Climate change, and the efforts needed to counter it, are among some of the hottest topics in the last 1-2 decades; it is also easy to see that the effort to discuss the needs for combating climate change is more than actual work being done to reduce emissions (climate change needs quick action and some aggressive goals of reducing emissions, and they are nowhere near happening). Nations get into political arguments when discussions start; the main major polluter (the United States) refuses to take action because of the feared effect on its economy, Europe looks to somebody for taking the lead on this, and the fast developing nations such as China, India, Brazil, etc who are still current low contributors but will have a much higher impact on emissions going forward want to get funding from the rich before taking action.
And in the middle of all this, the world keeps getting hotter, and the changes that are being made due to the global warming phenomenon keeps on working to its own cycle. Global warming is supposed to affect poor nations much more than it will affect the richer nations (and it will affect nations that are more sea based much more than nations that are bigger land masses) since some of the changes being caused due to global warming are higher sea levels and changes in weather patterns that affect crop cycles. Another way in which global warming directly affects the world food economy is due to the impact on fishing, and a study points out that the rich fishing waters near Southeast Asia will get severely impacted (link to article):

continue reading "Climate change and impact on coral reefs and fishing"

Obama would not have expected to be hit by popular anger so early, and hence the missteps that was visible in the early reaction by his administration to the scandal. After pumping huge amounts of money into many big banks, financial institutions, and other companies such as auto companies, there is a massive amount of public anger. For somebody who has just lost their job, or has their house taken away in a foreclosure, or is having to suffer the embarrassment of having to take free food, the concept of the Government supporting massive companies with public money is hard to take. After all, in simple terms (and even when you go through the whole complexity), the losses being suffered by the economy are directly attributed to the wrong economic policies that were being offered by a number of players in the financial sectors – these being banks, mortgage companies, investment banks, and other similar players.

continue reading "The AIG scandal and impact on Obama"

This was something that would have been deemed impossible even a few months back. A Government and system that believes in the free market philosophy, bailing out a massive bank with tax-payer money; that too when the President is from the Republican Party ? This just goes to show that ideology and dogma don’t stand a chance when a country’s interests and well-being are challenged. Citibank is too big a bank, with too heavy an involvement in the economy. A collapse of Citibank would have been seen as disastrous failure, and causing a lot of shocks in the financial world; already the US economy is in recession, sales are down, unemployment is high. One can imagine how bad the state of the economy is when you consider that such a massive step such as providing financial support to Citibank has not been opposed by anyone – most people are shell-shocked and without a clue as to how to improve things. In such a state, using the funds allocated for saving the economy to pick up a state in Citibank is like showing the market that the Government will not let such a big player such as Citibank go down; this is what the US Government has also done earlier for troubled institutions such as the Mortgage companies, for the big brokerages, for other banks, for AIG, and so on.
What does this mean ? It means that by the time this entire bad period ends, the happenings now will be a case study of the power of the Government and Central Banks to try and ward off a massive downturn while letting the recession and bad news stand. In addition, the Government will end up with stakes of so many financial institutions that it will seem like a command economy to some degree, like a back door nationalisation.

For a long time, Libya has remained on the edge of the global community because of its open support for terrorism. Libya was an open and acknowledged supporter of international terrorist groups (and earned a direct attack from the United States way back in 1986 for a bombing carried out by Libyan supported groups in a Berlin disco frequented by American servicemen). This was also followed by the explosion in a Pan Am fight over Lockerbie that killed all 270 on board and for which Libyan agents were blamed (and Libyan men were prosecuted and sentenced for the same crime. The consequence was a series of sanctions.
And then suddenly, a few years back, in 2003, Libya apparently and suddenly turned over a new leaf (suspicion was that it was done after the attack on Iraq under Saddam Hussein which showed the Libyan leader, Gaddafi, that his rule was under threat and could be attacked very easily; however, there were no apparent plans as such for any attack on Libya at that time). As a part of this, Libya stopped all efforts on developing nuclear weapons, and turned over all the plans and parts of its effort over to the US. And in a final effort, Libya agreed to pay compensation to the families of those who were killed in various terrorist activities such as flight bombings and the blast in the Berlin disco:

continue reading "Libya pays final compensation for terror"