The World Bank has been lobbying for a central role in climate finance. Our dedicated web page offers the latest news and analysis of the Bank's activities in and around the UN negotiations, with frequent updates from Bretton Woods Project staff in Copenhagen. You can also find background information on the World Bank and its problematic role in climate and development issues here:
www.brettonwoodsproject.org/copenhagen
IL RESTO DEL CARLINO - LA NAZIONE - IL GIORNO
PRIMO PIANO LUNEDÌ 14 DICEMBRE 2009 PAGINA 8
L ’ A N A L I S I
TAGLI, UN DEPUTATO VALE MILLE CONSIGLIERI COMUNALI
di MARIO CALIGIURI
I SINDACI non possono starci: i tagli agli enti locali sono troppo onerosi. Però in tempi di crisi, i sacrifici debbono essere ripartiti e quindi anche i Comuni devono fare la loro parte. Infatti, accanto a municipi gestiti in modo esemplare, ci sono esempi non proprio virtuosi. Va pure detto che da lustri i trasferimenti ai comuni vengono ridotti sistematicamente. Ma, proprio per dare l’esempio (che è sempre quello che convince di più), se anche i deputati e i senatori si facessero qualche sostanziale sforbiciata non sarebbe male.
Ma si vede che gli onorevoli si attengono ai fulminanti interrogativi di Altan: «Ma perché i sacrifici dobbiamo farli di nuovo noi? Non potrebbero essere dei disoccupati». che non hanno nulla da fare dalla mattina alla sera?
Se poi esaminiamo nel dettaglio la qualità di alcuni provvedimenti, verifichiamo agevolmente che le indennità degli amministratori locali non sono certamente eccessive e la gran parte dei consiglieri comunali percepisce gettoni di presenza a seduta di poche decine di euro lordi. Puro volontariato, se si guarda al beneficio economico. Basterebbe ridurre il costo di un solo parlamentare per avere l’equivalente della diminuzione di mille consiglieri nei comuni al di sotto dei 5 mila abitanti che si riuniscano una volta al mese. Invertirei allora il discorso, considerando i Comuni non un’area dove risparmiare ma dove investire nel capitale più importante: quello umano.
Il dato interessante è quello di considerare i comuni come un laboratorio che non solo sperimenta politiche sociali ed economiche ma soprattutto quale ambito dove selezionare le elite pubbliche, sia politiche che burocratiche.
Infatti, non essendoci più partiti che selezionino dal basso le classi dirigenti e le formino adeguatamente, forse i comuni sono oggi diventati il prevalente luogo di formazione. Le istituzioni funzionano in base a chi le governa e se i vertici vengono scelti in base a come parlano in televisione non possiamo poi lamentarci dei risultati. Appunto per questo, occorre prestare la massima attenzione alla selezione delle elite locali che si confrontano con i problemi immediati dei cittadini e ne determinano in gran parte la qualità della vita.
NELLA SCELTA degli amministratori i partiti debbono fare la propria parte, mentre per la burocrazia diventa centrale nell’efficienza dello Stato l’attività delle scuole di formazione delle elite pubbliche sia centrali che locali, dalla Sspa (Scuola superiore della pubblica amministrazione) alla Ssai (Scuola superiore dell’amministrazione dell’Interno) e alla Sspal (Scuola superiore della pubblica amministrazione locale). In quest’ultimo caso, esistono noti esempi che provengono dall’estero. La Francia ha le tradizioni delle alte scuole e l’Inghilterra quelle delle università di Oxford e Cambridge dalle quali provengono la maggior parte delle classi dirigenti a tutti i livelli. Investire nelle elite pubbliche locali potrebbe essere una strada per il rinnovamento della democrazia. E’ una risorsa della Repubblica, praticamente molto più della Banca d’Italia.
Mérida, December 12th 2009 (Venezuelanalysis.com) – After national investigators announced that several banking executives are suspected to have fled the country to avoid fraud charges, Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez ordered the seizure of the bankers’ financial and non-financial assets.
On Thursday, a prominent banker named Eligio Cedeño was scheduled to appear in court, where he is charged with stealing millions in depositor money. Cedeño is the former president of the Canarias and Bolivar banks, which are among the eight banks in which the government intervened over the past two weeks in a crack down on banking fraud.
However, a district judge granted Cedeño conditional freedom from police custody, and Cedeño never attended his hearing. Police now suspect he has fled the country; he is the fourth banker suspected of doing so since public prosecutors issued arrest warrants for ten bankers and prohibited nineteen others from leaving the country last week.
Meanwhile, police arrested the judge who freed Cedeño from police custody, alleging that she broke laws governing judges’ contact with suspects during trials.
Asset Seizures
In public announcements on Thursday, President Chavez ordered authorities to seize the assets of several bank owners who are charged with fraud.
“The battle that we are waging against these bankers who sabotaged and robbed many people is advancing rapidly,” Chavez declared.
