Tag: Bankers

Stand up for Christian values, says Cameron

Joe Murphy, Political Editor

Faith: Mr Cameron hailed Christianity

David Cameron today attacked a “slow-motion moral collapse” in Britain and called for a revival of traditional Christian values.

In a keynote speech, he condemned a growing “do as you please” culture in which people, including political leaders, increasingly feared criticising the bad choices of others.

“Whether you look at the riots last summer, the financial crash and the expenses scandal or the on-going terrorist threat from Islamist extremists around the world, one thing is clear,” said the Prime Minister. “Moral neutrality or passive tolerance just isn’t going to cut it any more.”

Addressing Church of England members at Christ Church Cathedral, Oxford, he went on: “Put simply, for too long we have been unwilling to distinguish right from wrong. ‘Live and let live’ has too often become ‘do what you please’.”

Mr Cameron, whose speech marked the 400th anniversary of the King James Bible, said people should openly proclaim the explicit values of Christianity.

He criticised the notions that by “standing up for Christian values we somehow do down other faiths”, or that it was offensive to pass judgment on other people’s behaviour.

“I think these arguments are profoundly wrong,” he said. “And being clear on this is absolutely fundamental to who we are as a people, what we stand for and the kind of society we want to build. We are a Christian country and we should not be afraid to say so.” The Prime Minister admitted that his own faith was racked by doubts. “I claim no religious authority whatsoever,” he said.

“I am a committed – but I have to say vaguely practising – Church of England Christian who’ll stand up for the values and principles of my faith but who is full of doubts and, like many, constantly grappling with difficult questions.”

He listed Christian values in British society as “responsibility, hard work, charity, compassion, humility, self-
sacrifice, love, pride in working for the common good and honouring the social obligations we have to one another, to our families and our communities”.

He went on “These are the values we treasure. Yes, they are Christian values and we should not be afraid to acknowledge that. But they are also values that speak to us all – to people of every faith and none. I believe we should all stand up and defend them.”

The Prime Minister said the summer riots were partly caused by people “shying away from speaking the truth about behaviour, about morality”. He added: “One of the biggest lessons of the riots is that we’ve got stand up for our values if we are to confront the slow-motion moral collapse that has taken place in parts of our country these past few generations.”

He said faith was no guarantee that people would lead moral lives and stressed that many atheists and agnostics lived by strong moral codes.

But religious faith could inspire people to more ethical decisions. “The absence of any real accountability, or moral code, allowed some bankers and politicians to behave with scant regard for the rest of society,” he said.

An “almost fearful, passive tolerance of religious extremism” had let Islamic extremism grow unchallenged.

During his speech, Mr Cameron also hailed the King James Bible as one of the greatest and most important works of literature.

www.thisislondon.co.uk, 16 Dec 2011

December 17, 2011
Iceland Arrests Former CEO Of Failed Bank

Adam Taylor

Iceland’s special prosecutor has taken Larus Welding, the former head of the failed Glitnir Bank, into custody, Reuters reports.

Glitnir Bank was the first of the top three Icelandic commercial banks to fail in 2008.

Former director of market trade Jóhannes Baldursson and former broker Ingi Rafn Júlíusson were also taken into custody and between ten and twenty other former employees of Glitnir Bank were also investigated.

They are expected to be held for a week, apparently to prevent tampering with evidence or witness coercion.

The Special Prosecutor’s Office released a statement that indicates their investigation will focus on four areas (via IceNews):

1. The purchase of Glitnir’s own trade of shares issued by the bank on the stock market. Also the bank’s purchase of and trade with shares issued by FL Group.

2. Loans granted to various companies because of purchase of shares issued by the bank at the end of 2007 and in 2008. The original principal of these loans is believed to amount to almost ISK 37 billion (USD 310 million, EUR 231 million) in total.

3. Trade with forward contracts on shares issued by the bank.

4. Glitnir’s underwriting of the ISK 15 million (USD 126 million, EUR 93 million) stock offering by FL Group at the end of 2007, beginning of 2008.

