Real Life Civics Lesson

 The Dark Side of US Supreme Court Justice selection, and other games.

WATCH: U.S. Sen. Sheldon Whitehouse speaks during hearing for Supreme Court nominee Amy Coney Barrett:  https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cjcXVKg43qY

He who pays the fiddler calls the tuna

Japan, fisheries revenue help Marshalls power company

The Japan Embassy in Majuro announced Friday that Ebeye Island’s power utility is benefiting from $827,455 in Japan funding provided to the Marshall Islands government through a “Counterpart Fund.”

The Counterpart Fund was established between the two nations in January 2009. When the agreement was signed in 2009, the government of Japan extended 200 million Japanese Yen (approximately $2.2 million at that time) as a non-project grant for the rescue of the energy sector to respond to the economic crisis affecting Marshall Islands.

The Marshalls Energy Co. is using the grant funding to purchase fuel that will be used to generate electricity for Ebeye Island, the second largest urban center in the country. The government’s Marshall Islands Marine Resources Authority earlier in the week extended a $2 million loan to the MEC that has solved the utility company’s urgent need for funding to pay for fuel for the power plants.

Marshall Islands revenue from fisheries has escalated in the past two years because the price of fishing days for purse seiners has doubled because of action by the Parties to the Nauru Agreement, the eight nations, including the Marshall Islands, that control waters where the bulk of skipjack tuna is caught. Joint venture ownership with Taiwan’s Koo’s Fishing Company of a purse seine fishing boat is now generating multi-million dollar returns to the fisheries department.

Chinese subsidies damaging Pacific tuna sector

The Pacific Islands tuna industry maintains that fishing pressure on southern albacore tuna is in truth much worse than the figures suggested by scientific studies.
Moreover, the Pacific Islands Tuna Industry Association stated that a fleet of new Chinese boats has made it impossible for local fishers to make a living as part of the industry.

In the last two years, between 200-250 new Chinese vessels have arrived in the fishery, the association estimates, and there is now a total of about 590 Chinese and Taiwanese vessels actively fishing.

The group’s chairman, Charles Hufflett, said the big fuel subsidies the Chinese pay their fleet are having a damaging effect because they make it impossible for the Pacific Industry to compete with them.

What divides America: politics or economy

Putting aside the biggest divide, religious belief and disbelief, Henry Blodgett looks at the big economic divide, which is the result of big money meddling in "both" political isles.

Corporate Profits Just Hit An All-Time High, Wages Just Hit An All-Time Low

1) Corporate profit margins just hit an all-time high.

2) Fewer Americans are working than at any time in the past three decades.

3) Wages as a percent of the economy are at an all-time low.

The problem is our debt: from government to corporates to households. Our stunning economic "growth" has been a mirage, a floating sea of debt hallucination.

As a percent of total employed people in our economy, the number of government workers is actually far lower than it used to be. About 16% of us now work for the government.

State and local governments have actually been firing people in recent years.
The number of Federal government employees has stayed steady for nearly half a century.

we need to understand that there are two kinds of government spending... The first kind is what we normally think of as government spending: Defense, highways, bridges, NASA, government employee salaries, etc.

The second kind of government spending is what is euphemistically called "personal transfers" -- checks handed out to citizens for a variety of social programs, including Social Security, Medicare/Medicaid, and Unemployment Insurance..

Over the past 50 years, social-program spending has exploded as a percentage of the economy..

And don't forget what we're really talking about when we talk about "social programs." It's not unemployment insurance, food stamps, and other handouts that some anti-government people sometimes go insane about. They're small potatoes

The real government budget busters are Social Security, Medicare, and Medicaid.

See his charts at the article link, then see his other 63 charts and graphics starting here.
Any chance the never shy but now retiring boomers will turn off the tap on ss, medicare and medicaid? Not when they feel they've paid for it and it's their due.

Never mind. In 30 years they'll be gone. But there'll be plenty more rorts and schemes to rise to the top of the next great debt crisis.

Pay attention kids. Next time won't be different, either.

Samoa the same

Not exactly breaking, or braking, news this:

China a better Pacific friend than US: Samoan PM.

People's Republic of China–Samoa relations


China, and Taiwan, have been on a decades long quest to spend their way into strategic "alliances" with hands-out Pacific nation-island-states, whilst Western countries and "traditional" allies New Zealand and Australia have withdrawn support. The Pacific is dotted with many Chinese temples (of various sorts) to this buying power.



CHINA STIRS THE POT OF DIVIDED PACIFIC LOYALTIES 2006

Chinese Premier Wen Jiabou plans to appear in Fiji next month to meet delegates from Pacific Islands countries that recognise China but not Taiwan.

Pacific countries that prefer to deal with Taiwan rather than China either hadn't been invited to the meeting by the time Islands Business went to print or had decided to boycott it.

Next day, April 6, he'll have talks with the prime ministers of Papua New Guinea, Samoa, Tonga, Cook Islands, Fiji and Vanuatu and president of the Federated States of Micronesia. All these countries prefer to [recognize] China in return for economic aid.

They are all members of the region's political club, the Pacific Islands Forum. The countries that prefer to [give] their loyalty to Taiwan-Tuvalu, Kiribati, Palau, the Solomon Islands, Nauru, Palau and the Marshall Islands are also Forum members.

This split in Forum country ranks is not the first one achieved by China as it wages its anti-Taiwan [campaign] in the Pacific Islands.

Initially, the China summit in the Pacific was heralded as the summit of Pacific leaders in the hope that heads of Forum-member governments would attend.

After hearing of Beijing's latest ploy for influence in the islands, the Taiwan Trade Mission representative in Suva, Sherman Shi-Nan Kuo objected to the involvement of the Forum Secretariat .

"Yes, we have informed the Forum that Taiwan opposes its involvement in the summit," he said. "We are a donor to the Forum and we told them that if they are organising a summit for China, then we can also ask for the same favour."

Taiwan Trade Mission's Kuo said that for 2006, Taiwan has [given] US$700,000 for the Forum Secretariat. It is also continuing with a US$500,000 scholarship scheme for island university students.

A Fiji government announcement said Jiabou's call would be a "historic" event since it would be the first meeting between China and the Pacific's islands nations.

Such Pacific Islands academics as Professor Ron Crocombe suggested that the Chinese are playing a long-term game for access to Pacific fish stocks which they already have and possible seabed mining opportunities.

In Papua New Guinea, the Chinese are moving into investment in mining and gas extraction.

The Australians have visions of the islands being taken over by Chinese organised crime and claim that drug busts, passport rackets and other criminal activities demonstrate that they're already happening.

Bertil Lintner, a journalist and an expert on organised crime, in a new book about Chinese organised crime, Blood Brothers, says China's diplomats cultivate gangs, routinely using them to spy on countries and to corrupt government politicians and bureaucrats.

President Chen Shiu Bian of Taiwan made a goodwill tour of some of Taiwan Pacific Islands friends in 2005.

The Chinese ambassador to Fiji, Cai Jinbiao, reacted with [apparent] anger in 2005 when he heard that the Taiwanese leader would overnight at Nadi and be welcomed with a Fijian welcoming ceremony by chiefs of the district.

By fronting up in Fiji, Jiabou will put it one over other major powers who for one reason or another has motives for cultivating Pacific Islanders for the few assets they have.

On May 26-27, Japan's prime minister, Junichiro Koizumi, will host the fourth Japan-Pacific Islands meeting at Okinawa. Known as the PALM meeting, held every three years, it is Japan's big pitch for having good relations with the Pacific Islands.

On June 27, island leaders have been invited to be in Paris for a meeting with President Jacques Chirac, who first met them in French Polynesia two years ago.

The point of the meetings for the French is to keep Pacific leaders sweet about France's presence in the Pacific and improve relations between them and France's three Pacific territories.

In 1990, during an election trip to Hawaii, then President George Bush dropped in on a meeting of islands leaders there. His son dropped in briefly on a similar meeting in October 2003. Neither event brought anything much to the Pacific.

China has actively been cultivating relations with the Pacific Islands for more than two decades. In doing so, it has clashed often with Taiwan as the two have clawed each other for island government loyalties.

Both countries have [won] friendships with aid now totalling tens of millions of dollars.

There's hardly a Pacific Islands leader who hasn't been invited on one or more junket trips to China or Taiwan, depending on whom they back. Groups of Pacific Islands journalists are also led around in Beijing by the nose, blocked from seeing the sinister side of life in China.

The benefits gained by Taiwan from its Pacific games are the pleasure of annoying the Chinese, who are apt to turn ugly in their attempts to block switches of loyalty to Taiwan and having a voice at the United Nations.

China has cultivated Pacific Islands governments for more than 20 years. It has embassies in Papua New Guinea, Vanuatu, Fiji, the Federated States of Micronesia and is planning to open a consulate in French Polynesia.

It's a tussle with Taiwan over Kiribati's loyalty it lost badly two years ago when a new Kiribati government elected for a lucrative deal with Taiwan. This led to the closure of the Chinese embassy at Tarawa-although four Chinese officials continue to lurk there-and the closure of a satellite and missile tracking station it operated there.

Former Vanuatu prime minister, Serge Vohor, made a bad mistake in 2004 when after junkets to Taiwan and China he switched Vanuatu's loyalties to Taiwan without consulting his cabinet ministers. Apparently got at by Chinese diplomats, the ministers rebelled and Vohor lost office.

Nauru had fun and games with China in 2005. It used to be pro-Taiwan, which thus helped with the cost of running Air Nauru.

In July 2002, the then Nauru government decided it could get a better deal even at the cost of money for Air Nauru and switched recognition to China. Last year, the present Nauru government, deciding that Taiwan was a better deal after all, restored its recognition of Taiwan to Beijing's mortification.

