Wednesday, October 24, 2012


Obama 是“小家子气的无赖” - 梁稳根是中共的僵尸狗

中国商界人士抨击美国“不可理喻”


中国一家领先企业的创始人最近在谈到中国企业进入美国市场受到的限制时,谴责巴拉克•奥巴马(Barack Obama)和美国监管机构是“小家子气的无赖”。


中国最富裕的人之一、三一集团(Sany Group)创始人向文波昨日不同寻常地勃然大怒,猛烈抨击美国监管机构,凸显出世界最大的两个经济体之间的商业关系日益紧张。


向文波在谈到美国外国投资委员会(Cfius)和总统 奥巴马时说:“他们是小家子气的无赖,不可理喻。”上个月奥巴马以国家安全为由,阻止三一附属公司收购俄勒冈州的一个风力发电场。

本案使中国企业进一步感到,它们在向美国市场扩张时受到歧视。它们表示,美国总统选举使情况更加糟糕。


三一重工(Sany Heavy)董事之一向文波表示:“美国把中国当作敌国一样对待。我们不管做什么,都被视为危害美国国家安全。”按销量计,三一重工是全球第九大工程机械 制造商。


今年早些时候,审查外国在美国投资的政府机构Cfius回溯性地阻止了三一下属企业Ralls收购俄勒冈州的风力发电场,理由是该风电站毗邻 一块军事禁飞区,威胁国家安全。


向文波发表这番评论之际,中国企业日益担心在美国市场面临的障碍。上周,一位美国国会委员表示,中国电信设备企业华为和中兴(ZTE)威胁到 美国国家安全。这一声明威胁到这两家公司在美国的扩张计划。中国石油企业中海油(Cnooc)正在等待Cfius对它收购尼克森 (Nexen)提议的决定。尼克森是一家加拿大石油公司,但在美国拥有部分资产。


随着奥巴马及其总统竞选对手米特•罗姆尼(Mitt Romney)争相展现谁对中国更加强硬,中国企业暗中对两人的言论感到震惊。


周二的总统辩论之后,中国外交部敦促美国维持正常的中美关系。外交部发言人洪磊表示:“我们希望美国有关政治家客观公正看待中国……中美经贸 关系的实质是互利共赢。”


一些人士认为,“三一重工”具有中国军方背景,这可能与其创建人梁稳根曾在中国军工企业工作 三年的经历有关。但毫无疑问的是,曾经在2011年被“胡润百富榜”以700亿元人民币个人资产列为中国首富的梁稳根是中国与官方关系最 为密切的私营企业家。

梁稳根,汉族,1956年出生,1983年毕业于中南矿冶学院(现中南大学)材料系,毕业后 到中国兵器工业部洪源机械厂工作,很快被提升为工厂的处级干部。

但是,梁稳根与唐修国、毛中吾及袁金华等四人于1986年正式辞职,决定下海,并在1989 年创建湖南省涟源市焊接材料厂,于1991年正式使用“三一集团”的名称。

“三一集团”据信在1993年遇到了最大的商机,梁稳根在这一年决定涉足工程机械行业,主要 研制混凝土输送泵等工程建筑机械产品。随后10年,“三一集团”得到了最大的发展。

十八大代表

人们注意到,梁稳根发展的一个重要特点是注意政治,保持同中共当局的密切关系。他在早 已担任“三一重工”董事长的2004年加入中国共产党,并且在2007年成为中共十七大代表。

2012年,梁稳根又成为中共十八大代表。据 中共有关消息来源透露,梁稳根很可能在下个月召开的中共十八大上被确认为中央候补委员。如果这一计划得以实施,梁稳根将成为中共中央 委员会中的第一个资本家。

据说在“三一重工”有个不成文的 规定,就是干部提拔前必须要递交入党申请书,否则不可能获得提拔。

梁稳根曾表示,“直到自己开始创 业以后,才明白只有与党的事业联系起来,才能实现自己的理想。

The Sino-Indian War: 50 Years Later, Will They Clash Again?



The Sino-Indian War

Indian troops training for the border war with China.

The only major war in modern history fought between India and China ended almost as abruptly as it began. On Oct. 20, 1962, a multi-pronged Chinese offensive burst the glacial stillness of the Himalayas and overwhelmed India’s unprepared and ill-equipped defenses, scattering its soldiers. Within days, the Chinese had wrested control of Kashmir’s Aksai Chin plateau in the west and, in the east, neared India’s vital tea-growing heartlands in Assam. Then, on Nov. 21, Beijing called a unilateral ceasefire and withdrew from India’s northeast, while keeping hold of barren Aksai Chin. TIME’s Nov. 30, 1962 cover story started off with a Pax Americana smirk: “Red China behaved in so inscrutably Oriental a manner last week that even Asians were baffled.”

Fifty years later, there are other reasons to be baffled: namely why a territorial spat that ought be consigned to dusty 19th century archives still rankles relations between the 21st century’s two rising Asian powers. Economic ties between India and China are booming: they share over $70 billion in annual bilateral trade, a figure that’s projected to reach as much as $100 billion in the next three years. But, despite rounds of talks, the two countries have yet to resolve their decades-old dispute over the 2,100-mile-long border. It remains one of the most militarized stretches of territory in the world, a remote, mountainous fault-line that still triggers tensions between New Delhi and Beijing.

At the core of the disagreement is the McMahon Line, an imprecise, meandering boundary drawn in 1914 by British colonial officials and representatives of the then independent Tibetan state. China, of course, refuses to recognize that line, and still refers much of its territorial claims to the maps and atlases of the long-vanished Qing dynasty, whose ethnic Manchu emperors maintained loose suzerainty over the Tibetan plateau. In 1962, flimsy history, confusion over the border’s very location and the imperatives of two relatively young states—Mao’s People’s Republic and newly independent India led by Prime Minister Jawaharlal Nehru—led to China humiliating India in a crushing defeat where, by some accounts, both sides lost upwards of 2,000 soldiers. In 1962, TIME described the Chinese offensive as a “human-sea assault,” like a “swarm of red ants” toting burp-guns. Beijing seized and has never relinquished Aksai Chin—”the desert of white stone”—a strategic corridor that links Tibet to the western Chinese region of Xinjiang. “The India-China war took place through a complex series of actions misunderstandings,” says Kishan S. Rana, a former Indian diplomat and honorary fellow at the Institute of Chinese Studies in New Delhi. “Bilateral relations are, however, moving forward. The border, despite unresolved issues, today is a quiet border.”

Yet, just as China’s economic liberalization hasn’t led to an opening up of its political system, the strength of India and China’s trade ties have yet to unwind the border impasse. The border may be “quiet,” but tensions have spiked in recent years, with China reiterating its claim to almost the entirety of Arunachal Pradesh, a northeastern Indian state that the Chinese overran in 1962 and consider to be “Southern Tibet,” while India has steadily beefed up its military deployments in the long-neglected Northeast. The issue of Tibet casts a long shadow—in 1959, the Dalai Lama fled to India, an accommodation that Beijing still resents. When he went recently to speak at a historic monastery in Arunachal Pradesh, the Chinese government lodged a formal complaint. “The territorial dispute between India and China is intertwined with the Tibet issue and national dignity, making the whole situation more complicated,” says Zhang Hua, a Sino-Indian relations expert at Peking University. “When the two countries look at each other, they cannot see the counterparty in an objective and rational view.”

