To the Last Heart-Beat

هو لسه فيه قادمة؟

نتيجة رائعة:

مبارك يحصل على

39%

نسبة تأييد في صفحته الخاصة

على الفيسبوك لانتخابه لولاية قادمة

في صفحة المؤيدين الخاصة به على الفيسبوك Fan Page، حصل الرئيس مبارك على 39% من تأييد المشاركين في استفتاء حول انتخابه لولاية قادمة، بينما بلغت نسبة المعارضين 53% ونسبة غير المتأكدين حوالي 7%. والجدير بالذكر أن عدد الأعضاء في صفحة أنصار الرئيس يبلغ 1286 مؤيداً، بالمقارنة بحوالي 4626 مؤيد لعمرو موسى وزير الخارجية المصري الأسبق والأمين العام لجامعة الدول العربية حالياً، و817 مؤيد لأيمن نور الذي حصل على المركز الثاني في أول انتخابات رئاسية في مصر والتي أجريت عام 2005، وسجن بعدها نور إلى أن أفرج عنه في فبراير 2009. أما الملك عبد الله، عاهل الأردن فله العديد من صفحات الأنصار على الفيسبوك، تبلغ العضوية في أكبرها أكثر من 23 ألف مؤيد. أما باراك أوباما فيبلغ عدد أنصاره أكثر من 6 مليون مؤيد. وبمقارنة الساسة بالفنانين في المنطقة العربية، تأتي النتيجة لصالح الفنانين بنسبة ضخمة، فعلى سبيل المثال يبلغ عدد أعضاء أكبر صفحات نانسي عجرم على الفيسبوك 151 ألف معجب، بينما يبلغ نفس العدد 115 ألف معجب بالنسبة لعمرو دياب.

وجاء السؤال على صفحة الرئيس مبارك كالتالي: "هل تنتخب الرئيس لفترة قادمة؟"، وجاءت تعليقات الفيسبوكرز على الاستفتاء متباينة:

· "انا حاسه ان احنا هانموت وهو هايفضل عايش وساعتها هايستورد شعب يطلع عينه برضه".
· "هاهاها .. حلوة .. هو لسة في مرة قادمة فعلاً؟ ... ده يبقى حظ ... "
· انا اتولدت وهو رئيس يارب مش عايز أموت وهو رئيس
· على ما اعتقد ان الجيل ده كله اتولد وهو رئيس وامنيه حياته انه يبعد بقى
· معرفش ليه إفتكرت مشهد فى مسرحية والراجل المهكع إياه بيقول عن نفسه فى السبعين ربيعاً،وحط عليهم عشرة،وكمان فترة قادمة،ومعانا سبعة!!هههههههه
· هو لسة فيه قادمة صحيح
· انا شفته اكتر من ما شفت ابويا الله يرحمه
· المشكلة فى انه لسه شايف نفسه يصلح بعد كل ده مش قادر يواجه نفسه بالحقيقة
· المشكلة الاكبر انه معتقد ان الشعب بيحبه ومش عايز يسيبه
· سر التحنيط هو السبب
· استنى ما تعلنش النتائج - انا لسة ما قلتش كلمتى
· هى جات في جمل، الأختام فى إيدنا والإرقام فى إيدنا،الفترة القادمة بـ 99% ،محدش يزعل الراجل على الأواخر


بينما كانت التعليقات على صفحة الرئيس أكثر تعاطفاً:

· آه والله اجمد رئيس و انشاء الله تستمر فى اللى انت مخطط له وهنينتخبك تانى
· والله العظيم أحسن رئيس جمهورية في العالم كله ...ربنا يخليك لينا
· مش كتير اللي حاسيس بيك ....بس أن شاء الله الجنة ليك
· والله مفيش بنى ادم كامل، ويكفى الرئيس الاداءالمتميز على المستوى الدولى، فرايى المشاكل الداخليه (اللى جوه مصر)، بسبب سوء البطانه المحيطه به، وموضوع التوريث ده طبع فى كل انسان مين مبيحبش انه يقعد ابنه فى مكانه بعده، اذا كان حاسس انه مكان كويس
· رجعلنا مصر اللى بنحبها يا ريس ...عاوزينها زى زمان جميلة وقوية وذكية وتقطع رقبة اى حد يحاول يتجرأ علينا او عليها


