Peaceful Burma (ျငိမ္းခ်မ္းျမန္မာ)平和なビルマ

Peaceful Burma (ျငိမ္းခ်မ္းျမန္မာ)平和なビルマ

TO PEOPLE OF JAPAN



JAPAN YOU ARE NOT ALONE



GANBARE JAPAN



WE ARE WITH YOU



ဗိုလ္ခ်ဳပ္ေျပာတဲ့ညီညြတ္ေရး


“ညီၫြတ္ေရးဆုိတာ ဘာလဲ နားလည္ဖုိ႔လုိတယ္။ ဒီေတာ့ကာ ဒီအပုိဒ္ ဒီ၀ါက်မွာ ညီၫြတ္ေရးဆုိတဲ့အေၾကာင္းကုိ သ႐ုပ္ေဖာ္ျပ ထားတယ္။ တူညီေသာအက်ဳိး၊ တူညီေသာအလုပ္၊ တူညီေသာ ရည္ရြယ္ခ်က္ရွိရမယ္။ က်ေနာ္တုိ႔ ညီၫြတ္ေရးဆုိတာ ဘာအတြက္ ညီၫြတ္ရမွာလဲ။ ဘယ္လုိရည္ရြယ္ခ်က္နဲ႔ ညီၫြတ္ရမွာလဲ။ ရည္ရြယ္ခ်က္ဆုိတာ ရွိရမယ္။

“မတရားမႈတခုမွာ သင္ဟာ ၾကားေနတယ္ဆုိရင္… သင္ဟာ ဖိႏွိပ္သူဘက္က လုိက္ဖုိ႔ ေရြးခ်ယ္လုိက္တာနဲ႔ အတူတူဘဲ”

“If you are neutral in a situation of injustice, you have chosen to side with the oppressor.”
ေတာင္အာဖရိကက ႏိုဘယ္လ္ဆုရွင္ ဘုန္းေတာ္ၾကီး ဒက္စ္မြန္တူးတူး

THANK YOU MR. SECRETARY GENERAL

Ban’s visit may not have achieved any visible outcome, but the people of Burma will remember what he promised: "I have come to show the unequivocal shared commitment of the United Nations to the people of Myanmar. I am here today to say: Myanmar – you are not alone."

QUOTES BY UN SECRETARY GENERAL

Without participation of Aung San Suu Kyi, without her being able to campaign freely, and without her NLD party [being able] to establish party offices all throughout the provinces, this [2010] election may not be regarded as credible and legitimate. ­
United Nations Secretary General Ban Ki-moon

Where there's political will, there is a way

政治的な意思がある一方、方法がある
စစ္မွန္တဲ့ခိုင္မာတဲ့နိုင္ငံေရးခံယူခ်က္ရိွရင္ႀကိဳးစားမႈရိွရင္ နိုင္ငံေရးအေျဖ
ထြက္ရပ္လမ္းဟာေသခ်ာေပါက္ရိွတယ္
Burmese Translation-Phone Hlaing-fwubc

Wednesday, September 17, 2008

World Economic Outlook According to Rogoff

September 15, 2008

by Emilio Lizardo | September 15, 2008 at 06:49 pm | 42 views | add comment

by AlexSGabor
Over the past several weeks we have seen central banks such as the Fed taking on more and more debt as major commercial institutions have come to them in search of life support. What is the outlook for these central banks, the bedrock on which our international economy rests ?

Here is what Kenneth Rogoff, presently Thomas D. Cabot Professor of Public Policy at Harvard, has to say about it.


Do Central Banks Have an Exit Strategy?





A year into the global financial crisis, several key central banks remain extraordinarily exposed to their countries’ shaky private financial sectors. So far, the strategy of maintaining banking systems on feeding tubes of taxpayer-guaranteed short-term credit has made sense. But eventually central banks must pull the plug. Otherwise they will end up in intensive care themselves as credit losses overwhelm their balance sheets.