“In this moment, I have ordered the takeover of tuna, fish, corn processing, and rice companies, as well as [the bankers’] estates and cattle... this will become wealth for the people,” Chavez continued. The state also seized “more than 700 trucks from a transportation company” that will now be “at the service of social production and socialism,” said Chavez.
Many of these companies currently provide services to the government’s subsidized food markets, and many are owned by Ricardo Fernandez, the principal stockholder in four of the banks that are under investigation. The Trade Ministry already intervened in the administration of Fernandez’s companies last week in order to prevent their collapse as a result of their owner’s arrest.
“We are confronting these problems in a coordinated manner with the whole state, and we are recuperating companies that were forming a kind of network,” said Chavez. “We cannot wait until tomorrow. At the first sign, [we must take] immediate action and inexorable application of the established laws and procedures.”
Attorney General Luisa Ortega filed requests for the seizure of the bankers’ assets, and said public prosecutors will soon request that the bankers’ assets abroad be frozen as well. She also emphasized that the current intervention in the banking sector does not signify a financial crisis, but “a specific case in which the owners of banks allegedly committed crimes envisaged in the banking laws.”
Battle against Corruption
Chavez’s announcements on Thursday left no doubt that the government is waging a full-scale battle against corruption in the financial sector.
The state is cracking down on corruption, among the opposition sectors and supporters of Chavez. On Thursday, President Chavez appointed a new minister for science and technology, Ricardo Menendez. Menendez replaced Chavez’s long-time ally, Jesse Chacon, who resigned last week after his brother, Arne Chacon, was arrested on charges of banking fraud.
“The traitors have many forms of connecting with each other, and we have to unmask them. There are many forms of committing treason against the revolution,” said Chavez. “To sell one’s values is treason against the revolution. To steal even one bolivar, to not work, to be lazy, is treason. To be selfish is treason, to neglect volunteer social work is treason,” said the president.
Out of the eight banks that came under investigation in the last two weeks, two of them, Confederado and Bolivar, were nationalized; and two others, Canarias and Provivienda, were liquidated. Two others, Central Banco Universal and Banco Real, will be incorporated into the state-owned bank Banfoandes along with the nationalized banks, according to Chavez’s announcements on Thursday.
The government transferred the deposits of the liquidated banks to the state-owned Bank of Venezuela, and depositors have the choice of withdrawing or transferring their money, or opening an account in the Bank of Venezuela. So far, the approximately 30,000 depositors have been processed, according to the government.
The president also ordered an increase in the amount of deposit insurance offered by the government from 10,000 bolivars per depositor to 30,000 bolivars per depositor. This will require banks to increase their monthly contribution to the insurance fund from .5% to 1.5% of total deposits, said the president.
The National Assembly is scheduled to renew its debate on reforms to Venezuela’s banking laws next week.
Ron Paul
Infowars.com
December 13, 2009
Before the US House of Representatives, December 9, 2009
Madame Speaker, I rise to introduce the Free Competition in Currency Act of 2009. Currency, or money, is what allows civilization to flourish. In the absence of money, barter is the name of the game; if the farmer needs shoes, he must trade his eggs and milk to the cobbler and hope that the cobbler needs eggs and milk. Money makes the transaction process far easier. Rather than having to search for someone with reciprocal wants, the farmer can exchange his milk and eggs for an agreed-upon medium of exchange with which he can then purchase shoes.
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| Gold and silver are anathema to governments. | |
This medium of exchange should satisfy certain properties: it should be durable, that is to say, it does not wear out easily; it should be portable, that is, easily carried; it should be divisible into units usable for every-day transactions; it should be recognizable and uniform, so that one unit of money has the same properties as every other unit; it should be scarce, in the economic sense, so that the extant supply does not satisfy the wants of everyone demanding it; it should be stable, so that the value of its purchasing power does not fluctuate wildly; and it should be reproducible, so that enough units of money can be created to satisfy the needs of exchange.
Over millennia of human history, gold and silver have been the two metals that have most often satisfied these conditions, survived the market process, and gained the trust of billions of people. Gold and silver are difficult to counterfeit, a property which ensures they will always be accepted in commerce. It is precisely for this reason that gold and silver are anathema to governments. A supply of gold and silver that is limited in supply by nature cannot be inflated, and thus serves as a check on the growth of government. Without the ability to inflate the currency, governments find themselves constrained in their actions, unable to carry on wars of aggression or to appease their overtaxed citizens with bread and circuses.
At this country’s founding, there was no government-controlled national currency. While the Constitution established the Congressional power of minting coins, it was not until 1792 that the US Mint was formally established. In the meantime, Americans made do with foreign silver and gold coins. Even after the Mint’s operations got underway, foreign coins continued to circulate within the United States, and did so for several decades.
On the desk in my office I have a sign that says: “Don’t steal – the government hates competition.” Indeed, any power a government arrogates to itself, it is loathe to give back to the people. Just as we have gone from a constitutionally-instituted national defense consisting of a limited army and navy bolstered by militias and letters of marque and reprisal, we have moved from a system of competing currencies to a government-instituted banking cartel that monopolizes the issuance of currency. In order to reintroduce a system of competing currencies, there are three steps that must be taken to produce a legal climate favorable to competition.
