Saturday, July 30, 2011

Dominique Strauss-Kahn, Tim Geithner and the IMF in "Hank (The Hammer) Paulson Created The Financial Crisis That Brought Down The World"

In a speech to a closed gathering at the Lowy Institute in Sydney on Thursday, Paul Keating gave a starkly different account of Geithner's record in handling the Asian crisis:


Paulson - The hammer behind the scenes

"Tim Geithner was the Treasury line officer who wrote the IMF [International Monetary Fund] program for Indonesia in 1997-98, which was to apply current account solutions to a capital account crisis."

In other words, Geithner fundamentally misdiagnosed the problem. And his misdiagnosis led to a dreadfully wrong prescription.

MORE HERE:

dailybail.com/home/dominique-strauss-kahn-tim-geithner-and-the-imf.html?utm_source=feedburner&utm_medium=email&utm_campaign=Feed%3A+TheDailyBail+%28The+Daily+Bail%29

AND PAULSON'S PANEL BEATING HERE:

dailybail.com/home/whitewash-on-wall-street-how-henry-paulson-created-the-finan.html?utm_source=feedburner&utm_medium=email&utm_campaign=Feed%3A+TheDailyBail+%28The+Daily+Bail%29

It’s not a “Debt Crisis”. It’s "Economic Genocide"

The grotesque political carnival gripping Washington is being referred to as a “debt crisis”. But the debt and the looming default of the United States are merely symptoms of the wider calamity that remains deliberately unaddressed.

This is a global collapse: the death and controlled demolition of a global capital system built on petroleum, political corruption, institutionalized fraud, the manufactured “war on terrorism”, the wholesale looting of taxpayer funds, and the imminent destruction of state social programs and civil society.

This collapse is thoroughly detailed by the prescient Mike Ruppert in his book Crossing the Rubicon, the book Collapse: The Crisis of Energy and Money in a Post Peak Oil World, and the film Collapse. His web site Collapsenet continues to report on events as they happen.

World collapse is also fully explained, from a different perspective, in the book The Global Economic Crisis, edited by Michel Chossudovsky and Andrew Gavin Marshall.

Chossudovksy writes:

“We are not dealing with a narrow defined economic crisis or recession. The global financial architecture sustains strategic and national security objectives. In turn, the US-NATO military agenda serves to endorse powerful business elite which relentlessly overshadows and undermines the functions of civilian government….The meltdown of financial markets in 2008-2009 was the result of institutionalized fraud and financial manipulation. The “bank bailouts” were implemented on the instructions of Wall Street, leading to the largest transfer of money wealth in recorded history, while simultaneously creating an insurmountable public debt.”
Today’s elite global criminal enterprise finds Washington’s political players---led by the devious corporate appeaser Barack Obama, and the neofascist right-wing Republicans and Tea Party---enthusiastically sharing a common vision of destruction. It is delusional to think these criminals are “racing” to save anything (besides their own rear ends). They are merely scrambling over the best method of securing even more power and wealth for their corporate puppet masters; arguing over the fastest, most effective way to eliminate social programs. And how to exploit the propaganda to their advantage, ahead of elections.

As pointed out by Patrick Martin, the “debate” over default ceilings and government spending cuts is a fraud. He notes that “the Democratic administration and the congressional Republicans are using an orchestrated crisis over the raising of the federal debt ceiling to create the conditions for an unprecedented attack on the living standards and social rights of working people”.

In the view of Paul Craig Roberts, the Washington political theater is “perfectly orchestrated scenario for getting rid of the New Deal and the Great Society [programs] that could be spent on wars and bailouts and tax cuts for the rich.”

This is the definition of genocide. The elimination of remaining social safety nets will result in a systematic long-term extermination of people in a variety of ways. It’s all “on the table”, from what little remains of health care, Social Security, etc. followed by poverty, homelessness, sickness, and death. While the elites remain safe and comfortable, awash in looted cash for generations. 

The United States and other governments all over the world have run out of money. Where is the money? That is the question that has been asked for years, by the likes of Catherine Austin Fitts:



Trillions have been looted, and these trillions remain unaccounted for. And trillions more will “disappear”.