The idea that the world’s largest economies are merely facing a short-term panic looks increasingly [unrealistic]. Instead, it is becoming apparent that, after a period of epic profits and growth, the financial industry now needs to undergo a period of consolidation and pruning. Weak banks must be allowed to fail or merge (with ordinary depositors being paid off by government insurance funds), so that strong banks can emerge with renewed vigor.

The United States Federal Reserve, the European Central Bank, and the Bank of England are particularly exposed. Collectively, they have extended hundreds of billions of dollars in short-term loans to both traditional banks and complex, unregulated “investment banks.” Many other central banks are nervously watching the situation, well aware that they may soon find themselves in the same position as the global economy continues to soften and default rates on all manner of debt continue to rise.

If central banks are faced with a massive hit to their balance sheets, it will not necessarily be the end of the world. It has happened before – for example, during the 1990’s financial crises. But history suggests that fixing a central bank’s balance sheet is never pleasant. Faced with credit losses, a central bank can either dig its way out through inflation or await recapitalization by taxpayers. Both solutions are extremely traumatic.


Source: brookings.edu


Kenneth Rogoff


[Currently Thomas D. Cabot Professor of Public Policy at Harvard, prior to which he] served as Economic Counsellor and Director, Research Department of the International Monetary Fund from August 2001 to September 2003. He was previously a Professor in the Department of Economics at Harvard University and, before that, the Charles and Marie Robertson Professor of International Affairs at Princeton University. Early in his career, Rogoff served as an economist at the International Monetary Fund and also at the Board of Governors of the Federal Reserve System. He is an elected member of the American Academy of Arts and Science as well as the Econometric Society, and a former Guggenheim Fellow. Mr Rogoff received a B.A. from Yale University summa cum laude in 1975, and a Ph.D. in Economics from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology in 1980.

Mr. Rogoff has published extensively on policy issues in international finance, including exchange rates, international debt issues, and international monetary policy. Together with Maurice Obstfeld, he is co-author of the 1996 graduate text/treatise Foundations of International Macroeconomics.

Mr. Rogoff was awarded the life title of international grandmaster of chess by the World Chess Federation (FIDE) in 1978.


Source: imf.org

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What Lehman will mean for the world ,Al Jazeera

Business


World markets have responded poorly to a day of tumultuous financial news [AFP]


World stock markets have plummeted after Lehman Brothers, the US' largest investment bank, filed for bankruptcy.

A surprise takeover of Lehman competitor Merrill Lynch and reports of American International Group (AIG) - one of the world's largest insurance companies - seeking a $40bn bridging loan, have only added to what's being called an "economic avalanche".

Al Jazeera spoke to a number of financial analysts to find out what it all means.




Max Keiser, prediction markets analyst in Paris

"There's a decoupling in the wind, America is essentially finished as a global economic power.

"The US dollar is now finished as the world's reserve currency and we are going to see now some other country rise up and take its place, most probably China."



"This is entirely predictable … [in] the neo-liberal model, which means that credit is available for almost free.

"Suddenly last summer, credit was unavailable, and then banks who need credit to live start to tumble.

"So this is gaining pace [and] there's going to be no credit for banks because you're talking about $700 trillion worth of debt in the global economy.

"The entire GDP [Gross Domestic Product] of the world is something like $60 trillion, so this has a long way to go as you deflate all of this debt back to something more sustainable.

"It's not a doomsday scenario if you're in a developing country and you've got stuff like oil in the Middle East or you've got huge savings, like they do in China.

"It is only a doomsday scenario for America and Britain that have been living on borrowed money for generations.

"It's a happy day for people who have savings, who have money, who have cash, who have stuff, who have oil, who have resources.


Allister Heath, editor of London's City A.M. financial newspaper

"Everybody in the West, [or] at least a lot of people, have pensions and these pensions invest in the stock market, and a lot of the shares are actually the shares of banks.

"And when bank shares get hammered, people's pensions get hammered, so everybody loses.

