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-- Who can stop the rise and rise of China? The communists, of course
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| Originally posted by Yoepus No offense - I do completely disagree with xxxtacy - but there is something to be said about killing people because of their political beliefs/associations and killing people simply because of their ethnic background. Whereas one you can change, the other you can not and is the ultimate form of racism (because you are born like A you must be B...) |
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| Originally posted by DrUg_Tit0 I agree with my friend from the commie quadrant here. The reason why Hitler was so much worse than all the other dictators is because you never had the option to adopt his ideals and be left unharmed. Even if you became an antisemitic jew, you'd still end up in a concentration camp. |
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| Originally posted by occrider How has the media been downplaying the economic circumstances of the EU? |
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| Originally posted by occrider The worst of the wear is Italy which is plagued by recession in the past 2 quarters. Its unit/labor costs have risen by 20% since adopting the Euro making its exports uncompetitive, and its public debt is over 100% of GDP. |
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| Originally posted by occrider Then there's Germany which has been stagnating for the past several years at under 2% growth with minimal domestic demand. Unfortunately its labor market woes are only going to get worse due to the absence of much needed social reform. |
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| Originally posted by occrider The best off of the biggest 3 eurozone economies is France and even they are suffering from near double digit unemployment. |
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| Originally posted by occrider Raise interest rates and Italy/Germany suffers. Lower interest rates and Ireland/Spain suffers. That's why the ECB has kept rates constant for the past 2 years... |
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| Originally posted by occrider Already you have grumblings from many of the member states about the whole deal. The Germans are certainly pissed off. |
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| Originally posted by occrider The Stern magazine did a poll which resulted in 56% of Germans saying they want to bring back the DM: -- The Italians followed this up by grumbling from some of their ministers with discussions of backing out of the Euro. |
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| Originally posted by occrider Now granted it is extremely unlikely that the Eurozone is going to be abandoned anytime soon, but it�s nowhere near an economic counterbalance to the US in the state that it is in. -- This is reflected in the financial markets with currency traders pushing the US�s current account deficit to the back of their mind and selling the Euro down to $1.22. |
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| Originally posted by occrider As for the Microsoft decision, what�s so special about that? European firms are forced to comply with the SEC and US anti-trust laws and vice-versa for the European counterparties. That has always been the case. |
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| Originally posted by occrider How is there deception in the public media about the capabilities of the DPRK nuke program and capabilities? I just quoted you an article where Tenet himself is telling the public that N. Korea has a missile capable of hitting the west coast. They�ve also been saying that N. Korea, has had nukes since early 2000. |
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| Originally posted by occrider Ah yes, except delays in food shipments and the KEDO project were tied to N. Korean provocations and aggressive acts against S. Korea and Japan. One such example is when the S. Koreans called for a delay due to submarine and spy excursions across the DMZ or the N. Korean testing of missiles over Japan. |
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| Originally posted by occrider The N. Koreans themselves provoked the delays with their continued aggression, non-compliance, and brinkmanship diplomacy. Furthermore, the US was correct in assuming that they had already violated the accords because they restarted their weapons programs in the late 90�s. Long before they officially broke from the agreement citing the delays in KEDO. |
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| Originally posted by occrider I�ve never heard any historian put forth the argument that the Crimean or Boer war had any significant impact whatsoever on Britain�s industrial revolution. If you have detailed analyses demonstrating such a cause and effect relationship, I would be very interested in reading it. |
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| Originally posted by xxxtasy I want to ask, how reputable is The Telegraph? There are soo many flaws in this guy's opinion. 1. Yes Mao accidently killed a lot of people but it was a mistake, it was wrong communist ideals. Hitler slaughtered people with intention. |
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2. North Korea's nuke problem is a card Beijing can play in the political arena. So does USA uses Taiwan as a leverage. It is politics. |
