IMF managing director arrested, accused of sexual attack

[kenoma]

^ links, otherwise you're talking out of your arse, as ever.

Is it okay if I provide links that bear little relation to my argument, as you do?

I posted a link to the latest IMF report on Europe about 10 pages back. You could start there, and in the meantime quit whingeing that no one ever reads your links

[lupercal]

Here's what I posted. If you want to refute any points, fine, refute them. That's what we're for. But don't just come here to fart:

then that is still no proof Kahn was up to any good.

Depends on your standard of proof. I would say there's very strong evidence that Kahn was up to a lot of good, and I've posted several articles to make that case, not that I expect anyone to have read them, so I'll chop it up into little bits to make it easy. It's pretty clear to me what's going on, and I'm doing the best I can to make it clear to you, but banking is not my bag so I can't swear to any of this:

1) DSK is a strong supporter of making loans on reasonable terms to smaller countries including Greece, Portugal, and Ireland when requested. Most recently this resulted in the approval of several such badly needed loans the day after he was arrested:

1. Europe's debt crisis may get worse
Strauss-Kahn's arrest has "cast uncertainty over global efforts to prevent Europe's debt crisis from spinning out of control," say Zachary A. Goldfarb and Brady Dennis in The Washington Post. As leader of the IMF, Strauss-Kahn has been "a muscular advocate" for helping Greece, Ireland, and Portugal avoid sinking into insolvency. This scandal may make it harder to pull the struggling countries out of their debt mess, increasing the odds that one will go broke, which "would shock the global financial markets and endanger the nascent economic recovery in the United States."

http://theweek.com/article/index/215317 ... he-fallout

Small countries "going broke" mean fire sale of their assets so naturally our friends on Wall Street are salivating at the prospect. Already there have been demands on Greece to put up its national monuments as collateral, which DSK refused.

2) Germany and the US have resisted making loans on terms favorable to these countries, and insisted on hard-line austerity measures, savings programs, etc:

The funds are needed later that month when a large tranche of Greece's debt comes due for renewal. German officials have said Berlin will do its bit. But there has been public opposition to funding a bail-out and Chancellor Angela Merkel said any aid would come with "very strict conditions", including a credible savings plan.

http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/8642399.stm

As far as I can tell DSK has set a policy of making these loans on more tolerableterms than was IMF practice previously.

3. DSK is, or was, a check on France's far right led by uber-spook Sarkozy, who just eliminated his biggest competition in next year's presidential election:

Strauss-Kahn's "spectacular fall from grace immediately alters the rules of the French political game," says Emma-Kate Symons at The Australian. The unpopular Sarkozy was running scared ahead of his 2012 re-election bid. Now his most serious potential opponent appears eliminated and the most likely scenario is that Sarkozy will wind up in a run-off with a Socialist second-stringer, and that's a race the embattled president can win.
http://theweek.com/article/index/215317 ... he-fallout

4. I have yet to see credible evidence that DSK was involved in dirty deals, fake revolutions, invasions and bombings on false pretenses, pension plundering or any of the other crap Sarkozy, Bernake and the rest of the kleptocracy does so well. If you have it, post it. Otherwise why not leave the dopey demagoguing to the pros? Not that they're any better at it, but they probably need the money.

[crikkett]

^ ditto. Do some research that isn't just copy-pasta from your favorite banker blog and maybe I'll take you seriously, although frankly, it's doubtful.

Another morning down the tubes.
It's all fun and games until someone loses an eye. no?

[Canadian_watcher]

^ ditto. Do some research that isn't just copy-pasta from your favorite banker blog and maybe I'll take you seriously, although frankly, it's doubtful.