وقد تولى مبارك الحكم في 14 أكتوبر 1981، أي منذ حوالي 28 عاماً، خلفاً للرئيس السادات، وهو الآن في النصف الثاني من الولاية الخامسة. والجدير بالذكر أن الدستور المصري كان يسمح بتولي الرئيس الولاية بحد أقصى فترتين بإجمالي 12 عاماً، إلى أن جاء اقتراح بتعديل من مجلس الشعب على أن يصبح منطوق المادة "مدد أخرى" بدلاً من "مدة أخرى"، وطرح هذا الاقتراح في استفتاء على الشعب مع مجموعة أخرى من المواد ضمنها "أن تصبح الشريعة الإسلامية هي المصدر الرئيسي للتشريع"، ولكن اغتيال السادات على أيدي الجماعات الإسلامية (!) حال بينه وبين الاستفادة من هذا التعديل، ليستفيد به نائبه وخليفته مبارك، الذي يعد واحد من أطول رؤساء العالم مكوثاً في الحكم يسبقه في هذا كاسترو ومعمر القذافي.

وهناك أجيال متعددة ولدت ونشأت في أثناء حكم مبارك، بل أن هناك حوالي 60% من المصريين لم يعاصروا أي رئيس آخر لمصر بما يفسر التعليقات. ورغم أن مبارك سيبلغ من العمر 81 عاماً خلال أسابيع وتحديداً يوم 4 مايو القادم إلا أنه لم يقم للآن بتعيين نائب له، بل صرح بأنه سوف يظل في كرسي الحكم حتى آخر نفس، أو "ما ظل القلب ينبض"، على حد تعبيره في خطاب أمام مجلس الشعب وسط تصفيق الأعضاء الموقرين وابتهاجهم بهذه البشارة السارة والأنباء السعيدة، التي تعني استمرار النخبة الحاكمة المرفوضة من الشعب في مقاعدها، حيث يتمتع الحزب الوطني الحاكم الذي يرأسه مبارك بأغلبية ساحقة في المجلس، رغم أنه لم يحصل في الانتخابات الماضية سوى على 32% من اصوات الناخبين، بينما لم تتجاوز نسبة الناخبين 23% ، من إجمالي المقيدين في الجداول الانتخابية، أي أن الحزب الوطني "الديمقراطي" الحاكم يجلس في مقاعد الحكم بتأييد حوالي 7.34% فقط من الناخبين بفرض عدم وجود تزوير أو تجاوزات أخرى.

وبالتالي فإن مستوى هذا التأييد لانتخاب مبارك لفترة قادمة (39%) يعد في أفضل الأحوال نسبة عالية جداً، وقد يكون هذا لأسباب متعددة، أهمها أن الصفحة التي تستضيف الاستفتاء هي مخصصة لمناصري مبارك نفسه. ومع هذا فيجب أن نقر بأن نتيجة التصويت على الإنترنت وعلى الفيسبوك قد لا تعبر بدقة عن آراء المصريين، حيث لا يزيد عدد أعضاء الفيسبوك عن حوالي مليون مصري من أصل ما يزيد عن 50 مليون مصري في سن الانتخاب.

والجدير بالذكر أن أحد استطلاعات الرأي على الإنترنت على موقع http://weekite.blogspot.com/ كان قد أجري بعد حريق مجلس الشورى للتعرف على أسباب ردود أفعال المصريين تجاه الحريق المشاعر، جاءت نتيجته أن 89% من المشاركين في الاستطلاع أكدوا أن البرلمان لا يعبر أبداً عن المصريين، بينما قال 7% أن البرلمان يعبر عنهم أحياناً. و بالمقارنة بنسبة رفض المصريين لممثليهم من البرلمانيين والتي بلغت 89% كما أسلفنا، ونسبة التأييد التي حصل عليها الرئيس مبارك، نقول أن الرئيس مبارك يستحق التهنئة على هذه النتيجة الرائعة.