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3. Political freedom is supressed, doesnt' mean technoligical creativity is supressed. China has been luring foreign research centers, increased the salaries of all universitie's professors so that they don't work in US. What has recent Microsoft's censorship of their China blogs got to stiffling advancement in science? |
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| Originally posted by TheNobleEu Not always. Jews willing to inform on the political activities of their fellow Jews were elevated to special status and placed as a sort of 'special police' in charge of ghettoes. Their main job was to serve as accountable middle-men between the Jews and the Germans. Such 'police' were later found at concentration camps as well, where they could or may not also find themselves part of the German Sonderkommando, a unit of slave labourers (not necessarily only Jews) who were kept alive to basically assist in processing other inmates for extermination (Jews, Communists, Socialists, other political-intellectual opponents of Nazism, Homosexuals, Gypsies, all manner of Slavs, sometimes Allied POWs belonging to the categories mentioned above, certainly Russian POWs, members of the German military and government that fell out of favour with Hitler, etc.) Also, Jews considered "skilled labour" (this even includes professional maids, butlers, cooks, tailors, etc.) by the Reich were also segregated and forced to work for high ranking officers and/or the industrial German war effort -- they were better treated, but not by much. This category probably accounts for the largest volume of Holocaust survivors. -Noble |
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| Originally posted by TheNobleEu Didn't you see the article in this forum that stated Europe was dead? lol What follows is the short version of what I lost: This was the plight of Italy before there was an EEC. |
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Italy as a litmus test of the economic strength of the EU is a laughable suggestion (but I think this is the Economist speaking here, not you necessarily). |
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Article in the recent Economist might interest you about a merger of Italy's largest bank, UniCredit, and Germany's second largest, HVB Group (4 June, p. 69 -- the article at Economist.com is pay-access only). |
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The high unemployment in the Euro-area is the result of the extremely plump safety net provided by the social model, which promotes laziness (especially in the North). Analysis of the Euro economies within the context of the social model is a problem senior economists don't know how to deal with yet. I think the social model is a grand thing, but needs some serious attention. |
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The EU *doesn't need* to raise interest rates because it knows it doesn't need to in order to be competitive and still nonetheless outvalue the Dollar at a time when the Dollar is strong and the Euro is weak! That ought to tell you something about its "stength." Article in recent Economist about that too, more below. |
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...But won't complain too loudly because it's largely their fault. They were the chief proponent of such rapid expansion, and they're the ones that wanted the former Soviet satellites in so badly. Makes you wonder how France and Germany sleep together at night. Makes no sense to belliache after getting what one said one wanted, but Germany will. This has been happening indeed, but this is the stuff of the Comedy Channel within the context of the above. Even moreso for Italy! The EU is a product of the governments, not the people. I really think the biggest obstacle with the EU is the endemic apathy of the populace, which in Germany at least isn't going to make it's voice heard until the German election. |
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Rubbish. The Euro has been steadily declining lately because the polls virtually guaranteed the Constitutional ratification would fail in France. |
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Come now. I doubt I need to spell this out... It's "special" because for the first time, American corporations are actually bound by meaningful antitrust, not the American rubber-stamp policy which previously allowed mega corporations to do almost anything they pleased. Things happily passed along in the US immediately raised red flags in the EU, much to my delight. Now the US has to prevent monopolization at home if it cares to sell anything outside the US (which it has to since EU countries own most big brand names and trademarks in the US). Kinda got them by the balls (or rather the pocketbook) now, eh? And the EU being "forced to comply with the SEC and US anti-trust laws" is quote an amusing sentence on your part. This is like suggesting a player in the NHL is being forced "to deal with the competition" when playing in the Pee-Wee leagues. |
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As a side note, I haven't been enjoying the Economist lately. As is the fate of all things that become trendy and popular, it's starting to get trashy -- it was much better a couple years back. I've cancelled my subscription and only pick up issues when it prints several articles on some recent event. I much prefer Foreign Affairs, now. BTW: do you think the Economist is pro or anti EU? |
