Eeyores News and View

At G20, Kremlin to Pitch New Currency
17 March 2009
By Ira Iosebashvili / The Moscow Times
The Kremlin published its priorities Monday for an upcoming meeting of the G20, calling for the creation of a supranational reserve currency to be issued by international institutions as part of a reform of the global financial system.
The International Monetary Fund should investigate the possible creation of a new reserve currency, widening the list of reserve currencies or using its already existing Special Drawing Rights, or SDRs, as a "superreserve currency accepted by the whole of the international community," the Kremlin said in a statement issued on its web site.
The SDR is an international reserve asset, created by the IMF in 1969 to supplement the existing official reserves of member countries.
The Kremlin has persistently criticized the dollar's status as the dominant global reserve currency and has lowered its own dollar holdings in the last few years. Both President Dmitry Medvedev and Prime Minister Vladimir Putin have repeatedly called for the ruble to be used as a regional reserve currency, although the idea has received little support outside of Russia.
Analysts said the new Kremlin proposal would elicit little excitement among the G20 members.
"This is all in the realm of fantasy," said Sergei Perminov, chief strategist at Rye, Man and Gore. "There was a situation that resembled what they are talking about. It was called the gold standard, and it ended very badly.
"Alternatives to the dollar are still hard to find," he said.
The Kremlin's call for a common currency is not the first in recent days. Speaking at an economic conference in Astana, Kazakhstan, last week, Kazakh President Nursultan Nazarbayev proposed a global currency called the "acmetal" -- a conflation of the words "acme" and "capital."
He also suggested that the Eurasian Economic Community, a loose group of five former Soviet republics including Kazakhstan and Russia, adopt a single noncash currency -- the yevraz -- to insulate itself from the global economic crisis.
The suggestions received a lukewarm response from Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov on Saturday.
Nazarbayev's proposal did, however, garner support from at least one prominent source -- Columbia University professor Robert Mundell, who was awarded the Nobel Prize in 1999 for his role in creating the euro.
Speaking at the same conference with Nazarbayev, he said the idea had "great promise."
The Kremlin document also called for national banks and international financial institutions to diversify their foreign currency reserves. It said the global financial system should be restructured to prevent future crises and proposed holding an international conference after the G20 summit to adopt conventions on a new global financial structure.
The Group of 20 industrialized and developing countries will meet in London on April 2.
http://www.themoscowtimes.com/article/600/42/375364.htm

Russia confirms Iran missile contract
MOSCOW – Russian news agencies cited a top defense official Wednesday as confirming that a contract to sell powerful air-defense missiles to Iran was signed two years ago, but saying no such weapons have yet been delivered.
Russian officials have consistently denied claims the country already has provided some of the S-300 missiles to Iran. They have not said whether a contract existed.
The state-run ITAR-Tass and RIA-Novosti news agencies and the independent Interfax quoted an unnamed top official in the Federal Military-Technical Cooperation Service as saying the contract was signed two years ago. Service spokesman Andrei Tarabrin told The Associated Press he could not immediately comment.
Supplying S-300s to Iran would change the military balance in the Middle East and the issue has been the subject of intense speculation and diplomatic wrangling for months.
Israel and the U.S. fear that, were Iran to possess S-300 missiles, it would use them to protect its nuclear facilities — including the uranium enrichment plant at Natanz or the country's first atomic power plant, which is now being built by Russian contractors at Bushehr.
That would make a military strike on the Iranian facilities much more difficult.
It was not clear why the missiles have not been delivered, but the reports cited the defense official as saying "fulfillment of the contract will mainly depend on the current international situation and the decision of the country's leadership."
That could indicate that Russia intends to use the contract as a bargaining chip before next month's meeting between President Dmitry Medvedev and President Barack Obama.
But the defense official said Russia does not intend to abandon the contract, estimated to be worth hundreds of millions of dollars, ITAR-Tass said,
A prominent Russian analyst, Ruslan Pukhov of the Center for Analysis of Strategies and Technologies, said the missile contract was seen by the Kremlin as primarily a political rather than commercial matter.
"The S-300 contract, and cooperation with Iran in general, is regarded by Moscow only as an instrument of political bargaining with the West and not as a way of realizing the fundamental defense and commercial interests of Russia," he was quoted as saying by RIA-Novosti.
http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20090318/ap_on_re_eu/eu_russia_iran