للدخول على موقع الاستفتاء قبل إزالته أو تغير النتيجة

http://www.facebook.com/pages/-/27537274055#/pages/-/27537274055?v=wall&viewas=691420567

صور الشاشة التي توضح نتيجة الاستفتاء تم التقاطها يوم 18 إبريل 2009 بين الساعة 12 ظهراً والساعة 3م بتوقيت القاهرة.

See the page and the poll result before they are removed. Snap-shot taken on April 18th 2009, at noon, Cairo Local Time.

Terms of Endearment

Mubarak Gets Only 39%

Support on His Own

Facebook Fan Page

By:

Wael Nawara

On his own Facebook fan page, only 39% of those who participated in a poll that is hosted on the same page said they would vote for Mubarak for another term (a 6th Term), while 52% said they would not elect him and 7% were undecided. The fan page has only about 1,284 fans. To put this in perspective, Amr Mousa, Egyptian ex-Foreign Minister, currently serving as Secretary General for the Arab League, has 4,626 fans, Ayman Nour who came second in 2005 Egyptian Presidential Elections and who has just been released from jail, has 817 fans on his page, King Abdullah of Jordan has over 23 thousand fans while Barack Obama has over 6 million fans. Nancy Ajram, a Lebonese female Singer has over 151 thousand fans and Amr Diab, an Egyptian male singer has 115 thousand fans.

The poll on Mubarak's fan page asked this question: “Will you vote for President Honsi Mubarak for another Term?”. Seeing results of the poll, Egyptian Facebookers comments were hilarious. Someone said, "I was born and he (Mubarak) is a president, I just have one wish. On the day of my death, I hope he is not a president". Another said, “Is there still in the bag yet another term?”. Mubarak has been in office for the past 28 years, since 1981. About 60% of Egyptians have never known another President. Mubarak, who is 81 years old, has recently “vowed” to stay in office as long as he breathes! “As long as my heart beats, I will stay”, were his very words in an address to the Egyptian People's Assembly, widely dominated by members of his ruling party the NDP. The honorable members applauded this announcement of their boss who is "promising" to stay as a president till the very last pulse as if it was a precious gift. Mubarak celebrates his 81st birthday on the coming 4th of May.

Youth of the 6th April movement vowed to give him a host of birthday gifts this year. Last year, 6th April youth called for a general strike on 4th May 2008 to commemorate Mubarak’s 80th Birthday and protest sky-rocketing prices and high rates of inflation. Mubarak made a pre-emptive strike by announcing a 30% increase in wages to curb the strike. Because of this and other factors, the 4th May 2008 strike was not as successful as the 6th 2008 April strike which was also a novelty. The sequel strikes, including that on 6th April 2009, which was declared as “Day of Rage”, never seemed to match the original strike in intensity. The fact that the government had to increase the wages and respond to many of the strikers’ demands is surely seen as a sign of success. The success of 6th April strike of 2008 is also seen as a milestone and a sign of change to come, that a few individuals using viral communication and social utility tools like the Facebook can break the state-owned media blackout, amass great popular support and exert critical political pressure on authoritarian regimes.


The level of support for Mubarak’s next term (39%) is probably higher than the real level of support, since the Poll is hosted on Mubarak’s own fan page. There are about one million Egyptians using Facebook out of about 10 millions who have “some” access to the Internet one way or another. In a recent online poll conducted on this blog, 89% of participants thought that the “People’s Assembly” does not truly represent them as Egyptians. So, I would say congratulations are in order for the President.

See the page and the poll result before they are removed. Snap-shot taken on April 18th 2009, at noon, Cairo Local Time:


http://www.facebook.com/pages/-/27537274055#/pages/-/27537274055?v=wall&viewas=691420567

From the Archives: Press Release, 20 October 2007

ضد الدولة الدينية



من أرشيف 2007

بيان صحفي صدر بعد قراءة برنامج منسوب للإخوان المسلمين



صدر هذا البيان بتاريخ 20 أكتوبر 2007

لقد دخلنا المعترك السياسي والفكري في حب مصر، وليس من أجل أي شخص أو جماعة أو لتحقيق أي هدف شخصي أو مادي. البرنامج الذي أعلنه الاخوان هو بمثابة إعلان حرب لاغتيال الدولة المصرية المدنية، وهو خط أحمر لا ينفع معه التمسح باسم أي شخص أو دين أو فصيل، ولا يصح معه عمل أية مواءمات سياسية أو مجاملات شخصية أو حزبية. لقد نصحنا بعض الزملاء بتجاهل الأمر وعدم التعليق على برنامج الإخوان، بحجة أن انتقاد البرنامج يفتح علينا جبهات عدائية لا داع لها، وقد يضر بشعبية الحزب في الشارع، وهنا أقول:

• أن السعي وراء شعبية تقوم على الزيف والنفاق والتعامي عن مصلحة الوطن هو أمر رخيص لا نقبله
• أننا نرفض أن تقوم أية جهة أو جماعة باحتكار الدين أو إضفاء وضعية قدسية على سياساتها الدنيوية
• أن الأغلبية العظمى من الشعب المصري واعية بمصالحها وقادرة على تمييز من يتاجرون بالدين لأهداف سياسية دنيوية

إننا الآن نتحدث عن مستقبل الدولة المدنية المصرية وهي بعد جنين نحلم به، فأن يأتي الآن أي فصيل بأجندة هدفها قتل هذا الجنين، ووأد هذا الحلم، فإنه يصبح واجباً علينا أن نتصدى له بكل ما نملك من قوة، ومن حق مصر علينا أن نعلن موقفنا الواضح والرافض لمثل هذه التوجهات التي تعود بنا إلى الوراء، بل أنه من حق الإخوان علينا أن ننبههم إلى خطورة ما يطرحونه، ولعلنا رأينا بعض أصوات العقل داخل الإخوان وبالذات من جيل الشباب، تدعو إلى مراجعة هذا الموقف المؤسف، أما السكوت على البرنامج، بحجة أن الإخوان فصيل معارض يقف معنا في خندق واحد، فهو يعطي إشارة خاطئة للشعب والتيارات السياسية بما فيها الإخوان، ويحرم الإخوان من فرصة مراجعة النفس، ويقايض المصالح العليا للبلاد بثمن بخس، وهي تجارة سياسية بائرة لأنها تفتقر إلى النزاهة وتبيع أمانة الكلمة والرأي، وتكتم الشهادة في وقت كاشف.


إننا كما أعلنا موقفنا واضحاً في كل صغيرة وكبيرة، ووقفنا بقوة مع استقلال القضاء، وضد حبس الصحفيين، وضد اعتقال الإخوان أنفسهم، فإننا نعلنها اليوم بكل وضوح وصراحة، لا للدولة الدينية، ولا لولاية الفقيه، وعاشت مصر دولة مدنية حرة مستقلة.





وائل نوارة

Day of Rage

Day of Rage

By:
Wael Nawara

Columns and Columns of heavy police carriers moved in downtown, days ago in anticipation. Arrests were made in various governorates. Regime-sponsored attempts to discredit the movement and the youth organizing it utilized huge billboards all over Cairo amongst many other free media. Rage, however, was unstoppable.


“Where are our national resources? What did you do with our money?” Chanted demonstrators at the footsteps of the Press Syndicate, led by Kamal Khalil and much younger leaders of the youth protest movement of “6 April”. “Egypt is a rich country”, explained one of the protestors, almost to himself. “It has been systematically robbed off by successive corrupt regimes. The fact that we can still find bread to eat despite corruption and misgovernment, is a testament to Egypt’s unbelievable wealth.”


“How many terms do you want?” another series of chants broke off. After 28 years in office, in the middle of a staggering fifth term, no one has any sympathy left to Mubarak’s claims that “stability comes first”. Egyptians seem to have had “Enough” of this brand of stability. “Stability, stability, whenever we demand change they flash out the stability card. Their stability in the seats of power has meant stagnation for Egypt and poverty for Egyptians. Enough is enough.” Another protestor explained. The yellow signs of “Kifaya”, literally meaning “Enough” were in abundance, in various shapes and forms. Kifaya leaders participated in the chanting.

A Folkloric piece of chants was to follow. It portrayed key symbols of corruption and their infamous deeds. From bribery filling one guy’s oversized belly, unconstitutional laws tailor-made by another of the regime’s men, specially designed to sustain the power monopoly, corruption and enhance the regime’s grip on things, to cancer-causing pesticides imported, widely distributed and sponsored yet by another of the those high officials. There was a special verse for NDP leaders accused of abuse of power in building steel monopolies and other lucrative cartels and concessions. The chanting went on.