That nationalist ill-will is not just confined to those in the corridors of power. In a survey published last week, the Pew Global Attitudes Project found that 62% of Chinese hold an “unfavorable” view of India—compared to 48% feeling the same way of the U.S. Brahma Chellaney, a professor of strategic studies at the Centre for Policy Research in New Delhi, fears such sentiment driving the political calculus in Beijing. In a more heated climate, the Chinese leadership may not be immune to the calls of its more hardline nationalists to strike out at India, writes Chellaney:

For India, the haunting lesson of 1962 is that to secure peace, it must be ever ready to defend peace. China’s recidivist policies are at the root of the current bilateral tensions and carry the risk that Beijing may be tempted to teach India “a second lesson”, especially because the political gains of the first lesson have been frittered away. Chinese strategic doctrine attaches great value to the elements of surprise and good timing in order to wage “battles with swift outcomes.” If China were to unleash another surprise war, victory or defeat will be determined by one key factor: India’s ability to withstand the initial shock and awe and fight back determinedly.
China’s decision to withdraw from much of the territory it seized in 1962 was spurred by the arrival of significant amounts of aid and weaponry in India from the U.K. and the U.S.—Washington, at the time, was locked in the Cuban Missile Crisis, an imbroglio some historians suggest China exploited to its advantage in launching its assault. TIME’s 1962 cover story on the Sino-Indian war breathes fire on the 73-year-old Nehru—”his hair is snow-white and thinning, his skin greyish and his gaze abstracted”—and his “morally arrogant pose” of “endlessly [lecturing] the West on the need for peaceful coexistence with Communism.”


An inveterate Cold Warrior, Henry Luce’s TIME reckoned the chief lesson of the war ought to be the demise of Nehru’s policy of Nonalignment, his principled Socialist stand with a number of other recently independent states to chart a third path on the world stage, away from the influence of both the U.S. and the U.S.S.R. “Nehru has never been able to rid himself of that disastrous cliche that holds Communism to be somehow progressive and less of a threat to emergent nations than ‘imperialism,’” TIME declared. His dreamy belief in Asian solidarity and unwillingness to see who really were “India’s friends”—namely, the U.S.—led to India’s humiliation. Tellingly, the TIME 1962 story hopes for the Indian army to “emerge as something of a political force” in its own right: for many Americans during the Cold War, the grand struggle against Communism outranked any concern for the future of fledgling democracies.

The shock of the war with China is believed to have worsened Nehru’s health; he died less than two years later. But his gift to India—its democracy—has endured and its military—unlike that of neighboring Pakistan, which would be drawn much more firmly into the American camp—has avoided meddling in its politics.


The war’s real legacy lies less in the folly of Nehru’s ideals and more in the frozen landscape where the battles were fought: India and China’s restive borderlands remain the victim of the two countries’ longstanding dispute, locked down by vast military presences. In Tibet and Xinjiang, any trace of dissent or separatist ethnic nationalism is ruthlessly suppressed. In Indian Kashmir and in its northeastern states, emergency laws are still in effect—that small bonus of being able to vote somewhat dampened by decades of army occupation, woeful governance and inadequate investment in basic things like infrastructure. TIME, in 1962, described the journey down a “Jeep path” in Assam where it took 18 hours to cover 70 miles. Fifty years on, the conditions haven’t improved much in many parts of the Indian northeast; New Delhi’s belated efforts to transform the region into an economic hub with Southeast Asia have yet to take hold.

Long gone are the days when caravans would regularly depart from Ladakh, in what’s now Indian Kashmir, and wind their way around the mountains toward the Silk Road cities of Yarkhand and Khotan, now in Xinjiang. Tibetan monks in Lhasa can’t visit some of the most sacred sites of their faith that lie in the Indian northeast. The myriad connections that bound the communities living along the Indian-Chinese border, the veritable “roof of the world,” have been lost amid New Delhi and Beijing’s icy standoff. As one Member of Parliament from Arunachal Pradesh told me earlier this year, “There’s a lot we shared in common, but that’s now all a thing of the past.”

America Always Go To War For Oil ? Don't Be Misled

America Will Produce More Fossil Fuels This Year Than It Ever Has Before

University of Michigan economics professor and American Enterprise Institute scholar Mark J. Perry has posted two graphs showing just how far America's fossil fuel production has come.


First, production is at an all-time high — nearly 62 quadrillion BTUs,
an increase of about 12 percent from 2005.

That's
enough to meet approximately 13 percent of the entire world's energy needs, according to the Department of Energy.

Perhaps more importantly, we haven't enjoyed this degree of energy self-sufficiency since the 1990s
, according to his second chart:

Embedded image
      permalink


This weekend, Standard & Poor's said the Marcellus shale formation could contain
"almost half of the current proven natural gas reserves in the U.S," the AP reported.

Another Spanish Civil War In Making ?

Spanish Military Association Wants "Declaration of War" Against Separatist Catalunya


The AME, a Spanish military organization says in an interview on Dutch TV "in the event of tampering or separatism" the military should act.


Via Google Translate, please consider military association calls for declaring a "state of war" against Catalunya.
Barcelona (Editorial). - The Association of Spanish soldiers returned to the charge. The AME explained in an interview with Dutch television Nieuwsur that, in his opinion, "in the event of tampering or separatism" should be declared "a state of war, state of emergency or a state of siege" in Catalunya.
This has manifested forcefully president of the association, one of three in Spain that brings together active and retired military, Colonel Leopoldo Munoz Sanchez quartermaster. The AME, specifically, make 3500 partners.
"Spain is a nation totally inseparable and if split or threat of separatism us, in accordance with Article 8 of the Spanish Constitution, we must ensure the territorial integrity, so our view is to declare a state of war, state of emergency or martial law ", said Muñoz Sánchez in a Dutch documentary about the Catalan question.
Not the first time that the AME is expressed in this regard. On September 24 threatened to bring before military tribunals President of the Generalitat , Artur Mas, and all Catalans institutional positions that promote the independence of Catalonia, if the military is forced to intervene to "guarantee the sovereignty, independence and territorial integrity "of Spain.
Nor was the only military threat to Catalonia in recent times. In late August, the Army Infantry excoronel Spanish, Alaman Francisco Castro, said in an interview with confidential Digital Alert willingness to respond with their own lives to defend the state of eventual independence of Catalonia. So the military has been expressed, it considers that the separation of any autonomy only be "over my dead body."

Expect More Extremism

As Spain sinks further into the abyss, expect more cries from separatists, not less. As happened in Greece (but so far to a much less extreme in Spain), citizens have shifted well away from the center to far left or far right groups.

Everyone, everywhere is Fed up with austerity (which to this point has primarily focused on tax hikes). Tax hikes have been an enormous mistake.What's really needed is work rule reform and less government.

Unfortunately, badly-needed reforms have been put off for so long that increased violence is highly likely in Greece, in Spain, in Portugal, and in Italy, should such reforms finally be implemented.
 

A Different Class Of Property Market

 

Company Sells Post-Apocalypse Survival Shelters

The world may end at the end of this year, or at least that is what a number of people are fearing because of the ancient Mayan calendar that does not go beyond December 21, 2012. Some people even fear that the end of the world could come in the form of a zombie apocalypse. If you're a doomsdayer or know someone who is, a California-based company has a new solution for you.


Atlas Survival Shelters, whose slogan is "Better prepared than scared," offers survival chambers made out of 32x10-foot metal tubes. The chambers are designed to be installed 20 feet underground, far away from the possible crumbling of the world above. The survival chambers would be accessible from a hatch in the backyard of the survivalist.


Atlas's website says you can stay safe in one of their shelters in the event of "pandemic outbreak, civil unrest, malicious mobs and biological, nuclear fallout or attacks from home grown terrorists or other nations." Not every survival shelter is the same, because they're each customizable. They come equipped with bunk beds, flat-screen televisions, kitchens, and even an electric toilet.