Islands Business was told of an extraordinary scene at Seoul airport last year when, enroute to Taiwan, President Ludwig Scotty after leaving an aircraft, was surrounded and practically dragged off by a horde of screaming Chinese officials intent on diverting him to Beijing.

He was presented with a ticket to Beijing and offered red carpet treatment. But President Scotty headed for Taiwan instead where the carpet he trod was a deeper red.

Last month, Air Nauru announced that with Taiwan's support it soon expected to replace its sole jet aircraft seized by the United States last year for debt.

Other Chinese/Taiwan conflict was over membership of the South Pacific Tourism Organisation (SPTO), a regional agency backed by most of the Pacific's national tourism promotion offices.

Taiwan became one of SPTO's few sources of cash. Then China moved in by joining SPTO at ministerial level-the first non-Pacific government to do so.

It blocked Taiwan's application for membership with threats, although the application was supported by pro-Taiwan members.

The Chinese made it plain that if Taiwan was admitted, then countries that hope to be put on the list of tourist destinations that Chinese tourists were allowed to visit-chiefly Fiji, Vanuatu,

Tonga, the Cook Islands and French Polynesia-would be greatly disappointed.

More reading:

China Banking on Pacific Islands 2011

As noted by Balaji Chandramohan writing for The Diplomat late last year, a number of countries including India and China are actively courting Pacific island nations as part of efforts to secure the right to station military bases there or to help develop their natural resources.

But according to the Lowy report, there has been one motivation quite specific to China, namely diplomatic competition with Taiwan. Although it notes the improved ties with the mainland since Taiwanese President Ma Ying-jeou took office, it quotes a Taiwanese official as stating that countries always prepare for the worst.

The danger to islands accepting these soft loans is that they are going to end up being burdened by loan repayments they can’t afford. As the report noted, Chinese loans to Tonga now make up the equivalent of 32 percent of the country's GDP, while the figure for Samoa and the Cook Islands was 16 percent. Combine this with a lack of transparency, and it’s easy to see why some Pacific island officials are concerned.

Sino-Pacific relations in the Pacific Islands

We Say: END OF THE CHINA-TAIWAN WAR IN PACIFIC?

Over the decades—and more so in recent years—there has been fierce competition between the two to win the support of Pacific Islands states with large packages of aid and a range of other financial inducements, including junkets to islands leaders.

This competition to win favours of the Pacific Islands has been described as chequebook diplomacy by the islands traditional development partners—notably New Zealand, Australia and more recently, the United States of America.

Unfortunately, many of the region’s leadership has fallen prey to these one-upmanship games between Taiwan and China and elections have been fought and governments fallen on the issue of whom to support.

Even in last month’s elections in the Marshall Islands, the question of allegiance was a major issue. Even outside the Pacific Islands region, the leaders of impoverished countries have fallen prey to this competition.

According to reports, the African nation of Malawi that supported Taiwan recently switched its support to China after it was promised a huge US$6 billion aid package.

The problem of diplomatic allegiance has caused deep schisms in the Pacific. Six Pacific Islands Forum nations—Nauru, the Solomon Islands, Palau, the Marshall Islands, Kiribati and Tuvalu—currently support Taiwan, while the rest have followed the ‘One China Policy’, recognising the People’s Republic of China.

China and Taiwan have used the Pacific as their diplomatic battleground openly. During the annual Forum summit in Fiji in 2006, China’s assistant foreign minister publicly accused Taiwan of spreading corruption in the region with largesse.

Then again last year, Taiwan hosted a summit for its allies in Palau at the same time as the annual Forum leaders’ meet in Tonga. Several Forum leaders chose to attend the Taiwan meet—thereby upsetting some of the agenda at the Tonga meet.

Wooing the Islands: China and Taiwan High Stakes Bid for Pacific Island Support

Several Pacific Island nation governments are willing to “go with anybody” as long as it is lucrative. Selling votes at the United Nations is a common occurrence. Micronesian nations, as well as many Polynesian and Melanesian ones, regularly support virtually any resolutions proposed by the United States. Francis Hazel, director of The Micronesian Seminar, remembers how one day a television crew from Israel besieged his office in the capital of the Federated States of Micronesia (FSM), Pohnpei. "I wondered what they were doing in this city, which hardly appears on any world maps. Then I understood: the Israeli public was curious about this country which keeps joining the U.S., voting against all UN resolutions condemning Israeli actions in the Middle East."

But China and Taiwan are the biggest players in this game. Both Taiwan and China have erected disproportionately huge buildings for use by local governments, including the parliamentary complex in Vanuatu and the government offices in Samoa. For the convention center in Majuro, Marshall Islands, where the 2nd Taiwan-Pacific Allies Summit took place last October, Taiwan spent approximately $5 million.

Image Source: Wikipedia





China and Taiwan in the South Pacific: Diplomatic Chess versus PacificPolitical Rugby



The Growing Chinese Presence in the Region

All countries' foreign relations contain some self-interest, all influence internal affairs, and all aid has strings (some visible but more hidden -- sometimes in the pockets and egos of the powerful). But in recent years in the Pacific Islands, China pursues its self-interest more forcefully, interferes more in Pacific Islands internal affairs, and has more strings on its aid than any other country.

The indigenous people of Taiwan (who were there for 6000 years before the Chinese invaded) are Austronesian, as are the ancestors of all Polynesians. In indigenous Taiwanese languages today, the word "mata" means eye as in many Polynesian languages. The Chinese people of Taiwan mostly migrated there 200 to 300 years ago and have become a different people (like the European people of USA and Australia are different from those of Europe and don't want to be recolonised by any European power). If Cook Islands leaders are happy to help crush their fellow Austronesians in Taiwan in order to gain some glory, ego massages, free trips and perks, and money to help their elections, one can understand that. But China's claim to Taiwan is simple greed for power.

China has a record of causing internal problems in Pacific countries. That is a long, sad story. Just in the last few months, President Anote Tong, of Kiribati (who is himself half-Chinese), complained of the government of China trying to destabilise his government. Then Prime Minister Saufatu Sopo'anga, of Tuvalu, lost a vote-of-no-confidence because, although Tuvalu recognises Taiwan, the prime minister was enticed by China on a secret fully-funded trip to Beijing without telling his cabinet. That caused disruption and a new election.

Aid is usually given by the richer to the poorer. But Cook Islanders are much richer (and much freer, better educated, etc), than Chinese. Income per person in the Cook Islands is much higher than in China. So why do richer Cook Islanders beg from poorer Chinese, and why is the government that controls the poor Chinese so keen to give to rich Cook Islanders instead of to its own much poorer people, many of whom are starving right now? Or to poorer people elsewhere?

It is because they figure that Cook Islands politicians are easy to manipulate and that it is the cheapest vote China can buy in the 30 or so international organisations to which the Cook Islands belongs. Although the Cook Islands is the richest Forum Island country per person in the Pacific, China has given more aid per person to the Cook Islands than to any other. It is a small step in China's strategy to dominate in the region.

Looking North, Looking South: China, Taiwan, and the South Pacific

Asia in the Pacific Islands: Replacing the West

Austerity or Posterity: Buy now or Pay later

Europe Austerity Leading to ‘Catastrophe,’ French Lawmaker Says

Setback for Merkel as austerity agenda rejected in Germany's biggest state

Greek austerity: Path to recovery, or path to violence?

Irish pose next democratic test for EU austerity


Police clash with anti-austerity protesters in Italy

Spain: Mass Anti-Austerity Protests Sweep Nation

We need a British austerity revolt

Default now or default later?

“I had no idea.”

Unless the rich and poor encounter one another in everyday life, it is hard to think of ourselves as engaged in a common project. At a time when to fix our society we need to do big, hard things together, the marketization of public life becomes one more thing pulling us apart.

“The great missing debate in contemporary politics,” Sandel writes, “is about the role and reach of markets.” We should be asking where markets serve the public good, and where they don’t belong, he argues. And we should be asking how to rebuild class-mixing institutions.

“Democracy does not require perfect equality,” he concludes, “but it does require that citizens share in a common life. ... For this is how we learn to negotiate and abide our differences, and how we come to care for the common good.”

Blood (money) Donors

25% of super PAC money coming from just 5 rich donors

Five wealthy people, led by Dallas industrialist Harold Simmons and Las Vegas casino mogul Sheldon Adelson, have donated nearly $1 of every $4 flowing to the super PACs raising unlimited money in this year's presidential race, a USA TODAY analysis shows.

In the No. 2 slot: Adelson and his wife, Miriam, who gave $10 million to Winning Our Future, a super PAC aiding former House speaker Newt Gingrich. Adelson declined an interview request through a spokesman.

However, in a Forbes magazine article posted Tuesday, Adelson said he is willing to donate an additional "$10 million or $100 million" to aid Gingrich. "I'm against very wealthy people attempting to or influencing elections, but as along as it's doable, I'm going to do it," Adelson said.

Adelson, who operates the Venetian, a massive Las Vegas resort, along with casinos in Singapore and Macau, shares hawkish stands on Israel with Gingrich, but he said he's motivated by economic policy. He said his goal is to defeat President Obama and what he termed a "socialist-style economy."

Anthony Corrado, a campaign-finance expert at Colby College in Maine said, "Super PACs have become a vehicle for a very small number of millionaires and billionaires who are willing to spend large sums in pursuit of their political agenda."

No Democratic donors rank as high as the top donors to Republican super PACs.

Priorities USA Action, the main super PAC backing Obama's re-election, raised just shy of $59,000 in January — a fraction of the $27.2 million raised last month alone by five leading GOP super PACs. The biggest donation to Priorities USA Action last month: $50,000 from John Rogers, CEO of Ariel Investments and one of Obama's closest friends.