Image: AP

The collapse of Iceland’s three biggest commercial banks left $86 billion in debt (Iceland’s 2010 GDP was only $13.3 billion).

www.businessinsider.com, 1 December 2011

December 2, 2011
Bankers admit they DO earn too much and “power and glamour” of money dehumanised people

Bankers have finally admitted they are paid too much.

Christian think-tank St Paul’s Institute found many believe their pay is too high compared to teachers or nurses.

The poll of 500 bankers also revealed that only 33% believe in God.

Canon Chancellor Giles Fraser and Reverend Graeme Knowles both quit St Paul’s Cathedral amid anti-greed protests.

The Archbishop of York Dr John Sentamu said the “power and glamour” of money dehumanised people.

Meanwhile, Ed Miliband last night said the protesters were a wake-up call to the Government.

In a scathing attack he blasted PM David Cameron for protecting “the privileged, the powerful and the wealthiest 1% of society”.

The Mirror

November 7, 2011
Ry Cooder takes on the bankers

By Nicola Stanbridge

Today Programme

The guitarist Ry Cooder is most famous for his Buena Vista Social club recording, which he used to highlight his opposition to America’s trade embargo on Cuba.

In his new album he continues his political stance, claiming he will use his music to take on bankers and give voice to “ordinary working people”.

Pull Up Some Dust And Sit Down completes the circle with the musician’s first albums, which covered songs by Woody Guthrie and Lead Belly that evoked the desperate times of The Great Depression.

The opening track on your album is a song about bankers. How do you see your role – venting spleen, recording events, or as a modern day protest singer?

All those things are good. I don’t look at it that way, though. I’m an older guy now and I’ve been making records for so darn long, I look upon it as the life that I have. As Albert Einstein used to say, you do the best you can with what you’ve got.

What have the bankers done to you?

This is déjà vu – what caused the great depression has caused it all over again. The banking laws that FDR put in place in the 1930s worked very well until it was all deregulated during Reagan’s time. So now, 40 years later, we have this problem that nobody can solve.

So what the Republicans were trying to do over this period, wasn’t just to deregulate banking so that you could have unlimited profits. What they wanted was a return to a period of “pristine capitalism” when there were no unions, and there was no labour movement and there were no protections for the working people and profits were maximised.

It was a wonderful time for the working elite. This is what they’re trying to recreate and, man, they’re succeeding.

So it’s not the bankers themselves – although, of course they’re driven mad by their greed for money. And I’m sorry for them because that’s a crappy kind of lifestyle to have. How many BMWs do you need? How many Rolex watches you gonna wear in your lifetime, for crying out loud? What is it about that kind of desire? I don’t understand it.

In another song you dream of sending in Jesse James to sort out Wall Street. And you say “my 44 will do the talking”. I didn’t think violence and inciting hatred were allowed in America…

Well, see, the point here is that Jesse James was a primitive white man from the 19th Century. And in those days the hero was a one-man, one-gun hero. It’s a very popular American myth.

But what Jesse doesn’t realise [in the song] is that while he’s been up in heaven, the forces massed against him… He can’t overcome the growth of the corporate, military-industrial equation. He can’t walk down Wall Street and shoot up the place. No-one would even pay attention to him. The hero is outnumbered and outgunned. The wagons are circling, but what’s he going to do? What’s anyone going to do?

Do you own a gun?

No! No guns please!

My neighbour does, though. He told me so. He says to me, “my guns are in a bomb-proof safe”. I said, “what are you preparing for?”. He said, “when the zombies come.” That was the end of that conversation.

Tell us the story of Quicksand

Well, in the Sonoran desert, right around the US-Mexican border, the temperatures get up around 140F (60C) . You can’t live in that kind of heat, but there’s a trail leading from the Mexican side through Arizona. It’s called the Devil’s Highway and it’s been a migrant trail for 200 years.