"When big banks like Lehman go under, you know the housing market is going to suffer again, house prices are going to fall in American and Britain, in Europe and so on.

"That's going to again hit millions of ordinary people, and of course you have got thousands of job losses."



Andrew Critchlow, managing editor for Dow Jones Middle East in Dubai

"I think the impact is going to be quite profound.

"I think this is a defining moment for world economies, it's a defining moment for the United States, it's a defining moment for all of us that will remember [this] for the rest of our lives.

"People who were around in the 1920s, at the time of the Great Depression - that experience stuck with them for an awful long time.

"And I think that the economic events that we're currently seeing in the world at the moment - they can only be described in similar terms.

"Certainly in my career, I've seen nothing that compares to this and it's difficult to quantify at this stage where all of this is going to lead.

"A lot of the bad news we've seen is just really referring to banks - a lot of these household names in US banking that are now technically going out of business.

"I think the worrying thing is when this hits the real economy, when this hits people on the streets who are going to have less money in their pockets, who are going to be put out of work, who potentially are going to be put out of their homes.

A 'falling knife'

"It's difficult to see how financial markets can stabilise at this point. I think that from an investor's view, you don't want to be caught catching a falling knife.

"Certainly talking to trader in the Gulf, Gulf markets have been very badly affected today.

"The sentiment is, we're not at the bottom of the market here, and as they say, this hasn't hit real economies yet - it hasn't hit the retail sector fully yet, it hasn't hit the spending power of the man on the street yet.

"There are lots of scary potential problems that could come out of the woodwork yet to haunt us here."



James Galbraith, economist and professor at the University of Texas at Austin

"There is a threat - it lies in these vast markets for credit derivates, credit defaults, swaps, mortgage backed securities and derivitives from them, which are not liquid at the moment, which are impossible to value and which result from the breakdown of prudent regulation and prudent financial practice over the past 30 years, but particularly in the last decade.

"The risk is one of a disorderly market, basically.

"It is very easy to destroy the trust on which a liquid financial market depends, rather hard to rebuild that trust afterwards.

"But I do think this was a revolution which has now run its course. It's a revolution which is now eating its children and a very big change in mindset has to be underway.

"I would much prefer to believe that we will see a change in US policy that will tend to restore the central role of a reliable, liquid and relatively stable US financial market in the world system.

"Whether we can achieve that from the current starting point, given the damage that's already been done, is very much an open question, but that will have to be the policy challenge going forward."


Source: Al Jazeera


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Lehman Brothers collapse sends shockwave round world

From The TimesSeptember 16, 2008


The 5,000 Lehman staff in Britain were clearing their desks in the country’s biggest single loss of jobs for more than three years

Gary Duncan, Economics Editor

Fears of a global financial meltdown grew yesterday as the world’s biggest bankruptcy plunged markets into turmoil.

Investors were left reeling as the abrupt demise of the Lehman Brothers investment bank sparked the biggest shake-up on Wall Street in decades.



Another of US capitalism’s biggest institutions, Merrill Lynch, is to be swallowed by Bank of America in a $50 billion takeover to save it from collapse.


Shares fell as fear spread through the financial system. Central banks unveiled urgent measures amid concerns that the world economy was entering a dangerous new phase. The Bank of England injected £5 billion of emergency lending into money markets.

The 5,000 Lehman staff in Britain were clearing their desks yesterday in the country’s biggest single loss of jobs since the collapse of Rover in 2005. The majority of the bank’s 26,000 staff around the world are expected to lose their jobs.

Leading shares on both sides of the Atlantic took a battering. More than £50 billion was wiped off London’s bluechip shares as the FTSE 100 index tumbled by 212.5 points, or more than 4 per cent. It was the darkest day for the stock market since January 21, when it fell 5.5 per cent.

Investors were fretting over the financial health of banks that had lent Lehman money – and the fear that more big institutions would be wiped out. “It’s clear that we are one step away from a financial meltdown,” Nouriel Roubini, a leading international economist, said.