Another morning down the tubes.
It's all fun and games until someone loses an eye. no?

do you seriously believe that these types of posts put you above the fray? I'd say you're right in there swinging, darlin'

[JackRiddler]

It's pretty clear to me what's going on, and I'm doing the best I can to make it clear to you, but banking is not my bag so I can't swear to any of this:

1) DSK is a strong supporter of making loans on reasonable terms to smaller countries including Greece, Portugal, and Ireland when requested. Most recently this resulted in the approval of several such badly needed loans the day after he was arrested:
....
Small countries "going broke" mean fire sale of their assets so naturally our friends on Wall Street are salivating at the prospect. Already there have been demands on Greece to put up its national monuments as collateral, which DSK refused.

Ah, DSK, protector of the Greeks. Don't you for a change want to know what you're talking about?! Demands to use monuments as collateral have so far been non-starters because Greeks are rioting against every aspect of the IMF-ECB austerity packages. Any concessions the banksters are willing to make you attribute to "DSK" in your imagination. (I submit: solely working backwards from the Sofitel incident to the faulty conclusion that accusations of rape against the IMF chief must be a set up, and therefore further to the faulty conclusion that he must be a good guy. Before the incident, would you have thought to attribute noble motives to DSK?)

But the "concessions" such as they are are actually the product of Greek resistance. Greece doesn't need new loans devoted solely to paying the interest on the old ones, accumulating more debt in the process. This is the same old IMF formula, and it's financial heroin, without the high and with further impoverishment guaranteed. Greece needs to undergo bankruptcy and free its people from a debt they (mostly) have nothing to do with and can never pay. Greece needs to exit the euro and pursue a sovereign, autonomous development (there being no other choice).

Sorry, I'm piling on to kenoma's able answer:

You haven't a clue what you're talking about. Firstly, the loans aren't 'badly needed'; they are being used to pay private debts which should have been defaulted on a long time ago. Secondly, DSK - by which you actually mean the IMF, Strauss-Kahn didn't personally negotiate the 'bailouts' - wanted to impose haircuts on bondholders because this was in the interests of the IMF: they want their money back, with interest. The ECB don't want to do this because they are protecting the creditors - German Landesbanken, French banks, etc. - in order to stave off massive bank losses in the core Eurozone countries. Do the IMF look sane and fair compared to the ECB? Perhaps, but it's not saying much. And anyway, they never objected in practical terms - they could have refused to play along with the bailout plans by withholding funds. They didn't. And if you actually looked at the IMF deals with the peripheries, you'd see that they are indeed going to force massive sell-offs.

That you believe "Wall Street" and the IMF are somehow opposing forces confirms for me that you are a spoofer who knows nothing about the history of the IMF or the details of the current European bailouts

Demonstrators hold a banner depicting a big fish as IMF-EU-ECB during a protest march May 11 in Athens, Greece. The storm over the IMF chief's sex assault case threw a giant cloud Monday over a European finance ministers' meeting aimed at easing the euro debt crisis and considering a new bail-out for Greece.

Why can't those people distinguish between DSK's Greek-loving IMF and the mean old ECB? He's their friend! They keep calling IMF-EU-ECB a "troika," as though they were all squeezing Greece at the same time, for the same reason.

Athens meets Dominique Strauss-Kahn with protests
http://www.grreporter.info/en/athens_me ... tests/3767

SNIP

George Papandreou and Dominique Strauss-Kahn will make press releases after the meeting and then will have luncheon. The Managing Director of the IMF will speak before the Greek Parliament in the late afternoon on the need for the brave economic reforms undertaken by the Greek government. Deputies from the Communist Party of Greece decided to leave the hall while the guest from Washington is speaking and members of the Coalition of the Radical Left announced him unwelcome in Greece.

Citizens are invited to participate in two demonstrations at the time when the Managing Director of the Fund will be in the Parliament building to express their disapproval of Strauss-Kahn’s visit to Greece. Trade unions of the public and private sector organize on Klavtmonos square at 05.00 pm demonstrations for canceling the Memorandum, and the communist trade union organizes another demonstration on Syntagma Square at 07.00 pm.