Billionaire Sheldon Adelson Says He Might Give $100M To Newt Gingrich Or Other Republican

Adelson, the 78-year-old CEO of casino giant Las Vegas Sands, certainly can afford to: With a net worth of roughly $25 billion, that $11 million (which he's actually given), which jolted Gingrich’s flatlining presidential bid back to life, equates to 0.044% of his fortune.

Is that fair? “I’m against very wealthy ­people attempting to or influencing elections,” he shrugs. “But as long as it’s doable I’m going to do it."

Super PACs make their muscle felt

Super PACs are relatively new. They are political action committees that can collect unlimited amounts of cash from corporations, labor unions and individuals. They are the by-products of a 2010 U.S. Supreme Court decision that overturned a federal law prohibiting such groups from independently influencing elections.

The Supreme Court ruled that the ban was an unconstitutional restriction on a corporation's right to engage in free speech. A form of the ban had been in place since 1907, when Congress enacted changes in campaign finance laws amid questions over big-business donations to President Theodore Roosevelt's campaign.

Russ Walker, a spokesman for Freedom Works for America, a Tea Party-inspired super PAC, said super PACs have every right to engage the public. And, he said, the federal government has no right to limit how much money a person or a business can donate to a campaign committee.

"I believe everyone should have a say in the political process, regardless of how much money they want to give. It's free speech," Walker said.

Randy Adkins, a political scientist at the University of Nebraska at Omaha, said, negative advertisements are more easily digested by the public, he said, because they typically focus on character issues, rather than policy. Campaigns and supporters wouldn't use them if they didn't work, Adkins said. "Negative ads stick with people," he said.

Super PACs also provide much-needed cover to politicians who like to maintain friendly, positive images. Although candidates and super PACs cannot legally work together, super PACs in the presidential race have assumed the role of campaign mudslingers, allowing the candidates to run upbeat television ads.

"It's sort of hard to hold campaigns accountable for what somebody says on their behalf," Adkins said.

Paul Johnson, a Democratic consultant from Louisiana, predicted that super PACs could soon outspend individual campaigns, effectively taking control of a candidate's message.

Johnson also worries that a single wealthy individual could exert undue influence in the political arena, using his money to torpedo a candidate for personal reasons.

"A person could say, 'You vote the way I want you to, or I will spend $2 million to defeat you.' That's the next step in all of this, and I believe that's dangerous to democracy," he said.

Nationally, these controversial committees have been making their marks on the Republican presidential race.

Their power was on full display in this year's Iowa caucuses.

A late surge by Gingrich, a former House speaker, was stopped cold when a super PAC aligned with Mitt Romney — Restore Our Future — flooded Iowa's airwaves with anti-Gingrich ads. In all, the group spent $3.4 million in Iowa, compared with two pro-Gingrich super PACs that spent $900,000.

Every major presidential candidate in the field now is supported by a super PAC, which often are run by candidates' former aides and supporters but cannot directly coordinate with a campaign or donate directly to a campaign.

The super PACs give candidates added cash power. Candidates can only accept $2,500 from an individual in an election cycle, but super PACs have no such limits.

Super PACs now spend nearly as much as candidates do on television ads. In the last presidential election, special-interest groups accounted for about 3 percent of television ads. This year, they have paid for 44 percent of the ads aired, according to a Wesleyan Media Project study.

President Barack Obama had opposed such groups, saying they could corrupt politics, but recently reversed course and blessed a super PAC that supports his re-election effort. Obama cited competitive concerns in embracing the super PAC, Priorities USA Action.

In Nebraska, a U.S. Senate seat attracted the attention of several super PACs, including American Crossroads, founded with the help of GOP political operative Karl Rove.

American Crossroads spent more than $530,000 running ads critical of U.S. Sen. Ben Nelson and former Nebraska Gov. Bob Kerrey, even before Nelson decided whether he was running again and before Kerrey decided on running. The ads were an attempt to persuade both to stay out of the race.

Both eventually did, although they said the ads had no bearing on their decisions.

By Robynn Tysver, WORLD-HERALD staff writer.

Of limp "enforcement"

Really, this is just all too much.

Too big to fail is now too big to flail. If this is the new normal in corporate oversight, there is no abnormal.

Guambat says, bring out the cat-o-9-tails and put the whip to some humans here. At the very least, how about applying the "3 strikes and you're out" rule, assiduously applied to small potatoes, to the Big Spuds in Cow Town?

All these "settlements" settle nothing.

Promises Made, and Remade, by Firms in S.E.C. Fraud Cases

When Citigroup agreed last month to pay $285 million to settle civil charges that it had defrauded customers during the housing bubble, the Securities and Exchange Commission wrested a typical pledge from the company: Citigroup would never violate one of the main antifraud provisions of the nation’s securities laws.

It also was not the first time the firm was making that promise.

Citigroup’s main brokerage subsidiary, its predecessors or its parent company agreed not to violate the very same antifraud statute in July 2010. And in May 2006. Also as far as back as March 2005 and April 2000.

Citigroup is far from the only such repeat offender — in the eyes of the S.E.C. — on Wall Street. Nearly all of the biggest financial companies, Goldman Sachs, Morgan Stanley, JPMorgan Chase and Bank of America among them, have settled fraud cases by promising the S.E.C. that they would never again violate an antifraud law, only to do it again in another case a few years later.

A New York Times analysis of enforcement actions during the last 15 years found at least 51 cases in which 19 Wall Street firms had broken antifraud laws they had agreed never to breach.

On Wednesday, Judge Jed S. Rakoff of the Federal District Court in Manhattan, an S.E.C. critic, is scheduled to review the Citigroup settlement. Judge Rakoff has asked the agency what it does to ensure companies do not repeat the same offense, and whether it has ever brought contempt charges for chronic violators.

The S.E.C. said in a court filing Monday that it had not brought any contempt charges against large financial firms in the last 10 years.

Guambat has never run the numbers, but he's pretty sure, by the wet finger in the wind test, that he's quite squarely in the 99% crowd. And he's a bit pissed off, too. He's certainly not eased by the rest of that story:

prior violations are plentiful. For example, Bank of America’s securities unit has agreed four times since 2005 not to violate a major antifraud statute, and another four times not to violate a separate law. Merrill Lynch, which Bank of America acquired in 2008, has separately agreed not to violate the same two statutes seven times since 1999.

Of the 19 companies that the Times found to be repeat offenders over the last 15 years, 16 declined to comment. They read like a Wall Street who’s who: American International Group, Ameriprise, Bank of America, Bear Stearns, Columbia Management, Deutsche Asset Management, Credit Suisse, Goldman Sachs, JPMorgan Chase, Merrill Lynch, Morgan Stanley, Putnam Investments, Raymond James, RBC Dain Rauscher, UBS and Wells Fargo/Wachovia. Two others, Franklin Advisers and Massachusetts Financial, said that their two settlements were made simultaneously and therefore one incident did not violate a previous cease-and-desist order.

But some experts view many settlements as essentially meaningless, particularly since they usually do not require a company to admit to the accusations leveled by the S.E.C. Nearly every settlement allows a company to “neither admit nor deny” the accusations — even when the company has admitted to the same charges in a related case brought by the Justice Department — so that they are less vulnerable to investor lawsuits.

In 2005, Bank of America was one of several companies singled out for allowing professional traders to buy or sell a mutual fund at the previous day’s closing price, when it was clear the next day that the overall market or particular stocks were going to move either up or down sharply, guaranteeing a big short-term gain or avoiding a significant loss.

In its settlement, Bank of America neither admitted nor denied the conduct, but agreed to pay a $125 million fine and to put $250 million into a fund to repay investors. The company also agreed never to violate the major antifraud statutes.

Two years later, in 2007, Bank of America was accused by the S.E.C. of fraud by using its supposedly independent research analysts to bolster its investment banking activities from 1999 to 2001. In the settlement, Bank of America without admitting or denying its guilt, paid a $16 million fine and promised, once again, not to violate the law.

But two years later, in 2009, the S.E.C. again accused Bank of America of defrauding investors, saying that in 2007-8, the bank sold $4.5 billion of highly risky auction-rate securities by promising buyers that they were as safe as money market funds. They weren’t, and this time Bank of America agreed to be “permanently enjoined” from violating the same section of the law it had previously agreed not to break.

In fact, the company had already violated that promise, according to the S.E.C when it was accused last year of rigging bids in the municipal securities market from 1998 through 2002. To settle the charges, Bank of America paid no penalty, but refunded investors $25 million in profits plus $11 million in interest. And, the bank promised again never to violate the same law.

The S.E.C. allowed the bank to settle without admitting or denying the charges, even though Bank of America had simultaneously settled a case with the Justice Department’s antitrust division admitting the very same conduct.

Companies routinely argue that while they may be settling multiple violations of the same law, the facts of each case are different — and therefore not exactly a repeat offense.

Guambat calls enough BS on this stuff.

These are serious offenses, by orders of magnitude much more serious than the offenses of "common" criminals who pay with much more jail time and other deprivations of liberty than any of the banks or other financial institutions have ever paid.

Guambat joins with those in the OWS crowd who say, we will accept the holding of the Supreme Court that corporations are persons too, with all the liberties accorded real people, when one of them is strung up.

Hang 'em high.

Otherwise, as Barry points out, "moving our money is an effective step towards reclaiming America."

OWS let the Gini out of the bottle (with a boost from T Party?)

Barry Ritholtz' blog has a regular contributor, Invictus, who posts this:

Meritocracy vs. Plutocracy

As Barry has described it, “there is an unfocused financial rage in the United States” — and you see it in both the Tea Party and the OWS movement. Rather than mischaracterize why so many Americans — on the Left and the Right — are unhappy, let’s go to the actual data to see what is underlying this negative general sentiment.