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Squeezed By The Euro Europe's single currency has not promoted growth. It has also failed to spark needed reforms and fiscal discipline Were the skeptics right? In early 1998, University of Bonn Professor Manfred J.M. Neumann mobilized 155 fellow economists to protest the coming introduction of the European common currency. The euro was dangerously premature, they argued in open letters published in major newspapers. Big countries such as Germany and France lacked the flexible labor markets they needed to compensate for losing control over monetary policy as a tool to promote growth. Needless to say, the protests had little effect. The euro blasted off on Jan. 1, 1999, as planned. Six years later, Neumann's warning seems ominously prescient. Far from becoming a powerhouse to compete with the U.S. and Asia, Europe in the past four years has been nearly stagnant, with average annual growth in the euro zone of of 1.2% since 2002. Meanwhile, it's hard to overlook the superior economic performance of European Union members that stayed clear of the common currency. Britain and Sweden have enjoyed healthy expansions and lower unemployment. Britain's jobless rate is 4.7%, compared with 8.9% for the euro zone. Even common currency champions such as European Central Bank President Jean-Claude Trichet see little chance of a euroland boom anytime soon. Just as Neumann predicted, overregulated labor markets in much of the euro zone prevent pay scales from reacting fast enough to competitive pressure from abroad. And individual countries can no longer compensate for these rigidities by devaluing their currencies to boost exports, usually through the swift downward movement of interest rates. "Unfortunately," says Professor Neumann ruefully, "we were right." That raises a larger question: Was the euro a mistake? Not even euro-skeptics such as Neumann argue that the currency should be scrapped now that euro coins and notes have become a fact of life from Finland to Greece. "It would be insane to give up the euro. We have to make the most of it," Neumann says. IMPATIENCE ON THE RISE Still, the question hangs in the air, especially amid evidence of growing popular discontent over core Europe's dreadful economic performance. A dramatic expression of that discontent came on May 22 when German Chancellor Gerhard Schr�der's Social Democratic Party (SPD) was booted from power in North Rhine-Westphalia, an economically battered industrial state that had been ruled by the party for four decades. Schr�der, in what amounts to an admission that his tepid economic reforms have failed, has called for national elections in September, a year early. In addition, French and Dutch voters may reject the proposed European constitution in referendums May 29 and June 1. If so, the votes will surely be interpreted as protests against a European system that seems ever more powerful yet ever more unable to deliver jobs and prosperity. The euro is integral to that system. Stagnation and political upheaval were obviously not part of the plan when the currency was launched six years ago. At the time, euro-optimism was running high. The idea was this: Before they could adopt the currency, countries like France, Germany, Italy, and others would rein in their budget deficits, and afterwards keep public spending in check to support monetary union. The existence of one currency, backed by fiscal discipline across the board, would then turn the half-fiction of a common market into reality. As Europe's various economies melded together into one, internal barriers to competition would tumble and the best-managed countries and companies would pull ahead. Countries that lagged would respond by loosening labor rules and cutting taxes to boost competitiveness. Like the Bundesbank, which had made Germany a beacon of monetary stability, the ECB would squash any hint of inflation with a rate hike. If countries wanted to grow, they would have to deregulate their economies and keep wage hikes in line with productivity. Now check out what happened. First, the benefits. Currency risk within the euro zone is gone: no need to hedge the lira against the franc, for example. Finnish mobile-phone company Nokia Corp. (NOK ) estimates that it saves at least $6 million a year in transaction costs within the euro zone, and that doesn't count savings by suppliers that ultimately benefit Nokia. "It makes the whole supply chain more efficient," says Nokia Chief Financial Officer Rick Simonson. Financial markets in Europe, meanwhile, have gotten a huge boost. Companies in countries whose national currency had been weak, such as Italy and Portugal, almost overnight saw their credit ratings improve. Italian companies were able to raise $82 billion on capital markets in 2003, more than double the amount they raised in 1999, says the ECB. Governments have saved billions by refinancing the national debt at lower interest rates. The euro, bolstered by initially high rates, has also ushered in an era of unprecedented low inflation in Europe. That's the bright side. But the costs have been enormous. Europeans remain skeptical about the euro, which they see as a project driven by politicians with little regard for ordinary people. Huge majorities are convinced that shops and restaurants used the introduction of euro notes and coins in 2002 to raise prices, which in fact was often the case, even if overall inflation remained steady. These resentments have increased doubts about the whole European project. "Prices rocketed. Now we can't buy as much," says Catherine Dumont, 47, a