People go out there and try to do it on foot, but if you make one mistake and go five minutes out of your way, you become disorientated and dehydrated. And they find these mummified bodies out there. The heat has just baked them through. And the people who live through it often refer to having a vision of the Virgin of Guadalupe flying overhead. This is a very common vision when the dehydration sets in.

So in the song the person says, “I see in my mind my mother, at home. And now I’m seeing the Virgin – take a message back to my home.”

What’s your take on immigration to the US?

It’s been a political issue in California for hundreds of years. We’ve had migrant workers here for almost 300 years – Chinese, Japanese, Filipino, Mexican, Italian… my own grandfather.

Would you say the economy is dependent on immigrants?

Oh, totally. But in political times, you will have the forces of repression wanting to say, “hey, they’re taking your jobs, send them back”. We had a Chinese expulsion, Japanese expulsion. Woody Guthrie wrote a great song about deportation.

They’re playing political games, but a terrible price is being paid by people.

It’s often the case, though, that immigrants are forced to take the tougher jobs…

Sure, immigrants will do work that no-one else will do. There was even a movie about it – A Day Without Mexicans. In Los Angeles everything would come to a screeching halt.

You seem to favour stories about unlikely heroes – Harry Dean Stanton was one in Paris, Texas. Can we see thematic links in your work through time?

I suppose you can. I always say I’ve got three ideas and I keep recycling them.

What are the three ideas?

I forget what the other two are – but the bottleneck guitar was a nice thing I was introduced to. Records were my first teachers, and then people showed me how. I asked [pioneering steel guitarist] John Fahey, “what is that sound?” and he said, “well, you get a bottle, you put it on your little finger and you play”.

I had a lot of luck in meeting great musicians who were kind enough to show me things. Otherwise, I don’t know what I’d be doing today. Probably sacking groceries. I wanted to be a car pinstriper but there was nobody to teach me how to do it. So I said, “music’s good too. I’ll do that maybe, since I can’t work out how to do this pinstriping”.

Do you ever find yourself trying to recapture the public acceptance you had for Buena Vista Social Club?

Well, those master musicians of Cuba were a revelation to many people. To the non-Latin people who bought that record in great numbers, this was a door opened. This music, the sound of Cuba coming through the voices and the artistry of these older masters.

They had a “pre-media mind”. Before radio, before television, minds were formed by other kinds of human association and music. That can never be recaptured. So that album is one of those “adios” experiences. Wave goodbye, it’s the last remnant of this sound. The record was successful for that reason.

www.bbc.co.uk, 24 September 2011

September 25, 2011
Turkey’s bankers tap into Kurdish boom

ERBIL // At the first branch of the Turkish VakifBank in Iraq, the manager sits proudly in his office under a portrait of Mustafa Kemal Ataturk, the founder of modern Turkey.

But while Ataturk coveted the oil-rich territory of northern Iraq when he founded Turkey, the banker Yesur Meylani has not come to occupy land. In fact, he is a Kurd – one of more than 21,000 Turks who have moved to Erbil, many in the hope of tapping into the booming cross-border trade.

Yesur Meylani is the manager of VakifBank, a Turkish bank that is opening up branches in Iraq. Lee Hoagland / The National

Masrour Barzani, grandson of the man seen as the founder of the Kurdish national movement, says he wants to change ‘the mentality of people whom we live with to accept the Kurds as equals.’ Read article

With a long history of tension with Kurds in Turkey and a volatile Iraqi border, Turkey might not seem like the ideal business partner for the semi-autonomous Kurdistan region. But against all odds, the relationship is growing.

“The politics and the economics are feeding each other,” Mr Meylani said.

VakifBank, which has about 650 branches in Turkey, opened in Erbil in February “because of the good relations between Turkey and Kurdistan and also because of the volume of trade”, he said.