So how much will you have to shell out to own one of these bad boys? The survival shelters start at close to $50,000 and go up from there. The owners say they have not actually sold one yet, but there have been some very serious inquiries. And they've recently added an incentive to purchase: Get 10 acres of land free when you buy a shelter.
A Civil War Brewing Inside Iran ?

Iran President Ahmadinejad barred from visiting prison

President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad is seen to have been losing influence

Iranian judicial officials have blocked President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad from visiting Evin prison in the capital, Tehran.

Mr Ahmadinejad had asked to visit soon after a close aide of his was imprisoned there while the president was in New York last month.

But a judicial official said the visit was not appropriate at a time when Iran faced pressing economic problems.


The refusal is seen as an indication of Mr Ahmadinejad's waning authority.

"As we are faced with special circumstances and the country's priorities are the economy and people's living conditions, all authorities should focus on solving key issues... visiting a prison is extraneous," chief prosecutor Gholam Hossein Mohseni Ejeie told Isna news agency.

"More than seven years of his presidency have passed, and no request was made during that time," he said.

Mr Ejeie indicated that Mr Ahmadinejad's desire to visit the prison was linked to "a person affiliated to (the government) in prison," apparently a reference to presidential press advisor Ali Akbar Javanfekr.

Mr Javanfekr was arrested for allegedly insulting Iranian leaders.

Iran's judiciary is controlled by conservative hard-liners close to the country's supreme leader, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei.

BBC Persian's Kasra Naji says the episode is another indication of the declining authority of the president just eight months before the end of his term.

Iran has been facing a currency crisis that officials there blame on speculators and international sanctions aimed at Iran's nuclear programme.

Many Iranians blame the problem on President Ahmadinejad's policies.

There Is A Dickhead In AIG

 

AIG was arguably the most epic disaster of all the epic disasters of the financial crisis. Remember: The company was ultimately on the hook for a significant chunk of those horrid mortgage-backed securities.

After major help from the government, the insurance giant is just now getting back on its feet (and back on some analyst's buy-rating lists) so NY Magazine's Jessica Pressler has provided us with a timely profile of the firm's bombastic CEO, Bob Benmosche.


If you don't know much about Benmosche, he's known for telling a room full of people, "Well that's a bunch of bullsh*t," and guiltlessly heading off to his vineyard in Croatia shortly after getting his job at the helm of AIG. None of this has done much for his reputation with government officials, but as he told Pressler, they should actually be thanking him and his company.

From NY Magazine:


“But it (the AIG bailout) wasn’t a free lunch,” Benmosche insists. It’s a point of view that I am apparently not the first to fail to appreciate. “Everybody said it’s just not going to happen, they’ll never pay it off,” he goes on. “SIGTARP, Elizabeth Warren, Gretchen Whatshername in the New York Times. The fact is we now have succeeded in getting the Fed back all of their money, and we’re just close to getting the Treasury paid back. And do you know,” he adds, an indignant note creeping into his voice, “neither of them have ever said ‘Thank you’? We have done all the right things. Somebody should say, ‘By golly, those AIG people made a promise and they are living up to a promise!’ We’re left with a major part of the economy in America; they’re going to make a profit on top of everything else they’ve got,” he finishes, settling back into his chair.
“God bless America. And God bless AIG. And God bless Tiny Tim.”

That's one way to look at it.

Tiny Tim
A Currency Manipulator Country  That's Bigger Than China

Stanley Fischer Bank of Israel


BoI Governor Stanley Fischer

The buzz about currency wars and currency manipulation is back. In the last presidential debate, Mitt Romney called China "a currency manipulator for years and years," and said that he would label the country a currency manipulator on his first day in office.
Tonight's debate is expected to focus even more on the China talking point.

However, there is one country you won't hear either candidate criticize tonight, even though it's been intervening to prevent its currency from strengthening against the dollar as well: Israel.
And when you look at Israel's foreign exchange holdings as a percentage of GDP, you see that at 61 percent, Israel's ratio is significantly higher than that of China, which stands around 45 percent.

The chart below shows the Bank of Israel's foreign currency reserves, which have ballooned since early 2008 when the central bank began buying up dollars and selling shekels.

By selling shekels against the dollar, the BoI hopes to keep its currency from strengthening, making exports more competitive vis-a-vis dollar-based exporters like those in the United States.

Bank of Israel foreign exchange
                              currency reserves

OECD economist Charlotte Moeser gave a brief history of the Bank of Israel's recent interventions in a 2010 paper and explained a bit of the rationale behind them:

In March 2008, the central bank began intervening in the foreign exchange market for the first time since 1997 stating that its goal was to increase international reserves up to 100% of short-term debt, as prescribed by the “Greenspan-Guidotti Rule." At the time, foreign reserves (USD 29.4 billion) stood at 81% of external short-term debt.

There was an initial unannounced intervention, which was followed by announcement of a schedule of foreign-currency purchases. At first, the bank purchased the equivalent of USD 25 million per day with a view to raising reserves to a value of USD 35-40 billion. In July 2008 the daily purchase was increased to USD 100 million, and in November the reserve target was raised to USD 40-44 billion.

Moeser wrote that as a result of the BoI's interventionism, markets assumed the central bank was secretly, but loosely, targeting a certain exchange rate:

By March 2009, foreign exchange reserves had increased to USD 40.6 billion, nearly 100% of external short-term debt; and, relative to GDP, reserves had reached a very high level compared with other small open economies and with historical Israeli values. Nevertheless, the Bank announced that it would continue the intervention, and its press releases increasingly referred to concerns about the level of the exchange rate, rather than reserve levels.

Regular intervention was finally stopped in August 2009, but a week prior to this the Bank announced a new policy of discretionary intervention. The Bank does reveal how much it purchases in monthly data on foreign-exchange reserves, and these confirm that intervention has continued. Markets now consider the Bank to have a “dirty float” policy on the exchange rate and speculate as to what its intervention price is. For instance, some observers believe this to be around 3.8 shekels to the US dollar.

The chart below shows the U.S. dollar against the Israeli shekel over the past few years:

Israeli shekel spot

Near the end of April 2011, Bank of Israel Governor Stanley Fischer gave an interview with the Wall Street Journal, right when the Shekel had appreciated against the dollar to levels not seen since mid-2008.

At the time, Fischer said the stronger shekel was not a problem, but he also hinted at more intervention. Via WSJ's Anjali Cordeiro:

Fischer said that if the shekel starts to move in directions that aren't in keeping with the central bank's estimates of where the market and the economy are, "we will have to intervene."
"We don't know what the level of intervention is going to be. We hope it will be minimal," Fischer said, adding that the bank doesn't publish its views on appropriate levels for the currency.

Since then, the shekel has weakened significantly against the dollar.

The Bank of Israel's website states that the interventions are designed to contribute "to the success of the whole economy, to economic growth, and to increased employment," and that as a result of the policy, "the whole economy reaps the benefit of economic strength, enhanced financial stability, protection against unexpected events, and reduced vulnerability to various crises."
And some of those dollars have ended up in an interesting place. On March 1, the BoI announced that it would actually invest $1.5-2 billion of its reserves in the U.S. stock market.

The BoI has faced some internal criticism recently over its interventionism. The State Comptroller's Office released a particularly negative report last week calling the operations into question.  

Via the Israeli business daily Globes:

Management of the bank's reserves is conducted in comparison with a benchmark portfolio, known as the numeraire, a hypothetical currency made up of the currencies of Israel's trading partners. The report criticizes the lack of transparency in setting the makeup of the numeraire, and also mentions that the audit failed to find tools with which the division could measure the overall risk of the reserves portfolio in extreme conditions.

It was also found that the foreign currency committee and the narrow monetary committee, two committee's chaired by Governor of the Bank of Israel that set policy for managing the reserves, have been acting without written procedures regulating their activity and the relationship between them.