Let’s start with the Gini Index, “the degree of inequality in the distribution of family income in a country.” Here’s our place in the world: [USA is in league with the dislikes of Mozambique and Uganda -- go read his post for details].

Well, How’d the Gini Index Get So Out of Whack?

In brief (footnotes removed):

In recent decades, CEO pay has grown dramatically in the United States. Between the 1930s and the 1970s, CEOs of the largest companies received approximately $1 million in total annual compensation (adjusted for inflation in year 2000 dollars). During this period, the ratio of CEO-to-worker pay narrowed as workers’ wages grew and CEO pay rose modestly. By the 1990s CEO pay grew dramatically. Business Week estimated that CEO pay at the largest companies grew from 42 times the average worker’s pay in 1980 to 531 times the average worker’s pay in 2000. In 2010, large company CEOs received $11.4 million, or 343 times worker pay, according to calculations by the AFL-CIO’s Executive Paywatch website.

A $1MM reduction in a CEO’s pay could be used to fund 13 jobs at $75k/year; nothing too complex about that math.

Meanwhile, while CEOs and other executives have feathered their nests — largely by exploiting overly-friendly relationships with all-too-compliant boards to negotiate outrageous compensation and severance packages — things have not been going quite as well for the rest of the country, as those at the top continue to rise while the remainder continue to drift

There is plenty of other data and commentary that follows, so be sure to click the link: Read the rest of this entry ».

It's a WIN-when? situation

What is the corporate tax rate in the USA? Doesn't matter if there is nothing taxed, does it? It's a European holiday for free.

If companies are allowed, indeed encouraged by certain "transfer pricing" regimes or other structured loopholes mechanisms, to park profits overseas and then every few years simply bring them back "home" to "repair" balance sheets, "create jobs" or just about any other euphemism you can choose for "avoid tax payments", companies get away with tax avoidance scott-free regardless of the ersatz tax rate.

Indeed, such "repatriation" schemes, from the stance of global companies, is just one more "transfer pricing" get out of tax jail free card.

Yeah, the US corporate tax rate may or may not be competitive/fair/productive or whatever, but it really doesn't matter if it is never imposed, or if imposed, done so on only a very small portion of profits. So, yeah, they may be taxed at a higher rate, but when if not ever?

Back in 2004 many of these global companies, claiming a tax "home" in the USA, transferred billions of dollars from other tax havens back to the US tax haven is a scheme called "repatriation", but it was like repatriating draft dodgers, only here it was repatriating tax dodgers.

They did it under a cynical scheme, sold easily to the US Congress, called the "Homeland Investment Act of 2004".

Same guys, same scheme is being reheated in the Congressional kitchen under the new banner of the WIN America Campaign, as reported a few days ago by Jesse Drucker in Bloomberg.

Biggest Tax Avoiders Win Most Gaming $1 Trillion U.S. Tax Break

Cisco, Oracle Corp. (ORCL), Microsoft Corp. (MSFT) and others formed a coalition called WIN America Campaign that plans to spend several million dollars pushing the issue.

“We simply don’t think it’s a good idea to do nothing while a trillion dollars sits overseas,” said Doug Thornell, a vice president for the firm who is advising the campaign.

Companies including Google Inc. (GOOG), Apple Inc. (AAPL) and Pfizer Inc. (PFE) are also pushing the proposed tax holiday, which would allow profits to return to the U.S. at a discounted 5.25 percent rate. Under current law, American companies can defer federal income taxes on most overseas earnings indefinitely. When they do return to the U.S., they’re taxed at the corporate rate of 35 percent -- with credits for foreign income taxes paid. Thus, companies paying little overseas face higher U.S. tax bills upon repatriation, and would get more benefit from the discount.

One way multinationals avoid taxes is through “transfer pricing,” transactions among subsidiaries that allow for allocating expenses to high-tax countries and profits to tax havens.

Cisco Systems Inc. (CSCO) has cut its income taxes by $7 billion since 2005 by booking roughly half its worldwide profits at a subsidiary at the foot of the Swiss Alps that employs about 100 people.

Cisco transfers a portion of the patent rights to technology developed in the U.S. to a Dutch unit, which sells some of the resulting products back to its parent for eventual distribution in the U.S., according to annual reports filed by the Amsterdam subsidiary. That means Cisco credits about $5 billion in U.S. sales annually to the Netherlands.

At the same time, most of the income from sales in countries like Germany, France and Japan [and the US], where statutory income tax rates average more than 30 percent, is ultimately transferred to Switzerland, meaning the other nations lose potential tax revenue. The result: Cisco’s international earnings have been taxed at about 5 percent since 2008, records show.

All told, Cisco has accumulated $31.6 billion in overseas earnings on which it has paid no U.S. income taxes yet, records show -- part of more than $1 trillion in U.S. companies’ offshore profits, according to data compiled by Bloomberg. In total, almost 90 percent of Cisco’s cash sits overseas.

Cisco, the largest maker of networking equipment, wants to save even more -- by asking Congress to waive most federal taxes due when multinationals bring such offshore earnings home. Chief Executive Officer John T. Chambers has led the charge for the tax holiday, which would be the second since 2004. He says it would encourage companies to “repatriate” as much as $1 trillion held abroad, spur domestic investment and create jobs.

[In the Homeland Investment scheme, they used these "talking points":

* Increasing domestic investment in plant, equipment, R&D and job creation;
* Increasing investments in business ventures in emerging technologies,
* Increasing funding for pension plans depleted by declines in the stock market;
* Improving the long term financial strength of U.S.-based companies by reducing domestic debt loads, strengthening corporate balance sheets, and lowering corporate bond rates; increasing dividends to shareholders (which can be productively redeployed); and raising equity market valuations by increasing funds available for share repurchases.

Actually, that last point was rather right on the main purpose of the supporters, and perhaps too blatant.]

“I create jobs overseas,” Chambers told interviewer Lesley Stahl on the CBS News program “60 Minutes” in March. “I build plants overseas and I badly want to bring that money back.”

The company needs that cash to prop up its share price.

U.S. companies used $312 billion they repatriated under a 2004 tax holiday largely for stock repurchases, while doing little direct hiring or domestic investment, according to a paper in the current issue of the Journal of Finance by professors at the University of Illinois, Harvard University, and the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. It was the latest in a series of studies that reached similar conclusions.

“Cisco complies with all global tax laws,” said John Earnhardt, a spokesman for the San Jose, California-based company, which makes switches, routers and other products, in an e-mailed statement. “In the past three years alone, Cisco (which has over 35,000 U.S. employees) has paid approximately $4.4 billion in U.S. federal corporate income taxes.” The company reported an effective tax rate last year of 17.5 percent, half the U.S. statutory rate.

While Treasury Secretary Timothy F. Geithner has expressed skepticism about a new repatriation break, Representative Kevin Brady, a Texas Republican, introduced a bill on May 11 that, like the 2004 measure, would not require companies to use their cash for hiring.

Brady declined to address why his measure does not include a hiring requirement. “With millions of Americans seeking work it makes good economic sense to temporarily lower the tax gate and allow up to a trillion dollars of stranded American profits to flow back into our economy,” he said in a statement.

The idea gained momentum last week after Senator Charles Schumer, a New York Democrat, said his party’s caucus was discussing whether short-term revenue from the holiday could fund an “infrastructure bank” to create jobs. Senator John Kerry, a Massachusetts Democrat, has also signaled that he may reconsider his previous opposition.

“Why should we reward firms for successfully gaming the tax system when we in turn are called on to make up the missing tax revenues?” said Kleinbard, a former corporate tax attorney at Cleary Gottlieb Steen & Hamilton LLP. “Much of these earnings overseas are reaped from an enormous shell game: Firms move their taxable income from the U.S. and other major economies -- where their customers and key employees are in reality located -- to tax havens.”

Tax-Free speech

Do we live in the Age of Corporatism?

Well, as we have seen, the Supreme Court has determined that corporations are as free to back politicians and political parties as your average citizen. Sort of a palsy-walsy, in pari passu patronage system, neh?

After all, just like your average citizen, corporations pay their fair share of taxes, don't they?

Don't they?

Ask Barry Ritholtz: Corporate Tax Rates, Then and Now

The GAO reported in 2008 that “two out of every three United States corporations paid no federal income taxes from 1998 through 2005.”

Since tomorrow is April 15th, it is a good time to look at our corporate tax rates. As the graphic below shows, the change in corporate tax rates over the past half century is astounding.

Corporate Taxes as a Percentage of Federal Revenue
1955 . . . 27.3%
2010 . . . 8.9%

Corporate Taxes as a Percentage of GDP
1955 . . . 4.3%
2010 . . . 1.3%

Individual Income/Payrolls as a Percentage of Federal Revenue
1955 . . . 58.0%
2010 . . . 81.5%

The average citizen is now footing way more of the government bill and getting far less per capita bang for her buck in the political arena than corporations. This is a trend that has gone on Guambat's entire life.

Sorry, kids. Hope you find a way to survive in the Age of Corporatism.

OK, which of these 2 stories will grow legs?

From today's San Fransisco Chronicle, which Guambat only rarely reads since Herb Caen passed away:

Barry Bonds guilty of obstruction of justice

Barry Bonds, the former Giants outfielder and baseball's all-time home-run leader, was convicted Wednesday of obstruction of justice for giving evasive answers to a federal grand jury that questioned him about his use of performance-enhancing drugs.

Read more: http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?f=/c/a/2011/04/13/MN491J01BR.DTL#ixzz1JTL9Vhos

Goldman Sachs Misled Congress After Duping Clients, Levin Says

Goldman Sachs Group Inc. misled clients and Congress about the firm's bets on securities tied to the housing market, the chairman of the U.S. Senate panel that investigated the causes of the financial crisis said.