What is clear is that there is endless money for endless wars, endless CIA budgets, and endless tax cuts for the wealthy and for corporations. But nothing for anything else.

Criminal aristocracies have increased their plunder, with Washington spearheading the operations. Governments of the capitalist world---each regime a criminal enterprise---are impoverishing their populaces, subjecting citizens to unprecedented suffering under the Orwellian rubric of “sacrifice”. Systematic destruction is taking place from the international down to the local level.

Adding to the insult, the elimination of the social safety net---literally life or death for millions of American citizens---is being callously bandied about like a political volleyball ahead of another idiotic and meaningless election. Obama spews lies and deception, pandering at every step to conservatives and Wall Street. The neofascist right-wing, led by John Boehner, Eric Cantor, Mitch McConnell, Bachman, Palin, the Tea Party, etc., are focused exclusively on the removal of Obama, oblivious to the fact that the “black man in the White House” has been the seamless extension of Bush/Cheney, and the perfect corporate/Wall Street lap dog. In true right-wing fashion worthy of the Third Reich, today’s Republicans and Tea Party “patriots” are genuinely evil and genuinely insane.

There is no leadership whatsoever, as the world tips over the brink.

This global crisis is real, and unprecedented. As Ruppert wrote in Crossing the Rubicon, “As a species and as a planet, we have reached a point of self-imposed crisis that can neither be postponed nor evaded. That crisis and values with which it is addressed are matters of life and death.”

Head Of Obama’s Jobs Council, Is Moving Jobs And Economic Infrastructure To China

