Showing posts with label United States dollar. Show all posts
Showing posts with label United States dollar. Show all posts

December 05, 2007

Aren't the Armenians just LUCKY? Eu to host Kurdish conference


European Parliament to host Kurdish conference

A conference on the European Union, Turkey and the Kurds will begin today in Belgium with the participation of high-level diplomats and Nobel Prize winners.

The two-day international conference focusing on the EU, Turkey and the Kurdish issue will be held in Brussels, hosted by the European Parliament in memory of prominent Kurdish novelist Mehmed Uzun, who lost his life in October after a lengthy battle with stomach cancer.

Participants in the conference will include Nobel Peace Prize laureate Archbishop Emeritus Desmond Tutu; Nobel Peace Prize laureate Dr. Shirin Ebadi; Nobel Prize in Literature laureate Harold Pinter; Bianca Jagger, Council of Europe goodwill ambassador and chairman of the World Future Council; writer Noam Chomsky; writer Yaşar Kemal; and leading Kurdish politician Leyla Zana.

Today's conference is the fourth of such conferences arranged by the EU-Turkey Civic Commission (EUTCC) in cooperation with the Rafto Foundation of Norway, UK-based Kurdish Human Rights Project and Germany-based Medico International. The first such conference was held in November 2004.

The keynote speeches at today's gathering will be delivered by European Parliament President Hans-Gert Poettering, Zana, Jagger and Frances Wurtz, a French leftist member of the European Parliament.

Joost Lagendijk, co-chair of the EU-Turkey Joint Parliamentary Committee, Akın Özçer, former Turkish diplomat, and Ahmet Türk, the former head of the pro-Kurdish Democratic Society Party (DTP), are among those who will discuss during the conference whether Turkey would be able to enter the EU without resolving the Kurdish issue. The conference is expected to end after a final statement is released on Tuesday.

Late last month, after the chief prosecutor of the Supreme Court of Appeals opened a court case against the DTP at the Constitutional Court by claiming that it is in conflict with the independence of the state and the indivisible integrity of its territory and nation, the EUTCC urged the Turkish government "to curb judicial attempts to derail the democratic and peaceful exercise of the right to free expression, and called on it to enter into a dialogue with all parties to come to a peaceful solution to the Kurdish issue and prevent the escalation of ethnic violence in Turkey."

03.12.2007

Today's Zaman Ankara

November 18, 2007

Chinese TV: Dump the Dollar

And you think that the US financial house is NOT about to fall! Here it comes, folks! Watch the Japanese news too.
Source: CNBC
Chinese lunchtime television on Friday gave ordinary people a basic tip on how to play the currency markets:

sell the dollar!


A state news program, quoting unnamed "wealth management experts," told residents with dollar accounts on the mainland to convert their holdings into yuan or a range of other foreign currencies, including the pound and the euro.

The prospect of ordinary Chinese ditching the dollar should be less alarming than reports that have roiled global markets of Beijing diversifying its official foreign exchange reserves.
Whereas China's official reserves of more than $1.4 trillion are the world's biggest, private foreign currency deposits in China are a fraction that size: $162.1 billion at the end of October, according to People's Bank of China.

The central bank did not give a currency breakdown of these deposits.

Three Solutions to Dollar Weakness

The state news program, which did not quote any government official, said people were getting squeezed because the pace of yuan appreciation against the dollar was greater than the interest rate earned domestically on dollar accounts.

Analysts expect the yuan to rise anywhere from 5 to 7 percent annually against the dollar, while domestic dollar accounts earn depositors just 3 percent a year.

The program proposed three solutions.

"Selling dollar for yuan as soon as possible may be a safe approach,"
the news program said, adding the yuan could then be used to invest in domestic mutual funds.

"Secondly, you can change the dollar into strengthening currencies,"

it continued.


"Currently, the U.S. dollar is falling against the euro , the British pound , the Australian dollar and the Canadian dollar , and you can change the dollar into these currencies for deposits."

The third recommended strategy was to

invest the dollars abroad,

in search of higher yields, by buying into Qualified Domestic Institutional Investor (QDII) products offered by Chinese banks and fund managers.

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