secretary who spoke as she shopped at a Monoprix supermarket in Paris. "It will have an impact on my opinion on referendum day," she adds, leaving little doubt she will vote "no" on the constitution. More important, the virtuous circle of competition and reform that the euro was supposed to kick off never materialized. The ECB, sworn to fight inflation, cut rates gradually from a high of 4.75% in 2000 to the current benchmark rate of 2% in June, 2003. That kind of monetary discipline was tough for Italy, which is having a hard time adjusting to a world where it can't devalue its way out of trouble, says Domenico Siniscalco, Italy's Finance and Economy Minister. "It's like taking a tiger and trying to make it turn vegetarian," he says. Germany would also benefit from a weaker currency, which would make its exports cheaper. "Things would have been better with the Deutschemark," says Joachim Preissl, owner and president of BING Power Systems, a Nuremberg-based maker of engine parts for customers including Porsche and BMW. Preissl says the strong euro makes it harder to compete with Mexican and Chinese rivals. To compensate for the loss of currency flexibility, both Italy and Germany could opt to reform much faster. But not even the harangues of the ECB can get the Italians, French, and Germans to confront politically explosive tasks, whether it's changing rules in France that make it difficult and costly to fire workers, or getting Germany to allow Dutch plumbers to compete for business in Dusseldorf. "None of the big countries is fighting to create a European market," says Rafael Pampill�n, an economics professor at Madrid business school Instituto de Empresa. THE POLICY PITFALL Even the fiscal discipline imposed as a precondition to monetary union is going by the board. Germany's budget deficit has exceeded the limit of 3% of gross domestic product since 2002. Now Italy and Portugal are also overdrawn. Rather than reining in spending, euro-zone countries earlier this year agreed to loosen the deficit restrictions. While Germany, Italy, and France would suffer if rates rose, other countries in the zone could use tighter money. Spain has an inflation rate of 3.5%, vs. 2% for the ECB's benchmark interest rate. That means Spain effectively has negative interest rates. The divergence makes it almost impossible for the ECB to formulate an economic policy that fits all the countries. Derek Scott, former economic adviser to British Prime Minister Tony Blair and a leading euro-skeptic, says the ECB can't risk hurting German growth by tightening the money supply, even if that means higher inflation in countries such as Spain. That in turn could undermine the ECB's reputation as a stern inflation-fighter. "With a single currency, you exchange the apparent stability of nominal exchange rates for greater instability of the things that matter: output, jobs, and inflation," Scott says. Of course, European central bankers dispute such theories. "One size does fit all!" insisted Otmar Issing, a member of the ECB's executive board, in a speech to a Frankfurt audience on May 20. The divergence in member-country growth rates is below the historical average, he said, an indication that the euro is not pushing countries to move at different speeds. Likewise, ECB President Trichet was at pains to point out the euro's benefits to an Italian business audience recently. But in a sign of growing nervousness within the bank, he also warned political leaders to step up the pace of reform. "Many countries have not adapted their economic, social, and legal frameworks in order to face the new challenges," Trichet said. Some governments have pulled off those changes, cutting taxes, rolling back job regulations, and eliminating barriers to competition. That's true of countries in the euro, like Ireland, and outside it, like Britain, Denmark, and Sweden, which focused on deep structural reforms after experiencing wrenching economic crises. Now, Germany may get a reformist government in September led by Christian Democrat Angela Merkel. A stronger dollar would also do wonders for Europe by making its exports cheaper abroad. But the euro countries will enter uncharted territory if, say, Italy and Portugal continue to deteriorate or Germany proves unable to return to health. Some economists speculate that in the worst case, a country such as Italy might get into such trouble that it would seek to pull out of the currency union. Patrick Minford, an economist at Cardiff Business School in Britain, thinks it more likely that one of the weak countries will run into budget problems and seek a bailout from its neighbors -- provoking a political backlash in Germany, where the euro was never popular. That could strain the currency union to the point of collapse. "The weakest point is Germany," says Minford, a member of the EMU Monitor, a group of university economists from around Europe who issue periodic reports on European monetary policy. Minford considers the possibility of a euro meltdown remote but adds: "It could be a very uncomfortable decade." Can the euro survive? That's a question no one wants to contemplate. The pressure is on European leaders to make sure they never have to. Zz http://www.businessweek.com/magazin...36068_mz054.htm |
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If you have acutally read said think-tanks, and not just googled them, you'll know the operational capacity of the missiles were withheld for quite some time before they hit "CNN." |