Turkey’s export volume to Iraq was US$7.5 billion (Dh27.5bn) in 2010, about 70 per cent of which was focused on Iraqi Kurdistan. Much of the trade is carried on trucks that squeeze through the only official border crossing between the two countries at Ibrahim Khalil – around 1,500 in each direction every day.

Aydin Selcen, the consul general at the Turkish consulate in Erbil, said: “The business volume that we have with this region, the Iraqi Kurdistan region, is equal to what we have for Syria, Lebanon, Jordan combined.” said When the consulate opened at one of Erbil’s new office blocks in March 2010, it became Turkey’s third consulate in Iraq.

Iraqi Kurdistan has 16 Turkish schools and two Turkish hospitals, and more than half of the foreign companies registered in the region – 741 in total – are from Turkey, Mr Selcen said. He said trade is “going to increase drastically” as Ankara pushes to reach its target of $25bn of trade annually with Iraq.

One of the main drivers of the economic relationship is Turkey’s thirst for energy to fuel its expanding economy, alongside its desire to diversify suppliers – Russia now provides about 70 per cent of the country’s natural gas.

“What they produce now in natural gas can satisfy one quarter of what we need. So if you add the undiscovered oil and gas resources to already existing ones, it’s for sure an interesting destination for our companies,” Mr Selcen said.

But while cross-border business is flourishing, the Kurdish militants known as the Kurdistan Workers’ Party, or the PKK, continue to damage relations. The group, which is designated as a terrorist organisation by several states including the US, has a stronghold in Iraq’s remote northern mountains. The guerrillas use the base to launch attacks on Turkey, and the Turks have bombed the rugged terrain, targeting the PKK.

Mr Selcen said counter-terrorism is one of the most important issues of co-operation between the two countries. He said there has been progress, “but this is such a sensitive issue that, of course, we are asking for more”.

Masrour Barzani, the chief of the Kurdistan Region Security Protection Agency, said the PKK operates in “harsh terrain” near the borders of Iraq, Iran and Turkey: “It’s difficult for Turkey to control it. It’s difficult for Iran to control it and it’s definitely difficult for us to control it.”

“We’ve been telling the Turks that we don’t think military solutions are the best solutions. We believe that peaceful solutions are going to last and that’s what we support and I think they understand that now.”

Mr Barzani said: “Trade and economic relations is helping the relationship, because before that there was more tension between the Kurdistan region and Turkey, with the Turks and the Kurds in general.”

Ako Shwani, a history professor at the University of Sulaymaniyah, said the Turks have a history of oppressing the Kurds, but they are changing tack to improve their human rights record in a bid to join the European Union.

Iraq has about 4.5 million to 6 million Kurds; Turkey has 14 million, according to the CIA World Factbook. Mr Shwani said the Turkish government fears that Iraqi Kurdistan’s success could inspire Turkish Kurds to push for independence.

“We have a parliament and a government, and the region’s greater degree of autonomy is not good in the Turkish mind,” he said.

Locals suspect that Turkey is sending its secret police into Iraqi Kurdistan to gather information, he said. “We don’t hate the Turkish people, we hate the Turkish regime.”

In the Souk al Kabeer, or the big market, at the foot of Erbil’s hulking citadel, merchants are taking advantage of the security in the region. The winding corridors teem with shops selling fabrics, perfumes and food; street hawkers polish shoes and sell pirated DVDs with titles such as The Fall of Baghdad.

“We’re happy to trade with Turkey,” said a Turkmen shop owner who gave his name as Mohammed. “Ten years ago, there were only locals here, but now there are people from everywhere and there’s very little poverty.”

Yousef Yaseen, a Kurdish graduate of Erbil University whose family owns five gold shops in the souk, agreed that locals are pleased to see Turks settling in the city.

Some of the Kurds do not support the PKK “troublemakers”, he said. “There are a lot of Turkish companies here. It’s a good thing.”

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via Full: Open for business: Turkey’s bankers tap into Kurdish boom – The National.

June 22, 2011