UN chief Ban Ki-moon is in India on a day-long visit to attend an environment conference and meet Indian leaders. Mr Ban is attending the Delhi Sustainable Development Summit which, organisers say, will press for cuts in carbon emissions. India is also expected to share with Mr Ban details of last November's Mumbai attacks which left over 170 people dead, reports say. Mr Ban arrived in India from Afghanistan and Pakistan. In Pakistan - his first visit to the country since taking office in 2007 - Mr Ban announced that the UN would launch "very shortly" an independent inquiry into the killing of Pakistani ex-Prime Minister Benazir Bhutto. Ms Bhutto was killed in a suicide attack on a rally in 2007. Her death triggered riots across the country. 'Global threat' In Delhi, Mr Ban attended an environmental meeting to discuss the impact of climate change and global warming. The UN secretary general, who was given the Sustainable Development Leadership Award at the conference, declared 2009 to be the year of climate change. "By presenting me with this award today, you recognise the unique role that the United Nations can and must play in addressing these challenges - challenges that know no borders and affect all nations and all peoples," Mr Ban said in his acceptance speech. "Combating climate change will need all our leadership, all our commitment, all our ingenuity. This is not going to be easy. "Nonetheless, I want to emphasise that, by facing up to this crisis, we have been given an exciting opportunity to make progress on a wide range of sustainable development issues," he said and added, "It is an opportunity we must seize." India faces the "challenges of poverty eradication, sustaining the rapid economic growth and dealing with the global threat of climate change", Rajendra Pachauri, head of the UN's 2008 Nobel prize-winning climate panel and one of summit organisers, told the AFP news agency. Later in the day, Mr Ban is expected to meet the Indian foreign minister and Congress Party chief Sonia Gandhi to discuss the Mumbai attack. Mr Ban began his regional visit on Wednesday in Afghanistan, where he said the country would be a priority for the UN in 2009. He proceeded to Pakistan later in the day. His visit to Pakistan came amid growing unrest in Pakistan's border areas, with Taleban rebels attacking Nato supply routes into Afghanistan while government forces engage the Taleban in the Swat valley of North West Frontier Province. Mr Ban has called for the "immediate and safe release" of John Solecki, the head of the UN refugee agency (UNHCR) in the city of Quetta, who was snatched at gunpoint after his driver was killed. | |
Thursday, February 5, 2009
UN chief to meet Indian leaders
Trump: Obama 'absolutely right' on executive pay cap
(CNN) -- Donald Trump, businessman and CEO of The Trump Organization, knows a little something about money.
Donald Trump says President Obama is trying to solve the nation's economic woes, but it's "trial and error."
Trump spoke with CNN's Larry King about whether there should be executive pay limits, if there should be a stimulus plan and when there could be an end to the economic downturn. The following is an edited portion of the interview.
Larry King: Is Obama right or wrong to go after these executives with salary caps?
Donald Trump: Well, I think he's absolutely right. Billions of dollars is being given to banks and others. You know, once you start using taxpayer money, it's a whole new game. So I absolutely think he's right.
King: What about the whole concept of bailouts?
Trump: Well, it's a little bit different. A lot of people are not in favor of bailouts. You know, we talked about all the different things going on in this country. Let's face it, Larry, we are in a depression.
If they didn't do the bailout, you would be in depression No. 2 and maybe just as big as depression No. 1, so they really had to do something. The problem is they're giving millions and billions of dollars to banks and the banks aren't loaning it.
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If you are a prime customer of a bank and if you need 10 cents, you can't get it. The banks are out of business. They're not loaning. Now, billions of dollars has been given. They're supposed to be loaning out that money and they're using it for other purposes, so it is a real mess.
King: If you were in the Senate, would you vote for the stimulus plan?
Trump: Well, I'd vote for a stimulus plan. I'm not sure that all of the things in there are appropriate. Some of the little toys that they have are not really appropriate, and they're a little surprising that they seem to want it, because the publicity on it has been terrible.
I would certainly vote for a stimulus, but I would really vote for banks having to loan out the money because they're not doing that.
King: In your adult career, have you ever seen it worse?
Trump: No, this is the worst ever. This is the worst I've ever seen. 1990 was a bad period of time, but this is far worse, and this is worse on a really global basis. I'm looking at different countries. Every country is bad. Now they're blaming us because of what happened. You know, why not blame the United States? But every country is in trouble.
King: Can you put the blame anywhere?