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North Korea has probably had considerable troubles with adapting the structurally heavy No-dong second stage to their new Taep'o-dong-2 first stage. It reflects on poor engineering design decisions both in its structural design and imposed performance penalties verses the PRC Chinese DF-4/CSS-3 design. http://www.globalsecurity.org/wmd/world/dprk/td-2.htm |
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Didn't suspicions also boil over that the DPRK were recycling spent fuel rods? I think this is around the time the better-part of the US force in S. Korea was withdrawn. This is all hindsight on your part, operant word "assume" in your text above. This is the source of the reneg, not a dispute that the reneg didn't occur without proof (do I hear a mob outside shouting "Iraq?") Basically, both pointing the finger back at each other for diplomatic failure on both parts. |
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I don't anything about it at all actually, but you would think it would factor considering these were two of the most costly campaigns the Brits ever engaged in. I doubt much has been done on it yet. Cheers, -Noble |
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| Originally posted by DrUg_Tit0 I agree with my friend from the commie quadrant here. The reason why Hitler was so much worse than all the other dictators is because you never had the option to adopt his ideals and be left unharmed. Even if you became an antisemitic jew, you'd still end up in a concentration camp. |
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| Originally posted by occrider Right, and the Italian escape from their predicament would be to devalue their currency in order to make exports more competitive, a tool that it no longer has at its disposal and now Italian economy must deal with the brunt of tight monetary policy head-on. |
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| Originally posted by occrider It�s not a litmus test of the strength of the EU. If every other economy were doing fine, it would likely be immaterial. However, when the three largest economies of the Eurozone are facing some severe economic woes, that says something about the state of the Eurozone. |
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| Originally posted by occrider Yea I read that article. One M&A of a bank hardly salvages the overall welfare of the German and Italian economy however (nor does it address the structural issues at play). Economic forecasters have pegged their GDP estimates at 1.1% and .3% respectively. |
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| Originally posted by occrider The problem isn�t that the Eurozone�s social model leads to a different level of full employment than the US (although Norway and Sweden have liberal social laws yet retain relatively low unemployment compared to the rest of Europe � however we shall ignore that in this discussion), the problem is that even taking this into account, the trend of unemployment has been consistently deteriorating to the point that Germany is at its highest level of unemployment in 6 years: |
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| Originally posted by occrider And governments are the product of the people. Look I�m not saying that because 56% of the Germans want a return to the DM and now that Italian ministers are putting the re-adoption of the Lira back on the table that it�s going to happen tomorrow. I thought that I put the �unlikely� disclaimer in my text. What I�m doing is describing the environment that the Euro is viewed upon by these two countries. |
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| Originally posted by occrider Umm so you�re saying that financial markets are shorting the Euro for completely non-economic reasons??? Look, if financial markets act on a political event it is because that political event has economic ramifications. |
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| Originally posted by occrider I do seem to remember a US anti-trust case against Microsoft that more or less expressed the same concerns. As for the EU owning most big brand names and trademarks in the US � huh? |
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| Originally posted by occrider Well given the fact that the industrial revolution roughly began in the 1830s and that the Crimean war didn�t begin until 1856 and that the Boer war didn�t begin until the 1890s, I�m skeptical as to them being major players in causing the industrial revolution. |
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| Originally posted by St_Andrew yes, but he thought he did it for mankind - to improve the genes of our genepool. Of course it was seriously flawed, but that was still his arguments, and i would say mao's arguments were flawed too! |
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| Originally posted by DrUg_Tit0 I know he did it because he wanted to improve mankind, I didn't say anything about his intentions. But the general concensus pretty much is that it's worse to kill people for something they didn't have power to change than to kill people for something that they could but didn't want to change. |
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| Originally posted by St_Andrew I think both are discusting, but i dont know if i would say that one was a lot worse than the other. And since mao killed so many more, i think he should take the more evil spot in front of hitler! |
I apologize for my late reply. Work has been a fucking drag as of late.