The Michigan Democrat also said federal prosecutors should review whether to bring perjury charges against Goldman Sachs Chief Executive Officer Lloyd Blankfein and other current and former employees who testified in Congress last year. Levin said they denied under oath that Goldman Sachs took a financial position against the mortgage market solely for its own profit, statements the senator said were untrue.

Read more: http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?f=/g/a/2011/04/13/bloomberg1376-LJM1ZZ1A1I4H01-0493A7DJR7692BN3LRLEGM0701.DTL#ixzz1JTLcT2g6

Bonds and Blankenfeld, both accused/guilty of bald-headed lies. Which one will we still be talking about in six months?

Sigh.

The rich thimble game

Who gets the government's largess? The poor, the middle class, the minorities, the welfare bludgers, labor unions, ... the rich???

Commentary: Uncle Sam subsidizes the lifestyle of the rich, famous

The budget hides $1 trillion in spending that primarily benefits wealthy and upper middle-class Americans and corporations.

If we reined in this hidden spending, it’d be a lot easier to balance the budget. But we can’t eliminate it — or even slow its growth — unless we’re willing to look at it squarely and call it what it is: welfare for the wealthy and for the middle class.

I’m talking about private spending that the government subsidizes through loopholes, deductions and credits in the tax code. These tax breaks — known as tax expenditures — subsidize some of the most expensive items in the family budget: buying a home, buying health care, saving for retirement and paying for college and child care.

Because the government provides these subsidies through the tax code instead of through direct spending, the benefits go largely to those who make the most money. A $1,000 deduction provides $350 in benefits to a taxpayer in the top 35% tax bracket, but just $100 to one in the bottom bracket of 10%. The 65% of taxpayers who don’t itemize deductions but take the standard deduction instead get nothing at all.

The richest 20% of families — those who make more than $115,000 a year — capture 71% of the benefits from the housing subsidies, as well as 80% of the benefits of retirement-savings deductions, according to the Tax Policy Center.

Meanwhile, the 20% at the bottom, who make less than $27,000 a year, get just 0.1% of the benefits of the housing subsidies and none of the benefits from the tax breaks for saving. Those in the exact middle 20% — families that make between $50,000 and $75,000 a year — get 8% of the benefits from the housing subsidy and 6% of the retirement subsidies.

The middle class doesn’t get much … just enough to ensure that Congress wouldn’t dare touch these giveaways.

These tax expenditures get in the way of balancing the budget, because the spending is largely hidden from view during the budget process. Congress doesn’t vote on these provisions each year, as it does for discretionary-spending programs, so they don’t get any scrutiny at all. In many cases, a direct subsidy would be a more efficient way of promoting a public good than a tax break.

Most of these incentives don’t actually do what they are intended to do. The deduction for mortgage interest just drives up the cost of housing, rather than making housing more affordable. Subsidies for saving mostly go to those who would save anyway. Also, one of the biggest reasons we can’t control health-care costs is that the tax code encourages us to buy too much health care.

In 2012, these so-called tax expenditures will amount to $1.1 trillion, more than twice as much as the $462 billion budgeted for nondefense discretionary spending. It’s a third of all federal spending, but you never hear about it.

The Republicans aren’t talking about the $1 trillion elephant in the room.

Fortunately a bipartisan deficit-reduction commission is.

Should we really be subsidizing mansions? Or cottages by the lake? Or “Cadillac” health-insurance plans? Or millionaires’ 401(k) plans?

Britain's baby doomers

In the US, baby boomers are finding that their Age of Aquarius has come and gone, as retirement realities loom. Guambat has personal knowledge. For the generations that followed, including Guambat's offsprung offspring, it's a time for a bit of ribbing the old folks; they have felt (without empirical justifications, Guambat reckons) it's about time someone took the punchbowl away from the boomers.

But in the UK, the boomer doomers threaten the whole muddle class economy.

Public sector staff to be told: Work for longer and get a smaller pension

A major Government report will recommend linking the pension age – currently 60 for most state employees – with the state pension age.

It is due to rise to 68 over the years ahead, threatening the retirement plans of millions of public employees, who will also have to contribute more to their ‘gold-plated’ pension funds. And experts forecast the state pension age will continue to rise, eventually hitting 70 as Britain struggles to meet the cost of its ageing population.

State workers who can currently retire as young as 55 will have to work for many more years to secure maximum pension benefits. Even members of theArmed Forces, police and firefighters, who can currently go on full pension as early as 50, will be told they will have to wait until they are 60 before they qualify.

The dramatic move is part of a broader shake-up of state employees’ retirement funds, which have created a £1trillion black hole in the public finances.

The highest-paid public sector employees are likely to have to pay far more into their pensions as a result – around 5 per cent of their earnings.

Read more: http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-1364758/Public-sector-staff-told-Work-longer-smaller-pension.html#ixzz1G9mlpw5u

Most Britons face 60 percent income loss in retirement

Almost two-thirds of people living in Britain today are likely to see a 60 percent drop in their income when they retire over the next 40 years and a plummeting quality of life, a report said Thursday.

"The UK has a distinct problem with middle-income earners who are failing to save enough and are likely to find the drop in income during retirement unexpected and unacceptable," said Paola Subacchi, one of the report's authors.

The report says the problem is worsening because of a shift from defined benefit (DB) pension schemes to defined contribution (DC) schemes, which do not guarantee a predetermined retirement income.

"Furthermore, the recent recession has highlighted how vulnerable wealth and pension funds are to economic shocks and reduced annuity conversion rates," it adds.

Middle-class Britons' meagre savings mean they will have to rely heavily on the relatively small state pension, which "only just ensures a minimum standard of living," Chatham House said.

"Some may even slip into poverty," the report adds.

If the economy fares worse over the next decades than most economists forecast, retirement incomes of the so-called squeezed middle will be pressured even more, it adds.

The report follows a warning by Labour leader Ed Miliband that low and middle-income families in Britain are facing a "cost of living" crisis which will persist for years to come.

That which doesn't kill Wall St. makes it stronger

Paul B. Farrell, that irascible old coot, is at it again.

Commentary: Too late to jail bank CEOs; only revolution will succeed

Just three years after Wall Street’s crooks “brought down the world’s economy” Goldman’s Blankfein and his buddies are paying record bonuses, and laughing at us.

Seriously, think about it folks: Since the 2008 meltdown magazines and newspapers have analyzed the 2008 crash to death. It really is old news, history. Journalists churned out book after book: “Greenspan’s Bubbles,” “House of Cards,” “Trillion Dollar Meltdown,” “13 Bankers,” “Dumb Money,” “Bailout Nation,” “All the Devils Are Here,” “The Big Short,” “Too Big to Fail,” “The Failure of Capitalism,” “This Time is Different,” “And Then the Roof Caved In,” on and on, ad nauseum. All talk, no action, and no effect.

Get it? With every book, every editorial, every expose the past three years, Wall Street bankers actually grew stronger, got richer, more arrogant, bolder on bonuses, impervious to attacks, even taunting us, like the dictators Mubarak, Ben Ali and Gadhafi, confident they could do no wrong, confident no one would rebel. Jail? Our moment to act is long past. We blinked.

I hope that whetted your appetite. The rest is classic. So classic, Guambat wonders if ever Mr. Farrell was a long-haired type, or is just now getting around to being long harried.

Equal opportunity destroyer

Barry Ritholtz is lamenting the wasted days and nights and opportunities of Barak Obama:

The Tragedy of the Obama Administration

On election night six years ago, I wrote The Tragedy of the Bush Administration.

The rest of that piece went on to lament how George W. Bush was granted that rare opportunity to grab the brass ring, to rise to the occasion — and failed miserably.

Here we sit, not half a century later as originally surmised, but a mere six years later. I once again find myself lamenting the opportunities wasted by a US President in response to a great cataclysm. In the case of President Obama, it was his response to the financial crisis. The opportunity for greatness presented itself, and was . . . ignored.

And what an opportunity it was: Over the prior 3 decades, the economy of the United States had been “financialized.” We became much more involved in ‘financial engineering’ than any other more productive engineering. Along with this financialization came increased revenue for the biggest banks and investment houses; greater profits, influence, and power. A wave of deregulation swept over the sector, freeing the banks from meddling oversight.

Thus, as the finance sector got larger and more important, it was paradoxically under ever less scrutiny, supervision, and regulation. With that new found freedom from oversight, the banks promptly blew themselves, and the global economy, to smithereens.

This was the environment in which the President came into office. What did he do in this scenario?

• He appointed two of the architects of the crisis to major White House economic positions: Lawrence Summers as CEA Chair, and Timothy Geithner as Treasury Secretary.

• He made the enormous tactical error of focusing on Health Care Reform, while the banking crisis was still in full flower.

• He failed to marshall adequate resources to respond to the worst economic recession since the Great Depression.

Yes, like his Yale, Rhodes Scholar and other predecessors, President Obama (Harvard) has shown that Wall Street is an equal opportunity destroyer.

Wall Street is Recession-Proof

The trillion-dollar taxpayer bail-out of Wall Street has worked a treat.

For Wall Street.

For deals like this, Guambat is prepared to dine on moral hazard morning, noon and night.

Wall Street Pay: A Record $144 Billion

Pay on Wall Street is on pace to break a record high for a second consecutive year, according to a study conducted by The Wall Street Journal.

About three dozen of the top publicly held securities and investment-services firms, a 4% increase. Wall Street revenue is expected to rise 3%.

"Until focus of these institutions changes from revenue generation to long-term shareholder value, we will see these outrageous pay packages and compensation levels," said Charles Elson, director of the Weinberg Center for Corporate Governance. Since Wall Street firms pay out up to half of their revenue in compensation, cutting back on that large cost can meaningfully increase profits left for shareholders.