Delta-Ni-Tau = IMF











.

[vanlose kid]

^ ditto. Do some research that isn't just copy-pasta from your favorite banker blog and maybe I'll take you seriously, although frankly, it's doubtful.

spoofer. with linked "research":

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viewtopic.php?p=402254#p402254

viewtopic.php?p=402242#p402242

viewtopic.php?p=402222#p402222

...

Now it's up to six charges:

Strauss-Kahn faces six charges:

Criminal Sexual Act in the First Degree:
Attempted Rape in the First Degree;
Sexual Abuse in the First Degree;
Unlawful Imprisonment in the Second Degree;
Sexual Abuse in the Third Degree;
Forcible Touching.

Good thing he didn't try to steal any towels or he'd be up for grand larceny too...

*

[lupercal]

^ ahem, those are my links, posts, translations, and etc, not yours. I'm guessing you're unclear on the concept of "plagiarism"? That would not surprise me.

[JackRiddler]

.

vanlose linking (without quotes) to lupercal linking and quoting articles lupercal didn't write is plagiarism?

"Spoofer" is good.

.

[Canadian_watcher]

^ ahem, those are my links, posts, translations, and etc, not yours. I'm guessing you're unclear on the concept of "plagiarism"? That would not surprise me.

[lupercal]

^ thanks, I got a good chuckle out of it too. Moving on. Stiglitz on the IMF under DSK, from a column published earlier this month:

The IMF’s Switch in Time
Joseph E. Stiglitz - Project Syndicate - 2011-05-05


NEW YORK – The annual spring meeting of the International Monetary Fund was notable in marking the Fund’s effort to distance itself from its own long-standing tenets on capital controls and labor-market flexibility. It appears that a new IMF has gradually, and cautiously, emerged under the leadership of Dominique Strauss-Kahn.

Slightly more than 13 years earlier, at the IMF’s Hong Kong meeting in 1997, the Fund had attempted to amend its charter in order to gain more leeway to push countries towards capital-market liberalization. The timing could not have been worse: the East Asia crisis was just brewing – a crisis that was largely the result of capital-market liberalization in a region that, given its high savings rate, had no need for it.

That push had been advocated by Western financial markets – and the Western finance ministries that serve them so loyally. Financial deregulation in the United States was a prime cause of the global crisis that erupted in 2008, and financial and capital-market liberalization elsewhere helped spread that “made in the USA” trauma around the world.

The crisis showed that free and unfettered markets are neither efficient nor stable. They also did not necessarily do a good job at setting prices (witness the real-estate bubble), including exchange rates (which are merely the price of one currency in terms of another).

Iceland showed that responding to the crisis by imposing capital controls could help small countries manage its impact. And the US Federal Reserve’s “quantitative easing” (QEII) made the demise of the ideology of unfettered markets inevitable: money goes to where markets think returns are highest. With emerging markets booming, and America and Europe in the doldrums, it was clear that much of the new liquidity being created would find its way to emerging markets. This was especially true given that America’s credit pipeline remained clogged, with many community and regional banks still in a precarious position.

The resulting surge of money into emerging markets has meant that even finance ministers and central-bank governors who are ideologically opposed to intervening believe that they have no choice but to do so. Indeed, country after country has now chosen to intervene in one way or another to prevent their currencies from skyrocketing in value.

Now the IMF has blessed such interventions – but, as a sop to those who are still not convinced, it suggests that they should be used only as a last resort. On the contrary, we should have learned from the crisis that financial markets need regulation, and that cross-border capital flows are particularly dangerous. Such regulations should be a key part of any system to ensure financial stability; resorting to them only as a last resort is a recipe for continued instability.

There is a wide range of available capital-account management tools, and it is best if countries use a portfolio of them. Even if they are not fully effective, they are typically far better than nothing.