Those criticisms were obviously not leveled at the Bank's attempts to weaken the shekel against the dollar.

Of course, the Israeli economy is so small, nobody thinks it's a serious threat to big US industries, but the point remains that China is far from unique in its efforts to control its currency for export purposes.

Soon America Will NOT give A Damn If The Middle East Burn In Hell

The Coming American Energy Independence


The United States is on track to achieve independence from imported Middle East oil within the next seven years due to the boom in domestic and North American energy development.  Consequently, the United States would have eventually ratcheted down our huge military presence in the Middle East defending oil imports.  But just like television scenes of the attack on the United States embassy during the 1968 TET Offensive destroyed public support for the Viet Nam War, last week’s television images of protests against American embassies has devastated public support for a continuing military presence in the Middle East.  The American public will soon demand a crash program to exploit domestic energy resources to facilitate a Middle East withdrawal. 
American Exceptionalism’s military and economic triumphs in the first half of the 20th Century were directly attributable to secure domestic access to immense amounts of oil.  President Coolidge wrote in 1924 after WW I; “the supremacy of nations may be determined by the possession of available petroleum and its products.”  During World War II, the United States domestic gasoline output for the military grew 18 times and the production of aviation fuel jumped by 80 times.  Half the total weight of supplies shipped overseas to U.S. allies during the war consisted of petroleum products. 

Following defeat of Germany’s Afrika Corps in 1943, Middle East oil resources were rapidly commercialized.  After the war, massive new volumes of cheap Middle East oil froze the world price of oil at between $2.77 and $3.60 a barrel from 1948 to 1972.  During period, American domestic production withered and the bulk of U.S. oil refining capacity was relocated to coastal ports on the Gulf of Mexico, Atlantic and Pacific. 
  
On December 2, 1970, just as oil prices were about to climb, Congress passed the Environmental Protection Agency, which had a huge negative financial impact on domestic oil industry.  The number operating oil refineries in the U.S. fell from 301 in 1970 to 134 today.  Land-based oil production fell from 9.6 million barrels a day in 1970 to only 5.1 million in 2005.  Even with new off-shore production in Alaska and the Gulf of Mexico, total U.S. domestic oil production fell from 10.8 million barrels a day in 1980 down to 8.3 million barrels in 2005.  To cover the shortfall as demand continued to grow; imports rose from 1.3 million barrels a day in 1970, providing 12% of supply to a peak at over 12 million barrels in 2005, accounting for 63% of all U.S. oil supply.  

But since 2008, fracking and other new drilling technologies have fostered a domestic 25% surge in oil production and a 40% jump in natural gas production.  driven down Demand for imported oil has fallen to less than 45% of supply, the lowest level since 1997.  Cheap new supplies from Canadian tar sands drove down imports of Middle East oil to less than 10% of U.S. supply.

Radical Islam’s coordinated attacks against American embassies across the Middle East has fractured the region’s respect for U.S. military power and emboldened our enemies.  Taliban forces this weekend brazenly penetrated the perimeter of a the joint U.S. and British air base in Afghanistan, blew up 6 Marine Harrier “jump jets” and killed one of the Marine’s highest decorated Air Squadron Leader.  After NATO forces suffered their 51st murder by an Afghanistan government forces, the U.S. military suspended all operations with patrolling with Afghan troops. 

In 1968, President Lyndon Johnson claimed a military victory as American and South Vietnam forces slaughtered ten times as many Viet Cong as they lost in the TET Offensive.  But bloody television images of the battle at the U.S. embassy in Saigon convinced Americans that the Vietnamese could never be pacified.  Similar television images of anti-American violence in the Middle East have convinced the American public that the Middle East cannot be pacified. 

The American public will soon politically coalesce around a major increase in domestic energy exploration and development, in order to facilitate the elimination of reliance on imported Middle East oil.  Fortunately, America has technology and resource potential to rapidly make this initiative a reality.

Israeli Poll Finds Majority In Favor Of 'Apartheid' Policies


More than two-thirds of Israeli Jews say that 2.5 million Palestinians living in the West Bank should be denied the right to vote if the area was annexed by Israel, in effect endorsing an apartheid state, according to an opinion poll reported in Haaretz.

Three out of four are in favour of segregated roads for Israelis and Palestinians in the West Bank, and 58% believe Israel already practises apartheid against Palestinians, the poll found.


A third want Arab citizens within Israel to be banned from voting in elections to the country's parliament. Almost six out of 10 say Jews should be given preference to Arabs in government jobs, 49% say Jewish citizens should be treated better than Arabs, 42% would not want to live in the same building as Arabs and the same number do not want their children going to school with Arabs.


A commentary by Gideon Levy, which accompanied the results of the poll, described the findings as disturbing. "Israelis themselves … are openly, shamelessly and guiltlessly defining themselves as nationalistic racists," he wrote.


"It's good to live in this country, most Israelis say, not despite its racism, but perhaps because of it. If such a survey were released about the attitude to Jews in a European state, Israel would have raised hell. When it comes to us, the rules don't apply."


The poll was conducted by a public opinion firm, Dialog, and commissioned by the New Israel Fund, an organisation accused by rightwing critics of having an anti-Zionist agenda. Dialog interviewed 503 people out of an Israeli Jewish population of just under 6 million.


Talk of the possible annexation of the West Bank, or the main settlement blocks within it, has increased in recent months as expectations of a negotiated settlement to the conflict have sunk to an all-time low. Israel's defence minister, Ehud Barak, recently argued for the annexation of land between the internationally recognised Green Line and the Israeli-built separation barrier.


The poll results will bolster the claim of Israel's Arab citizens, who make up 20% of the population, that they suffer from racist discrimination. Almost half the poll's respondents said Israeli Arabs should be transferred to the Palestinian Authority, and a third said that Arab towns in Israel should be moved to the PA's jurisdiction in exchange for Jewish settlements in the West Bank.


According to the Haaretz report, the survey found that ultra-Orthodox Jews held the most extreme views about Arabs, with 70% supporting a legal ban on voting rights and 95% backing discrimination against Arabs in the workplace.


Superman: Clark Kent quits reporting at the Daily Planet


Superman is giving up his once-promising career in journalism.
Alter ego Clark Kent is resigning from the post of star reporter at the Daily Planet, the Metropolis newspaper where he has worked since the first Superman comics were published in the 1940s.
DC Comics, which publishes the Superman stories, says Kent will walk out in protest that hard news has given way to too many "soft" entertainm!ent stories.
Clark Kent
        Superman.jpgThe move has been prompted by the Daily Planet's takeover by a conglomerate.
The publisher has hinted that the Man of Steel might even go the way of many journalists and become a blogger, in an effort to get his views across to a wider audience.
"Why am I the one sounding like a grizzled ink-stained wretch who believes news should be about, I don't know, news?" says a disillusioned Kent, according to a leaked panel from Wednesday's edition of the comic that appeared on the Newsarama.com website.
New Superman writer Scott Lobdell told USA Today newspaper: "This is really what happens when a 27-year-old guy is behind a desk and he has to take instruction from a larger conglomerate with concerns that aren't really his own."
 Oil Is Down

Earnings season quickly sapped the life out of the equity and commodity markets, showing that the US economy has a long way to go to fully recover. In addition to slower economic growth, inventory levels could be on the rise. Traders may wish to monitor developments relating to Tropical Storm Sandy, as its progression to a hurricane could cause supply disruptions in the Gulf States.