The first step consists of eliminating legal tender laws. Article I Section 10 of the Constitution forbids the States from making anything but gold and silver a legal tender in payment of debts. States are not required to enact legal tender laws, but should they choose to, the only acceptable legal tender is gold and silver, the two precious metals that individuals throughout history and across cultures have used as currency. However, there is nothing in the Constitution that grants the Congress the power to enact legal tender laws. We, the Congress, have the power to coin money, regulate the value thereof, and of foreign coin, but not to declare a legal tender. Yet, there is a section of US Code, 31 USC 5103, that purports to establish US coins and currency, including Federal Reserve notes, as legal tender.
Historically, legal tender laws have been used by governments to force their citizens to accept debased and devalued currency. Gresham’s Law describes this phenomenon, which can be summed up in one phrase: bad money drives out good money. An emperor, a king, or a dictator might mint coins with half an ounce of gold and force merchants, under pain of death, to accept them as though they contained one ounce of gold. Each ounce of the king’s gold could now be minted into two coins instead of one, so the king now had twice as much “money” to spend on building castles and raising armies. As these legally overvalued coins circulated, the coins containing the full ounce of gold would be pulled out of circulation and hoarded. We saw this same phenomenon happen in the mid-1960s when the US government began to mint subsidiary coinage out of copper and nickel rather than silver. The copper and nickel coins were legally overvalued, the silver coins undervalued in relation, and silver coins vanished from circulation.
These actions also give rise to the most pernicious effects of inflation. Most of the merchants and peasants who received this devalued currency felt the full effects of inflation, the rise in prices and the lowered standard of living, before they received any of the new currency. By the time they received the new currency, prices had long since doubled, and the new currency they received would give them no benefit.
In the absence of legal tender laws, Gresham’s Law no longer holds. If people are free to reject debased currency, and instead demand sound money, sound money will gradually return to use in society. Merchants would have been free to reject the king’s coin and accept only coins containing full metal weight.
The second step to reestablishing competing currencies is to eliminate laws that prohibit the operation of private mints. One private enterprise which attempted to popularize the use of precious metal coins was Liberty Services, the creators of the Liberty Dollar. Evidently the government felt threatened, as Liberty Dollars had all their precious metal coins seized by the FBI and Secret Service in November of 2007. Of course, not all of these coins were owned by Liberty Services, as many were held in trust as backing for silver and gold certificates which Liberty Services issued. None of this matters, of course, to the government, which hates competition. The responsibility to protect contracts is of no interest to the government.
The sections of US Code which Liberty Services is accused of violating are erroneously considered to be anti-counterfeiting statutes, when in fact their purpose was to shut down private mints that had been operating in California. California was awash in gold in the aftermath of the 1849 gold rush, yet had no US Mint to mint coinage. There was not enough foreign coinage circulating in California either, so private mints stepped into the breech to provide their own coins. As was to become the case in other industries during the Progressive era, the private mints were eventually accused of circulating debased (substandard) coinage, and with the supposed aim of providing government-sanctioned regulation and a government guarantee of purity, the 1864 Coinage Act was passed, which banned private mints from producing their own coins for circulation as currency.
The final step to ensuring competing currencies is to eliminate capital gains and sales taxes on gold and silver coins. Under current federal law, coins are considered collectibles, and are liable for capital gains taxes. Short-term capital gains rates are at income tax levels, up to 35 percent, while long-term capital gains taxes are assessed at the collectibles rate of 28 percent. Furthermore, these taxes actually tax monetary debasement. As the dollar weakens, the nominal dollar value of gold increases. The purchasing power of gold may remain relatively constant, but as the nominal dollar value increases, the federal government considers this an increase in wealth, and taxes accordingly. Thus, the more the dollar is debased, the more capital gains taxes must be paid on holdings of gold and other precious metals.
Just as pernicious are the sales and use taxes which are assessed on gold and silver at the state level in many states. Imagine having to pay sales tax at the bank every time you change a $10 bill for a roll of quarters to do laundry. Inflation is a pernicious tax on the value of money, but even the official numbers, which are massaged downwards, are only on the order of 4% per year. Sales taxes in many states can take away 8% or more on every single transaction in which consumers wish to convert their Federal Reserve Notes into gold or silver.
In conclusion, Madame Speaker, allowing for competing currencies will allow market participants to choose a currency that suits their needs, rather than the needs of the government. The prospect of American citizens turning away from the dollar towards alternate currencies will provide the necessary impetus to the US government to regain control of the dollar and halt its downward spiral. Restoring soundness to the dollar will remove the government’s ability and incentive to inflate the currency, and keep us from launching unconstitutional wars that burden our economy to excess. With a sound currency, everyone is better off, not just those who control the monetary system. I urge my colleagues to consider the redevelopment of a system of competing currencies and cosponsor the Free Competition in Currency Act.
David Webb exposes the system Central Bankers have in place to take everything from everyone Webb takes us on a 50-year journey of how the C...