Jeffrey Immelt, the head of Barack Obama’s highly touted “Jobs Council”, is moving even more GE infrastructure to China.  GE makes more medical-imaging machines than anyone else in the world, and now GE has announced that it “is moving the headquarters of its 115-year-old X-ray business to Beijing“.  Apparently, this is all part of a “plan to invest about $2 billion across China” over the next few years.  But moving core pieces of its business overseas is nothing new for GE.  Under Immelt, GE has shipped tens of thousands of good jobs out of the United States.  Perhaps GE should change its slogan to “Imagination At Work (In China)”.  If the very people that have been entrusted with solving the unemployment crisis are shipping jobs out of the country, what hope is there that things are going to turn around any time soon?
Earlier this month, Immelt made the following statement to a jobs summit at the U.S. Chamber of Commerce….
“There’s no excuse today for lack of leadership. The truth is we all need to be part of the solution.”
Apparently Immelt’s idea of being part of the solution is to ship as many jobs overseas as he possibly can.
A recent article on the Huffington Post documented how GE has been sending tens of thousands of good jobs out of the country….
As the administration struggles to prod businesses to create jobs at home, GE has been busy sending them abroad. Since Immelt took over in 2001, GE has shed 34,000 jobs in the U.S., according to its most recent annual filing with the Securities and Exchange Commission. But it’s added 25,000 jobs overseas.
At the end of 2009, GE employed 36,000 more people abroad than it did in the U.S. In 2000, it was nearly the opposite.
GE is supposed to be creating the “jobs of tomorrow”, but it seems that most of the “jobs of tomorrow” will not be located inside the United States.
The last GE factory in the U.S. that made light bulbs closed last September.  The transition to the new CFL light bulbs was supposed to create a whole bunch of those “green jobs” that Barack Obama keeps talking about, but as an article in the Washington Post noted, that simply is not happening….
Rather than setting off a boom in the U.S. manufacture of replacement lights, the leading replacement lights are compact fluorescents, or CFLs, which are made almost entirely overseas, mostly in China.
But GE is far from alone in shipping jobs and economic infrastructure out of the United States.  For example, big automakers such as Ford are being very aggressive in China.  Ford is currently “building three factories in Chongqing as part of $1.6 billion investment that also includes another plant in Nanchang”.
Today, China accounts for approximately one out of every four vehicles sold worldwide.  The big automakers consider the future to be in China.
Just a few decades ago, China was an economic joke and the U.S. economy was absolutely unparalleled.
But disastrous trade policies have opened up the door for a mammoth transfer of jobs, factories and wealth from the United States to China.
China has become an absolute powerhouse and America is rapidly declining.
Beautiful new infrastructure is going up all over China even as U.S. infrastructure rots and decays right in front of our eyes.
You can see some amazing pictures of the stunning economic development that has been going on in China hereherehere and here.
America is being deindustrialized at lightning speed and very few of our politicians seem to care.
Back in 1979, there were 19.5 million manufacturing jobs in the United States.
Today, there are 11.6 million.
That represents a decline of 40 percent during a time period when our overall population experienced tremendous growth.
We used to have the greatest manufacturing cities on the entire globe.  The rest of the world was in awe of us.
Today, most of those formerly great manufacturing cities are decaying, rottinghellholes.
The following is what one reporter from the UK saw during his visit to Detroit….
As you pass the city limits a blanket of gloom, neglect and cheapness descends. The buildings are shabbier, the paint is faded. The businesses, where they exist, are thrift shops and pawn shops or wretched groceries where the goods are old and tired. Finding somewhere to have breakfast, normally easy in any American city, involves a long hunt. ‘God bless Detroit’, says one billboard, just beside another offering the alternative solution: liquor.
You can see some really shocking images of the decline of Detroit right here.
Our politicians insisted that globalism would not result in a “giant sucking sound” as millions of jobs left America.
But that is exactly what has happened.
Sadly, most American families still don’t understand what has happened.  Most of them are still waiting for things to get back to “normal”.
Millions of unemployed Americans are dealing with incredible amounts ofstress right now as they wait for jobs to start opening up again.  But the jobs that have been shipped overseas are not coming back.  In a globalized economy, it doesn’t make sense to hire American workers when you can legally pay workers slave labor wages on the other side of the globe.
Millions of good middle class jobs have been replaced by low paying service jobs.  Today there are huge numbers of Americans that are cutting hair or flipping burgers because that is all they can get right now.
Many others are only able to survive because of the safety net.  One reader named David recently left a comment in which he shared his story.  David did everything that the system asked him to do, but the promised rewards never materialized.  Now David is broke, unemployed and he feels deeply frustrated….
A year ago I had a job, we were struggling, but bills were getting paid, and somehow we were getting by. Then I made the mistake of getting sick, one day before my company insurance kicked in. An auto-immune illness almost killed me, if it weren’t for the amazing efforts of my physicians and an emergency spleenectomy, I would not be here.
My wife would have been a single mother,raising two young sons, one of which is autistic. Instead, I pulled through. The disease damaged my liver, leaving me with a chronic condition, and even after a year, it is hard to get up and go some days. My “employer” dumped me as soon as I left the hospital, and I haven’t worked since. It isn’t for lack of looking. There just isn’t anything.
Oh, I get my government cheese money. Here I am college educated, unable to find something that can pay the bills better than the money that we get from the government. It sickens me to be this dependent on the system like this. But the system de-incentivizes work, and makes living on the dole make a perverse economic sense.
I used to have dreams, but I have given up on them. My wife and I have no savings, we have no life raft and if it weren’t for the generosity of her parents and mine, things would have ground to a halt a long time ago.
I believed every thing adults told me. Work hard, I did. Get an education, I did. Find a nice girl and settle down, I did. Two cars, a dog, a cat and couple of kids, a nice townhouse…the american dream. Yep.
I love my country. My heart is broken, broken because I have been betrayed. I did what you asked, I played by the rules. I did what you said to do; I submitted, I conformed, I stopped dreaming. Now what?
I am willing to pay for my faults and transgressions; my failures are my own, I get that. My children should not have to suffer for my failures, they did not do anything wrong. My youngest boy is autistic, we hope he will be able to integrate into society, but the fact is we may have to take care of him for the rest of his life. How do I do this with nothing, and no opportunity in the foreseeable future?
Depression, stress…yep, I’ve got all that. I used to be hopeful and optimistic about the future. Now all I am is afraid.
As the United States continues to bleed good jobs, stories like the one you just read are going to become much more common.
So what are our politicians doing about all of this?
They tell us that we need even more “free trade”!
Barack Obama says that we need more free trade.
The Republicans say that we need more free trade.
In Washington D.C. our politicians do not agree on much, but one thing they do agree on is that we need to keep shipping jobs out of the country.
Until the American people wake up and start demanding an end to the globalization of the U.S. economy, the job losses are just going to continue to get worse.
The United States has lost a staggering 32 percent of its manufacturing jobs since the year 2000.  If this trend continues, millions more Americans will soon be surviving on food stamps or living in tent cities.
The American people are deeply concerned about the economy, but they still have not connected the dots on these issues.  The mainstream media and most of our politicians keep telling them that the globalization of the economy is a wonderful thing.
It is so sad that people just do not understand what is going on right in front of their eyes.
Whether you are a conservative or a liberal or a libertarian, you should be against the deindustrialization of America.
Allowing our industrial base to be raped is not a good thing.
Allowing big corporations and foreign governments to pay slave labor wages to workers on the other side of the globe making things that will be sold inside the United States is not a good thing.
Allowing the destruction of our industrial capacity to threaten our national security is not a good thing.
Allowing millions of precious jobs to leave the country is not a good thing.
The biggest corporations are making some extra profits by exploiting cheap labor on the other side of the globe.  Corporate executives love to shower themselves with larger and larger bonuses.
But our current trade policies are not working for American workers.
We need “fair trade”, not “free trade”.
The United States is being taken advantage of, and the Democrats and the Republicans are both laying down like doormats and letting it happen.
If you want to know where all the good jobs went, it is not a big mystery.
They have been shipped out of the country and they are not coming back.
Unless fundamental changes are made, things are going to get worse and worse and worse for American workers.
So what is going to happen next?
It is up to you America.