Fundamentals


Crude Oil is down for the fourth consecutive session under the weight of earnings season. We have seen companies missing targets, suggesting the economy may be worse than Oil traders had previously priced-in. Some traders are pricing in another inventory build in tomorrow's EIA petroleum report on higher production. The analyst estimate of a 1.8 million barrel build in Crude Oil was calculated factoring in the highest works production in 17 years. If the economy is really as soft as earnings season is projecting, tomorrow's EIA number easily could be much larger than the 1.8 million barrel build currently being projected. The news that the Keystone pipeline is now back online adds a bit of bearish pressure on the Oil market. Many traders are closely watching Tropical Storm Sandy, which threatens to become a hurricane. If Sandy does, indeed, tick-up to hurricane speeds, it may be seen as a bullish force for the Oil market, depending on its trajectory.


Technical Notes


Turning to the chart, we see the December Crude Oil contract closing just above support at 88.50 yesterday. Prices have already moved down through this support level in overnight trading. If prices do indeed close below 88.50, prices could attack support at the 80.00 mark, which could be seen as major support. The RSI is already near oversold levels, so it will be interesting to see if the bears have enough momentum to keep seeking pressure on Oil prices.

Revealed: the songs you should play during sex: The true sound of seduction? 'Boudoir king' Marvin Gaye tops poll of sexy music

Listen to the top 10 tracks to get ‘in the mood’ below

Related articles

Suggested Topics
The orchestrated pleadings of Marvin Gaye and the crescendo of Ravel’s Balero are the true sounds of seduction, a new study has confirmed. But there is no place for Bohemian Rhapsody in the bedroom, a music psychology expert has warned.
Soul legend Gaye’s reputation as the “boudoir king” is justified by the mood-enhancing combination of earthy vocals and lush, circular melodies, argues Dr Daniel Müllensiefen, music psychologist at Goldsmiths, University of London.
Dr Müllensiefen analysed the results of a Spotify survey of 2,000 music fans, which identified the songs most likely to form the playlist for an amorous encounter. Marvin Gaye’s Sexual Healing and Let’s Get It On were the songs most likely to help a couple get “in the mood”.
Ravel’s Bolero proved  one of the most popular accompaniments to the act itself along with the entire soundtrack to 80s film Dirty Dancing, a sign that women are more likely to control the soundtrack in the bedroom.
“The tracks that get us in the mood all possess the same qualities including a greater dynamic range, more use of the high chest voice, more raspiness in the voice and less use of vocal vibrato,” said Dr Müllensiefen, co-director of the Masters programme in Music, Mind and Brain at Goldsmiths. “These specific attributes are strongly evident in the Marvin Gaye tracks, Sexual Healing and Let’s Get It On.”
The Gaye songs are “smooth and have no distracting orchestration. They possess a circular and emotional quality which goes really well with the voice which conveys passion and emotion. It’s very well suited to the bedroom.”
The subterranean moans of Barry White, “the walrus of love”, also featured strongly as did Donna Summer’s combination of throbbing disco beats and orgasmic vocals, I Feel Love.
Dr Müllensiefen admitted he was initially surprised by Bolero’s popularity as a musical aphrodisiac. “But it makes sense,” he said. “It has the perfect structure – it’s 17 minutes long, the right length for a sex episode and it builds in dynamics constantly to a huge crescendo. Rhythmically it is repetitive and features two melodies which spiral over and over.”
Bolero’s popularity as seduction soundtrack can be traced to its appearance in the 1980 film 10, as the backdrop to a scene in which Bo Derek makes love to Dudley Moore.
The entire soundtrack to Dirty Dancing topped the songs apparently most played during sex. The film’s storyline provides a romantic fantasy for many women and the collection of 50s hits culminates with the ideal post-coital outcome, (I’ve Had) The Time of My Life.
Men are more likely to defer to their partners when choosing a soundtrack.  “Much depends on taste,” said Dr Müllensiefen. “ If a woman doesn’t like rock music then it’s best to avoid anything with loud guitars.”
Queen’s Bohemian Rhapsody topped the list of songs least likely to become a bedroom soundtrack. “Anything that is distracting or demands attention, or has elements of the unexpected is not so good for romance,” said the psychology lecturer. “Bohemian Rhapsody has too many different parts and breaks. It breaks the concentration. These unexpected turning points do create strong emotional feelings however which can be positive in other contexts. ”
Hits and misses: The survey results
Top five songs to play during sex…
1. Dirty Dancing Anything from the soundtrack
2. Marvin Gaye Sexual Healing
3. Ravel Boléro
4. Berlin Take My Breath Away
5. Barry White Anything from his collection
…and the bottom five
1. Queen Bohemian Rhapsody
2. Kings of Leon Sex on Fire
3. Robbie Williams Angels
4. Meat Loaf Bat Out of Hell
5. Bon Jovi Livin’ on a Prayer
Top tracks to get ‘in the mood’:
Source:  Spotify study interviewed 2000 people aged between 18 and 91 years old, with an almost equal gender split.

Monday, October 15, 2012

The World And Rare Earth Metals


Rare earth metals are an essential ingredient of many of the consumer products we use every day. China produces 95 percent of the world's rare earths, and as a result, it's important to understand how important they are to our day-to-day lives.
This infographic, courtesy of vouchercloud.com, explains all of the ways we use rare earths:
Rare earths infographic
Is This The End Of The Bulls ?

Barron's
        cover
UH-OH: Check Out The Cover Of The New Barron's

Stock market veterans will tell you that the market tends to do the opposite of what is suggested by a cover story on a widely circulated business news publication.

Famous examples include BusinessWeek's 1971 cover story "The Death of Equities"  and the Financial Times' similar story "The Death of Equities?"  Indeed, both stories were followed by big rallies.

Today, Barron's goes out on a limb again with a bullish cover story titled "Almost There" in reference to the Dow Jones Industrial Average being 6 percent from an all-time high.

Here's a sample of what author Andrew Bary says:

The Dow Industrials are more reasonable now than at the 2007 peak, when the index traded for 16 times the then-current 2008 earnings estimates. That projection turned out to be way too high, as did even more bullish 2009 projections at that time, as the financial crisis and recession savaged earnings.
...
It's bullish that U.S. stocks have done well without much participation by retail investors, who continue to prefer bonds despite historically low rates on Treasuries, mortgage securities, high-grade corporate debt, and junk bonds. The average junk-bond yield of 6% is only three percentage points higher than dividend yields on scores of high-quality, dividend-paying stocks. Junk bonds probably can't go much higher, although they could go a lot lower. If retail investors ever warm to stocks, the Dow could go much higher.

Bary's story includes quotes from Jim Paulsen of Wells capital Management and Blackstone's Byron Wien who both point to a stronger-than-expected U.S. economy.

"With a bevy of reasonably priced stocks, the Dow industrials look poised to set a new record, if not this year then next, and investors can get a nice 2%-plus yield along the way," writes Bary.
Another War Brewing Across The Northern Africa ?

Egypt Is Prepared To Bomb All Of Ethiopia's Nile Dams

nile
      river
In 2010 Egypt discussed taking military action in cooperation with Sudan against Ethiopia to protect their stake in Nile River, according to internal emails from the U.S. private-security firm Stratfor.

Egypt and Sudan currently receive 90 percent of the river’s water under colonial-era accords while upstream countries including Uganda, Rwanda, Tanzania, Kenya and Ethiopia have been clamoring for a new deal during more than a decade of talks.

The Nile flows south to north, making it one of only a handful of rivers in the world to do so and one of only two in Africa.

So, rather than Cairo sitting at the mouth of the massive water supply, it sits dead last—subject to all the whims and fancies of each upstream nation. With several factional governments upstream and the premium on fresh water, diplomacy only goes so far.