Fed to buy up to $300B long-term Treasury bonds
WASHINGTON (AP) -- The Federal Reserve announced Wednesday that it will inject about $1 trillion into the economy in a bold effort to help the battered housing market and lift the country out of recession.
At the same time, the Fed left a key short-term bank lending rate at a record low of between zero and 0.25 percent. Economists predict the Fed will hold the rate in that zone for the rest of this year and for most -- if not all -- of next year.
In a new program, the Fed said it will buy up to $300 billion of long-term bonds, a move that should boost Treasury prices and drive down their rates. That would ripple through and lower rates on other kinds of debt. The last time the Fed set out to influence long-term interest rates was during the 1960s.
And expanding an existing program, the Fed said it will buy more mortgage-backed securities guaranteed by Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac. The central bank will buy an additional $750 billion, bringing its total purchases of these securities to $1.25 trillion. It also will boost its purchase of Fannie and Freddie debt to $200 billion.
"This is not only going to keep mortgage rates low for a long period of time," said Greg McBride, a senior financial analyst at Bankrate.com. "The mere announcement may produce a honeymoon effect and bring mortgage rates down to even lower levels in the coming days."
In addition, the Fed said a $1 trillion program to jump-start consumer and small business lending could be expanded to include other financial assets.
The program -- which is rolling out this week -- currently is focused on spurring lending for autos, education, credit cards and loans for business equipment. The government already has announced an expansion to include commercial real-estate assets. Any broadening of the program would be beyond that area.
The Fed's action kept Wall Street's big rally alive. After being down earlier in the day, the Dow Jones industrial average added more than 90 points, and broader indicators also rose.
Government bond prices surged. The yield on the benchmark 10-year Treasury note, which moves opposite its price, fell to 2.50 percent from 3.01 percent late Tuesday.
Fed Chairman Ben Bernanke and his colleagues are taking the new steps as the economy sinks deeper into recession.
Since the Fed last met in late January, "the economy continues to contract," the policymakers observed.
"Job losses, declining equity and housing wealth and tight credit conditions have weighed on consumer sentiment and spending," they said.
Businesses, meanwhile, are facing weaker sales prospects and credit troubles have them cutting inventories. Problems overseas have crimped demand for U.S. exports, dealing domestic companies another blow, the Fed said.
Across the Atlantic, the Bank of England last week began buying government bonds from financial institutions as it turned to other ways to help revive Britain's moribund economy. The Bank of England, like the Fed, already had lowered its key interest rate to a record low of 0.5 percent.
Finance leaders from top economies have discussed coordinating actions from their governments and central banks to provide a more potent punch against the global financial crisis.
Still, the Fed hoped its actions, the government's banking rescue effort, and President Barack Obama's $787 billion stimulus of increased government spending and tax cuts eventually will help revive the economy.
"Although the near-term economic outlook is weak, the committee anticipates that policy actions .... will contribute to a gradual resumption of sustainable economic growth," the Fed said.
Obama has urged Americans to be patient, saying it will take time for his revival programs to work.
Bernanke has repeatedly said that stabilizing the nation's financial system is key to turning around the economy. If that can be done, then the recession might end this year, setting the stage for a recovery next year, he said.
But even in this best-case scenario, the nation's unemployment rate -- now at quarter-century peak of 8.1 percent -- will keep climbing. Some economists think it will hit 10 percent by the end of this year.
The recession that began in December 2007 already has snatched a net total of 4.4 million jobs and has left 12.5 million searching for work.
And the economy is still sinking. It contracted at 6.2 percent in the final three months of 2008, also the worst showing in a quarter-century. Analysts believe the economy in the current January-March quarter is contracting at a pace between 5.5 and 6 percent or more. They expect the economy also will continue to contract in the April-June quarter.
http://finance.yahoo.com/news/Fed-to-buy-up-to-300B-apf-14679757.html