Boehner Debt Ceiling Plan Drops A 26-Year-Old Exemption That Protects The Poor From Budget Cuts

As the Republicans haggle over whether to support their own plan for raising the nation’s debt ceiling, an “unprecedented” coalition of religious leaders are urging President Obama and Congress not to sacrifice the needs of the poor in the name of debt reduction. Even the conservative U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops joined the effort, singling out House Speaker John Boehner’s (R-OH) plan for its “disproportionate cuts in essential services to poor persons.”
In scrutinizing the debt deals, some religious leaders praised the plans for at least exempting low-income “means-tested” programs from across-the-board cuts. The Center for Budget and Policy Priorities notes today, however, that Boehner’s plan does not actually exempt programs like Medicaid and food stamps from such cuts. Instead, it does the opposite.
Breaking a 26-year policy of exempting basic low-income entitlement programs from across-the-board cuts, both of the House Republican plans — “Cut, Cap, and Balance” Act and Boehner’s debt-ceiling proposal — “drop all of the low-income exemptions that have been part of every previous across-the-board cut mechanism since 1985″:
For 26 years, all budget legislation that would trigger across-the-board cuts if Congress fails to meet a fiscal target has exempted the basic low-income (or “means-tested”) entitlement programs from those cuts. The Gramm-Rudman-Hollings laws of 1985 and 1990, the deficit reduction agreement of 1990, and the Balanced Budget Act of 1997 — all bipartisan pieces of legislation — included that exemption. So did last year’s “pay-as-you-go” law, which requires Congress to offset the cost of new tax cuts or increases in entitlement programs so they don’t increase the deficit. Congress has never enacted a law with an across-the-board cut mechanism that subjects core assistance for the poor to these cuts.

But in the last few weeks, House Republicans have advanced two major pieces of legislation that would do just that. Both the “Cut, Cap, and Balance Act,” which the House passed last week, and the new Boehner debt-ceiling proposal drop all of the low-income exemptions that have been part of every previous across-the-board cut mechanism since 1985.
“In an exercise in political cynicism,” CBPP notes that both bills include an exemption for payments to Medicare providers that was not part of previous laws. This allows Republicans to avoid another hit from the senior community “even as they subject those living below the poverty line to the risk of automatic cuts that would push them even deeper into poverty.” Earlier this week, CBPP put out an analysis showing that Boehner’s debt ceiling plan “could well produce the greatest increase in poverty and hardship produced by any law in modern U.S. history.”
The Republican move to cut a long-standing bipartisan protection for the poor really brings into question exactly which Americans Republicans say they’re fighting for. Religious leaders should take note. If asked “What Would Jesus Cut,” it seems Republicans are determined to provide the wrong answer.