A dispatch from May 26, 2010, that cited information from a Egyptian diplomatic source points to the country's frustration:

Sudanese president Umar al-Bashir has agreed to allow the Egyptians to build an a small airbase in Kusti to accommodate Egyptian commandos who might be sent to Ethiopia to destroy water facilities on the Blue Nile... It will be their option if everything else fails

The Blue Nile, which begins in Ethiopia, contributes about 85 percent of the flow that passes through Egypt to the Mediterranean.
Aswam Dam

Egypt's Aswan Dam
Ethiopia became an even bigger threat a month after the Egyptian Revolution toppled President Hosni Mubarak in February 2011 when they announced new details about the construction of the Grand Ethiopian Renaissance Dam.

In April of this year Bradley Hope of the The National reported that construction had begun and that the massive project "could destabilize Egypt in a way that would make the last year of political upheaval look minuscule."

"It would lead to political, economic and social instability,"  Mohamed Nasr El Din Allam, Egypt's minister of water and irrigation until early last year, told Hope. "Millions of people would go hungry. There would be water shortages everywhere. It's huge."

Ethiopia is also currently struggling to fund the dam, which would need foreign aid to be completed. Egypt and Sudan have lobbied foreign donors to refrain from funding the project while they try to find a diplomatic solution to the increasingly dire water situation.

A dispatch from June 1, 2010, that cited a "high-level Egyptian security/intel source, in regular direct contact with Mubarak and [then-intelligence head Omar] Suleiman" said:

The only country that is not cooperating is Ethiopia. We are continuing to talk to them, using the diplomatic approach. Yes, we are discussing military cooperation with Sudan. ... If it comes to a crisis, we will send a jet to bomb the dam and come back in one day, simple as that. Or we can send our special forces in to block/sabotage the dam... Look back to an operation Egypt did in the mid-late 1970s, i think 1976, when Ethiopia was trying to build a large dam. We blew up the equipment while it was traveling by sea to Ethiopia.

A dispatch from July 29, 2010, that cited the Egyptian ambassador to Lebanon said that Egypt and leaders of the soon-to-be independent southern region of Sudan "agreed on developing strategic relations between their two countries," including Egypt training the South Sudan military, and noted that "the horizons for Egyptian-southern Sudanese cooperation are limitless since the south needs everything."

The blog Rebel Economy notes that in 1979 Anwar Sadat, Egypt’s second president, said: “The only matter that could take Egypt to war again is water."
Why Argentina Needs Another Falkland War

Argentina's Debt Picture Looks Increasingly Disastrous

WHEN Argentina proposed a brutal 65% haircut to holders of its defaulted sovereign bonds in a 2005 restructuring, one argument the country’s officials used to justify the offer was that the country could not take on more debt than it could reasonably expect to pay. As painful as the loss might be, the argument went, at least the new bonds the government would issue would be creditworthy.

Just seven years later, that claim now looks harder to support. This month the impoverished northern province of Chaco was unable to pay $263,000 of interest, after Argentina’s Central Bank refused to sell it the necessary dollars. That forced the province to announce it would compensate its creditors in pesos, converting the amount owed at the official exchange rate, which is roughly 25% less than the currency’s value on the black market. It was the first time an arm of the Argentine government had failed to deliver a debt payment in full since the country’s massive 2001 default.

Is Chaco's technical default a canary in the coal mine for Argentine debt in general, or merely an isolated nuisance? In the short run, most bondholders can stay calm. Although the Chaco paper is denominated in dollars, it is governed by Argentine law, which allows borrowers to settle their obligations in local currency. Ever since the Central Bank clamped down on the foreign-exchange market last year in an effort to slow capital flight, its official policy has been that local issuers can only buy dollars to fund infrastructure projects.

But just $191m of provincial debt is governed by local law and thus subject to this requirement. Only two other provinces have Argentine-law bonds outstanding, and one of them, Tucumán, has already reassured the public that it plans to continue meeting its liabilities in dollars. The vast majority of provincial debt--around $7 billion--is subject to British or New York law. So far, those securities have not been affected by Argentina's dollar shortage. The Central Bank has $45 billion in reserves, 14 times what the federal government owes to creditors in 2013.

That said, Argentina's medium-term debt picture looks increasingly cloudy. Including provinces and municipalities, the public sector is in deficit even before counting interest payments. There is virtually no chance of retrenchment under the government of Cristina Fernández de Kirchner, whose popularity depends on ever-greater public spending. The overall public debt stock is still relatively low. But because investors demand prohibitive interest rates to lend to a government seen as unpredictable and anti-markets, Argentina cannot refinance its obligations as they mature, and must pay the full principal out of tax revenues or central-bank reserves. And although the economy is likely to recover modestly next year after flatlining in 2012, it receives little private-sector investment. That means there is little chance it will expand fast enough for the government's revenues to outgrow its liabilities.

The bond markets are well aware of all these warning signs. When the Chaco news broke, the federal government's dollar-denominated bonds promptly sold off by 2%. Savvy investors who recognise Argentina's capacity to pay for now but have doubts about its trajectory might consider buying the country's debt that matures in the near future while selling its longer-dated issues.

Sunday, October 14, 2012

America Getting Ready For A War With China

US prepares first-strike cyber-forces

Defence Secretary Panetta warns of 'cyber Pearl Harbour'

Cyber-attacks could inflict as much damage on the US as the physical attacks on 11 September 2001, the US defence secretary has warned.
Leon Panetta said the country was preparing to take pre-emptive action if a serious cyber-attack was imminent.
He said US intelligence showed "foreign actors" were targeting control systems for utilities, industry and transport.
Advanced tools were being created to subvert key computer control systems and wreak havoc, said Mr Panetta.
"An aggressor nation or extremist group could gain control of critical switches and derail passenger trains, or trains loaded with lethal chemicals," said Mr Panetta in a speech to business leaders held on the USS Intrepid - a former aircraft carrier that is now a museum.
"They could contaminate the water supply in major cities, or shut down the power grid across large parts of the country.
"Such a destructive cyber-terrorist attack could paralyse the nation and create a profound new sense of vulnerability," he said.
Smaller scale cyber-attacks were now commonplace, said Mr Panetta.
Aftermath of
        9/11 attacks Cyber-attacks could inflict as much damage as 9/11. warned the US defense secretary
In recent weeks, many large US firms had suffered attacks that had involved them being bombarded with huge amounts of data, he said. In addition, oil companies in Qatar and Saudi Arabia had been hit by the Shamoon attack, which had tried to replace computer data with gibberish. About 30,000 machines were hit by the Shamoon attack.
The US defence department had developed tools to trace attackers, he added, and a cyber-strike force that could conduct operations via computer networks. And it was now finalising changes to its rules of engagement that would define when it could "confront major threats quickly".
"Potential aggressors should be aware that the United States has the capacity to locate them and hold them accountable for actions that harm America or its interests," he said.
"If we detect an imminent threat of attack that will cause significant physical destruction or kill American citizens, we need to have the option to take action to defend the nation, when directed by the president."