Why I Carry a Gun
My old grandpa once said to me, "Son, there comes a time in every man's life when he stops bustin' knuckles and starts bustin' caps and usually it's when he becomes too old to take an ass whoopin'.
I don't carry a gun to kill people. I carry a gun to keep from being killed.
I don't carry a gun to scare people. I carry a gun because sometimes this world can be a scary place.
I don't carry a gun because I'm paranoid. I carry a gun because there are real threats in the world.
I don't carry a gun because I'm evil. I carry a gun because I have lived long enough to see the evil in the world.
I don't carry a gun because I hate the government. I carry a gun because I understand the limitations of government.
I don't carry a gun because I'm angry. I carry a gun so that I don't have to spend the rest of my life hating myself for failing to be prepared.
I don't carry a gun because I want to shoot someone. I carry a gun because I want to die at a ripe old age in my bed, and not on a sidewalk somewhere tomorrow afternoon.
I don't carry a gun because I'm a cowboy. I carry a gun because, when I die and go to Heaven, I want to be a cowboy.
I don't carry a gun to make me feel like a man. I carry a gun because men know how to take care of themselves and the ones they love.
I don't carry a gun because I feel inadequate. I carry a gun because,
unarmed and facing three armed thugs, I am inadequate.
I don't carry a gun because I love it. I carry a gun because I love life
and the people who make it meaningful to me.
"Police Protection" is an oxymoron. Free citizens must protect themselves..
Police do not protect you from crime; they usually just investigate the crime after it happens and then call someone in to clean up the mess.
Personally, I carry a gun because I'm too young to die and too old to take an --- whoopin'."
....author unknown (but obviously brilliant)
Remember the average response time to a 911 call is over 4 minutes.
The average response time of a 357 magnum is 1400 FPS.

Study: Being obese can take years off your life
March 17, 2009 - 8:05pm y MARIA CHENG AP Medical Writer
LONDON (AP) - Being obese can take years off your life and in some cases may be as dangerous as smoking, a new study says. British researchers at the University of Oxford analyzed 57 studies mostly in Europe and North America, following nearly one million people for an average of 10 to 15 years. During that time, about 100,000 of those people died.
The studies used Body Mass Index (BMI), a measurement that divides a person's weight in kilograms by their height squared in meters to determine obesity. Researchers found that death rates were lowest in people who had a BMI of 23 to 24, on the high side of the normal range.
Health officials generally define overweight people as those with a BMI from 25 to 29, and obese people as those with a BMI above 30.
The study was published online Wednesday in the medical journal, Lancet. It was paid for by Britain's Medical Research Council, the British Heart Foundation, Cancer Research UK and others.
"If you are heading towards obesity, it may be a good idea to lose weight," said Sir Richard Peto, the study's main statistician and a professor at Oxford University.
Peto and colleagues found that people who were moderately fat, with a BMI from 30 to 35, lost about three years of life. People who were morbidly fat _ those with a BMI above 40 _ lost about 10 years off their expected lifespan, similar to the effect of lifelong smoking.
Moderately obese people were 50 percent more likely to die prematurely than normal-weight people, said Gary Whitlock, the Oxford University epidemiologist who led the study.
He said that obese people were also two thirds more likely to die of a heart attack or stroke, and up to four times more likely to die of diabetes, kidney or liver problems. They were one sixth more likely to die of cancer.
"This really emphasizes the importance of weight gain," said Dr. Arne Astrup, a professor of nutrition at the University of Copenhagen who was not linked to the Lancet study. "Even a small increase in your BMI is enough to increase your risks for cardiovascular disease and cancer."
Previous studies have found that death rates increase both above and below a normal BMI score, and that people who are moderately overweight live longer than underweight or normal-weight people.
Other experts said that because the papers used in the study mostly started between 1975 and 1985, their conclusions were not as relevant today.
Astrup worried that rising obesity rates may reverse the steep drops in heart disease seen in the West.
"Obesity is the new dark horse for public health officials," he said. "People need to be aware of the risks they're taking when they gain weight."
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On the Net:
http://www.lancet.com
http://wtop.com/?nid=106&sid=1626903