Trump: Well, look, it's something that, to a certain extent, happens. You go up, you go down. You have recessions. If you just look at the charts over the period of 150 years, you've had good times (and) you've had bad times.
Certainly, there's been a lot of greed. There's been a lot of stupidity. You know, like I say, today the banks don't have money, they don't loan money. But if you went to a bank two years ago and you wanted a $300 million loan, they'd say 'No, we don't want to do that, but we'll give you $400 million,' so I guess, to a certain extent, that's part of the problem.
King: If you had the power, if you could wield, what would you do?
Trump: Well, the biggest problem we have is it's trial and error, Larry. I mean we've never had anything like this before. It is absolute trial and error. They're trying. The new president is trying. Bush left him with a mess -- a total mess in many different ways. I really think he's doing the best he can, but it is trial and error.
They try something, if it works, great. If it doesn't work -- and the problem is you don't really know if it's going to work for quite some time. If it's really wrong -- and it could be wrong -- we're going to really have a mess in two years.
Economic Policy Could Scuttle Obama's Good Start
Obama is in these early weeks making trillion-dollar decisions that will cast the die for the rest of his promising agenda. Unfortunately, while the new president has already proved to be a brilliant and super-competent agent of change in so many ways, in matters of economic policy he has relied excessively on the financial "experts" who helped get America into this mess.
Treasury Secretary Timothy Geithner and top White House economic adviser Lawrence Summers are retreads from the Clinton years who sided with congressional Republicans in unraveling the regulatory regime created by Franklin Roosevelt that had served the nation so well. Perhaps they have now come to their senses, given the financial horrors that their deregulatory mania unleashed, but it gives one pause to see these folks back on center stage performing with the same arrogant aplomb as they did when they had it all wrong.
We can only hope they are now prepared to make amends, although Geithner and Summers often seem to be pushing for more of the same: bankers first, women and children later. The good news is that the message coming from the mouth of the new president is that he intends to make a significant departure from the Bush bailout, by placing emphasis on preventing foreclosures, curtailing bank lobbying and holding the recipients of federal funds responsible for opening the tap of loans to the public.
The structure of the stimulus package is also reassuring, with its emphasis on spending money in ways that will improve the quality of life for ordinary Americans and its ban on bonuses for corporate execs who utterly failed in their responsibilities. Imagine how much better off we would be if we had just taken the first $350 billion of Troubled Asset Relief Program (TARP) funds and used it to help teachers, cops, nurses and firemen buy homes in the communities they serve.
We certainly should give Obama the benefit of the doubt.
In every other area, his early performance has been stellar. Certainly so with respect to human rights and protection of civil liberties — in his first week in office, he reversed many of the atrocious Bush-era policies. With an urgency unmatched by any other modern president, Obama has sharply countered America's tainted image by acting to close the Guantanamo Bay detention center, ban the CIA's "enhanced" interrogation tactics and restore the power of the Freedom of Information Act to ensure public access to the information required for an informed democracy.
In other important instances, Obama has been refreshingly true to the promises of his campaign by taking the first steps toward ending the U.S. occupation of Iraq, by moving toward energy conservation and ending punishment of international health organizations that have been severely undermined by the dictates of anti-abortion zealots. His early actions on global warming and the Mideast show a clarity of commitment absent from the executive office over the past eight years.
In these areas, Obama has acted with an informed confidence not always evidenced in his initial moves on the economy. Why, in the management of the economy, do we hear so little from the Chicago community organizer concerned with the pain of the average person and instead perceive so much of the sensibility of the Harvard business and law school elite, preoccupied with the well-being of the denizens of Wall Street?
As Obama stated in his inauguration speech, "A nation cannot prosper long when it favors only the prosperous." That is the problem with the Bush bailout, which Obama asked to be extended and which has resulted in little more than a rearranging of the chairs, not to mention the commodes, of the first-class passengers on a sinking ship. It has been the biggest corporate welfare program in history, enabling Wall Street hustlers to cut themselves lucrative deals while so many millions lose their jobs and homes. I'm betting that Obama will try to put a stop to all of this, but he needs to hear from ordinary folks who are hurting and outraged.
Robert Scheer's new book is "The Pornography of Power: How Defense Hawks Hijacked 9/11 and Weakened America." E-mail Robert Scheer at rscheer@truthdig.com. To find out more about Robert Scheer, and read features by other Creators Syndicate writers and cartoonists, visit the Creators Syndicate Webpage at
www.creators.com.
