Candidates have tried to lure to the ballot box the nearly 50 per cent of those who failed to vote in the Dec. 6 first round, and those votes appeared to have been decisive.

The once-powerful Socialist Party, which currently controls all but one of France's regions, came in a poor third place in the first round and pulled out of key races in hopes of keeping the National Front from gaining power. Former president Nicolas Sarkozy's party came in a strong second, and hoped to make substantial gains in Sunday's runoff.

Winning control of any region would have been an unprecedented boost for the National Front — and especially for Le Pen's hopes for the presidency in 2017.

The atmosphere in the hall in Henin-Beaumont where National Front supporters were gathered to watch election results was grim, in stark contrast to a week earlier when Le Pen won more than 40 per cent of the vote.

The region where Marine Le Pen was a candidate includes the port city of Calais, a flashpoint in Europe's migrant crisis this year, and suffers high unemployment. Bertrand, a former labor minister, is from former President Nicolas Sarkozy's mainstream conservative Republican party.

There was an especially marked jump in turnout Sunday around Calais compared to the first round.

Marechal-Le Pen, 26, is the youngest legislator in France's Parliament. She has used a soft touch to deliver hard messages on migrants and Muslims that outdo her tough-talking aunt.

The National Front has racked up political victories in local elections in recent years, but winning the most seats in an entire regional council would have been a substantial success.

The election was seen as an important measure of support for Le Pen ahead of 2017 presidential elections.

The French, more than many other nations, have a very defined value system and fear that allowing a party associated with extremism to take power would damage their sense of identity.

Le Pen cast her ballot in the northern city of Henin-Beaumont, one of 11 run by the National Front.

She denounced "this giant campaign of insults, slander, fear" by her rivals during a bitter campaign. Socialist Prime Minister Manuel Valls has called the National Front a "scam" that "fools the French" and a divisive party that could "lead to civil war."

The governing Socialists ordered their candidates to withdraw from the regions where Le Pen and Marechal-Le Pen were running and to vote for the right to block their candidacies.

The Socialist candidate refused to pull out in a third region, in the east, where the projections showed the National Front's No. 2, Florian Philippot, losing as well.

Councilors elected in regional elections are responsible for local affairs such as economic development, transportation and public education.

fonte

Comunidade de Traders / Climate Change - acordo na conferência de Paris

« em: 2015-12-12 22:06:19 »

LE BOURGET, France — With the sudden bang of a gavel Saturday night, representatives of 195 countries reached a landmark climate accord that will, for the first time, commit nearly every country to lowering planet-warming greenhouse gas emissions to help stave off the most drastic effects of climate change.

Delegates who have been negotiating intensely in this Paris suburb for two weeks gathered for the final plenary session, where Foreign Minister Laurent Fabius of France asked for opposition to the deal and, hearing none, declared it approved.

With that, the delegates achieved what had been unreachable for two decades: a consensus on the need to shift from carbon-based fuels and a road map for the 195 nations to do so.

Though the deal did not achieve all that environmentalists, scientists and some countries had hoped for, it set the table for more efforts to slow the slide toward an unlivable planet.

It was an extraordinary effort at global diplomacy. Supporters argued that no less than the future of the planet was at stake, and in the days before the final session, they tried relentlessly to persuade skeptical nations.

As they headed into the cavernous hall late Saturday, representatives of individual countries and blocs expressed support for a deal hammered out in a final overnight session on Friday. After a day of stops and starts, Mr. Fabius, the president of the climate conference, declared a consensus and struck the gavel at 7:26 p.m., abruptly closing formal proceedings that had threatened to go into the night.

The hall erupted in cheers as leaders like Secretary of State John Kerry and former Vice President Al Gore stood to applaud President François Hollande of France; his ecology minister, Ségolène Royal; his special envoy, Laurence Tubiana; and the executive secretary of the United Nations climate convention, Christiana Figueres.

South Africa’s environment minister, Bomo Edna Molewa, called the accord the “first step in a long journey that the global community needs to undertake together.”

At its heart is a breakthrough on an issue that foiled decades of international efforts to address climate change. Previous pacts required developed economies like the United States to reduce greenhouse gas emissions but exempted developing countries such as China and India.

The new accord changes that dynamic, requiring action in some form from every country. But the echoes of the divide persisted during the negotiations.

Delegates received the final draft of the document Saturday afternoon, after a morning when the text was promised but repeatedly delayed. They immediately began parsing it for language that had been the subject of energetic debate, in preparation for a voice vote on whether the deal should become law.

All evening, tense excitement was palpable. The delegates rose to their feet to thank the French team, which drew on the finest elements of the country’s traditions of diplomacy to broker a deal acceptable to all sides.

France’s European partners recalled the coordinated Nov. 13 terrorist attacks in Paris, which killed 130 people and threatened to cast a shadow over the negotiations. But, bound by a collective good will toward France, countries redoubled their efforts.

“This demonstrates the strength of the French nation and makes us Europeans all proud of the French nation,” said Miguel Arias Cañete, the European Union’s commissioner for energy and climate action.

Yet amid the spirit of success that dominated the final hours of the talks, Mr. Arias Cañete reminded delegates that the accord was the start of the real work. “Today, we celebrate,” he said. “Tomorrow, we have to act. This is what the world expects of us.”

The new deal will not, on its own, solve global warming. At best, scientists who have analyzed it say, it will cut emissions by about half of what is needed to prevent an increase in atmospheric temperatures of 2 degrees Celsius, or 3.6 degrees Fahrenheit. That is the point, scientific studies have concluded, at which the world will be locked into devastating consequences, including rising sea levels, severe droughts and flooding, widespread food and water shortages, and more destructive storms.

But the agreement could be an inflection point in human history: the moment when, because of a huge shift in global economic policy, the inexorable rise in carbon emissions that started during the Industrial Revolution began to level out and eventually decline.

Unlike at the climate summit meeting in Copenhagen in 2009, Mr. Fabius said, the stars for this assembly were aligned.

As negotiators from countries representing a self-described “high-ambition coalition” walked into the plenary session shortly before noon, they were swarmed by cheering bystanders. The coalition, formed to push for ambitious environmental provisions in the deal, includes rich countries such as the United States and members of the European Union; island nations like Tuvalu and Kiribati, which are vulnerable to rising sea levels; and countries with the strongest economies in Latin America, such as Brazil.

Representatives of the group wore lapel pins made of dried coconut fronds, a symbol of the Marshall Islands, whose climate envoy, Tony de Brum, helped form the coalition. Developing countries with the highest emissions, such as China and India, are not members.

Scientists and world leaders had said the talks here were the world’s last, best hope of striking a deal that would begin to avert the most devastating effects of a warming planet.

The final language did not fully satisfy everyone. Representatives of some developing nations expressed consternation. Poorer countries had pushed for a legally binding provision requiring that rich countries appropriate at least $100 billion a year to help them mitigate and adapt to the ravages of climate change. In the deal, that figure appears only in a preamble, not in the legally binding portion.

“We’ve always said that it was important that the $100 billion was anchored in the agreement,” said Tosi Mpanu-Mpanu, a negotiator for the Democratic Republic of Congo and the incoming leader of the Least Developed Countries coalition. In the end, though, they let it go.