“中国令邻国不 寒而栗”

(华盛顿9日讯)美国共和党总统候选人罗姆尼今天发表外交政 策演说指出,中国近期表现的独断行为造成区域邻国“不寒而栗”,美国必须强硬起来,因为盟国需要更多来自美国的领导和支持。
罗姆尼在弗吉尼亚军事学校首度发表外交政策演说,议题主要抨 击总统奥巴马的中东和回教世界政策,以及美国在中国和俄罗斯威胁下逐渐失去世界领导地位。
罗姆尼指出,在欧洲,俄罗斯总统普丁成为年轻民主国家的阴 影,美国在欧洲的传统友邦则听到美国外交主轴转移;而在亚太区域,中国近期独断的行为也令区域国家不寒而栗。
友邦需要美国领导
他说,如果美国再不出来领导,与美国利益和价值相左的其他国 家将会出头,世界将会更趋黑暗,美国本身和盟友都将在阴影之下
他表示,美国的全球友邦需要更多来自美国的领导,包括更多道 德支持、安全合作、经贸交流、建立自由社会与促进经济繁荣的协助。
华府外交界认为,罗姆尼的外交政策和总统奥巴马的主张有差 异,罗姆尼提出异于民主党的新模式,强调对阿拉伯民主运动采取更积极参与的角色,在面对中国崛起和俄罗斯在欧洲的行动,以及军事 支援区域盟邦,立场要更为强硬。
要逼叙利亚总统下台
罗姆尼也宣称,要迫使叙利亚总统阿萨德下台。
对于叙利亚问题,罗姆尼表示不仅要将叙利亚反对派组织起来, 而且还会向他们提供坦克、战斗机等武器,直到迫使阿萨德下台,而不是像奥巴马这样“袖手旁观”。
此外,罗姆尼宣称一旦自己当选总统,他将毫不犹豫地加大制裁 伊朗的力度,重新在地中海东部和海湾地区常年部署航母,并且会“每年新建15艘海军军舰,包括3艘潜艇”,同时会部署有效反导系 统慎防威胁。
他声称:“在这个问题上,面对普丁我不会有弹性。”
他又强调一旦上台,自己将敦促北约信守承诺,每年防务开支必 须占国内生产总值(GDP)总量的2%。

砸巨资巩固海防 东 南亚增军备防中国

(新加坡9日路透电)多家西方军事智库和研究所纷纷 表示,中国军事崛起使东南亚国家日渐感受威胁,纷纷加强军备,特别是巩固海防。
斯德哥尔摩国际和平研究所数据显示,随着东南亚经济 蓬勃发展,2002年到2011年间国防支出成长42%。采购清单上居多的是战舰、巡逻船、雷达系统与战斗机,以及对阻 止进入海道特别有效的潜舰与反舰导弹。
为了提防中国,经济快速成长的东南亚国家正在增加军 事硬体开支,以保护对商品出口与能源至关重要的航道、港口和海疆。
新加坡军费最高
国际战略研究所说,新加坡2011年国防预算达 96.6亿(美元;下同;约293.5亿令 吉),远高于泰国的55.2亿(约167.7亿令吉)、印尼的54.2亿(约164.7亿令吉)、马来西亚的45.4亿 (约137.9亿令吉)和越南的 26.6亿(约80.8亿令吉)。
南海存在领土主权纷争,加上这个海域富含石油与天然 气的前景推波助澜,越南、马来西亚、菲律宾和汶莱都在设法因应中国越来越强大的海军实力。
对无关主权争议的国家印尼、泰国与新加坡来说,海上 安全也是它们的重要考量。
《珍氏防务评论》亚太编辑哈迪星期一表示:“经济发 展促使它们花更多钱建设国防,借此保护投资、航道与专属经济区。最大的趋势是沿岸与海上监控及巡逻。”
国际战略研究所亚太主管赫克斯利说:“潜舰很重要, 可以在不知不觉中造成(敌人)重大伤害,可以在这个区域的任何地方这样做。”
随着中国实力增强,也因为可用资金越来越多,东南亚 国家采购的武器渐趋精密,而因为该地区国家多靠海,采购重点多放在海上和空中的防御系统。
印尼向韩国购买潜舰,并向中国与美国购买岸际雷达系 统;越南向俄罗斯添购潜舰与战斗喷射机;而世界第5大武器进口国新加坡,也正在添购精密武器。

菲美联合演练剑指中国

  • 美 国两栖攻击舰“好人理查德号” 近日现身苏比克湾, 星期一可见有人员在检查“鹞” 式战斗机。

(马尼拉9日讯)菲律宾和美国两栖登陆联合演练星期二在菲北 部的苏比克湾正式展开,持续至18日结束。
菲律宾媒体强调,演习正值菲律宾与中国因黄岩岛纠纷持续之 时,大有向中国挑起仇恨之意。
约2000名美军官兵和1600名菲军方人员参加此次联合演 练。菲军方称,此次演练将侧重增强菲美两军相互协调以及应对自然灾害的能力。
《菲律宾每日问询者报》星期一报道,美国“好人理查德号”两 栖攻击舰5日抵达菲律宾,该舰由2艘军舰护卫,搭载着2200名美军士兵,并装载两栖战车、轻型装甲车辆、直升机及“鹞”式垂直 起降战斗机。
另外,美国海军“洛杉矶”级攻击型核潜艇“奥林匹亚号”,也 于4日抵达苏比克湾,目前还不清楚是否会参与演习。
Chinese Companies Are Evil Part 4 - Canada 
 Blocks Them Out

加拿大暗示将排除华为参与网络建设


华为
华为已经是具有国际竞争力的企业。
加拿大政府周二(9日)强烈暗示,因为安全风险的考量,将排除中国华为公司参与政府通讯 网络项目建设。
路透社报道,联邦政府已经引入一个国家安全例外条款,以允许其在不违反国际贸易义务的前提下,区别对待某些对政府网络系统 构成潜在风险的企业。
保守党总理哈珀的发言人麦克道格尔在记者会上表示,“政府将会在网络建设商的选择上非常谨慎,项目甚至牵涉到了国家安全例 外条款。”
麦克道格尔的讲话是对美国众议院周一公布的报告所作出的回应。该报告指出,中国公司华为和中兴有可能对美国国家安全构成威 胁,并要求美国企业禁止与这两家公司有贸易来往。
加拿大CBC电视台报道指出,美国众院情报委员会主席罗杰斯也敦促加拿大公司不要与华为进行业务往来。
华为和中兴相继发表声明,反驳了美国众议院情报委员会报告对这两家企业所作的指责,形容报告与事实完全不符,纯属空穴来 风,毫无根据。
华为表示,报告充满传闻,且未能提供明确的信息证明委员会的担忧是合理的,目的是阻挠中国公司进入美国市场、阻碍竞争。
华为在加拿大的业务正处于上升阶段。在2008年,该公司赢得一个一份为该国运营商泰勒斯公司和贝尔公司搭建电信网络的合 同,公司甚至还获得了加拿大安大略省资助的6700万加元(约合6800万美元)的研究资金。
澳大利亚政府不久前命令禁止华为参与构建政府380亿美元的全国宽带网络项目。
安大略省金斯敦皇后大学网络安全专家斯科里克恩表示,他支持美国的建议,不与华为进行贸易往来,同时也表示渥太华也应该重 新审视其同意让华为在加拿大运营的决定。
Chinese Companies Are Evil Part 3 - Spying For Their Government ?

