Action coups de poing magnifique Contre l'Occupation illégale des territoires palestiniens

 26/03/2010

 Shame, Shame on H&M

 Je suppose que cette video va être censurée dans tres peu de temps, donc vite recopiez la video!

JPMorgan, Lehman, UBS Named as Conspirators in Muni Bid-Rigging

By William Selway and Martin Z. Braun

source : http://www.bloomberg.com/apps/news?pid=20601087&sid=anW3hAG0Zw5k&pos=1

March 26 (Bloomberg) -- JPMorgan Chase & Co., Lehman Brothers Holdings Inc. and UBS AG were among more than a dozen Wall Street firms involved in a conspiracy to pay below-market interest rates to U.S. state and local governments on investments, according to documents filed in a U.S. Justice Department criminal antitrust case.

A government list of previously unidentified “co- conspirators” contains more than two dozen bankers at firms also including Bank of America Corp., Bear Stearns Cos., Societe Generale, two of General Electric Co.’s financial businesses and Salomon Smith Barney, the former unit of Citigroup Inc., according to documents filed in U.S. District Court in Manhattan on March 24. The papers were filed by attorneys for a former employee of CDR Financial Products Inc., an advisory firm indicted in October. The attorneys, as part of their legal filing, identified the roster as being provided by the government. The document is labeled “list of co-conspirators.”

None of the firms or individuals named on the list has been charged with wrongdoing. The court records mark the first time these companies have been identified as co-conspirators. They provide the broadest look yet at alleged collusion in the $2.8 trillion municipal securities market that the government says delivered profits to Wall Street at taxpayers’ expense.

‘Sufficient Evidence’

“If the government is saying they are co-conspirators, the government believes they have sufficient evidence that they can show they were part of the conspiracy,” said Richard Donovan, a partner at New York-based law firm Kelley Drye & Warren LLP and co-chair of its antitrust practice. Donovan isn’t involved in the case.

The government’s case centers on investments known as guaranteed investment contracts that cities, states and school districts buy with the money they receive through municipal bond sales. Some $400 billion of municipal bonds are issued each year, and localities use the contracts to earn a return on some of the money until they need it for construction or other projects.

The Internal Revenue Service sometimes collects earnings on those investments and requires that they be awarded by competitive bidding to ensure that governments receive a fair return. The government charges that CDR ran sham auctions that allowed the banks to pay below-market interest rates to local governments.

CDR, a Los Angeles-based local-government adviser, was indicted in October along with David Rubin, Zevi Wolmark and Evan Zarefsky, three current or former executives. The company and the three men have denied wrongdoing. Since last month, three former CDR employees who weren’t charged in the initial indictment have pleaded guilty and agreed to cooperate with the Justice Department.

Company Officials

Brian Marchiony, a spokesman for JPMorgan in New York; Doug Morris, a spokesman for UBS in New York; and Danielle Romero- Apsilos, a spokeswoman for Citigroup in New York, all declined to comment. A Societe Generale spokesman, Jim Galvin; Lehman spokeswoman Kimberly MacLeod, and GE Capital spokesman Ned Reynolds in Stamford, Connecticut, also declined to comment. Bank of America spokeswoman Shirley Norton in San Francisco declined to comment. Bear Stearns was bought by JPMorgan in 2008, the same year Lehman Brothers collapsed.

Laura Sweeney, a Justice Department spokeswoman in Washington, declined to comment.

Lawyers’ Filing

In a court filing yesterday, defense lawyers said they “inadvertently” included the names of individual and company co-conspirators in a motion asking the court to compel the government to provide more specific evidence of the alleged misconduct. They asked the court to strike the entire exhibit in which the list appears. U.S. District Judge Victor Marrero granted the request.

The government’s probe became public in 2006 when federal investigators raided CDR and two competitors and issued subpoenas to more than a dozen firms. The “co-conspirators” on the list released in court this week also included Wachovia Corp. Lindsay Adrian, a spokeswoman for San Francisco-based Wells Fargo & Co., which acquired Wachovia, had no immediate comment.

The indictments released in October didn’t identify any of the sellers of the investment contracts involved in the alleged conspiracy. They were identified only as Provider A and Provider B. They paid kickbacks to CDR after winning investment deals brokered by the firm, according to the indictments.

The firms did this by paying sham fees tied to financial transactions entered into with other companies, prosecutors said. Kickbacks were paid from 2001 to 2005, ranging from $4,500 to $475,000 each, according to the Justice Department.

Investment Contracts

According to the list contained in the court filing this week, the investment contracts involved were created by units of GE and divisions of Financial Security Assurance Holdings Ltd., a bond insurer formerly part of Brussels-based lender Dexia SA.