It was not immediately clear what horse trading and arm twisting had brought the negotiators into accord. But in accord they were, after two years of international talks in dozens of world capitals, two weeks of focused negotiations in a temporary tent city here, and two all-night, line-by-line negotiations.

While top energy, environment and foreign policy officials from nearly every country offered positions on the text, ultimately it fell to France, the host, to assemble the final document and see through its approval.

Some countries objected to the speed with which Mr. Fabius banged down the gavel. Nicaragua’s representative, Paul Oquist, said his nation favored a global cap on emissions, a political nonstarter. He said the deal unfairly exempted rich nations from liability for “loss and damage” suffered by those on the front lines of climate change.

The national pledges will not contain warming to 2 degrees Celsius. And more recent scientific reports have concluded that even preventing that amount of warming will not be enough.

Vulnerable low-lying island states had pushed for the more stringent target over the objections of major oil producers like Saudi Arabia. But that target is largely considered aspirational and is not legally binding.

The agreement sets a vague goal of having global emissions peak “as soon as possible,” and a schedule for countries to return to the negotiating table every five years with plans for tougher polices. The first such meeting will take place in 2020.

The accord also requires “stocktaking” meetings every five years, at which countries will report how they are reducing their emissions compared with their targets. And it includes language requiring countries to monitor, verify and publicly report their emission levels.

Monitoring and verification had been among the most contentious issues, with negotiators wrangling into Saturday morning. The United States had insisted on an aggressive, uniform system for countries to publicly report their emissions, and on the creation of an outside body to verify reductions. Developing nations like China and India had demanded that they be subject to a less stringent form of monitoring and verification.

The final draft requires all countries to use the same reporting system, but it lets developing nations report fewer details until they are able to better count their emissions.

Some elements of the accord are voluntary, while others are legally binding. That hybrid structure was specifically intended to ensure the support of the United States: An accord with binding targets would be legally interpreted as a new treaty and would have to go before the Senate for ratification. Such a plan would be dead on arrival in the Republican-controlled Senate, where many question the established science of climate change and hope to thwart President Obama’s climate change agenda.

CONTINUE READING THE MAIN STORY
568
COMMENTS
As a result, all language on the reduction of carbon emissions is essentially voluntary. The deal assigns no concrete reduction targets to any country. Instead, each government has crafted a plan to lower emissions at home based on the country’s domestic politics and economy.

The accord uses the language of an existing treaty, the 1992 United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change, to require countries to verify their emissions and to periodically put forth tougher domestic plans.

“This agreement is highly unlikely to trigger any legitimate grounds for compelling Senate ratification,” said Paul Bledsoe, a climate change official in the Bill Clinton administration. “The language itself is sufficiently vague regarding emissions pledges, and presidents in any event have frequently used their broad authority to enter into these sorts of executive agreements.”

nyt

L

Política e Economia Política / Donald J. Trump

« em: 2015-12-09 16:16:22 »

tem que ser, tem que haver um tópico sobre o homem....


DarthTrump

Política e Economia Política / The carving out of the new MENA (middle east and north africa)

« em: 2015-11-26 20:46:54 »

How the British Screwed Up the Middle East, in 10 Classic Cartoons

"The sun never sets on the British Empire."

This phrase was often used to describe the British Empire at the peak of its power as the largest empire in history. Covering 13.01 million square miles of land, almost one-fourth of the world, the empire encompassed about 458 million people in 1938 through overseas colonies, dominions, protectorates, trading posts and mandates.

Image Credit: AP. British troops in the Egyptian Desert, 1936.

Despite its numerous accomplishments, the imperial empire was also responsible for sowing the seeds of global tension, conflict and wars, many of which still continue to rage on.

When asked how Britain could help end the conflict over Kashmir during a visit to Pakistan in 2011, Prime Minister David Cameron said, "I don't want to try to insert Britain in some leading role where, as with so many of the world's problems, we are responsible for the issue in the first place."

Image Credit: Wikimedia Commons. All countries and regions that have ever been under British rule.

While the British may not have been directly responsible for every event, their interference and self-serving policies at the time were more often destructive than helpful.

Many historians also say Britain does bear historic responsibility for many regional disputes in the Middle East, including the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. While it is near-impossible to summarize the entire history of the Middle East in just one article, with all of its complexities and nuances, here is a brief modern history lesson on how Britain basically screwed up the region:

1. 1875: Making their way to India

Via: By Tenniel, 'Punch', December 11, 1875

During the 19th century, Egypt and Sudan were considered strategic regions for imperial powers in terms of continental and possible global control. In 1875, Britain bought Egypt's shares in the Suez Canal for £4 million, making them the largest shareholder and safeguarding the water route to India.

While Britain held these until 1956, this strategic move marked the beginning of imperial Britain's control over Egypt.

2. 1876-82: Protecting Egypt before taking over

Via: By Tennison, 'Punch', September 27, 1882

By 1876, Egypt's ruler, the Khedive Ismail Pasha had run up debts of about £100 million, in spite of Egypt's sale of its holdings in the Suez Canal to Britain in 1875. As a result, he was forced to accept Anglo-French control of his treasury, customs, post offices, railways and ports.

Following riots in Alexandria, heightened tensions and the rise of a nationalist movement led by Ahmad Urabi Pasha Al-misri, Britain ordered the bombardment of Alexandria which led to the Anglo-Egyptian War of 1882 between British and Egyptian defenses, and eventually the seizure of both the canal and the country by British troops.

3. 1915: Dividing up the Ottoman Empire

Just two days after the British navy lost against the Turkish army, the British government signed a secret agreement with Russia that included a hypothetical post-WWI division of the Ottoman Empire into spheres of influence.

According to the agreement that was signed on March 20, 1915, Russia would claim Constantinople, the Bosporus Strate, the Dardanelles, the Gallipoli peninsula and more than half of the European section of Turkey. Britain, on the other hand, would lay claim to other areas of the former Ottoman Empire and central Persia, including Mesopotamia, which was known to be rich in oil.

The sneaky agreement signified a change in alliances during the Great War, as Britain promised away territory it sought to defend a few years earlier. In 1854, Britain had gone to war with Russia to prevent it from claiming Constantinople and the strait, while in 1878, Prime Minister Benjamin Disraeli sent the British fleet to the Dardanelles during the Russio-Turkish War to send them away from Constantinople.

4. 1914-18: World War One and the Fall of the Ottoman Empire

Via: By Raven Hill, 'Punch', November 11, 1914

Although the German attempt to take over Europe was stopped, the Middle East was also affected in the process. The Ottoman Empire, once the greatest Islamic power in the region, sided with Germany and declared war against France, Russia and Great Britain in November 1914.

Considering the Ottoman Empire a serious threat to the British Empire, London launched preemptive strikes and attacks to knock Turkey out of the war and take down the Ottoman Empire.

The war ended with Great Britain occupying territory that would eventually become Syria, Lebanon, Iraq, Palestine and Trans-Jordan.

5. 1916: Encouraging the Great Arab Revolt

Via: The Passing Show

"Employing bags of gold, the diplomacy of Lawrence of Arabia and promises of Arab independence," the British sparked and encouraged an Arab uprising in 1916, known as the "Great Arab Revolt," against the Turks.

