Economy – Page 24

Life During Wartime

Published on April 14, 2007

Oh, my heart bleeds:

Southern California running low on servants

By David Streitfeld

Los Angeles Times

LOS ANGELES — The rich might be getting richer, but their lives are hardly trouble-free. In Southern California, there aren’t enough servants to go around.

Wealthy families need more chefs to prepare meals, more maids and butlers to serve them, more housekeepers to keep mansions tidy, and more nannies and night nurses to tend offspring.

“I just filled nine positions, and I could have filled another nine immediately,” says Christopher Baker, who runs Christopher Baker Staffing in Los Angeles.

“The wealthy are living larger than ever. Forget about second homes. Now you have a third home, a fourth home. And these aren’t little shacks. They need staffs.”

[…]

The burgeoning service industry now has its own glossy magazine, CelebStaff: Managing Mansions and Estates. Its offices are in Beverly Hills.

“For the average Joe, this type of lifestyle is unimaginable,” the CelebStaff editors write, “but those that live it will have it no other way!”

If the average Joe only knew, those in the field say, he could be upgrading his own life by working for the wealthy.

“He could be making $50,000, $60,000, $70,000 a year at a mansion in Bel Air with museum-quality furnishings, rather than cooped up as a $9-an-hour computer programmer in a cubicle in Mid-Wilshire,” says Baker, who started his company in 2004 after a stint as a recruiter for a search firm.

More…

High-schooler wondering what do to in life? Worried that all the good jobs have been outsourced? Get your eyes downcast, your hair combed and your shiny shoes and pinny on. Practice saying ‘Yes, Sir/Madam.” to your betters.

Don’t you know being a minion is a noble calling? You should be proud to be a millionaires’ flunky – they made the coiuntry what it is today. Besides, think of all the money you’d save on school; you know all that book-larnin’ would only make you dissatisfied with your lot in life.

However you look at it, servitude’s the way to go, careerwise. It beats being blown up by a roadside IED.

A Very Expensive Fumble In The Stationery Cupboard

Published on April 13, 20071 Comment

Phwarr, what a hunk of spunk. NOT.

I must say I’m enjoying seeing loyal Bushie and PNAC zealot Paul Wolfowitz left twisting in the wind at the World Bank over giving a job and pay rises to his mistress.

So far so typically corrupt, or at least that’s how this is being framed by the major media.

But it’s not as though his relationship with Shaha Riza wasn’t known about when he took the job and she’s hardly some brainless bit of arm candy. World bank employees complained at the time of his appointment in 2005:

From Inside the WB: Discontent over Riza We hear from Bank insiders that Shaha Ali Riza, whom Paul Wolfowitz has been dating for a couple of years, is not popular with her colleagues. As acting manager for External Relations and Outreach in the Middle East/North Africa region of the World Bank, she is to some degree the institution’s public face on that region.

Her personnel file at the Bank reportedly contains several complaints about her job performance as well as about a certain “lack of people skills.” This, we are told, is part of what is behind the World Bank Staff Association’s relatively more open disagreement with the U.S.’s choice.

The WBSA raised loud complaints a few years ago when Wolfensohn named Nick Stern as Chief Economist. Several staffers pointed out the Bank’s strict anti-nepotism laws should have prevented that move, since Stern’s brother was on staff at the Bank. Their complaints were never addressed seriously.

It should be noted that at least one civil society organization believes that Riza is one of the most effective gender experts working at the Bank.

But what’s not being reported is just how closely his Riza is connected in neocon and Bush/Cheney circles – she’s held some very powerful positions in the White House working alongside Liz Cheney on mid-east polcy and is closely connected to the total fuckup that is the Iraq invasion and occupation. No wonder she’s been called the most powerful Moslem in Washington.

A perfect match for Wolfowitz, himself instrumental in the Iraq debacle – truly these two are a poisonous pair.

2005:

Shaha Ali Riza, lately in the news as World Bank President Paul Wolfowitz’s Saudi-born girlfriend, has been assigned to the U.S. State Department. The move, which has not been announced by either huge agency controlled by the Bush regime, means that she’ll be working with Dick Cheney’s daughter Liz Cheney, a top official in the key Near East Affairs bureau.