Where revenue falls short, analysts and experts expect that Wall Street will lay off employees in order to keep bonus pools high.

Such nonbank firms like Blackstone Group LP, Och-Ziff Management Group LLC and Fortress Investment Group LLC aren't as scrutinized in Washington. All three firms' revenue and compensation are projected to increase.

Running against the grain

It's previously been reported in this blog that the Australian Wheat Board has got a tender body part in a wringer over it's participation in Saddam's rorting of the Oil-for-food Program, but how John Howard just couldn't image such good guys doing anything untoward.
http://guambatstew.blogspot.com/2005/10/bad-saddam-bad-kofi-and-shame-on-rest.html

Well, it appears not only did they possibly get into some things a might curly, they had the willing cooperation, if not competence, of Howard's government in the process.

"Evidence to a parliamentary committee revealed Department of Foreign Affairs and Trade (DFAT) officials failed to investigate two key warnings that AWB was funding the despot's regime under the United Nations oil-for-food program. The officials quickly signed off on AWB's request to seek deals which later saw it pay inflated transport costs to a company which was a front for the Iraqi government.

"These officers were not corrupt," Mr Downer told parliament during a fiery exchange with his Labor counterpart Kevin Rudd. But Mr Rudd said DFAT's evidence before the Senate estimates committee showed "inexcusable negligence" by the government. DFAT laid responsibility for policing the corruption-ridden oil-for-food program squarely with the UN." http://smh.com.au/news/NATIONAL/DFAT-approved-AWB-oilforfood-request/2005/11/03/1130823328054.html

"The UN raised allegations with Australia's mission in New York in January 2000 that the monopoly wheat exporter, AWB, was paying money into a Jordanian bank account lining the pockets of Saddam Hussein's regime. Despite this, 11 months later the Department of Foreign Affairs and Trade gave AWB the green light to enter into commercial arrangements with a Jordanian company, Alia - now known to have been a front for the Iraqi dictator's regime - without consulting the mission in New York or the UN.

Department officials revealed yesterday that cables went to Canberra - where they were copied to the office of the Foreign Affairs Minister, Alexander Downer - in January 2000, after an officer from the UN's Office of the Iraq Program approached Australia's UN mission in New York with allegations made by Canada.

Earlier, Canada's mission in New York had informed the UN that the Iraqi Government had demanded the Canadian Wheat Board deposit $US700,000 ($943,000) into a Jordanian bank account to cover transport costs in Iraq and made allegations that similar arrangements had been made between Iraq and the Australian Wheat Board.

The UN told the Canadians that the payments should not be made into the account and contacted Australia's mission, which reported back soon after that AWB had "categorically denied" the allegations.

Ten months later AWB wrote to Foreign Affairs, in correspondence tabled at the hearing, saying "as you are aware, AWB is experiencing problems managing its Iraq business efficiently", and asking if the department was "comfortable" with its proposal to enter into an arrangement with a Jordanian-based trucking company.

"We believe the proposed solution will eloquently ["elegantly", even] solve our problem," the letter stated. The department wrote back in November 2000, saying that it had examined the Jordanian trucking company proposal and "could see no reason from an international legal perspective why you should not proceed". "That is, this would not contravene the current sanctions on Iraq," it stated.

However, the unnamed department officer who wrote the letter did not, departmental officers admitted, consult its mission in New York or the UN, which in June that year had prepared a memo, not passed on to Australia, stating that dealings with Alia would breach UN sanctions.

The Labor senator John Faulkner told the hearing "one check with the UN OIP [Office of the Iraq Program] would have found that this was a massive problem, just a simple check"."

http://www.smh.com.au/news/world/wheat-deal-approved-despite-un-concern/2005/11/03/1130823343424.html

Meanwhile, back at John Howard's ranch,

"The man who chaired wheat exporter AWB at the time it made kickback payments to Saddam Hussein's regime was later appointed by the Federal Government as a senior agricultural administrator in Baghdad.

Trevor Flugge left AWB in March 2002, and a year later, immediately after the Iraq war began, was appointed by the Foreign Minister, Alexander Downer, to jointly lead a US-Australia team to modernise Iraqi agriculture.

Mr Flugge was chairman of AWB in 1999 when the company began paying "inland transportation fees" to a Jordanian trucking firm to carry Australian wheat from Iraqi ports....

[The UN's Volker Report] says "numerous aspects of the AWB-Alia relationship … suggest that some employees of AWB were placed on notice of facts strongly suggesting that AWB's payments were in whole, or in part, for the benefit of the [prewar] government of Iraq". There is no suggestion in the report Mr Flugge was aware of those facts.

The report found that AWB was the largest provider of humanitarian goods to Iraq under the oil-for-food program, and the $221 million AWB made in "side payments" for the trucking fees amounted to "more than 14 per cent of the illicit funds collected by the Iraqi regime under its kickback schemes".

The opposition says the payments illegally obtained from AWB were by far the largest from any company participating in the provision of food or humanitarian assistance to the former regime.
http://www.smh.com.au/news/world/wheat-boss-given-top-job-in-baghdad/2005/11/02/1130823281418.html

Building wealth

When the Oil-for-food scandal first began to break, blame was laid at the feet of Saddam and the UN for all the corruption, with criticism especially vitupritive from the Bush administration, Fox News and like-minded cheerleaders. There was certainly blame enough to spread there, too, fair cop. But there would have been no corruption, notwithstanding the best efforts of Saddam or the worst efforts of the UN, without the willing and facilitating participation of business (much of it French and Russian), some of which is finally being "outed". (http://guambatstew.blogspot.com/2005/10/bad-saddam-bad-kofi-and-shame-on-rest.html) You might also cast your mind back to the Bush administration's handling of FEMA and the NOLA experience (e.g., http://guambatstew.blogspot.com/2005/09/buck-doesnt-stop-its-lying-in-wait-for.html). Bear that in mind whilst reading the following.

WASHINGTON (Reuters) - Corruption continues to cost Iraq billions of dollars each year, and Washington and Baghdad should be doing far more to stop it, the top U.S. auditor for Iraq's reconstruction said in a report released on Sunday. Stuart Bowen, special inspector general for Iraq reconstruction, said U.S. efforts to help Iraq build strong anti-corruption institutions were urgently needed and called for an American-Iraqi summit to battle a legacy of corruption. "Creating an effective anti-corruption structure within Iraq's government is essential to the long-term success of Iraq's fledgling democracy," Bowen wrote in his seventh quarterly report to Congress.

"Bowen's office, which has 20 auditors and 10 investigators in Iraq plus staffers in the United States, has made significant progress on cases charging fraud, bribery and kickbacks involving U.S. citizens -- government officials and contractors -- in Iraq, he said. The report said investigators had gathered "an enormous amount of evidence" in these investigations but gave no details on any possible indictments. Bowen said his office, created by Congress in November 2003 to oversee the Iraq Reconstruction and Relief Fund, recently transferred $2 million to the Justice Department to fund prosecution efforts, and four prosecutors were now working full-time on Iraq reconstruction cases. He said it was crucial for the United States to strengthen Iraq's new domestic anti-corruption agencies, noting that Iraq lost more than $2 billion each year in stolen gasoline and diesel fuel supplies. The report said Iraq's Bureau of Supreme Audit charged that up to $1.27 billion from some 90 contracts was lost from June 2004 to February 2005 because deals were given to "favored suppliers" and cash was given to third-party firms to work out contracts.

"Overall, the report said the United States had made steady progress in its $30 billion drive to rebuild Iraq, billed as the biggest U.S. foreign aid operation since the post-World War Two reconstruction of Europe."
http://today.reuters.com/news/NewsArticle.aspx?type=topNews&storyID=uri:2005-10-30T211014Z_01_KRA076157_RTRUKOC_0_US-IRAQ-RECONSTRUCTION.xml&pageNumber=1&summit=


"As the money runs out on the $30 billion American-financed reconstruction of Iraq, the officials in charge cannot say how many planned projects they will complete, and there is no clear source for hundreds of millions of dollars a year needed to operate the projects that have been finished, according to a report to Congress released on Sunday. The report, by the special inspector general for Iraq reconstruction, describes an array of projects that went awry, sometimes astonishingly, like electrical substations that were built at great cost but never connected to the country's electrical grid. With more than 93 percent of the American money now committed to specific projects, it could become increasingly difficult to solve those problems. Issues like those "should have been considered before," said Jim Mitchell, a spokesman for the inspector general's office. "It's very critical right now, with so little of the U.S. money left to be committed, that they're going to have to make these determinations very quickly."

"Overall, the report says, there have been 4,208 death and injury claims filed through the insurance coverage that United States law requires for contractors of any nationality who work on American bases abroad. Although that number includes claims from bases around the world, the majority are believed to originate from Iraq and Afghanistan. Those death and injury tolls, which in the chaos of Iraq are probably underreported to begin with, especially among Iraqi contractors, have come about even though more than a quarter of the reconstruction money has actually "been spent on security costs related to the insurgency," the report says. The security costs have "proportionately reduced funds for other reconstruction projects," the report continues, leading to the cancellation of many initiatives.