However, after the war, the victorious allies failed to grant full independence to the Arab people, and instead placed them under British and French control according to the mandate system under the Treaty of Versailles.

6. 1916: Carving up the Middle East

Via: The San Francisco Chronicle

More than a year after the agreement with Russia, Great Britain and France also signed a secret agreement known as the Sykes-Picot agreement, by which most of the Arab region under the Ottoman Empire would be divided into British and French spheres of influence after World War I.

British and French representatives, Sir Mark Sykes and Francois Georges Picot, believed that the Arab people were better off under European empires and divided up the region with a ruler and without Arab knowledge.

Image Credit: Mideast Cartoon History

The two men created uncomplicated, immaculate straight-line borders that would cater to the needs of Britain and France. However, these borders "did not correspond to sectarian, tribal or ethnic distinctions on the ground," and failed to allow for future growth of Arab nationalism and secularism.

"Even by the standards of the time, it was a shamelessly self-interested pact," writes British historian James Barr in his book A Line in the Sand.

7. 1914-18: Sowing the seeds for the Israel-Palestine conflict

Via: By Kennington from 'The Seven Pillars of Wisdom'

After World War I, the British government was given a mandate to rule Palestine in the carve-up of the Ottoman Empire, including a commitment to Britain's Jewish community to create a Jewish "national home" in the region put forth by British Foreign Secretary Arthur James Balfour. Eager to make sure Britain kept good on their promise, Arabs also demanded an Arab state on the same land.

Image Credit: Mideast Cartoon History

The simmering tension that would eventually evolve into the current Israeli-Palestinian conflict had already begun. For the next quarter of a century, the British faced riots and uprisings from both the Arab and Jewish sides.

8. 1947: The United Nations votes for partition of Palestine

Via: By Illingworth, 'Punch', March 31, 1948

Having ruled Palestine since 1920, Britain handed over responsibility for solving the Zionist-Arab issue to the United Nations in 1947. At the time, the region was plagued with chronic unrest between native Arabs and Jewish immigrants dating back to the 1910s, when both groups laid claim to the British-controlled territory.

Image Credit: By Illingworth, The Daily Mail, December 2, 1947

The U.N. recommended splitting the territory into separate Jewish and Palestinian states. According to the partition plan, 56.47% of Palestine would be given to the Jewish state and 43.53% to the Arab state. While the Palestinians opposed the plan, the Jewish forces secured control of their U.N.-allocated share of Palestine, as well as some Arab territory.

9. 1948: Setting the stage for today's Israel-Palestine conflict

With the expiration of its mandate, Britain withdrew from the region on May 14, 1948, and the State of Israel was proclaimed as the first Jewish state for nearly 2,000 years.

The next day, five Arab armies from Jordan, Egypt, Lebanon, Syria and Iraq invaded Israel.

Image Credit: By Illingworth, The Daily Mail, May 10, 1948

The Israeli army managed to fend off the Arabs and seize key territories, including Galilee, the Palestinian coast and a strip of territory that connected the coastal region to the western side of Jerusalem. After a U.N.-negotiated cease-fire in 1949, Israel gained permanent control of these areas.

10. Post-WWI: Self-serving interests in Iraq

Via: Mideast Cartoon History

After the Ottoman Empire fought on the side of the Central Powers (Germany and Austria-Hungary), the British captured Baghdad. Iraq remained a British mandate for the next three decades as a complex mix of ethnic and religious groups.

However, Britain's gluttonous appetite for the new nation's oil fields, new railway system and navigable rivers, the Tigris and Euphrates, for trade and transportation overshadowed their concern over the country's ethnic communities and tribes, including the Kurds, the Shi'a in and around Basra and the Sunni kings in Baghdad.

A Hashemite monarchy was established in 1921 under the British, and the country was granted independence on Oct. 3, 1932. Under the terms of the Anglo-Iraqi treaty in 1930, the British retained military bases and an agreement to train Iraq's army. The army, however, "became a breeding ground of resentment against the British presence, particularly amongst new nationalist officers."

After the Hashemite Royal family and politicians were swept away in a vicious nationalist army revolt in 1958, the Republic of Iraq was created and was then ruled by a series of military and civilian governments for the next two decades until General Saddam Hussein became the Iraqi dictator. Hussein's authoritarian tactics and hold on power suppresed any regional, sectarian revolts. The face of the country, however, took a turn for the worse after the American-led, British-supported invasion of Iraq in 2003 led to renewed sectarian violence that was brewing for nearly a century and attacks from al-Qaida and its affiliates.

world.mic

Política e Economia Política / Democracia Cristã

« em: 2015-11-16 02:54:32 »

HISTORY

The International Center Democratic Party was founded in 1961 under the name of World Union of Christian Democrats (WUCD). It was created by the New International Teams, predecessor organization to the European Union of Christian Democrats (EUCD), the Christian Democrat Organization of America (CDOA) and the Christian Democratic Union of Central Europe (CDUCE). In 1999 it adopted its present name, Centrist Democrat International.

The changes on the international stage since 1989, with the end of the confrontation between east and west that had threatened mankind since the end of the Second World War, the creation of new independent states, the struggles for democracy and the globalization at the start of this new millennium are providing society with new opportunities as well as challenges, both in national and international communities, for people to live in peace, freedom, justice and solidarity.

The International Center Democratic Party brings together political parties, organizations and associations whose thoughts and actions are guided by the principles of Christian or integral humanism; that is, a humanism that is open to transcendence and committed to brotherhood. For these parties and organizations, this means:

The recognition of the inalienable dignity of every person regardless of sex, age, skin color, their economic, social or cultural beliefs or convictions.

The recognition and promotion of personal rights as defined in the Universal Declaration of Human Rights and the International
Covenants that complement it.

The pursuit of peace based on the aforementioned values.

The recognition and affirmation of the social character of man, who makes his living by integrating the multiple communities, in particular the family, that constitute human society;

Achieving the common good as the goal of political society and the guiding principle of public power.

The recognition and defense of democracy as the only form of national political organization that ensures the participation of all in public life, particularly through free, general and regular elections, by secret vote, guaranteeing to ensure the possibility of a transfer of power under the rule of law and a constitutional balance between national bodies.

The search for sustainable human development to meet the material, cultural and spiritual needs of individuals, families and societies, while respecting the liberties of each and of nature, whose resources must be preserved and renewed.

Recognition, particularly in economic terms, of the need to reconcile the private interests of individuals with those of their fellow citizens and, by extension, with those of society as a whole, through the application of measures based on the principles of subordination, solidarity and justice through a social and ecological market economy.

The promotion of forms of community organization and participation through which civil society can contribute to equitable development.

The above is best achieved by adopting and maintaining a centrist position from which to engage in more inclusive policies that can be used to introduce the necessary changes into society, the goal being to attain the best possible progress for all peoples through dialogue and consensus.

idc-cdi

Política e Economia Política / Comunismo - observações, debate e outra intervenções

« em: 2015-11-15 00:53:40 »

é aqui.
cita-se do tópico original e debate-se aqui.
daqui a pouco destranco o tópico para cada um apagar as suas intervenções.

não vou estar a ter um trabalhão a editar texto, para ficar tudo poluído e desorganizado por atitudes mesquinhas de criançolas embirrantes.