Rule: ‘Martial Law’ – Obama To Use Dictatorial Powers To Raise Debt Ceiling If Need Be

The U.S. debt is totally out of control — now sitting at $14.3 Trillion, raising the debt ceiling will only buy a little more time until a massive crash takes place and total chaos ensues (economic and physical), a total fall of the republic.
The agenda seems to be to push for raising the debt limit ceiling to save this once great nation’s AAA credit rating — but what does a AAA credit rating mean if you go totally broke later and fall even harder?
The 14th Amendment states: “The validity of the public debt of the United States, authorized by law, including debts incurred for payment of pensions and bounties for services in suppressing insurrection or rebellion, shall not be questioned.”
This is the new tactic that the powers that be plan on using to obtain their goal (create more debt).
Obama can also use PDD51 or other Executive Orders provided to him under Pandemic Level 6 (which was extended by Obama until March of 2012) to raise the debt ceiling.
Pandemic Level 6 gives them all they need to do what ever they want, we are technically in a silent martial law.
Obama stated the other day that “Any solution to avoid the default must be bipartisan,  supported by both parties and the American people, not just one faction.”
But yet one faction (Obama and the powers that be) will use Executive Orders to get this passed.
Doublespeak at it’s best.
Listen to this FOX News clip of a public threat being made (just as The Intel Hub eluded to last Sunday in the viral article titled: Pentagon To Deploy 20,000 Troops In CONUS For Civil Unrest, Possible Threats To Populace) where they hint (threaten) martial law;
This is what the staged spectacle has come to, so predictable we called it nearly a week ago.
There are also threats of canceling Social Security, Veterans benefits and more as we spiral into the abyss.
One person (or should I say sheep) said, “The country had a perfect credit rating and now they want to ruin it”.
But what would extending the debt really do, but bring us more into debt, more into trouble as stocks and paper money dwindle to nothing.
The DOW fell as the Tuesday deadline approaches. Investors worried about the countries AAA credit rating.
Expect to see even more of a staged circus sideshow in the coming days and possibly some type of major staged event.

CHART: U.S. Debt To GDP 1940-2015


Clinton deserves very little credit for the momentary blip down, even though praise is lavished upon him by virtually all MSM.  Federal tax receipts exploded due to the Y2K spendout and associated tech and internet bubbles.   It had nothing to do with his policies; he just got lucky.  Seriously lucky.


Source - TPM

Why The National Debt Crisis Is Way Worse Than You Think


If Washington is deadlocked now, how will it deal with the much bigger debt problems that lurk in the decades to come?
Business Week Magazine
By Peter Coy
Listen to the podcast with the author - recommended
There is a comforting story about the debt ceiling that goes like this: Back in the 1990s, the U.S. was shrinking its national debt at a rapid pace. Serious people actually worried about dislocations from having too little government debt. If it hadn’t been for two wars, the tax cuts of 2001 and 2003, the housing meltdown, and the subsequent financial crisis and recession, the nation’s finances would be in fine condition today. And the only obstacle to getting there again, this narrative goes, is political dysfunction in Washington. If the Republicans and Democrats would just split their differences on spending and taxes and raise the debt ceiling, we could all get back to our real lives. Problem solved.
Except it’s not that way at all. For all our obsessing about it, the national debt is a singularly bad way of measuring the nation’s financial condition. It includes only a small portion of the nation’s total liabilities. And it’s focused on the past. An honest assessment of the country’s projected revenue and expenses over the next generation would show a reality different from the apocalyptic visions conjured by both Democrats and Republicans during the debt-ceiling debate. It would be much worse.
That’s why the posturing about whether and how Congress should increase the debt ceiling by Aug. 2 has been a hollow exercise. Failure to increase the borrowing limit would harm American prestige and the global financial system. But that’s nothing compared with the real threats to the U.S.’s long-term economic health, which will begin to strike with full force toward the end of this decade: Sharply rising per-capita health-care spending, coupled with the graying of the populace; a generation of workers turning into an outsize generation of beneficiaries. Hoover Institution Senior Fellow Michael J. Boskin, who was President George H.W. Bush’s chief economic adviser, says: “The word ‘unsustainable’ doesn’t convey the problem enough, in my opinion.”
Even the $4 trillion “grand bargain” on debt reduction hammered out by President Barack Obama and House Speaker John Boehner (R-Ohio)—a deal that collapsed nearly as quickly as it came together—would not have gotten the U.S. where it needs to be. A June analysis by the Congressional Budget Office concluded that keeping the U.S.’s ratio of debt to gross domestic product at current levels until the year 2085 (to avoid scaring off investors) would require spending cuts, tax hikes, or a combination of both equal to 8.3 percent of GDP each year for the next 75 years, vs. the most likely (i.e. “alternative”) scenario. That translates to $15 trillion over the next decade—or more than three times what Obama and Boehner were considering.
Continue reading at Business Week...
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Ferengi Discusses Earth Economics (Star Trek)

