Dragging Secret Accounts Into The Open
November 9, 2009As I learned back in elementary school, “Secrets, secrets are no fun.” This is especially true when the secrets involve billions of dollars in hidden offshore accounts and hundreds of millions in unpaid taxes. Earlier this year, the Internal Revenue Service filed a lawsuit against the Union Bank of Switzerland (UBS), seeking the identities and account information for as many as 52,000 accounts. After months of negotiations, including high level …
Mumbai Attacks Weigh On Recent Visitor
January 1, 2009Editor’s Note: New York artist and lawyer Jolie Schwab toured Mumbai and other Indian cities recently with the American Jewish World Service. She left that country three days before the terrorist assault on Mumbai that began Nov. 26. In an email to family and friends, excerpted here, she shared her reactions immediately after the attack. As I was leaving India on Nov. 23, I was struck by the vastness of the …
A Financial Meltdown 75 Years In The Making
January 1, 2009
1933 — President Roosevelt signs the Banking Act of 1933, or the Glass-Steagall Act, into law with the aim of restoring confidence in the banking system, which is at record lows after one in five banks failed following the 1929 stock market crash. The legislation separates commercial banks from investment banks to ensure that deposits are not subject to the risks associated with the underwriting and speculative trading of stocks …
Maximize Benefits Of Banking Without Borders
October 1, 2008Nations may still be divided by closely watched boundaries and vast oceans, but the global economy has no borders, and your bank account need not, either. Banks around the world today offer international, multi-currency accounts. Millions of international travelers, business professionals and investors enjoy the benefits of these accounts. You an choose among and open many of these accounts over the internet, though you probably will need to ship some …
Bernanke & Co. Play A Confidence Game
April 2, 2008On an August Sunday in 1971, President Richard M. Nixon ordered the world to trust the full faith and credit of the United States. The world, having no alternative, obliged. Today’s disorderly credit markets, and the response by U.S. policy-makers who seem desperate to avoid a recession, may put the world’s trust in America and its currency to the greatest test yet. The worst economic turmoil since the 1970s could …
Canada Settles Issues; America Belabors Them
January 1, 2007SHERBROOKE, Quebec — As night falls and a frigid December wind blasts across Quebec’s Eastern Townships, the 100-foot-tall illuminated cross atop Mont Bellevue commandeers this small city’s skyline. The sight of it startles me. Just an hour earlier, I was standing at the mountain’s base, watching snow guns furiously try to compensate for nature’s lethargy in time for an approaching weekend. Mont Bellevue is a city park, 900 vertical feet …
Former Hostage Surveys Today’s Landscap
October 1, 2004Few Americans have more experience with militant Islam than Terry Anderson. Anderson was chief Middle East correspondent for The Associated Press when he was abducted at gunpoint on a Beirut street in March 1985. His captors, the Iranian-backed Hezbollah militia, held him for nearly seven years — longer than any of the dozens of Westerners who were seized when civil war brought near-anarchy to Lebanon. Anderson became an author and …
Japan: A Real Recovery?
January 1, 2004The Japanese Nikkei stock index jumped 39% from its bottom in April 2003 through the end of October. This indicates that many investors believe the Japanese economy is on its way to a full recovery. Is it for real this time? Japan has endured more than a decade of economic decline. The country is experiencing deflation, and attempts by the Bank of Japan to fight it have been ineffective. Politicians …
The Long-Delayed End Of The Gulf War
April 1, 2003The imminent fighting in Iraq is not, in my view, a second Gulf War. It is the inevitable conclusion of the first one. The Bush administration’s inability to make this clear is one of its biggest failures. The administration’s real aim, which it has admitted only intermittently, is to get rid of Saddam and his government. This is perfectly legitimate, because this same regime forced America and its allies to …
The High Cost Of Being Right
April 1, 2003Fighting probably will have commenced in Iraq by the time you read this. It might even be over, and the regime of Saddam Hussein may have ended. But as I write this on the first weekend in March, there is a sense of history poised to happen, of world-changing events about to unfold. I suspect the summer of 1939 felt like this. I believe war in Iraq has been both …
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