L

Política e Economia Política / Comunismo

« em: 2015-11-14 23:48:23 »

o que é
e o que não é
é aqui

L

Política e Economia Política / Social-democracia e Socialismo

« em: 2015-11-14 23:46:23 »

o que é
e o que não é

é aqui

L

Política e Economia Política / Liberalismo

« em: 2015-11-12 21:25:52 »

O que é.
O que não é.

É aqui.

L

Política e Economia Política / Direitos humanos

« em: 2015-11-11 18:47:37 »

é aqui.

L

EDIT: alterei o cabeçalho para apenas direitos humanos.
Não são só os da China que interessam.
o tópico está aberto para tudo o que sejam atropelos dos direitos humanos na china, na coreia, na rússia, em cuba, em portugal, nos estados unidos, na hungria...

no mundo todo!

Política e Economia Política / Refugiados

« em: 2015-11-03 01:29:09 »

Merkel’s Shift on Refugees Alienates Her Allies on the Left

Chancellor Angela Merkel calls them “transit zones.” Her Justice Minister Heiko Mass has called them “mass holding camps in no man’s land.” But whatever the political term of art, it won’t be pretty when Germany starts building border facilities to process the thousands of asylum seekers streaming into the country every day.

The idea for these places, which would basically function as deportation centers along the southern frontier with Austria, received Merkel’s grudging approval late on Sunday, when her political party released a new “position paper” on how to deal with this year’s influx of refugees. It marked a clear reversal of Merkel’s open-door policy toward asylum seekers. But more worryingly for the political establishment, it showed the strain on Merkel’s ability to placate the dueling forces inside her own coalition. With contradictory demands coming from her two main partners, Merkel’s knack for finding compromises appears to have found its limits.

From the right, the Chancellor’s stance on migration is hemmed in by her conservative Christian Social Union allies in Bavaria, the predominantly Catholic province where more than half a million Muslim asylum seekers have entered Germany this year. The head of this region, Horst Seehofer, has been demanding the creation of transit zones for months, in part to reassure his right-wing base that he will not allow Bavaria to be inundated with foreigners.

From the left, Merkel faces resistance from the Social Democratic Party’s Sigmar Gabriel, her vice chancellor and coalition partner. Throughout the worst migration crisis Europe has seen since World War II, Gabriel has stood behind Merkel’s welcoming attitude toward refugees. But he appears to have drawn the line at the creation of transit zones, which he has termed “detention centers.”

On Sunday, this ruling trio met at the chancellery in Berlin to seek common ground, and apparently didn’t find enough of it to stand on. After two hours, Gabriel left the talks with a sour expression on his face. Merkel and Seehofer meanwhile stayed on for eight more hours and released their six-page position paper that night.

Its plan to “organize and steer immigration” set out a few key policies. The centers would function like revolving doors; migrants from “safe countries of origin” – especially from the Balkans and other parts of Eastern Europe – would be kept at these border facilities pending “accelerated” deportation. By contrast, migrants coming from war-torn countries like Syria, Iraq or Afghanistan would still be able to get temporary housing deeper inside Germany while their applications for asylum get a closer look.

But the paper was also short on details. Crucially, it did not spell out whether the transit zones would have fences and gates to keep the migrants confined inside. It also left open the question of whether Germany would start walling itself off with razor-wire fences, as the right-wing government in Hungary started doing in August to keep the migrants out.

But Merkel’s position paper does foresee a two-year suspension of one of the most generous and humane aspects of German asylum policy. Under a provision that took effect on Aug. 1, refugees who arrived in Germany were able to apply to have their families join them even before they were granted asylum. Women and children from Syria were thus given a chance to avoid the perilous migration route to Europe, because as long as their husband or father made it to Germany first, he could secure safe and legal passage for them to follow. But under the plan that Merkel and Seehofer hashed out on Sunday, this “family reunification” initiative will be frozen until 2017.

It was another concession to the conservative Bavarian leader, and it likely isn’t the last one Merkel will have to make. The Chancellor’s hold on power in Germany has relied throughout her decade in office on her ability to co-opt and balance the positions of both the left and the right, thus allowing her to dominate the political landscape as a pragmatic centrist for all occasions.

“That’s part of why she’s so successful,” says Hans Kundnani, a political expert at the German Marshall Fund, a think tank in Berlin. “But on this issue of migration she’s moved really far to the left, in a much more controversial way than on previous things she’s done.”

That doesn’t mean her defining strategy will change. She will still need to cede ground and offer concessions to the opposing camps within her coalition. But at this stage in the migration crisis, there may be a political need to placate conservatives like Seehofer. Her open-arms approach toward the migrants had led to a spike in support for far-right fringe parties, as well as an alarming rise in xenophobic violence and attacks against asylum seekers in Germany. On Oct. 17, one of Merkel’s political allies, Henriette Reker, was stabbed in the neck while campaigning for the mayor’s seat in the city of Cologne. Police later said the attack was motivated by Reker’s devotion to the acceptance and integration of refugees.

For Merkel it was a rude awakening, proving how dangerous the mood of xenophobia in Germany had become. And her priority then turned to appeasing the voices on the right, which resulted in Sunday’s position paper and its vision for transit zones along the border. But while it calmed the mutiny emerging in Bavaria, it won’t be the end of her need for appeasement.

On Thursday, she and Seehofer will meet again with Gabriel, their liberal partner in the governing coalition, who is still firmly opposed to transit zones anywhere in Germany. As the discussions proceed, he will be sure to pull them back toward the left as much as he can manage. But Merkel can afford to stand her ground. Though her ratings have dipped amid the migrant crisis, her position as the ruling arbiter of German politics is not under immediate threat, mostly because there is no viable alternative for the post of Chancellor. But the debate over mass migration has already shown how a crisis can throw her off balance, leaving the Chancellor to swing between two political forces that she cannot fully control.

time

Comunidade de Traders / O Euro

« em: 2015-11-01 22:57:14 »

a moeda não o par eurusd.
na minha opinião há que vigiar o que se vai passando com ele.
há cada vez mais gente a dizer 'o rei vai nu'.

aqui é o Wolfgang Munchau a dizê-lo:

Enlargement and the euro are two big mistakes that ruined Europe
Wolfgang Munchau

The single currency is a trap and eastern expansion forced the EU to take its eye off the ball

There has hardly been a year when the EU has not been on the brink of some crisis: banking, sovereign debt, Russia’s annexation of Crimea and now refugees. You can always point fingers at individual politicians and assign blame.

But it is highly implausible that the EU’s serial failures can always be explained as the product of accident and malice.

I put it down to two catastrophic errors committed during the 1990s and at the beginning of this millennium. The first was the introduction of the euro; the second, the EU’s enlargement to 28 members from 15 a couple of decades ago.

You might agree with one or other of these statements, or with neither of them. But few people will agree with both.

I was among those who supported monetary union at the time of its introduction. Advocates of the euro at the time came from two different groups, who struck a Faustian Pact.

Members of the first group believed the euro as constructed would fail, and hoped it would somehow be fixed. The others thought the system would stay rigid, and bend the economies of its members into a new shape.

This latter group knew that, to withstand the rigours of a fixed-exchange system that resembles nothing so much as the gold standard, countries would have to adjust to economic shocks through shifts in wages and prices — a course, they believed, that the euro’s members would be forced to take.