Panning For Gold

http://revolutionarypolitics.tv/video/viewVideo.php?video_id=15889

Peter Schiff: 'Debt ceiling is a charade'

http://revolutionarypolitics.tv/video/viewVideo.php?video_id=15891

We Are Headed for Economic 911 - Gerald Celente on Ed Taylor Radio 26 July 2011

http://revolutionarypolitics.tv/video/viewVideo.php?video_id=15890

OUTRAGE - Microsoft Uses Loopholes To Pay JUST 7% U.S. Corporate Tax

Cantor Is Hedge Fund's Best Man In Congress, Obamacare Reaches Supreme Court, Bad News For Global Warming Alarmists, The Debt-Interest Road To Hell (LINKS)

Ron Paul & Dylan Ratigan: Cancelling Debt Held By The Fed

Video

Video - Dr. Paul with Dylan Ratigan - Is Debt Cancellation An Option? - July 13, 2011
Ron Paul shares his thoughts on Congress cancelling the $1.6 trillion in Treasury bonds owned (accumulated during QE1 and QE2) by the Federal Reserve as a one-time event to alleviate the time constraint of the August deadline for debt ceiling negotiations.
Paul has been floating this idea for the last several weeks, though it has yet to gain much traction.  Interesting discussion.  More below including news that Paul has has raised more 2012 campaign donations from active-duty military personnel than all other GOP candidates combined.
A few recent links:
Ron Paul gets HUGE endorsement ahead of crucial Iowa contest - CNN
Ron Paul Wins NH Straw Poll, Obliterates Mitt Romney
Ron Paul's First Official Campaign Video For 2012
Dr. Thomas Woods Explains Why Ron Paul Is The BEST Candidate For President In 2012
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Video - Ron Paul has raised more 2012 campaign donations from active-duty military personnel than all other GOP candidates combined.

Bugger Off - Lyrics ,

Fifteen Men (Bottle of Rum) - Original Version

Ford India Officially Announces Launch of Second Plant in Sanand, Gujarat Following a US$1bn Investment