华为和中兴与中国政府关係密切

美国眾议院情报委员会主席、共和党籍的罗杰斯透露,已掌握中国电信巨头华为,涉嫌透过贿赂获得合约的证据,会交给联邦调查局 (FBI)跟进调查。

综合报导,美国眾议院情报委员会,经过一年的调查后发表报告,批评中国两 大通讯设备公司华为和中兴通讯「信不过」,受中国政府操控,威胁国家安全,建议美国公司避免跟他们做生意。

这次报告的调查范围,只是针对大规模数据处理设备,没有涵盖两间公司其他业务。

报告结论认为,华为和中兴 与中国政府关係密切。如果容许两间公司的网络服务及器材进入美国市场,有机会令消费者的资料外泄。

罗杰斯周一在记者会上表示,有使用华为器材的美国公司举报,怀疑电脑系统 暗中將大量资料传送到中国,当中可能涉及机密资料。

曾经是FBI调查员的他又透露,委员会在调查过程中,掌握到华为涉嫌以贿赂手段,在美国获得服务合约的证据,会交给FBI及司法部跟 进。

「如果(调查结果)能让中国政府停止从事网上间谍活动,那就再好不过了。」

思科终止与中兴结盟

报告又建议美国政府的电脑系统,不应该安装这两间公司生產的零件,以免构成泄密 风险;美国政府亦应该禁止这两间企业参与美国的商业併购。

与此同时,全球网络设备製造大厂美国思科公司,周一终止与中兴通讯的结盟关係,主因是中兴通讯被控涉嫌向伊朗业者出售设备。

据彭博社报导,思科发言人恩哈德当天发布电子邮件声明,指思科目前与中兴通讯已经没有结盟关係。

路透社3月间曾经报导,中兴通讯向伊朗一家电信业者出售监控系统,可以侦测传输线、行动与线上通讯。路透社指出,中兴通讯向伊朗出售 的设备包括思科的转换器。

总部位于深圳的中兴通讯代销思科產品,以此作为两家公司结盟的一环。

网络攻击增损失惨重根据周一公布的研究报告,过去3年来,针对美国各机构的网络攻击数量倍增,造成了严重损失。

在惠普公司(HP)赞助下、由资讯研究机构Ponemon Institute进行的这项研究指出,多数攻击涉及恶意程式码、阻断服务、失窃或被挟持的装置等。

报告说,网络攻击次数在3年之间增加了一倍以上,因此造成的財务影响则增加了將近40%。

这项2012年研究显示,上述机构平均每週遭到102次得逞的政击;2011年为每週72次、2010年为50次。

接受调查的被攻击得逞公司,平均损失为890万美元(2732万令吉),比2011年增加6%,比2010年增加38%;资讯失窃占 整体损失44%,生產率丧失占30%。

华为中兴斥毫无根据

美国眾议院情报委员会周一发表报告指,中国通讯企业华为和中兴对美国的国家安全构成威胁,建议美国公司不要与他们有商业往来。

综合报导,华为和中兴已经成为国际市场的重要竞爭者,一直希望消除美国国会议员的怀疑,从而扩大在美国的业务。

华为和中兴当天相继发表声明,反驳美国眾议院情报委员会报告对他们的指责。

华为表示,报告充满传闻,且未能提供明確的信息证明委员会的担忧是合理的,目的是阻挠中国公司进入美国市场、阻碍竞爭。外务副总裁 指,华为是美国政界对中国崛起的忧虑的受害者,报告的批评只是政 治幻觉。

中兴通讯则表示,中兴不会对美国市场造成安全威胁,並且表示美国相关机构和人员的当务之急,是「扩大视野审视整个电信產业供应链」。

中国外交部发言人洪磊则呼吁美国国会摒弃偏见,多做有利于中美经贸关係的事情。

华为是列瑞典爱立信之后的全球第2大路由器、开关和其他电讯设备生產商,中兴名列第5。

针对中资企业「危害国安」的指控,在美国经济衰退期间愈见普遍。

美国舆论经常称,中国政府指使骇客刺探美国政府和企业机密。至于华为等中国企业进军美国,则是为了获取美国先进技术,用于中国军队发 展,中国企业会有意或无意向美国提供「有陷阱的技术」,在其设备或软件留 下可侵入美国电讯系统的「后门」。

华为美国上市恐梦灭

虽然,华为已多次否认与解放军有连繫,但始终仍受西方质疑。澳洲早前又以 华为创办人任正非有解放军背景,禁止华为参与一项全国性宽频网络的投標。

西方的施压,令中国通讯企业「走出去」障碍重重。这次美国眾议院的报告,更隨时令华为在美国上市梦碎。

市场分析认为,华为上市並非为了融资(该公司截至去年底持有现金572亿元人民幣,约279亿令吉),而是为了增加公司透明度,提高 从美国等地市场获得大型合约的机会,但华为要通过美国监管机构的上市审批绝非易事。
Chinese Companies Are Evil Part 2 - Cisco Stops Playing

思科宣布终止与中兴销售合作关系




思科宣布终止与中兴销售合作关系低价、高效、优质的服务包帮助中兴一步步赢得市场,但也导致中兴毛利率长期处于低 水平。沈井韦/CFP
就在中国两大通讯企业华为与中兴在美国政坛双双遭到指控的同时,全球行业巨 头思科(Cisco Systems, Inc.)10月9日宣布,终止与中兴通讯合作七年的销售合作伙伴关系。
思科称其决定是基于独 立调查后做出的。对外,思科称其在数月调查后认为,中兴将思科与其他美国公司的电脑设备等产品,售往正在受到制裁的伊朗。
“思科目前和中兴没有合作关系。”思科集团发言人恩哈特(John Earnhardt)对财新记者表示。这两家公司的合作协议包括中兴帮助思科销售其产品。不过,尽管两家公司有着较长的合作历史,合作关系自2010年以 来出现淡化。
思科集团首席执行官钱伯斯(John Chambers)此前表示,思科决不允许任何合作伙伴将思科产品运往诸如伊朗等正受制裁的国家。“这种情况一旦被发现,思科将坚决介入处理。”
对于思科的这一举动,中兴发言人表示,“中兴高度关注此事,并正与思科进行 沟通。同时,中兴正在积极与美国政府对伊朗的调查展开合作”“中兴相信此事“终会妥善解决”。
中兴通讯负责北美与欧洲事务的高级副总裁朱进云上月在国会听证会上,否认了 中兴向伊朗政府出售思科设备。
朱进云表示,中兴向来在伊朗进行常规商业运作。“同时,中兴正在逐渐减小其 目前在伊朗的业务范围,并不会在该国开展新业务。”朱进云说。
在大选之年,奥巴马政府受到共和党与以色列对伊朗动武的压力与日俱增。为了 证明制裁有效,奥巴马已在今年年内数次加大对伊朗的制裁力度,包括切断所有与伊朗银行有关的交易。
今年3月,路透社报道称中兴正在向伊朗出售思科的产品。获悉后,思科公司连 同美国商务部、 国会委员会以及联邦调查局(FBI)对此事展开调查。报道称FBI已对此指控展开刑事调查。
不过令中兴意想不到的是,其在美国德州的首席法律顾问雅布伦(Ashley Kyle Yablon)今年5月向FBI透露,中兴曾试图通过销 毁文件等方式掩盖其在伊朗的销售行为。
10月8日,美国众议院情报委员会指控华为与中兴对美国国家安全构成威胁, 并进一步认定华为涉嫌通过贿赂而获得美国商业合同。
华为今年上半年的营业利润同比下降22%。中兴通讯二季度的净利润较上年同期下滑85%,至9400万元;上半年,中兴通讯的净利润比 去年同期下跌68%,至2.45亿元。
KCPO - A Technical Rebound Should Be Continued - 10/15/2012

 

 I bought the market when price went above the lower band with Stochastic crossing above 20's. The trade was working until Friday's intraday panicky retracement will hit the prior day low and closed off the trade somehow prematurely. I would re-enter a long position when price goesabove Friday's high. The market is staging a technical rebound after the strong selloff last month. Since both the Stochastic and MACD have turned positive and price above the lower band, I would stay with the bull for the time being. The flat ADX above DMI is telling us the bears have lost their claws, at least for now.

 

 The weekly chart MACD and DMI are still negative with the ADX rising strongly . Though the Stochastic is making a turnaround. But with price far from the lower band, I think the bears are still holding the court. But as I mentioned here last week, sometime when prices get away too far from the bands, they tend to want to get back near to them. So a mild technical rebound to do just that should be expected.

This time commodities do not seem to react to the QE3 as they did the last 2 times. Could it be there is something more horrendous behind all this ?