The admission that the euro was a mistake should not be confused with a desire to dissolve it. That would be even more catastrophic. It is merely a recognition that we are trapped in a dysfunctional monetary system.

But how does enlargement play into this? This is not an argument about any particular member state with whose actions one happens to disagree. Nor is it an argument about the principle of enlargement, which is fundamental to the EU.

My quarrel is with the speed of accession, and the criteria that aspiring members have to meet. Just as countries have maximum absorption capacities for migrants, the EU has a maximum absorption capacity for new members.

I have no idea what that number is in any given time period, but it surely is not 13 members in a single decade.

Enlargement affected Europe’s ability to respond to the shocks of subsequent years in two ways. First, it forced the EU to take its eye off the ball at a critical time when it should have focused on building the institutions needed to make the euro work.

Second, enlargement meant that EU countries that were not in the eurozone suddenly found themselves in the majority. That shift naturally shaped the EU’s own agenda. I recall the obsession during those years with competitiveness, a typical small-country economic issue.

Debates on the reform of Europe’s treaties during those years focused on voting rights and the protection of minorities. It was the overwhelming view of European officials and members of the European Parliament that the eurozone itself did not need to be fixed.

At that time it would have been comparatively easy to set up a banking union. But once the crisis set in, and banks suffered huge losses, countries could no longer share their deposit insurance schemes, let alone to create a single one for everybody.

After the crisis had started, the debate about common insurance mechanisms became intertwined with one about transfers. The crisis thus rudely interrupted the EU’s time-honoured, step-by-step approach to integration.

An optimist might interject at this point that it is worth hanging in there. Crises come and go. The EU will still be there. Perhaps so, but then ask yourself: why was the period from the 1950s to the late 1990s more stable compared with the period since?

In the first years of the then European Economic Community, the external security risks were taken care of by Nato. There were almost no risks to financial stability because regulation was extremely stringent by today’s standards.

While the economic shocks, such as the oil and inflation crises of the 1970s, were no less severe than today, EU members had the ability to absorb them through flexible exchange rates.

Today Brussels suddenly has to look after its own foreign policy interests and run the world’s second-largest economy. The EU is not institutionally ready for either job. And its leaders are intellectually not ready either.

We should expect to see more crises, more unilateral action by member states, greater willingness to explore opt-outs, invocation of exceptional circumstances to suspend EU-level action, more rule breaking and the like.

The real risk is not a formal break-up. That would be technically hard to do. But this is no consolation. The real danger is that the EU is simply going to wither away and turn into a ghost.

ft

Política e Economia Política / União bancária

« em: 2015-10-30 13:58:51 »

What options for European deposit insurance?

The aim of this blog post is to clarify different options of how to organize European deposit insurance without yet settling on the best option. We aim to explain and to highlight what different options can and cannot achieve. We end by drawing some tentative conclusions on potentially adequate quid-pro-quo measures for different forms of deposit insurances given the problem of transition.

BY: DIRK SCHOENMAKER AND GUNTRAM B. WOLFF DATE: OCTOBER 8, 2015

The five presidents’ report on Completing Europe’s Economic and Monetary Union in June this year called for European Deposit Insurance to complete the Banking Union.

European Council President Tusk also called for completing banking union by creating a European deposit insurance and he argued that this could be done without treaty change.

A German “non-paper”, on the other hand, argued that a “discussion on further mutualization of bank risks through a common deposit insurance or an European deposit reinsurance scheme is unacceptable” unless a number of other measures are taken earlier that would render bail-in more likely, reduce the exposure of banks to sovereigns and reduce the link between banks and sovereigns.

The non-paper also considers treaty change indispensable.Reducing the link between banks and sovereigns is indeed a key issue that banking union aims to achieve. In the supervisory dimension, the SSM has already achieved a rather strong separation of banks from national pressures exerted through supervisors. However, one of the reasons for the ongoing debate of national vs European competences in supervisory matters relates to the treatment of deposits in the case of failure.

As long as the national governments and national deposit insurances are the back-stops to banks, the link between banks and sovereigns continues to be strong. As a result, national authorities will demand a special role in the supervision of “their” banks.

Recent conflicts between Germany’s approach to shift some authorities from the supervisor (i.e. the SSM) to the German finance ministry and the ECB’s assertion of its supervisory mandate are one potential case in point.

Banking union therefore remains incomplete. Consequently, banks risk, funding costs, and performance of banks will depend on national policies.A European deposit insurance is one of the many indispensable part of a complete banking union. We would argue that policy makers should broaden the debate on deposit insurance with the institutional question of bank resolution.

Conceptually, it would make sense to combine a Single Deposit Insurance with the Single Resolution Fund and let it be administered by an enlarged Single Deposit Insurance and Resolution Board.

The US FDIC and the Japanese Deposit Insurance Corporation also combine the functions of resolution and deposit insurance.The aim of this blog post is to clarify different options of how to organize European deposit insurance without yet settling on the best option.

The policy discussion on deposit insurance is, characterized by unclear conceptual representations. We aim to explain and to highlight what different options can and cannot achieve. We end by drawing some tentative conclusions on potentially adequate quid-pro-quo measures for different forms of deposit insurances given the problem of transition towards a more integrated banking market (transition problems) and potential further harmonization of other national policies.

A key issue to consider is whether and to what extent a European Deposit Scheme mutualizes risks of losses on depositors across borders or merely serves as a credit line to various national deposit insurance schemes.

Risk sharing across borders is important to ensure that funding conditions for banks across the EU do not depend too much on the location of the bank.Deposit guarantees are currently national schemes.

Their credibility depends on the amount of paid-in resources, the health of the banking sector in the country concerned and the health of the public sector, that serves as a back-stop to the national deposit guarantee. In particular, the deposit guarantee scheme directive, DGS, foresees that, if necessary, banks have to pay additional contributions to the national deposit fund.

Moreover, if the fund is depleted in case of a large pay-out, the national deposit fund would typically get a loan from the national government.Funding costs for banks, i.e. deposit rates, are therefore different across euro area countries.

The chart shows the standard deviation of deposit interest rates normalized by the German interest rate on deposits. (It is a coefficient of variation where the normalization is the rate of the large country with the lowest rate.

Normalization with the average rate shows even an increase in the coefficient of variation but is misleading as since the decision to start banking union, deposit rates have come down in the periphery, driving down the average rate).

It has come down in the last years but it is still higher than in the pre-crisis years. This suggests that location of banks in the euro area is a significant factor determining the riskiness of banks’ deposits.

Standard deviation of interest rates on deposits from non-financial corporations and households normalized by the German rate

The normalized standard deviation was calculated as the standard deviation of interest rates on outstanding amounts across Eurozone countries in a given year divided by the German interest rate in the same year.

Source: ECB Statistical Data Warehouse, Bank interest rates – deposits from non-financial corporations and households (on outstanding amounts)

The debate on deposit guarantees is also quantitatively important. Deposit in different euro area countries often exceed 100 % of GDP. Also covered deposits amount to very significant percentages of GDP as can be seen in the chart below.

The magnitude of such deposits also renders it obvious that build-up insurance funds can only partly cover losses in case one of the large, systemic banks with a large deposit base suffers from massive losses.

This is why deposit insurances rely on explicit or implicit fiscal backstops.