London’s losses were stemmed as Bank of America’s rescue bid for Merrill Lynch helped to limit yesterday morning’s sell-off on Wall Street. When London closed, the benchmark Dow Jones industrial average was down 300 points, or 2.6 per cent. Sentiment was also bolstered by steep falls in oil prices, which dropped by more than $5 a barrel to $96, closing under $100 for the first time in six months and raising hopes that cheaper fuel would ease economic stresses on Western nations.

However, by close of trading the Dow had fallen by more than 500 points – its biggest one-day drop since the reopening after the September 11 attacks – as concerns mounted over the world’s largest insurer. Shares in American International Group (AIG), which sponsors Manchester United, fell by 45 per cent after it made an unprecedented approach to the US Federal Reserve for $40 billion in emergency funding.

Last night the Fed asked Goldman Sachs and J P Morgan Chase, two of Wall Street’s remaining big banks, to head a $75 billion emergency package to keep AIG afloat.

As central banks battled to stabilise the system, the Fed eased its rules for emergency lending further. It announced that it would accept company shares in return for crisis loans for the first time. In Frankfurt, the European Central Bank injected €30 billion in emergency funds into eurozone markets.

A group of ten global banks also attempted to foster calm, announcing a $70 billion pool of funds, with any one of them able to tap a third of that should they hit difficulty.

The collapse of Lehman came after the US Treasury refused to bail out the embattled 158-year-old bank, a crucial shift after its support in March for a Wall Street rescue of the failing Bear Stearns.

Lehman was felled by the weight of about $60 billion in toxic bad debts. It went under holding assets of $639 billion against debts of $613 billion, making it the biggest corporate bankruptcy since WorldCom collapsed in 2002.

President Bush, seeking to assuage fears yesterday, conceded that “in the short run adjustments in the financial markets can be painful”. However, he added: “In the long run, I’m confident that our capital markets are flexible and resilient, and can deal with these adjustments.”

Henry Paulson, the US Treasury Secretary, insisted last night that the American banking system remained “safe and sound”. Washington was committed, he said, to minimising the impact of what he admitted were the “painful” economic shifts of the present crisis.


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TAINTED MILK: China prepares for the worst

2008/09/16
BERNAMA

BEIJING, TUES:

China is preparing for more cases of babies falling ill from feeding on melamine-contaminated milk with the Health Ministry warning of “possibly rising cases” Tuesday, a day after reporting two deaths and 1,253 infants diagnosed with kidney stones.



The official Xinhua News Agency quoted the ministry as saying that all grassroots medical agencies were prepared for additional cases.

Reports of babies falling sick from consuming Sanlu brand formula have poured in from a third of the country with the highest numbers so far in the provinces of Gansu, Jiangsu and Hubei.



China Daily on Tuesday quoted Health Minister Chen Zhu as saying that the number of victims could rise sharply in the coming days as more parents take their children for check ups.

“Their number could rise further as the search for more infants fed with Sanlu milk food spread across the country’s rural areas,” China Daily reported.

A five-month-old boy and eight-month-old girl died of kidney failure in May and July respectively in Gansu, the only reported fatalities to date.

The Health Ministry said Monday that 10,000 infants fed with milk produced by Sanlu, one of China’s biggest dairy producers, had undergone tests and 53 babies were in critical condition.

Sanlu Group, which is 43 per cent owned by New Zealand’s diary giant Fonterra, issued an apology on Monday.

Authorities have detained 19 persons and two brothers in northern Hebei province have admitted to mixing melamine in milk they supplied to Sanlu.

Melamine, a chemical used to make plastics and fertilisers, is rich in nitrogen and when mixed into milk, can make its protein level appear higher than it actually is.

New Zealand premier Helen Clark said on Monday her government had alerted senior officials Beijing after local Chinese officials failed to act to recall the tainted milk.

The scandal is another setback in China’s efforts to repair its quality control image after a series of food safety scares last year including melamine-tainted pet food exported to the United States.

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