Day: October 12, 2008

Iceland To Borrow Funds From Russia

This needs to be watched…since the US is no longer the stability that countries are looking for, Russia is creeping into the picture.

Iceland said it will borrow €4bn (£3.1bn) from the Russian Treasury, after announcing this morning that it would nationalise its second biggest bank, Landsbanki, and give a £400m loan to its largest lender, Kaupthing.

The decision to borrow a large sum of money from another country comes just hours after Prime Minister Geir Haarde told the country that borrowing billions of krona could “make the whole Icelandic society bankrupt”.

The threat to Iceland’s financial sovereignty is seen as the greatest faced by any country since the credit crisis started 14 months ago.

The Russian ambassador to Iceland, Victor Tatarintsev, informed central bank governor David Oddsson early this morning that Russia would provide Iceland with the loan for three to five years at rates 30 to 50 points above Libor.

Iceland’s Financial Supervisory Authority announced on its website that the nation’s second biggest bank, Landsbanki, was now in national hands, dismissing the board of directors and putting the company into receivership.

The country’s largest bank, Kaupthing, will be given a £400m loan from the Icelandic Central Bank, which yesterday guaranteed all savings for Icelandic customers.

News of the bank nationalisations sent the Icelandic krona plummeting to a new 35pc low against the euro, but the currency recovered the loss after reports of Russia’s loan

Is this a tremd to be concerned about?

Stop The Presses! The Report Is In!

Alaska Governor Sarah Palin abused her power by letting her husband press for the firing of a state trooper, a legislative probe found, while adding that she acted within her authority when she dismissed the state’s public safety commissioner.

“Governor Palin knowingly permitted a situation to continue where impermissible pressure was placed on several subordinates in order to advance a personal agenda,” said the state legislative investigator’s report released yesterday in Anchorage. The report also said Palin’s dismissal of the commissioner, Walt Monegan, was a “proper and lawful exercise” of her power to fire department heads for any reason.

Monegan has said he was dismissed for refusing to fire Trooper Michael Wooten, who was involved in a divorce and custody battle with Palin’s sister. The report on Palin, the Republican candidate for vice president, was released less than a month before the Nov. 4 election. Republican Presidential candidate John McCain‘s campaign rejected the findings as partisan politics.

The report “shows that the governor acted within her proper and lawful authority in the reassignment of Walt Monegan,” said Meg Stapleton, a spokeswoman for McCain’s campaign. “The report also illustrates what we’ve known all along: This was a partisan-led inquiry run by” supporters of Democratic presidential nominee Barack Obama, she said.

The investigator wrote in the report that, “I find that Governor Sarah Palin abused her power by violating” a statute of the Alaska Executive Branch Ethics Act, which bars any official action to benefit a personal interest.

Violation of the ethics act could result in sanctions, including up to $5,000 in civil fines by a state ethics board, according to the law.

McCain’s campaign has criticized the probe as partisan because the lawmaker directing it, Hollis French, is a Democrat. The state Legislative Council, which ordered the investigation, is dominated by Republicans.

Who Da Best At Orgasm?

I can’t get no satisfaction, complained rock legend Mick Jagger back in the Swinging Sixties, in a hit song he co-wrote with Rolling Stones band member Keith Richards. Maybe the pair should have moved to Africa.

According to the Durex Global Sex Survey, South Africans and Nigerians are among the most satisfied people in the world when it comes to sex, or having the most orgasms.

“Two thirds of South Africans claim to orgasm regularly, compared to 48 percent of people globally,” the condom manufacturer said on Tuesday in a statement issued to mark the survey’s release

Among other things, it found Nigeria to be the most sexually satisfied nation (at 67 percent), followed by Mexico (63 percent), India (61 percent) and Poland (54 percent).

The least sexually satisfied people in the world, according to the survey, are the Japanese, with a mere 15 percent of respondents from that country giving their love lives a thumbs up.

“It is the sexed up Greeks who have the most sex, at 164 times a year, with Brazil next (145) , followed by Poland and Russia (both 143).

The Japanese are the least sexually active nation, having sex just 48 times a year,” Durex said.

South Africans also spend more time actually having sex, with sessions lasting an average 20 minutes, compared to the 18 minute world average, the survey found.

“The Nigerians take the longest time over sex, at 24 minutes per session, while Indians have the quickest sex, at 13 minutes.”

However, while South Africans may be having the most orgasms, the survey warns they are failing to set the bedroom alight.

Today In Labor History

12 October

Company guards kill at least eight miners who are attempting to stop scabs, Virden, Ill. – 1898

14 miners killed, 22 wounded by scabherders at Pana, Ill. – 1902

2,000 workers demanding union recognition close down dress manufacturing, Los Angeles – 1933

More than 1 million Canadian workers demonstrate against wage controls – 1976

Main Street Is Not Happy!

On the evening of Sept. 30, Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-Ky.) helped unveil a bipartisan deal that would open the door to massive government intervention in the financial markets, calling it “one of the finer moments in the Senate.”

Less than two weeks later, McConnell may wish to revise his remarks about the bipartisan nature of the $700 billion rescue plan. Soon after praising the plan, McConnell came under assault in television ads from his opponent and the Democratic Party alleging that his neglect helped contribute to economic collapse.

Congressional leaders in both parties demanded support for the rescue plan and hailed its passage. But that unity has given way to a storm of acrimony on the campaign trail and a crossfire of blame. In Senate races from Oregon to Georgia, and House races in northeastern Pennsylvania and Hartford, Conn., incumbents who were prodded into voting for the package find themselves under siege from challengers who accuse them of writing a “blank check” for Wall Street financiers.

They said that if it was nor passed then the markets would cease up…thinking…I believe that happened anyway, so I ask what was the rush?

If One Attack Does Not Work, Try Again

After a week of increasingly nasty rallies in which John McCain and Sarah Palin hammered Democratic rival Barack Obama over his “association” with a 1960s-era radical, the Republican candidates changed tactics Saturday during campaign swings through two presidential battleground states. Palin launched a new front in the culture wars here, attacking Obama on abortion, while in Iowa, McCain concentrated on a critique of Obama’s spending proposals.

On a day when an important civil rights figure condemned the tone of the McCain campaign, Palin seemed to acknowledge the nastiness. After chastising Obama for “unconditional support for unlimited abortions,” she said at a rally in this heavily Catholic, socially conservative Democratic stronghold that “Americans need to see his record for what it is. And please: It is not negative, it is not mean-spirited, to talk to about his record.”
Meanwhile in Iowa, McCain advocated for his tax cuts and his plan to balance the budget by “the end of my term in office.” He offered a scathing critique of the price tag of Obama’s spending proposals and accused him of being vague.

Poll numbers were sliding since the beginning of the hatred thing they tried.  I guess it was to try again from a different direction.