Total and covered deposits as a percent of GDP in 2012

Note: Total deposits as a percent of GDP were calculated by dividing the total value of deposits in a country by the country’s gross domestic product at market prices. Covered deposits as a percent of GDP were calculated by dividing the total value of covered deposits (deposits repayable under a country’s deposit guarantee scheme) in a country by the country’s GDP at market prices.

Sources: European Commission Joint Research Centre, Updated estimates of EU eligible and covered deposits; ECB Statistical Data Warehouse, Gross domestic product at market price.

Against this background, we discuss the following proposals.

Back-stops to national deposit insurance schemes

The first proposal is to provide liquidity to a national deposit insurance scheme when it runs out of money due to a mid-sized or large bank failure. Figure 1 illustrates the example of a deposit insurance scheme with a fund of 60, while the deposit insurance payouts on an (imaginary) failed bank amount to 100.

The scheme could refinance itself with a credit line from the national government A, which will be paid back from future deposit insurance premiums on banks. If the government of country A cannot provide the funding, it could borrow from the European Stability Mechanism (ESM).

This option already exists now and is somewhat comparable to what Spain did to stabilise its banking system in 2012. However, ultimately this is just a liquidity line and the losses will remain in the country, as the national banks and taxpayers have to repay the ESM loan by future deposit insurance premiums. It therefore does little to cut the link between banks and their sovereigns.

An alternative would be a credit line to the national deposit insurance from a supranational fund such as the ESM or a European deposit insurance fund. Again, this would ultimately keep the losses with the national banking system and not break the link between banks and sovereigns.

A third proposal, advocated strongly by Gros in 2013 and, as a crisis measure, by Véron in 2012, is to create a re-insurance scheme. The national deposit insurance schemes would remain in place, but they reinsure themselves in a European fund in case the deposit insurance payouts exceed the national fund.

This would amount to an insurance against large, systemic shocks. Gros points out that such a scheme needs to be compulsory to avoid adverse selection and that the national DGS would have a first-loss tranche to bear.

As usual with re-insurance, the national schemes pay a premium for this cover of extreme risks. Such risk-premia could be country-specific, which would introduce country differences, or European. Such a re-insurance protects against tail risk and is therefore a true insurance that spreads large losses beyond national borders.

For the smaller risks, the national funds would need to be re-financed by extra premiums on the remaining national banks. It should be noted, that introducing a re-insurance, however, does not fully solve the problem of fiscal back-stop. In fact, for larger systemic risks, even a re-insurance is unlikely to cover the entire potentially affected deposits. A re-insurance would therefore also have to be able to draw on a fiscal backstop such as the ESM.

The fourth proposal is to create a European deposit insurance fund. This fund would cover potential deposit insurance payouts, while the premiums would be equally spread over the participating Eurozone banks. Re-insurance is no longer needed, as a European fund is larger and can thus cover the failure of a few mid-sized banks or one or two larger banks.

Nevertheless, a credit line from the ESM will be useful, similar to the credit line of the US Treasury for the Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation (FDIC).

Assessment

So how do these schemes compare overall? We do not consider options A and B as a European deposit insurance scheme. Rather, they constitute credit lines that enhance the credibility of the national deposit insurance schemes but they do not insure risks other than liquidity risks across borders.

Markets would still differentiate between a bank’s country of origin. Banks from countries with weaker government finances would pay higher funding costs. Our contention is that this differential will remain in the first two proposals, as the deposit insurance arrangements remain basically national.

Moreover, the governments will still want to top up the single supervision of the ECB with national supervision, because of the exposure of the national deposit insurance scheme to a domestic bank failure.

A deposit re-insurance scheme, however, has a number of advantages and disadvantages. The advantages of this scheme are clear. It would recognize that currently some banking policies remain national. The first loss would remain with the national schemes in order to reflect the fact that some national policies matter for bank performance.

For example, loan-to-value ratios for mortgages differ across Europe and thus influence the riskiness of mortgages on bank balance sheets. The disadvantage, however, is that country differences for banks would remain significant.

In particular, national supervisors would rightfully want to have a special supervisory relation with the banks for which their national deposit insurance would have to take the first loss.Moreover, the percentage that is national in the insurance is an important variable driving the effectiveness of the scheme.

If the national percentage is high, significant differences between countries’ banking systems would remain, in particular as the national depositors would have the responsibility of re-financing the fund after a bank rescue.

In fact, a large national component could even introduce an element of significant vicious circles as the failure of one bank would make deposits in other banks more costly due to the increased levy. In contrast, if the national first-loss tranche is rather small, the system moves closer to a system in which it resembles a European deposit insurance, option D.

By contrast, the fourth proposal would provide for Eurozone wide risk sharing. In that way, bank funding costs would still be different according to a bank’s solvency position but no longer by its location of headquarters. The advantage of such a scheme would be that the quality of deposit insurance would be equalized across countries. Such a scheme would also best correspond to a centralized supervision by the SSM and could be compulsory for all the banks directly supervised.

However, the scheme would also require that other national policies cannot be used in a way so as to free-ride on the European insurance, creating potentially significant moral hazard problems.

Conclusion

To conclude, a genuine banking union that fulfils the aim of “breaking the vicious circle between banks and sovereigns” would require option D.

This option, however, raises questions as regards transition problems as well as governance when some national policies remain in place. Before providing such a full European deposit insurance, it is certainly necessary to reduce the national sovereign risk on banks’ balance sheets, for example by introducing some form of large exposure rules.

Also, a full European deposit insurance would require a European fiscal backstop.In contrast, option A and B would not per se justify any move in the direction of large exposure rules as the national sovereigns remain the ultimate back-stops.

bruegel.org

Off-Topic / 3nder - app for three...

« em: 2015-10-23 18:28:34 »

‘Tinder for threesomes’ gets $500K investment

3nder founder Dimo Trifonov says his "Tinder for threesomes" app has been downloaded almost 1 million times.

There are no two ways about it: This dating app was built for threesomes.
London-based startup 3nder — the name can be pronounced “Thrinder” to rhyme with “Tinder,” according to its founder — has raised $500,000 in seed capital from a pair of unnamed angel investors.

Since 3nder’s mid-2014 launch, nearly 1 million users have downloaded the iOS app in search of kinky hookups — whether “straight, bisexual, gay, poly- or pansexual,” says founder and CEO Dimo Trifonov.

The torrid growth has spilled into the US, where New York is 3nder’s second-biggest market behind California. Worldwide, users are sending about 1.2 million messages a month on 3nder while logging around 4 million swipes.

That falls sorely short of the 1 billion swipes per day seen on Tinder, the hookup app whose viral growth is boosting billionaire Barry Diller’s IAC/Interactive.
Still, 3nder’s smallish subscriber base is a motivated one that’s willing to pay its monthly fee of nearly $13. Revenue is up 500 percent this year, and “it’s all organic, we haven’t done any marketing or advertising,” Trifonov told The Post.

Nearly a third of the accounts created on 3nder are couples, and most are millennials, according to Trifonov.
Indeed, old-school swingers have balked at 3nder’s Facebook log-in requirement, which is intended to verify identities.

Despite 3nder’s privacy guarantees, “People were saying, ‘I can’t log in with Facebook — I’m gonna lose my job,’ ” according to Trifonov. “But people between 18 and 34 are not so affected by imaginary moral values.”