The chants then turned to the poor conditions of the soldiers working in the security and compared the meager wages of the soldiers to the generous benefits of their superiors. A smart move to win the troops hearts! Apparently there was no need for that tactic. Many of the police officers on the scene could not hide their unspoken sympathy with the cause of the protestors. Soldiers and officers, everyone suffers from the high prices and the stinking corruption at the highest levels. Abdel halim Kandil, Kamal Khalil, Mohamed Abdel Koddos and Ayman Nour were amongst the hundreds of demonstrators, barricaded by thousands of security forces. But the majority of the protestors were from a young angry generation that has never known any president but Mubarak. They carried Egyptian flags, hand-made banners of protest, Kifaya signs, and many wore orange scarves distinctive of El Ghad Party members.

And so on went the day. Hours earlier Ayman Nour, George Ishak, Anwar Sadat and a few other opposition leaders announced the release of “Cairo Declaration” at the State Commissioners Court, the highest administrative court in Egypt, demanding election of a national assembly responsible for drafting a new constitution which can guaranty dignity, liberty and human rights for every Egyptian while limiting the wide powers enjoyed by the presidential establishment. Esraa Abdel Fattah and other young activists who started the 6th April movement in 2008 on Facebook also read articles of the ten-point declaration. The ten-point declaration demanded freedom of the press and election of all officials from village mayors to the president through a clean, transparent and democratic process. Ayman Nour announced that “We shall engage other opposition streams in developing a final version of this preliminary draft. We will then go door-to-door, to every Egyptian village, town and city to ask for support from our fellow Egyptians and collect as many signatures as we can on this declaration. The time for change has come and we shall together work to make it happen. If these demands are not met within the next twelve months, we call for a general strike and a state of civil disobedience on 6th April 2010, exactly one year from today.” Ayman Nour stands behind the idea of the Cairo Declaration and for the past month worked on gathering support around it. The same demands were announced at the Lawyers Syndicate and at several other governorates all over Egypt simultaneously.

One word. Rage. But will this rage continue to gather momentum as to actually put sufficient weight behind this demands? Or will the regime manage to bleed off a wee bit of the pressure with some phony appearances of reform and meanwhile buy time to survive for a few more years as it has skillfully managed to do for decades? Will opposition truly stand united behind a unified goal and engage the average Egyptian man and woman to support the cause of reform? I think the answer to this very last question will determine the fate and fruits of this rage over the coming days, weeks and months.

Death of Privacy

Death of Privacy

And the Rise

Of the Collective

Big Brother

By:

Wael Nawara

I have recently observed a number of notes written by fellow Facebookers in which they would describe, in varying levels of detail, “romantic relationships” which they allegedly have had with other friends on Facebook. The underlying motive in most of these “notes” would seem to be taking revenge once the relationship had gone sour. But the peculiar thing is this. None of these notes would go as far as to mention the actual name of the other party “involved”. Instead, the plaintiff, would lay out sufficient personal details as to expose the alleged “perpetrator” before other fellow Facebook friends or acquaintances. I say “perpetrator” because this is how the “person” is described. A savage inconsiderate beast. Of course, none of these adjectives had been used when the relationship was good and running. But the trick is, once they break up, the one who starts to publicize this corners the “defendant” who in fact is bullied into silence. To avoid a scandal, the “defendant” would refrain from making a comment so that he or she does not directly commit to being a party to the broken affair and the recipient of the generously designated infamous adjectives of evil. The harm, nevertheless, is done, and the “defendant’s” reputation is tarnished. He or she can never tell their side of the story. Yet, they stand in fact victims of a one-sided virtual trial which sentence they cannot appeal.