That’s the word from one of my moles in the World Bank. This significant assignment — a hardened link between the money of the World Bank, which is supposed to focus on poverty, and the neocons’ aims of trying to salvage their privatization plans for Iraq — has not be reported anywhere else, to my knowledge, and I see no word of it on the World Bank website either.

This new loan by the World Bank is strictly from hunger, and it’s sure to do nothing to help us in the Arab world. Wolfowitz’s girlfriend and Cheney’s daughter, in charge together of the U.S. State Department’s Near East bureau? [My emphasis] W.B. Staffer One, as I’ve referred to this particular source, copied me on a September 16 internal memo from Christiaan J. Poortman, the W.B.’s vice president for Middle East and North Africa (MENA, in bank parlance), that says in part:

The Bank has received a request from the US State Department for the secondment of Shaha Riza — on external service — to the Near East Affairs Office of Partnership Initiative. In accepting this assignment Shaha will be responsible for setting up and managing an International Multilateral Foundation that will support reform in the MENA region.

I have agreed to this request which will allow Shaha to continue her work with civil society, complementing our own work on the reform agenda of our partners in the region. Shaha’s assignment will be effective September 19, 2005. Please join me in wishing Shaha the best in her new assignment.

Yeah, Poortman “agreed to this request.” At least it gets Riza out of the office. Wolfowitz got a grand sendoff by the Pentagon in late April, when he left to take over the World Bank. Maybe co-workers had cake for Riza, but maybe not. A similar public pronouncement of a new post didn’t happen for Riza, whose job at the World Bank — basically, head flack for the MENA office — caused plenty of grumbling about nepotism by other W.B. staffers.

More…

It’s not the nepotism that’s most important here, or the minor scandal of venality in office. That’s hardly anything new for Republicans.

What is important is the way all this corrupt manoeuvring has tied World Bank lending policy to White House foreign policy like a horse to a buggy. Where the neocons drive, Wolfowitz and the bank follow – Bushco, by using Wolfowitz’ besottedness with his girlfriend, has managed to subvert the bank’s putative independence and to the great consternation of international development NGOs and governments worldwide the World Bank (not that the it was exactly a fair insitution to begin with) from being previously just US-inclined, has now become the de facto banking arm of Bushco neoconnery and imperial expansion.

This is a lot more important than than just a quick bit of illicit nookie over the desk.

Tiptoe Through The Tax Shelters

Published on February 4, 2007

Champion of the poor my arse – when it comes to tax shelters, that sanctimonious professional Irishman and hypocrite Bono’s could house the world’s homeless. Unfortunately one of the places where he and his greedy peers stash all their cash virtually tax-free is Holland, and more particularly Amsterdam.

The NYT has a long, informative and well-worth-the-read article on the way the Amsterdam has become a popular tax haven destination for celebrities and dictators alike, because of the right-wing, neoliberal, Balkanende government’s lax attitude to corporation tax and exemptions.

Here’s some of the best bits: the whole article is behind registration but you can read the whole article below the fold, as it were..

[…]

The Rolling Stones are not the only celebrities sheltering income in the land of tulips, windmills and Rembrandt. The rock powerhouse U2 has transferred lucrative assets to Amsterdam, as have other pop singers and well-known athletes, all of whom have used or continue to take advantage of the Netherlands’ tax shelters, according to a Dutch tax lawyer who requested anonymity because of client confidentiality agreements.

Entertainment companies and others that benefit handsomely from the Dutch shelters include EMI, the giant record label, and CKX Inc., the entertainment company that owns stakes in “American Idol,” the Elvis Presley estate and the soccer pin-up idol David Beckham.

[…]

Many of the world’s multinational corporations, like Coca-Cola, Nike, Ikea and Gucci, have set up holding companies here in recent years to take advantage of tax shelters nearly identical to the ones that the Rolling Stones and U2 use. An additional draw is the Dutch Finance Ministry’s recent willingness to issue advance rulings that effectively bless the tax shelters, a fast-track process that has lured in companies and individuals seeking to use the Netherlands as a tax shelter.

[…]

The Dutch shelter is simple: royalties that flow into or out of a Dutch holding company are exempt from taxes. Although the nominal corporate tax rate in the Netherlands is around 30 percent, analysts say that domestic tax shelters bring that rate down substantially.

[..]