The soft-spoken, 25-year-old techie admits his own tastes run vanilla. He got the idea when his longtime girlfriend confessed an attraction to a woman.

nypost

Comunidade de Traders / Grandes mitos - debunked (you're welcome)

« em: 2015-10-19 17:37:26 »

China's Selling Tons of U.S. Debt. Americans Couldn't Care Less.

For all the dire warnings over China’s retreat from U.S. government debt, there’s one simple fact that is being overlooked: American demand is as robust as ever.
Not only are domestic mutual funds buying record amounts of Treasuries at auctions this year, U.S. investors are also increasing their share of the $12.9 trillion market for the first time since 2012, data compiled by Bloomberg show.

The buying has been crucial in keeping a lid on America’s financing costs as China -- the largest foreign creditor with about $1.4 trillion of U.S. government debt -- pares its stake for the first time since at least 2001. Yields on benchmark Treasuries have surprised almost everyone by falling this year, dipping below 2 percent last week.

It’s not the scenario that doomsayers predicted would leave the U.S. vulnerable to China’s whims. But the fact that Americans are pouring into Treasuries may point to a deeper concern: the world’s largest economy, plagued by lackluster wage growth and almost no inflation, just isn’t strong enough for the Federal Reserve to raise interest rates.

“As you develop a more pessimistic view on global growth, inflation, and rates, asset managers are going to buy Treasuries in that environment,” said Brandon Swensen, the co-head of U.S. fixed-income at RBC Global Asset Management, which oversees $35 billion.

Overseas Creditors

Overseas creditors have played a key role in financing America’s debt as the nation borrowed heavily to pull the economy out of recession. Since 2008, foreigners have more than doubled their Treasury investments and now own about $6.1 trillion.

China has led the way, funneling hundreds of billions into Treasuries as the Asian nation boomed and it bought dollars to limit the gains in its currency.
Now that’s changing.

This year alone, China’s holdings have fallen about $200 billion as it raises money in support of its flagging economy and stock market. If the pattern holds, it would be the first time that China has pulled back from Treasuries on an annual basis. The tally includes Belgium, which analysts say is home to Chinese custodial accounts.

The People’s Bank of China directed questions on its Treasury holdings to the State Administration of Foreign Exchange, which didn’t reply to a fax seeking comment.
The Chinese pullback has led some to raise troubling questions about the U.S.’s ability to borrow and refinance its obligations at ultra-low rates year after year. It’s also reignited long-held concerns, aired over the years by both Republican and Democratic politicians, that China’s ownership of U.S. debt is a threat to America’s independence.

Homegrown Buyers

Homegrown demand for Treasuries suggests there’s no reason to panic.
American funds have purchased 42 percent of the $1.6 trillion of notes and bonds sold at auctions this year, the highest since the Treasury department began breaking out the data five years ago. As recently as 2011, they bought as little as 18 percent.
As a group, U.S. investors of all types have also stepped up their holdings of Treasuries since they fell to a low in mid-2014. In 2015, that share has climbed 2.1 percentage points to 33.1 percent of the U.S. government debt market.
That might not sound like much, but the annual increase -- which has pushed up Americans’ holdings to a record $4.3 trillion -- would be the first since 2012.

Misplaced Worries

“The worries about China selling are misplaced,” said David Ader, the head of U.S. government-bond strategy at CRT Capital Group LLC. “This was one of the great fears of the bond market, and it’s happening and we took it in stride.”
While the appetite among Americans for the haven of U.S. debt has kept the government’s financing costs low, what’s worrisome is what it suggests about the health of the economy, according to George Goncalves, the head of interest-rate strategy at Nomura Holdings Inc., one of 22 dealers that are obliged to bid at Treasury auctions.

Sure, the U.S. is creating jobs, but a raft of disappointing indicators, from retail sales to manufacturing, suggests consumers are scaling back just as overseas demand weakens.
And wages are stagnating for many Americans. Since the recession ended, average hourly earnings have increased less than in any expansion since the 1960s. Without higher wages to spur spending, inflation has remained stubbornly low.

Price Pressures

The auction data shows that U.S. funds targeted 30-year bonds -- those most vulnerable to rising growth and inflation -- the most among interest-bearing Treasuries. That comes as traders are pricing in the likelihood the inflation rate will remain below the Fed’s 2 percent goal over the coming decade.

Yields on the 10-year note, the benchmark for trillions of dollars of debt securities worldwide, were about 2.04 percent on Monday. That’s about a percentage point below where they were at the end of 2013.

Economists in a Bloomberg survey now see a 15 percent chance the U.S. will slide into a recession in the next 12 months, the highest estimate since 2013.

Investors in the U.S. “are making a decision based on their outlook and it’s a reflection of the economy as well as their risk aversion,” Nomura’s Goncalves said.

It also suggests the Fed policy makers may want to rethink their assumptions about the need to raise interest rates any time soon. While Fed Chair Janet Yellen has said she still sees the economy growing enough for the central bank to raise rates by year-end, traders are skeptical. They see only a 32 percent chance of a rate increase by
December, while the odds of a March rise are at little more than a coin flip.
Some Fed officials are coming around to that view. Governors Lael Brainard and Daniel Tarullo both indicated this month the Fed should wait until clearer signs of inflation emerge.

“There’s no pressing reason for the Fed to hike rates and there are clear risks against a global backdrop that’s so fragile,” said Robert Tipp, the chief investment strategist at Prudential Financial’s fixed-income unit, which oversees $533 billion.

bloomberg

Off-Topic / Coisas que eu não compreendo

« em: 2015-10-16 23:14:45 »

qual é o interesse de matar elefantes e leões? por mais que tente não consigo compreender.
o próprio caçador afirma "It was a majestic animal,".
no entanto matou-o. não percebo.

Killing of one of Zimbabwe's biggest elephants has echoes of Cecil

* German hunter kills one of Zimbabwe's largest elephants
* Killing comes three months after death of Cecil the lion
* Elephant believed to have been over 40 years old

HARARE, Oct 16 (Reuters) - A German hunter has shot and killed one of the biggest bull elephants seen in Zimbabwe in three decades, a local hunters' group said on Friday, just days after the country declined to prosecute a foreign hunter for killing a lion that had become a national landmark.

The unidentified German hunter shot the elephant this month outside Gonarezhou National Park, in the south of the country, said Louis Muller, chairman of the Zimbabwe Professional Hunters and Guides Association.

The elephant had rarely been seen until it was killed this month, Muller said. It was believed to be more than 40 years old, with tusks that weighed 55 kgs (121 pounds) each, the biggest recorded in Zimbabwe in 30 years, he said.

The elephant's death echoed the killing in July of Cecil, a rare black-maned lion and well-known denizen of Hwange National Park in western Zimbabwe. Cecil's death sparked international outrage, but earlier this week the government said it would not charge the American dentist, Walter Palmer, who brought him down .

The killing was legal, the government said, because Palmer had the right permits when he shot Cecil with a bow and arrow outside the park. Similarly, according to the British newspaper the Telegraph, the elephant was shot by the German hunter on Oct. 8 in a private hunting concession bordering Gonarezhou after he paid $60,000 for a hunting permit.