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| Originally posted by TheNobleEu Do you think this is the motive behind the idea of bringing back the Lira? |
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I'm just not sure of the fairness of measuring the EU on the basis of problems inherent to member countries before the EU was formed -- neither are the economists. |
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Haven't the German banks been doing well lately? I seem to recall reading a few Economist articles to this effect in the last few months (but you obviously know more about it than I do). |
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True, but I understand this to be a fact of life in Europe since the EEC. |
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Oh gee, like me to name some? Stop & Shop, Dunkin Donuts, Slim Fast, 7UP, Hawaiian Punch, Baby Ruth, Snapple, Dr. Pepper, Miller beer, A&W Root Beer, Taster's Choice Coffee, Captain Morgan's Rum, Ben & Jerry's Ice Cream, Archway Cookies, Power Bars, Bazooka Joe Gum, Hellmann's, Lean Cuisine, Mazola, Kool and Lucky Strike and Kent cigarettes, Penguin Books, Random House Books, The Financial Times, Chicago Sun Times, New York Post, First Boston National Bank, Ray Band sunglasses, Dial Soap, Britney Spear's label, Plymouth, Dodge, Chrysler, Case, Jeep-Wrangler, the LA Dodgers, the American Heritage Dictionary... None of these are American -- my point was that many household products one thinks of as typically "American" are owned by Europeans. The primary market for the US and the EU are each other. |
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Never said they caused industrial revolution... Sigh, -Noble |
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| Originally posted by occrider Back to your original point, this hardly constitutes having anything by the "balls" so to speak since every company is a profit maximizer and thus won't do anything stupid to screw up sales. This goes for American companies too. Thus parity is a more accurate description. |
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| Originally posted by occrider Some say China has us by the balls with their fixed currency which allows the US to finance its deficits, however, once again it's a parity relationship. China is doing what it's doing for a reason ... for its own benefit. If it tried to seriously fuck up the US, it would be disastrous for China and the global economy as a whole. |
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| Originally posted by occrider Well you haven't said how exactly they've aided the industrial revolution with any tangible evidence soooo without any weight behind the alternative hypothesis, I revert back to the null hypothesis that them from playing a major role. |
whups!