"We welcome and value the independent oversight," said a spokeswoman for the State Department, which now largely oversees the rebuilding effort. "Their objective findings have helped improve transparency, accountability and efficiency as we work with the Iraqi people to establish an independent, stable and prosperous Iraq." The five electrical substations examined by the inspector general's office, which is led by Stuart Bowen Jr., were built in southern Iraq at a cost of $28.8 million. "The completed substations were found to be well planned, well designed and well constructed," the report says. Unfortunately, the system for distributing power from the completed substations was largely nonexistent. "No date for installing the distribution system was given," the report says."
http://www.iht.com/articles/2005/10/30/news/rebuild.php

"BASRA, Iraq — Laura Bush's gift to the people of Iraq is rising in a dirt lot across from a sheep market here, hidden behind high concrete walls and towers with armed guards. Behind the walls, hundreds of Iraqi workers in blue jumpsuits scurry around a construction site filled with rebar, dirt and trailers. The project, funded by the U.S. government and donations raised with the first lady's help, will someday be a hospital equipped to treat pediatric cancer patients. Nobody denies that Iraq needs new hospitals, but the experts questioned the priorities of Washington's $1-billion rebuilding plan, which has focused on construction instead of basic needs such as better training for doctors and public healthcare campaigns.

"We have more important priorities to solve our urgent health problems," said Abdulamir Khafaji, the chief pediatrician at Basra's largest hospital, citing the need for additional equipment in his emergency room. Meanwhile, the number of clinics to be built has been reduced because of security costs and other problems. It is uncertain whether Iraqis will be able to staff and maintain the health centers that are being constructed.

"The U.S. spent funds on equipment that is now sitting in warehouses and on medications that later disappeared, presumably stolen, according to interviews and federal reports. Iraqis and health experts said more attention should have been paid to refurbishing the country's dilapidated network of 1,700 clinics and nearly 200 hospitals. A 2004 survey of 214 clinics found that only 10% had a regular water supply, only half had electric generators, and less than a third had "functional and relatively clean" toilets. "I saw enormous incompetence which was more costly than even Iraqi corruption," said Richard Garfield, a Columbia University health expert who worked with U.S. and international officials in Iraq last year. The U.S. "was pouring money down the drain."

"To improve things, the U.S. issued a $43-million contract in April 2003 to Abt Associates Inc., a Massachusetts-based consulting firm, to modernize the Iraqi Health Ministry and provide needed supplies. But the company, which has worked on healthcare issues throughout the developing world, quickly ran into problems, according to an audit issued this year by the USAID inspector-general. Company officials were slow to mobilize. They bickered with Iraqis and officials with the Coalition Provisional Authority, the U.S.-led agency that administered Iraq until June 2004. One Abt manager "did not recognize" the CPA as a "legitimate authority," the audit said. Medical kits intended for 600 clinics contained damaged or useless equipment, the audit said. USAID subcontractors questioned the quality of a device that Abt bought to sterilize medical tools, noting that it was manufactured by an Indian firm that hadn't made such an appliance before. The medical kits, which were supposed to be purchased by October 2003, weren't delivered to the warehouse until June 2004, eight months late, the audit said. By February 2005, some clinics still had not received the kits. One subcontractor involved in delivering the equipment said he had "never witnessed such a debacle" in 20 years of working with USAID, the audit said. The audit also criticized USAID officials for constant turnover and failing to move quickly to address problems. In the end, USAID officials cut Abt's contract, paying it only $23 million. Abt officials refused to comment, referring all questions to USAID.

"By the time the Abt contract expired in November 2004, the U.S. already had a new approach to improve healthcare: building and refurbishing hundreds of clinics and hospitals. In March 2004, the Pentagon's reconstruction agency, now known as the Project and Contracting Office, announced the award of a $500-million contract to Parsons Corp., based in Pasadena, to build 150 clinics and refurbish 20 hospitals and other facilities. But violence flared in Iraq that month, causing security costs to soar. Parsons had to relocate its headquarters inside the heavily fortified Green Zone in Baghdad and limit trips around Iraq. The U.S. recently cut eight clinics from construction plans, citing security costs. The refurbishment project also became mired in landownership disputes, problems with Iraqi officials demanding kickbacks and poor performance by Parsons' Iraqi subcontractors, State Department officials said. The first of the new clinics is supposed to be complete by the end of this year. Parsons referred questions to the government. In contrast to the delays that have beset other construction projects, Basra Children's Hospital is on track to open its doors in September 2006 — 3 1/2 years after the invasion. That may be in part because of the intense interest shown by Laura Bush and Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice."
http://www.latimes.com/la-fg-iraqhealth30oct30,0,1723256.story?page=2&track=morenews&coll=la-story-footer

Somewhat related post: http://guambatstew.blogspot.com/2005/09/waging-war.html

Bad Saddam. Bad Kofi. And shame on the rest of youse, too

Oil-for-food. That's gotta be bad for your cholesterol.

"More than 4,500 companies took part in the U.N. oil-for-food program and more than half of them paid illegal surcharges and kickbacks to Saddam Hussein, the committee investigating the program is to report. The country with the most companies involved in the program was Russia, followed by France, the committee says in a report to be released Thursday US time. The inquiry was led by Paul A. Volcker, former chairman of the U.S Federal Reserve Board.

"In my mind," he said, "this part of our investigation, looking at the manipulation of the program outside the U.N., strongly reinforces the case that the U.N. itself carries a large part of this responsibility and needs reform. "Even though we are looking at it from the outside, it kind of screams out at you, 'Why didn't somebody blow a whistle?"

"Those manipulating the program ranged from established trading companies to front companies set up for the purpose, and included some companies of international reputation as well as many well known in their home countries, the investigators said.

"Saddam received $1.8 billion in illicit income from surcharges and kickbacks on the sales of oil and humanitarian goods during 1996-2003, when the program ran, the committee concluded in its last report in September.

"Earlier Volcker committee reports summarising the year and a half of inquiries have examined the activities of the United Nations, finding the institution's management inept and corrupt, and providing evidence that the program's former director, Benon V. Sevan, received kickbacks himself. He has denied any wrongdoing. The $64 billion program was set up by the Security Council to help ease the effects of U.N. sanctions on the 27 million Iraqis by supplying food and medicines in exchange for letting the Saddam government export oil." (http://smh.com.au/news/world/report-names-top-firms-that-bribed-saddam/2005/10/27/1130400311224.html)

"The final report from the Independent Inquiry Committee aims to show how companies all over the world, as well as individuals and governments, rorted the program on a grand scale, sabotaging diplomatic efforts to bring Saddam under control. The country with the most companies involved was Russia, followed by France, the report is expected to reveal. The surcharges on oil were finally stopped in 2001 by the United States and Britain in the UN Security Council." (http://www.heraldsun.news.com.au/common/story_page/0,5478,17056405%255E663,00.html.)

"Among companies the report names in connection with a variety of illicit payment schemes are DaimlerChrysler, French carmaker Renault and some of the world's biggest pharmaceutical companies, including Glaxo Wellcome, SmithKline Beecham and Eli Lilly.

"[The report] says the Iraqis received a total of nearly $643,000 in "service fees" when they made four purchases of medical equipment totalling $7.6 million from [Minnesota based] St. Jude's Austrian subsidiary. St. Jude is a global leader in making and selling heart valves and other cardiac devices.
St. Jude issued a statement saying only: "We are studying the report."

"[Minnesota based] Cargill's Malaysia subsidiary sold the Iraqis $1.2 million in palm oil -- vegetable oil used for cooking -- in two contracts in 2000 and 2001, it said. Lori Johnson, a spokeswoman for the privately held agribusiness giant, said company officials were "surprised by the report.

"Cargill's U.S. operations also sold $19.5 million in wheat to Iraq, and its French subsidiary sold $27.4 million in sugar and wheat to Saddam's government, the report said, but it listed no Iraqi records of improper fees in connection with those sales." (http://www.startribune.com/stories/722/5693747.html)

"Australian wheat exporter AWB is defending its role in the Iraqi oil-for-food program after adverse findings from a United Nations (UN) inquiry. The report found no evidence to show AWB knew of the kickbacks, but suggests it should have realised. After the first Gulf War, AWB became the single largest provider of goods to Iraq under the United Nations oil-for-food program.

"In the final report, the now privatised AWB has been found to have paid more than $200 million for transport services that went straight back to the Iraqi regime instead. AWB managing director Andrew Lindberg rejects the inquiry committee's suggestions that at least some AWB employees should have picked up on the illicit activity. "We were an unwitting participant in an elaborate scheme of deception devised by the regime." Mr Lindberg says there were good reasons for not questioning the sharp increase in transport costs for its wheat. AWB says at no time did it know that the money it paid to a Jordanian trucking company was being diverted to the Iraqi Government.

"But the president of the Iraqi Islamic Council of Australia, Dr Mohamad Taha Al-Salami, has rejected the AWB's defence. "If it was a matter of a hundred dollars or $200 you know I would accept that, but when it is millions of dollars they have to justify it and it's naive, a naive defence in my opinion," he said.

"[Australian Prime Minister John Howard said,] "My dealings with the people in the AWB in the past have always been such that I've found them a very straight up and down group of people and I can't imagine for a moment that they would have knowingly been involved in anything improper." Trade Minister Mark Vaile has also defended AWB. "I wouldn't imagine for a moment that any of the management or the board of AWB would have knowingly been involved," he said. Mr Vaile says the AWB followed all UN guidelines while taking part in the program. Mr Vaile has blamed the United Nations, saying it oversaw the contract." (http://www.abc.net.au/news/newsitems/200510/s1492749.htm)

Personal observation: I've had a wee bit of experience in shipping commodities in bulk, and that small portal on the industry taught me that, generally, most shippers, especially the large ones, know every cent involved in the transport of the product and how it is justified and do a major job heavying the carriers to get costs down. But I have no knowledge of AWB or how it has operated and cast no aspersions, implicitly or explicitly.

"Tariq Aziz, who at the time was Iraq's deputy prime minister, told investigators that beneficiaries received oil barrel allocations based on their level of opposition to the sanctions. The report is filled with records of transactions kept by Iraqi officials who demanded special surcharges. DaimlerChrysler is listed as paying $7,000 for a $70,000 contract, while Volvo Construction Equipment in Brussels paid $317,000 in extra fees for a $6.4 million contract.