Elephants are known to live up to 70 years in the wild, and Muller said the dead bull was at least 40.

"It was a majestic animal," he said. He confirmed the tusks were the largest seen in three decades, and added that "in the hunting fraternity anything above 80 pounds is incredible. If you shoot something over a 100 pounds it is really, really incredible."

Zimbabwe generated $45 million from big game hunting in 2014, according to the national parks agency, mostly from wealthy hunters from United States and Europe. But the anger over Cecil's killing brought unwanted attention to Africa's multi-million-dollar hunting business.

Muller said, however, the fact the elephant had seldom been seen before it was killed was a sign that Zimbabwe's animal conservation efforts were paying off.

"There is an increase of these big bulls from the previous decade, so that tells us we are doing something right in Zimbabwe. The (hunting) quota system is working," Muller said.

His association proposed last November locating and putting GPS collars on all Zimbabwe's big bull elephants to boost tourism, Muller said. The authorities have not yet considered the proposal, he said.

Meanwhile, the parks agency said 26 more elephant carcasses had been discovered in Hwange National Park. That brings to 40 the total number of elephants poisoned by cyanide by suspected poachers in less than a month.

fonte

Política e Economia Política / Estado, Nação e Estado-Nação

« em: 2015-10-09 22:19:26 »

Estado, Nação e Estado-Nação são três coisas diferentes.

Uma nação, embora sendo um conceito de alguma forma subjectivo, está mais directamente ligado a etnia do que a estado.
Pode haver nações sem estado, estados multinacionais e estados de uma só nação.

Nação: Normalmente diz-de de uma comunidade que partilha várias coisas: linguagem, cultura, descendência, história ou religião.
Há nações sem território, nações espalhadas por diferentes territórios e até continentes.

Exemplos:
Curdos: espalhados pela Síria, Turquia, Iraque e Irão. Em vias de se tornarem um estado-nação no curdistão iraquiano.
Judeus: Espalhados pelo mundo inteiro, existindo no entanto o estado-nação de Israel.
Roma: Espalhados pelo mundo inteiro, sem qualquer território que possam chamar seu.
Bascos: Divididos entre Espanha e França. Poderão eventualmente vir a ser um estado-nação.
Idem para os Catalães.

Estado multinacional:
Reino Unido: Gales, Escócia, Inglaterra, Irlanda do Norte. A Escócia por pouco passava a estado-nacão, há uns mesitos atrás.
Bélgica: Valões e Flamengos. Podem vir os dois a ser estados-nações.

Estado-Nação: Portugal

estes conceitos têm que estar claros quando se discute leis, soberania, autoridade do estado etc.

este post refere-se ao conceito de nação.

L

Comunidade de Traders / ups GOOG & AAPL . no more tax heavens

« em: 2015-10-06 20:35:49 »

Google to Apple Could See Tax Loopholes Curbed in OECD Proposal

Multinationals' tax havens cost $240 billion in lost revenue
OECD plan would limit strategies like the `Dutch Sandwich'

The world’s top body for economic coordination unveiled its blueprint Monday for cracking down on international tax avoidance, an opening salvo in what promises to be a prolonged battle between countries and companies over who gets taxed and where.

The Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development, a research institute funded by 34 countries including the U.S., is seeking to curb tax haven use and other
strategies by companies such as Google Inc., Starbucks Corp. and Apple Inc., which the group says costs the world as much as $240 billion a year in lost revenue.

“This is the most important development in international tax in quite a few decades,” said H. David Rosenbloom, an attorney at Caplin & Drysdale in Washington and director of the international tax program at New York University’s School of Law. “It will definitely make a difference. Exactly what that difference will be is hard to predict.”

The new guidelines include a series of highly technical plans to limit strategies with nicknames like the “Double Irish” and the “Dutch Sandwich.” It’s the result of a three-year process initiated in 2012 by the Group of 20 Nations, which asked the Paris-based OECD to develop a plan.

“The problem we had is that you could easily shift risk or capital without any tax risk,” said Pascal Saint-Amans, who heads the effort as director of the OECD’s Center for Tax Policy and Administration. “You could have a cash box in a tax haven where there is nobody. This is over.”

Republican Criticism

For years, big multinational companies have cut their tax bills using strategies now coming under public criticism: assigning valuable patent rights to shell companies based in tax havens; getting interest deductions for payments made to their own subsidiaries; or cutting deals with countries like Luxembourg to tax profits at low single digit rates.

The OECD plan will be discussed at a meeting of G-20 finance ministers in Lima on Oct. 8. If they approve it, it will then be presented to the group’s leaders in Turkey in November for a vote on adoption.

Countries aren’t required to follow the OECD’s recommendations, but many adopt the group’s guidelines as their own international tax rules. Tax regulations in the 34 member countries are required to conform to OECD standards, putting pressure on those nations to adopt some version of the organization’s action plan.

Although the U.S. is the OECD’s biggest funder, Congressional Republicans have criticized the OECD work on tax loopholes, calling it a way for other countries to increase taxes on American companies. Many of the multinational companies whose tax avoidance techniques have received publicity are based in the U.S.

India, Brazil

Rosenbloom said he expects the new plan –- known by the acronym BEPS, for “base erosion and profit shifting” –- to trigger increased disputes between regulators and multinationals around the world.

“Countries are going to do all sorts of things in the name of BEPS,” he said. In places like India, Brazil, China, Mexico and Canada, “you are going to see renewed aggressiveness in auditing of the multinationals,” he said. “There’s a lot of money involved here.”

Some critics say the OECD project hasn’t gone far enough, and that the international corporate tax system should be replaced with one that allocates profits according to real world factors like where employees are located or sales are made. Instead, the OECD plan builds on a system which relies on paper transactions between different subsidiaries of the same company.

“They are trying to patch up this system which is doomed from the beginning,” said Tove Ryding, tax justice coordinator at the European Network on Debt and Development, a Brussels-based watchdog organization.

Sales Location

Michael Durst, a veteran international tax lawyer in Washington and longtime critic of the current system, said a better approach would be to allocate income according to things like the location of sales. He also supports imposing a minimum tax on companies, similar to a proposal by President Barack Obama’s administration. However, many of the OECD’s recommendations, if adopted, “could have a significant positive effect,” Durst said.

One of those: the OECD seeking to restrict transactions between subsidiaries of the same company that generate an interest tax deduction in one country without generating taxable income in another.

Another action would restrict a company’s ability to take advantage of the tax treaty benefits of countries like the Netherlands simply by funneling profits through paper subsidiaries there.

The OECD plan also calls for companies to disclose to regulators detailed geographic breakdowns of sales, profits and taxes paid around the world, known as country-by-country reporting.

bloomberg

Off-Topic / Água em forma liquída em Marte

« em: 2015-09-28 18:51:40 »

que marte tinha água já se sabia; em forma de gelo nas calotes polares.
agora foi descoberta água líquida na zona do equador.

conferência de imprensa:

parece-me que não consigo um link a funcionar para a conferência de imprensa...
EDIT: NASA Public, Ustream.TV: NASA TV airs a variety of regularly scheduled, pre-recorded educational and public relations programming 24 hours a day on its var...
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Política e Economia Política / Islão - Tópico principal

« em: 2015-09-24 19:24:44 »

é aqui.

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