Some experts see a darker side to the emergence of the Netherlands as a sought-after tax shelter. In 2000, the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development, based in Paris, black-marked the country as one of the world’s top five industrialized tax havens for promoting “treaty shopping” for low-tax jurisdictions. The Netherlands tightened certain rules, requiring more substance for Dutch companies set up solely to reduce or eliminate taxes. But some analysts say that troubles persist.

In its report last fall, SOMO, the research group, said the Dutch shelters affect “both the capacity of developing-country governments to supply essential services to their populations and the capacity of developed-country governments to provide finance for development in the form of debt relief and official development aid.” The report also said that “tax haven features of the Netherlands also facilitate money laundering and attract companies with a dubious reputation.”

Downing St Corruption: It’s Not Just Blair, It’s Brown Too

Published on January 25, 2007

Oooh. Looks like Inspector Knacker may bag more than one major Labour politician. A major corruption and patronage storm is brewing around Gordon Brown, who has been anointed by the faithful to take over as Prime Minister when Tony Blair finally goes or is arrested (whichever comes soonest).

The story in brief: Brown is accused of being complicit in what may be fraudulent activity concerning an allegedly non-political ‘educational’ charity, the Smith Institute.

The institute is fimanced and run by Brown supporters, staffed by his and his wife’s personal friends, and holds closed meetings at No.11 Downing St.. the Chancellor’s office, which the Chancellor himself attends. These meetings are where prominent buinesspeople are dictating government economic policy to Brown and channeling fcharitable funds to the Smith Institute, Brown’s private slush fund, for the privilege of doing so – all the while claiming charitable status and the tax perks that go with it.

As Guido Fawkes puts it, it smells. More than that, it reeks. he has put together a timeline of posts that give the whole backstory, and a stinking mess of secret dealings, jobs for the boys, general self-interestedness and cynicism it is.

Cash for Policy.

Sith attempt to cover-up use of No. 11.

Mrs Brown recruits Konrad as the Sith apprentice.

The back story to the Sith’s Konrad.

The public charity which refuses to talk to the public.

Cameron : Brown is the dark side. [Sith Death Star graphic]

more….

BBC2’s Newsnight also did a an expose last night which can be viewed here.

Just because the major media is keeping schtum on this one for the moment doesn’t mean it won’t develop into a yet another major New Labour corruption story. I can’t wait. Brown is the architect of New Labour’s disastrous neoliberal economic policies and he’s as big a warmonger and liar as Blair.

Perhaps we’ll be rid of them both in one godalmighty, gigantic scandal and dramafest. That would be sweet.

It’s not enough for me that they’re gone: I want to see them go with piles of burning coals heaped upon their heads, never to be able to show their faces in public again, preferably to end their days chronically ill, on means-tested benefits, gibbering madly in one of their own privatised hellholes of a homeless hostel.

Or do you think I’m being too soft?

Taking Control Of Money

Published on January 6, 2007

The developed nations seem to be trudging ahead with chip and pin and contactless credit and debit card technology just as Africa is developing a new paradigm of money transfer that transcends both of these creaky and insecure technologies.

I heard a version of this short documentary about it on the World Sevice a week or so ago, but here’s the full report, Kenya’s Mobile Revolution, from BBC2’s Newsnight.

Completely bypassing physical banking or telephone structures and using a combination of mobile phone networks and scratchcards, people in Kenya (and abroad working elsewhere) are able to trade more securely, to transfer money worldwide and take control of their own finances and futures. This is liberating many from the tyranny of financiers and predatory middlemen.

Africa in many ways is skipping the industrial revolution entirely and zooming right past the rest of us; we’re still in thrall to predatory lenders and outrageous bank fees, and hoping desperately that whenever we swipe our cards they’re not being cloned by some shady gang of identity thieves.

Speaking of which, here’s one of those ‘secure’ chip and pin terminals hacked to play Tetris:

Even given that the supposedly tamper-proof terminal had to be physically modified to do that, this video does not inspire confidence. That it can be so easily subverted should be a worry to all card-users.

I’m not starry eyed about the Kenyan developments either though. No doubt their system will be hacked in some way eventually too, human ingenuity and the lust for money being what it is.

Read more: Money, Economy, Banking, Development, Technology, Security, Hacks