But an even more important change is the link that the IMF has finally drawn between inequality and instability. This crisis was largely a result of America’s effort to bolster an economy weakened by vastly increased inequality, through low interest rates and lax regulation (both of which resulted in many people borrowing far beyond their means). The consequences of this excessive indebtedness will take years to undo. But, as another IMF study reminds us, this is not a new pattern.

The crisis has also put to the test long-standing dogmas that blame labor-market rigidity for unemployment, because countries with more flexible wages, like the US, have fared worse than northern European economies, including Germany. Indeed, as wages weaken, workers will find it even more difficult to pay back what they owe, and problems in the housing market will become worse. Consumption will remain restrained, while strong and sustainable recovery cannot be based on another debt-fueled bubble.

As unequal as America was before the Great Recession, the crisis, and the way it has been managed, has led to even greater income inequality, making a recovery all the more difficult. America is setting itself up for its own version of a Japanese-style malaise.

But there are ways out of this dilemma: strengthening collective bargaining, restructuring mortgages, using carrots and sticks to get banks to resume lending, restructuring tax and spending policies to stimulate the economy now through long-term investments, and implementing social policies that ensure opportunity for all. As it is, with almost one-quarter of all income and 40% of US wealth going to the top 1% of income earners, America is now less a “land of opportunity” than even “old” Europe.

For progressives, these abysmal facts are part of the standard litany of frustration and justified outrage. What is new is that the IMF has joined the chorus. As Strauss-Kahn concluded in his speech to the Brookings Institution shortly before the Fund’s recent meeting: “Ultimately, employment and equity are building blocks of economic stability and prosperity, of political stability and peace. This goes to the heart of the IMF’s mandate. It must be placed at the heart of the policy agenda.”

Strauss-Kahn is proving himself a sagacious leader of the IMF. We can only hope that governments and financial markets heed his words.

Joseph E. Stiglitz is University Professor at Columbia University, a Nobel laureate in Economics, and the author of Freefall: Free Markets and the Sinking of the Global Economy.

http://www.project-syndicate.org/commen ... 38/English

[crikkett]

This post was made by Canadian_watcher.... Display this post.

I caaaaaannnnn't heeeeeear yooooooooou....

[Canadian_watcher]

This post was made by Canadian_watcher.... Display this post.

I caaaaaannnnn't heeeeeear yooooooooou....

what a fucking idiotic thing to say.

[barracuda]

Could you two take your dispute to private messages or the lounge, please? Post to the topic, or leave it alone.

[Canadian_watcher]

word,. I will desist from taking the bait.

[Peachtree Pam]

The inhabitants of the building in NY where Anne Sinclair rented two apartments will not have him there:

Luxury Building Blocks Strauss-Kahn for House Arrest
By JOHN ELIGON

Dominique Strauss-Kahn, the former managing director of the International Monetary Fund, must find another place to stay when he leaves the Rikers Island jail cell because the Upper East Side apartment rented by his wife will not accept him, a court official said on Friday.

Instead, Mr. Strauss-Kahn will be staying at a corporate housing building used by the security company, Stroz Friedberg, that has been hired to guard him while he remains under 24-hour home confinement, according to the official at State Supreme Court in Manhattan.He had been expected to leave Rikers on Friday. He has been there held since his arrest last Saturday on sexual assault charges.

But by midday, it was clear that the arrangements for the apartment — arrangements that figured in a judge’s decision to grant bail and approve his release — had fallen apart. Mr. Strauss-Kahn’s wife Anne Sinclair had rented two apartments in the building, the Bristol, at 210 East 65th Street, according to real estate executives, where some apartments rent for about $14,000 per month.

In the meantime, officials with the city’s Department of Correction were scrambling to come up with a way to take Mr. Strauss-Kahn out of the Rikers Island jail to his ultimate destination and avoid the phalanx of media waiting outside in a caravan of vehicles.

continued at link:

http://www.nytimes.com/2011/05/21/nyreg ... ss&emc=rss