The kickbacks were paid out of fees generated by transactions entered into with two financial institutions that weren’t identified in the October court filing. The March 24 list filed by the defense named the two firms as UBS and Royal Bank of Canada.

Dexia completed the sale of FSA’s bond-insurance business in July to Assured Guaranty Ltd. of Hamilton, Bermuda, while retaining its outstanding investment contracts. FSA, based in New York, was the biggest insurer of U.S. municipal bonds in 2007 and 2008.

Telephone messages left at Dexia’s media-relations offices in Paris and Brussels after business hours weren’t immediately returned.

“We have no comment,” said Betsy Castenir, a spokeswoman for Assured Guaranty in New York, in an e-mail response. “Dexia has responsibility for the liabilities of the Financial Products business.”

Gillian McArdle, a spokeswoman for Royal Bank of Canada in New York, didn’t return a phone message seeking comment.

The case is U.S. v. Rubin/Chambers, Dunhill Insurance Services Inc., 09-CR-01058, U.S. District Court, Southern District of New York (Manhattan).

To contact the reporters on this story: William Selway in San Francisco at wselway@bloomberg.net; Martin Z. Braun in New York at mbraun6@bloomberg.net
Last Updated: March 26, 2010 00:01 EDT

**************a priori je ne peux pas mettre en relief ce texte, sinon ca ferme mon navigateur, il bug**************

Propagande pour IDIOTS Crédules : "Earth Hour": une heure dans l'obscurité pour la planète.

source : http://www.romandie.com/ats/news/100326081018.53ie0y8y.asp

screen si l'adresse n'est plus valable :connerie_hypnotique.jpg

SYDNEY - Des centaines d'édifices prestigieux, de la Tour Eiffel à la Cité interdite, seront plongés samedi dans le noir pour l'opération "Une heure pour la planète" (Earth Hour) destinée à promouvoir la lutte contre le dérèglement climatique.

Cette quatrième édition, trois mois après l'échec du sommet sur le climat de Copenhague, promet d'être la plus suivie avec 125 pays participants contre 88 l'an dernier, selon les organisateurs.

"L'accueil fait à Earth Hour a été immense. Le taux de réponses est bien supérieur à l'an dernier", s'est félicité le fondateur du mouvement, Andy Ridley. "L'opération Earh Hour est censée dépasser les frontières géographiques et économiques", a-t-il ajouté.

Le mouvement est né à Sydney en 2007 lorsque 2,2 millions de personnes avaient fait le noir pendant 60 minutes afin de sensibiliser l'opinion à la consommation excessive d'électricité et à la pollution au dioxyde de carbone.

Cette opération, organisée à l'initiative du Fonds mondial pour la nature (WWF), a pris une dimension mondiale en 2008.

Samedi, plus de 1.200 bâtiments à travers le monde ont prévu d'éteindre leurs éclairages à 20h30 locales.

Des groupes multinationaux comme Google, Coca Cola, Hilton, McDonalds, Canon, HSBC et IKEA se sont associés à l'évènement.

Privilège du décalage horaire, Sydney aura les honneurs du premier "black out" avec l'extinction de l'Opéra. D'autres monuments prestigieux suivront: les Pyramides et le Sphinx en Egypte, la Fontaine de Trevi et la Tour de Pise en Italie ou encore la Tour Eiffel à Paris.

A Pékin, la Cité interdite et l'emblématique "Nid d'oiseau" - stade des jeux Olympiques de Pékin en 2008 - seront également plongés dans l'obscurité. Ces extinctions revêtiront un aspect particulièrement symbolique dans ce pays à la fulgurante croissance économique mais qui s'est aussi arrogé le titre de plus gros pollueur de la planète.

Au Japon, le Mémorial de la paix d'Hiroshima participera à l'opération tandis que les groupes Sony, Sharp et Asahi couperont leurs éclairages à Tokyo.

Enfin à Dubai, Burj Khalifa, la tour la plus haute du monde culminant à 828m, sera également dans le noir.

En décembre, la conférence de Copenhague, sous l'égide de l'ONU, avait débouché sur un accord a minima conclu par moins de trente pays sur les 192 présents.

L'accord fixe comme objectif de limiter à deux degrés la hausse moyenne de la température de la planète mais reste très évasif sur les moyens d'y parvenir, ne donnant aucun objectif chiffré à court terme (2020) ou moyen terme (2050).

Les grands pays en développement, dont la Chine et l'Inde, s'arc-boutent contre toute tentative de leur faire accepter des contraintes. Ils considèrent en outre que les objectifs de réduction annoncés par les pays industrialisés sont encore loin du compte.