"The report also cited Banque Nationale de Paris, or B.N.P., for playing a double role in handling the oil-for-food escrow account, but not revealing knowledge about certain financial relationships that enabled the payment of illegal surcharges. B.N.P., however, issued a company statement that the illicit surcharges were detected only through the "enormous investigative efforts" of the Volcker committee and the C.I.A.. The bank called it "unjustified" to suggest that "alleged deficiencies in its screening of payments contributed to illicit surcharges."

"One-third of the oil exported from Iraq through the program ended up in the hands of Russian companies, the report said. Russia had argued for lifting the sanctions. An Iraqi document accompanying the report contended that Russian companies including Lukoil, the country's largest private energy company, and TNK, now merged in a joint venture with BP, paid surcharges in cash to the Iraqi Embassy in Moscow. The embassy accepted $52 million between March 2002 and December 2002, the report contended. The money was packed in red canvas diplomatic bags sealed with wax and sent by diplomatic courier, the report said. Each bag could hold $1.5 million in $100 bills.

"The report said that three Siemens companies Siemens-France, Siemens-Turkey and Osram Middle East knowingly paid kickbacks of at least $1.6 million. There was no response from Siemens in the report.

"Weir Group, an engineering services company based in Scotland, made about $4.5 million in illicit payments to the Iraqi government, the report said. The report said that when Iraq's regular customers balked in late 2000 at buying oil with surcharges, four oil traders merged to dominate the market.Bayoil Supply & Trading Limited from the Bahamas, Glencore International from Switzerland, the Vitol Group from the Netherlands and the Taurus Group from New Zealand employed intermediaries in Italy, Liechtenstein, Malaysia and Switzerland to purchase 60 percent of Iraqi oil until the overthrow of Mr. Hussein in 2003.

"Afiliates of other American companies were listed in the report, including Coastal Corporation and NuCoastal Corporation. "This was a report that came out with a conclusion they set out to come up with," said Catherine Recker, a lawyer for Bayoil U.S.A. Incorporated, a Houston-based oil trading company named as a defendant in an indictment brought by the United States attorney in New York. The company has pleaded not guilty.

"Oscar S. Wyatt, a Texas oilman who was also named in the report and owns NuCoastal, was indicted Friday on charges that he paid millions of dollars in kickbacks to obtain rights to sell Iraqi oil. He pleaded not guilty Thursday in Federal District Court in Manhattan." (http://www.nytimes.com/2005/10/28/international/28companies.html)

"The individuals named as having profited from contracts with Iraq ranged from recognizable politicians like Vladimir V. Zhirinovsky, leader of the Liberal Democratic Party in Russia, and Charles Pasqua, a former French interior minister, to unfamiliar names like the Rev. Jean-Marie Benjamin, a Swiss priest who put his profits in his Vatican bank account.

"The abuses were geographically widespread. Kickbacks on humanitarian goods were traced to companies or individuals from 66 countries, while payments of surcharges were made by entities from 40 countries.

"At the center of this activity, according to the report, was Tariq Aziz, the former deputy prime minister who was Mr. Hussein's chief diplomatic emissary. Mr. Aziz now awaits trial in Baghdad, but during the program's life, from 1996 to 2003, he wooed friends for Iraq with profitable oil allocations.

"Among the people he dealt with, identified as "political beneficiaries" in the Volcker report, was Roberto Formigoni, president of the Lombardy region in Italy and onetime under secretary to the Ministry of the Environment. He was a longtime supporter of Iraq and an opponent of penalties, and Mr. Aziz arranged for him to receive 27 million barrels, recording it under "special requests for Italy," the committee said. Mr. Formigoni denied the charge.

"Claude Kaspereit, a businessman and son of a French member of Parliament, flew French men and women opposed to penalties on Baghdad and expressed solidarity with Mr. Hussein, and afterwards received allocations, the committee said. The report said he secretly sold oil rights for 4 million barrels to the financier Marc Rich, who is now a fugitive. The report reproduced a letter of credit from the transaction stamped with the words "Marc Rich and Co. Investment AG whose name must not be mentioned."

"Mr. Aziz was also the contact point for Father Benjamin, an antiwar activist who founded the Benjamin Committee for Iraq in 1999. The report says the priest facilitated an oil deal for a Swiss trader friend by introducing him to Mr. Aziz. The priest received what he called a donation of $140,000, and the committee said his Vatican bank account showed a $90,000 deposit the same day. Father Benjamin told the committee he had no idea of the source of the funds.

"Mr. Aziz also worked with George Galloway, a British member of Parliament, who was accused of receiving more than 18 million barrels of oil in his name or the name of a Jordanian associate, Fawaz Abdullah Zureikat. A portion of the profits went to Mr. Galloway's wife, Amineh Abu-Zayyad, a Palestinian biologist. In his letter denying the allegations, Mr. Galloway noted that his wife had announced on the front page of the Sunday Times of London in May that she was divorcing him.

"According to the report, companies often disguised surcharge payments by funneling them through offshore bank accounts or labeling them as legitimate oil-related expenses. One example the report gave was the substitution of the words "loading fees" for "commission" on payments of the Taurus Group, a large oil trader.

"The report said that putting disclaimers in contracts that no surcharges had been paid did little to lessen trade. "In one instance an agent for BayOil admitted to fabricating an after-the-fact disclaimer to help disguise the payment of surcharges," the report said in discussing a Houston oil trader.

"The committee said that companies it contacted to explain premiums they paid for oil often passed them off as the result of ordinary market forces.
Kickbacks were paid on contracts and disguised as "inland transportation fees" or "after-sales service fees." Contractors would then inflate prices and recover from the United Nations escrow account the money they had secretly paid to Iraq.

"The committee said companies confronted with evidence of illicit payments generally offered one of four justifications. Some said they had been unaware of side payments or the payments had been made by employees in Iraq without authorization; some said they thought inland transportation and after-sales service fees were legitimate expenses; some challenged the committee's evidence as untrustworthy because it came from Iraq; some admitted paying kickbacks, saying they understood it to be part of doing business in Iraq."
(http://www.nytimes.com/2005/10/28/international/middleeast/28food.html)

"Since Saddam was toppled in April, Iraq has paid out $1.8bn in reparations to the United Nations Compensation Commission (UNCC), the Geneva-based quasi tribunal that assesses claims and disburses awards. Of those payments, $37m have gone to Britain and $32.8m have gone to the United States. That's right: in the past 18 months, Iraq's occupiers have collected $69.8m in reparation payments from the desperate people they have been occupying. But it gets worse: the vast majority of those payments, 78%, have gone to multinational corporations, according to statistics on the UNCC website.Away from media scrutiny, this has been going on for years. Of course there are many legitimate claims for losses that have come before the UNCC: payments have gone to Kuwaitis who have lost loved ones, limbs, and property to Saddam's forces. But much larger awards have gone to corporations: of the total amount the UNCC has awarded in Gulf war reparations, $21.5bn has gone to the oil industry alone. Jean-Claude Aimé, the UN diplomat who headed the UNCC until December 2000, publicly questioned the practice. "This is the first time as far as I know that the UN is engaged in retrieving lost corporate assets and profits," he told the Wall Street Journal in 1997, and then mused: "I often wonder at the correctness of that."But the UNCC's corporate handouts only accelerated. Here is a small sample of who has been getting "reparation" awards from Iraq: Halliburton ($18m), Bechtel ($7m), Mobil ($2.3m), Shell ($1.6m), Nestlé ($2.6m), Pepsi ($3.8m), Philip Morris ($1.3m), Sheraton ($11m), Kentucky Fried Chicken ($321,000) and Toys R Us ($189,449). In the vast majority of cases, these corporations did not claim that Saddam's forces damaged their property in Kuwait - only that they "lost profits" or, in the case of American Express, experienced a "decline in business" because of the invasion and occupation of Kuwait. One of the biggest winners has been Texaco, which was awarded $505m in 1999. According to a UNCC spokesperson, only 12% of that reparation award has been paid, which means hundreds of millions more will have to come out of the coffers of post-Saddam Iraq." (http://babaklayeghi.blogspot.com/2004/10/why-is-war-torn-iraq-giving-190000-to.html)

" U.N. documents show that Halliburton's affiliates have had controversial dealings with the Iraqi regime during Cheney's tenure at the company and played a part in helping Saddam Hussein illegally pocket billions of dollars under the U.N.'s oil-for-food program. The Clinton administration blocked one deal Halliburton was trying to push through sale because it was "not authorized under the oil-for-food deal," according to U.N. documents. That deal, between Halliburton subsidiary Ingersoll Dresser Pump Co. and Iraq, included agreements by the firm to sell nearly $1 million in spare parts, compressors and firefighting equipment to refurbish an offshore oil terminal, Khor al Amaya. Still, Halliburton used one of foreign subsidiaries to sell Iraq the equipment it needed so the country could pump more oil, according to a report in the Washington Post in June 2001.The Halliburton subsidiaries, Dresser-Rand and Ingersoll Dresser Pump Co., sold water and sewage treatment pumps, spare parts for oil facilities and pipeline equipment to Baghdad through French affiliates from the first half of 1997 to the summer of 2000, U.N. records show. Ingersoll Dresser Pump also signed contracts -- later blocked by the United States -- according to the Post, to help repair an Iraqi oil terminal that U.S.-led military forces destroyed in the Gulf War years earlier."
(http://babaklayeghi.blogspot.com/2004/10/under-cheney-halliburton-helped-saddam.html)

An historical up-close-and-personal look at the program,"ground zero": http://archives.cnn.com/2002/WORLD/meast/09/30/sproject.irq.sanctions/