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| Originally posted by TheNobleEu The USA simply doesn't possess the political will (re: state of and political influence of corporate enviroments) to "catch up" with EU antitrust law. |
hey Noble, check your PM
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| Originally posted by TheNobleEu No, it really isn't -- I think you're still missing the point: The EU regulations are five times as stringent as the US's; the laws that shackle the US in the EU, simply not being present in the States, gives the EU free reign to dominate the US market while the US cannot do the same in the EU. The EU can and already has slapped the US with billions in fines and corporate loses. This is why I chuckled at the notion that 'the EU has to observe US antitrust equally,' quite true in theory, a farsical notion in practice. That's like going from the MLB to the minor A and then asserting one can compare the two on equal footing. The USA simply doesn't possess the political will (re: state of and political influence of corporate enviroments) to "catch up" with EU antitrust law. |
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Europeans complain over Sarbanes Oxley costs and to SEC over U.S. listing requirements -------------------------------------------------------------------------------- Posted by London on Feb 12, 2004, 20:24 European companies, worried about the costs and restrictions of complying with the Sarbanes-Oxley Act, are mounting a drive to make it easier for them to stop complying with U.S. securities laws. In a letter to William Donaldson, the chairman of the Securities and Exchange Commission, 11 organizations of companies - saying they represented 100,000 European companies including more than 100 whose securities are traded in the United States, asked for changes that would make it easier for them to stop being registered with the SEC. The letter was made public Wednesday. . While some European companies are "quite satisfied with their experience in the U.S. market," others have concluded that the costs are not worth the benefits, said the letter, signed by business leaders including Alain Joly, the president of the European Association for Listed Companies and the chairman of the supervisory board of Air Liquide. . "There is a feeling of, 'Why do you want to have a U.S. listing,'" said Edward Greene, a partner in the London office of Cleary, Gottlieb, Steen Hamilton, who prepared a proposal for changes in U.S. rules for the European companies. "The costs of Sarbanes-Oxley have been substantial. The hidden sleeper has been the upcoming attestation of internal controls. It really is a substantial effect on costs and audit fees." The rule he referred to, whose implementation was delayed until 2005 for foreign companies, requires corporate executives to certify that internal financial controls are adequate, and requires outside auditors to certify that the management's conclusions are accurate. Companies have complained that will raise audit fees substantially. Greene, a former SEC general counsel, said many companies were also concerned about bars on company loans to executives. They were included in Sarbanes-Oxley when it was passed in 2001, in the aftermath of the Enron and WorldCom scandals, both of which involved loans to executives. Under current law, a company that wants to sell securities to the public in the United States, or to list securities on a U.S. market, must reconcile its financial statements to U.S. accounting rules and comply with American securities laws, including Sarbanes-Oxley. A company that no longer values a U.S. listing can easily delist from the exchange, Greene said. But it remains subject to the securities laws unless it can show that it has fewer than 300 American investors. To do that, it must conduct research to determine its actual shareholders, regardless of whether those holders bought the shares in America or overseas. That is a difficult standard to meet, and even if it is met the company might have to resume complying with the U.S. rules in a later year if the number goes back above 300. . The companies proposed that European concerns should be able to drop their registration if they delisted and showed that less than 5 percent of their share volume was in the United States. That would cover many prominent companies, including some that trade in substantial volume in New York. For example, hundreds of thousands of shares of Deutsche Telekom, the German telephone company, are traded each day on the Big Board. But that volume is dwarfed by its volume in Germany. . The European companies' proposal would not apply to Japanese or other overseas companies because it assumes the European companies would follow new International Accounting standards, as they are expected to do beginning in 2005, although some European companies are resisting the international rule on accounting for derivatives. . An SEC spokesman in Washington declined to comment on the letter. But the proposal is likely to run into some opposition in America, since it would be seen as a step on the road to acceptance of international standards as being equivalent to American ones. . European companies that listed in the United States did so in some cases to be able to use stock to acquire U.S. companies, or to gain access to American capital markets. But many have found that American institutional investors are willing to buy shares overseas, wherever the most liquidity is. And companies that are not listed in the United States can sell securities there in private offerings, under an SEC rule known as 144A, so long as the buyers are institutional investors. . "As a result," said the letter, "many of our member companies with U.S. listed securities find that they have no greater access to the U.S. market than other companies whose securities are listed only in Europe." http://www.srimedia.com/artman/publish/article_753.shtml |