(©AFP / 26 mars 2010 09h10)

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Quand la BETISE HUMAINE n'a plus de limite.

Quand les médias influence votre "réflexion" (si tant est qu'il y ait eu une réflexion, quand je vois l'idiotie devenir une vérité...)

Quand Ils vous font croire qu'éteindre pour une heure "préserve le changement climatique"... sans se borner, ils ne font qu'économiser 1h d'électricité!

Un jour ils vous diront: essayez de ne pas respirer pendant 1 minute, ça sauvegarde  la terre du CO2 ?! Est ce que les humains sont aussi cons pour suivre aussi bêtement ? Vous jeterez vous par la fenêtre pour sauvegarder la terre ?

La terre vous survivra, elle survivra à l'homme!

Mais les hommes ne survivront pas à leur propre connerie, ça c'est une certitude!

Ecologie du fascisme vert: la débilité a un nom

Nervyoko.

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German Shipping Faces Wave of Financing Problems

By Beat Balzli and Wolfgang Reuter

source: http://www.spiegel.de/international/business/0,1518,685207,00.html 

As recently as 2008, container ships were transporting record amounts of products across the world's oceans. Now, many German shipping companies are struggling to pay for the vessels they ordered during the boom. Their banks could be in trouble, too.

Major shipowner Bernd Kortüm and his wife were enjoying fresh snow in the Austrian ski resort of Lech last week. "The crisis is almost over," Kortüm, one of Hamburg's richest residents, said calmly, noting that things are beginning to look up for his industry. But the owner of a fleet of 102 container ships was exaggerating mightily.

Less than a year ago, Kortüm and his company, Norddeutsche Vermögen, were on the brink of collapse. Hamburg-based commercial lender HSH Nordbank had previously set aside risk reserves of close to €250 million ($338 million) to cover a credit line in the billions. "Because of the inadequate economic circumstances," the auditors of KPGM wrote, there were "acute risks of default." The lender was even threatening an extraordinary termination of loan agreements.

It was only last November that Körtum was able to put together a financing agreement with HSH. And it only came about due to the shipowner's willingness to make a substantial contribution from his private fortune. He is unwilling to reveal how much he is paying, but he does admit that there are problems. "The recently concluded charter rates are not covering total costs yet," says Kortüm, adding that eight of his ships are "without revenue."

Things are hardly looking any better for the rest of the German shipping industry. Despite a slight recovery in the freight market, many shipowners and ship funds face critical questions about their financial survival.

The crisis is also eating its way into the foundations of German banks. Institutions like HSH Nordbank, Commerzbank, Nord/LB, state-owned bank KfW's subsidiary Ipex and DVD Bank are the world's biggest ship financiers, with close to €100 billion in ship loans on their books.

At Anchor Worldwide

For many of the borrowers, it has become a question of survival, and the subject of profits hardly comes up at all anymore. Depending on the type of ship, charter rates are up to 80 percent lower than before the crisis, when they were at their highest point. In fact, writes Hamburg shipbroker Harper Petersen & Co., charter rates have arrived at "a painfully low level, and most shipowners are still losing money." For lack of contracts, almost 500 ships are currently at anchor in ports worldwide.

In the boom years, intoxicated with their success, German shipowners ordered $60 billion worth of new ships. Banks were expected to provide 70 percent of the financing, while shipowners planned to drum up the rest of the money from German small investors through so-called "ship funds" set up by brokerage firms like HCI, MPC and Lloyd. But now investors are balking. The supposedly safe ship funds, which had promised high returns subject to minimal tax rates, are suddenly requiring additional investments to cover their losses.

With the first funds already capitulating, shipowners can no longer depend on selling shares in new ship funds to finance their current orders.

Although brokerage firms and shipowners guarantee the equity shortfall for which the banks are now providing interim financing, they are unable to come up with the cash. "In theory, many are bankrupt," says Hamburg industry expert Jürgen Dobert. "But the banks are deferring debt service and are not enforcing their claims because they know that an entire house of cards could collapse if they did."

In the worst case, shipowners would have to sell ships from their fleets. "This would lead to new market distortions that would affect shipowners, shipyards and banks," one banker warns. Fire sales would depress already low ship prices even further, thereby reducing the value of the banks' collateral.

Not Even Discussed

Where, then, is the money supposed to come from? Not from the government, at any rate. Last fall, two major Hamburg shipowners, Claus-Peter Offen and Peter Döhle, tried in vain to obtain funds from the €115 billion German Economic Fund, which was passed in 2009 to help private companies weather the economic storm. The government's €1.2-billion loan guarantee for the Hapag Lloyd shipping line remains an exception.