Ford India officially announced about investing $1bn for building their second engine and vehicle assembly in India. This comes in the wake of the company trying to step up its production to keep up with the increasing demand in the market.
Their assembly plant will be in Gujarat, and will employ 5,000 individuals. This will be the company’s second manufacturing plant in India, following the first plant, which is located in Chennai. We recently announced about the government of Gujarat allocating a 400 acre plot for use to Ford Motors; however there was still no official word from the leading auto company, which was expected to be out today.
Well, the company recently released an official announcement that they have signed a Memorandum of Understanding with the government of Gujarat and will be making an investment of INR 4,000 crores or US$1bn in two facilities that will include body, paint, stamping as well as assembly operations for manufacturing of engines.
The plant will have an annual production capacity of 240,000 units in the initial phase, whereas the engine manufacturing annual capacity in the initial phase will be 270,000 units. The plant is to be built on the 460 acre plot provided by the state of Gujarat. The CEO and president of Ford’s Africa and Asia Pacific division, said Namaste Gujarat! He said that they are delighted on announcing the newest location for the company’s vehicle manufacturing site in Gujarat.
The company has set aggressive growth plans in Africa, Asia Pacific and India, the opening of these 2 new facilities is important for them is realising this strategy for growth in one of the world’s most dynamic regions.
The reason the company selected the state of Gujarat, was because of their pro-business infrastructure, environment, and access to ports as well as skilled workforce. The new plant would allow for quick access to their site from operations to the heartland of India’s critical west and northern regions, which have the largest market for passenger cars in India.
The construction for both of the plant would begin by this year end. This first engine and vehicle is scheduled to roll off the assembly line by 2014. Last year, the company had made an announcement that they would be introducing 8 new products in India by 2015. The company already has a facility in Tamil Nadu and is currently expanding their engine manufacturing plant over there.
At a function held in Gandhinagar, Gujarat’s industry secretary, M. Sahu, and the MD and head of Ford India, Michael Boneham, signed the agreement, in presence of the CM of Gujarat, Narendra Modi, as well as Joe Hinrichs.
Hinrichs said that this investment is that of the global Ford’s future. The new modern facilities will help them in reaching their goal of expanding their sales in the worldwide market by almost 50% by 2015 to around 8mn vehicles per annum. They are also aggressively increasing in worldwide markets, which offer the most potential of growth for offering high quality and fuel efficient models from their global portfolio to their customers in Indian markets along with value.
The company will be bringing in above 50 new powertrains and vehicles to the African and Asia Pacific region by 2015. The company expects around 60 to 70% of their sales to be accounted by this region alone in a period of ten years.
Boneham said that India is an important and dynamic market for them. Following their strategy in India, they will keep on expanding their engine and vehicle production, enhancing their local team and dealer network, while also realising the value and strengths of their suppliers.
Boneham added that this investment would reinforce their long term commitment in India. Their successful modern planaat in Chennai, as well as the passion of their hardworking women and men has resulted in additional investment and growth of Ford in India. Like in Tamil Nadu, where they have strived for being a good corporate citizen, they will do so in Gujarat as well.
Meanwhile, the CM of Gujarat, Narendra Modi, stated that with the entry of this company in the state, it will only further strengthen Gujarat’s capability as a major auto centre. He assured the company the wholehearted hand holding and support of his government in speedily implementing their project.
This investment will bring the company’s total investment in India to around US$2bn approximately. The company currently employs around 10,000 individuals across their IT operations, manufacturing and global business services.
The introduction of the Figo helped to transform the company’s fate in India. Within just 15 months, the company had managed to sell around 1,00,000 Figo cars. They are also exporting this car from their state of the art facilities in Chennai. The car that exemplifies value and quality for money helped boost the success of the company in India by almost tripling their sales last year and bagging 20 leading auto awards, including the 2011 Indian Car of the Year, one of India’s most prestigious car awards.
Earlier in this month, the company also launched their new global Fiesta that continues to increase their portfolio of fuel efficient, smart, high quality cars, and segment leading technology equipped cars. The company had also announced about investing US$72mn by 2012 for expanding their powertrain plant in Chennai. They also increased their sales, service network to around 190 outlets in 108 cities, of which 40% are situated in secondary markets. They have also continued their expansion strategy by launching at least one sales or service outlet every week.

WAKE UP AMERICA! - The Real U.S. Budget Problem: Defense & War Spending Equal 94% Of All Federal Income Tax Revenues


What's missing from the debt-ceiling discussion, albeit nothing new to DB readers, is spending on wars and the pentagon.  It's not even being mentioned as a possibility in any of the competing debt plans, despite the following undeniably depressing and disgusting facts:
From Reddit:
I thought this kind of puts things in perspective.  In 2010, the US government collected $898 billion in federal income tax revenues.  The same year, we spent $847 billion on useless wars and national defense.  That means that 94% of all federal income tax revenue is equivalent to what we spend on the Pentagon.  Who out there thinks it was money well spent?
Also, just to piss you off a little bit more - defense spending is equivalent to 443% of what we collect in total corporate taxes.
One more link you need to see:
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The hidden cost of war in Afghanistan...
Short video on the unseen and often uncalculated costs of war.

Obama's Debt Solution: Crack-O-Nomics


Video - Ryan Dawson explains how Obama's crackhead cure is... more crack
Give clip this a few minutes.  Dawson offers alternative deficit solutions that will sound familiar to DB readers.  Related story from yesterday:

WAKE UP AMERICA! - The Real U.S. Budget Problem: Defense & War Spending Equal 94% Of All Federal Income Tax Revenues