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Wait for it: http://www.economist.com/displaysto...25%23P%23%3C%0A |
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Sigh. You're catching the disinformation bug. Never mind. Cheers, -Noble |
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occrider: Did Great Britain undergo its industrial revolution due to a war? No it was fueled by resources, technology, labor, etc., the same as America. |
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Noble: Hmm, and the Crimean and Boer Wars? |
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| Originally posted by occrider Huh? Ok point to some tangible losses US companies are facing in the EU asides from Microsoft (which both the US and EU prosecuted and fined mind you). What other US companies are withering away in the face of such disparity? You think that strict regulatory controls are aiding EU companies? Hmmm yea that might explain why 7 of the 10 largest companies in the world are US based: http://www.forbes.com/lists/results...olumnClick=true Yup, these companies will be going down now . |
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| Originally posted by Yoepus Actually its more then just Microsoft (and the case regarding Microsoft was regarding Windows Media player -- which you can uninstall if you want - not IE. Aside from the fact that the 'punishment' for including media player in Windows was rididiclous). But there are several other notable ones: GE / Honeywell (probably the most rididiclous decission by the commission) Timewarner / AOL Vivendi / Universal And undoubtedly I'm forgetting a couple. |
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| Originally posted by occrider Huh? Ok point to some tangible losses US companies are facing in the EU... |
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| Originally posted by occrider Wait for what? That article didn�t address any of my points. |
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| Originally posted by occrider No let�s not never mind. You�ve been cherry picking which arguments you respond to after I come back with evidence to support my claims, and that�s fine. But it�s utterly fucking ridiculous for you to accuse me of being misinformed |
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| Originally posted by occrider Ok, these are rejections of mergers and acquisitions. Not anti-trust fines. Therefore, in what way are US companies being disadvantaged such that there is arbitrage for European companies? |
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| Originally posted by TheNobleEu LOL Go ask Jack Welch. |
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Then you obviously didn't read it. |
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Ok, let's not. And to think you've been the most rational so far... I never claimed you were misinformed about this. I claimed you "were catching the disinformation bug," i.e., you were misrepresenting what I said, and you still are. |
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My asking you your opinion on *how* the Crimean and Boer campaigns contributed to industrialization (especially the peak of the 1890s in the case of the latter) *in no way* = a claim on my part that these conflicts *started an event 50 years previous!* That's called an anachronism, and it was you that pointed out that it would be. It was *you* that assumed there was a connection there, where none was stated -- observe your own citations! |
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EDIT: you're obviously a smart guy, and you'll note that I've admitted when I don't know something and have asked your opinion. When I'm unsure what you mean, you'll also note in several instances I've asked clarification. Just don't assume, misrepresent, and then get mad, ok? It's not worth getting annoyed over. I'm don't mean to come off as condescending, but I refuse to take up some opion thrust at me, and neither will I get upset or dwell over a forum. |
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Are you being deliberately obtuse? |
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If you have acutally read said think-tanks, and not just googled them, |
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| Then you obviously didn't read it. |
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| Originally posted by Yoepus The above stated rejection of mergers were all based (rejected) on anti-trust grounds. |
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| Originally posted by TheNobleEu No, it really isn't -- I think you're still missing the point: The EU regulations are five times as stringent as the US's; the laws that shackle the US in the EU, simply not being present in the States, gives the EU free reign to dominate the US market while the US cannot do the same in the EU. The EU can and already has slapped the US with billions in fines and corporate loses. This is why I chuckled at the notion that 'the EU has to observe US antitrust equally,' quite true in theory, a farsical notion in practice. That's like going from the MLB to the minor A and then asserting one can compare the two on equal footing. The USA simply doesn't possess the political will (re: state of and political influence of corporate enviroments) to "catch up" with EU antitrust law. Cheers, -Noble |
and whatever else from Brussels and Nice, the U.S. businesses carry on.
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| Originally posted by Yoepus EU 'anti-trust' law (but I'd say the commission really) is one of the most farsical, corrupt, purely anti-anything-European, despicable, money-grubbing institutions I have ever encountered. But thats just me |
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