The German government's negative stance toward the shipping industry hasn't changed. At a crisis meeting in the Economics Ministry last Thursday evening, the industry's request for a €10 billion loan guarantee was not even brought up.

Instead, the roughly 50 industry representatives agreed to a 13-point plan with top government officials and Hans-Joachim Otto, the federal government's maritime coordinator. So far, the plan primarily calls for a number of studies. The goal is to examine whether the federal government can move up public shipbuilding orders, partly in connection with development aid, such as those for ferries in Africa. In addition, the industry wants to determine whether the government-owned KfW bank can relax the requirements for obtaining funding from the German Economic Fund.

This will hardly be enough. Some 1,000 ships ordered by German shipowners have not yet been delivered. They include about 300 giant container ships, with an estimated value of about €30 billion.

The maritime business is having a significant impact on bank balance sheets. The division of government-supported Commerzbank that is partly responsible for ship financing lost close to €850 million in 2009.

Succumbed to the Temptations

Ailing lender HSH Nordbank, the world's largest shipping industry financier, doubled its reserves to €1 billion for the 2009 fiscal year. Ship loans worth about €35 billion are languishing on the books of the Hamburg-based lender. An auditor's report on HSH Nordbank reveals how threatening many a ship loan was for the bank -- and, in some cases, still is.

The auditors were particularly interested in the Kortüm case. With a credit line of €2 billion at the end of 2008, the shipowner is one of the bank's biggest customers. He had also succumbed to the temptations of the boom years. His floating cash machines were such tremendous moneymakers that he embarked on a veritable ordering frenzy shortly before the crisis erupted.

Kortüm couldn't have picked a worse time to expand. He and his wife were on a sailboat headed for Australia on Sept. 15, 2008, the day US investment bank Lehman Brothers went under. The volume of freight orders for ships declined sharply, and the bankers at HSH became alarmed.

By now, all of Kortüm's new ships have charter agreements. But his company, Norddeutsche Vermögen, will be forced to acquire two new ships without the help of outside investors due to lack of interest in shipping funds. Indeed, leading ship fund businesses have their backs to the wall. In February, HCI was able to negotiate a moratorium with its creditor banks, deferring payments until Sept. 2013, in a move that saved them from bankruptcy. Other brokerage firms are still in talks.

Cases like Kortüm's are the rule rather than the exception at HSH Nordbank. Another example is the Danaos Group, most of which is owned by Greek shipowner John Coustas. Until recently, the 53-year-old was counted among the world's richest men. But according to an audit report by KPMG, the group owed Hamburg banks more than half a billion euros by the end of 2008. In their report, the auditors wrote that the Coustas fleet was expected to include "30 new ships with delivery dates through 2011."

Acute Risks

In 2008, HSH lent more than €400 million to Dryships Inc., a ship holding company, which even includes two mobile drilling barges in its fleet. It is now unclear whether the loans will be repaid in full. The financial markets, at any rate, have largely lost confidence in the company, whose stock price has declined sharply, from more than $80 to about $6 a share.

HSH is unwilling to provide any information about individual borrowers. But bank executives are making a deliberate effort to appear unperturbed. No one at HSH is willing to admit that there are acute risks, not to mention a threat to the bank's very existence. CEO Dirk Jens Nonnenmacher is already promising profits for 2011.


"The ships have financing periods of 13 years, but lifespans of 25 years," says HSH division manager Harald Kuznik, who also attended last week's crisis meeting in Berlin. In other words, he adds, shipowners can defer debt repayment during the crisis "without losing money in the end." In addition, he says, the major shipping lines, such as Hapag Lloyd, are "operationally out of the woods."

Industry expert Dobert, however, sees all of this as "nothing but cheap propaganda" since the future development of the economy is still up in the air. "If consumer spending doesn't pick up and remain strong," he warns, "the shipping lines won't have much to do soon."

Translated from the German by Christopher Sultan

Most Japanese Airports in Debt, Face Closure 

By Peter Valk
Epoch Times Staff
Created: Mar 22, 2010
Last Updated: Mar 22, 2010

source: http://www.theepochtimes.com/n2/content/view/31869/

The majority of Japanese airports are facing serious financial problems and may be forced to close unless they attract more passengers, according to a Japanese Ministry of Transport survey, reports the Japan Times.

The survey indicates that 72 of the 98 Japanese airports have low viability. One of the main reasons is that huge amounts of money have been invested in the construction of new airports while both the actual and estimated amount of passengers turns out to be disproportionately small.

A large part of the construction costs were covered by landing fees and fuel tax subsidies, which in turn were paid by airline companies. The survey concluded that the underachieving airports should look to the more successful ones, and a review of the current estimation methods is encouraged.