For the past decade and a half, we have managed to live by while our names, photos, news, personal data and private stuff was being violated. We survived this “invasion” of our privacy. But for relationships, romances, affairs and break-ups to publicly go online, this marks the end of privacy. I do not see this phenomenon as a new trend in romantic relationships. I see this as an announcement for the death of privacy or what remained of it. The frightening penetration of Facebook, My-space, Twitter and other virtual social communities adds a lot of leverage to this loss of privacy. What you say or write in confidence to someone, can possibly be advertised by that person or worse, by a hacker, and exposed to the whole 200 million users of Facebook or the 1 billion users of the Internet! Unlike older chat communities, such as “Yahoo Chat” where everyone was using some screen name or a handle which protected their real identities, Facebook came with a new concept: no face, no book, so you either shared your real name, photo and personal details or no one will feel comfortable enough to “add” you as a friend. It is like this giant nude beach party where the only condition to being invited is to show up naked yourself! It worked. People just put their real names and photos and stepped into the global village where anyone can know everything about anyone else.


We got so absorbed, in fact sucked into this virtual universe that many of us would update their “status” several times a day using their mobile phones, to tell the rest of the world what they are up to, where they are and how they feel. We shared our photos, photos of our children and loved ones with the entire Internet-using world. Anyone now can know our birth date, our entire education and job history, music and movies we like, even watch our friends’ photos and learn their hobbies.


We live our lives naked. Why do we do that? Is it because we are exhibitionist by nature and have been just waiting all along for the chance to be ourselves? Are we just lonely and we are trying to find someone, anyone to communicate with? Are we just randomly tossing away bottles into the deep wide ocean and hoping that someone somewhere will read the message, possibly like what is there enough to get back to us, even befriend us for whom we are?


This desperate and random exchange of billions of message-carrying-bottles every day, however, has come at such a price. At the cost of our own privacy. Some would argue, what is the value of privacy if there is nothing happening in our lives in the first place. Nothing interesting, exotic and out of the ordinary that is. So, we trade privacy for communication and potential action.


Should we just share our lives on the screen with whoever cares to watch in a giant random “Truman Show” where everyone basically knows that they are being watched? Should we mourn our privacy or celebrate our new friends? Should we guard our secrets or snoop into those of everyone else so that we are all equally exposed! Is privacy over-rated? Does the apparent loss of privacy make us behave in a better way? Become better netizens, since everything we say or do can be found out, reported and publicized for and or against us? Isn’t this “familiarity” what enforced a certain behavioral code in little villages where everyone knew everyone else? A code which was less observed in the city where people could go wild anonymously?


On the other hand, isn’t our privacy what makes us unique? Makes us who we are? I mean, if we feel watched all the time by some “collective Big Brother”, wouldn’t we just think and behave as we are “expected to”? Would we try to become who we should be rather who we really are? Would we just lose our uniqueness, innocence, spontaneity, innovation and become copies of the same “standard and approved person”?

For some reason, somehow, I do mourn privacy and regret its death. The death of a world where you could one day, not too long ago, think loudly sometimes, without finding your thoughts played on YouTube the next day.

Clapping with both the Visible and the Invisible Hands 1

The Market

and the

Splitting of "Self"

By

Wael Nawara

How did it all happen? What went wrong? Does the market no longer work?


I have some good news and I have some bad news. The good news is: yes. Markets work. The bad news is, our world is not a perfect world. At least, it is not perfect in the sense described in Economic Theory Books for the Invisible Hand to do all the work. This time, the Visible Hand must help the Invisible Hand do its thing.


Markets do not operate in vacuum. They do not operate in Wonderland. They operate in our imperfect world. If we want markets to work, we must realize how our real world differs from the perfect world of Perfect Market Theories.


“Self” Interest

In October 2008, Alan Greenspan said: “Those of us who have looked to the self-interest of lending institutions to protect shareholder's equity -- myself especially -- are in a state of shocked disbelief”. OK. Let me spell it out. The problem lies in the word “self-interest”. The fact is, Market Theory is based on an assumption that both sellers and buyers will take decisions in their best interest. But since separation of management and ownership ages ago, the word “self” is no longer valid. There is no self. Who is to say which “self”? Is it the managers, workers, short-term owners (usually speculators and quick cap gain seekers) or long-term owners, those who really have the long-term “interests” of the “self” in mind, heart and pocket?


First, let us say that for the Market to work, we need laws, courts and enforcement to protect the idea of personal property or ownership. The market will not work if the concept of property is not there or is unprotected. To buy, is to obtain the title of ownership of the goods bought. So, we need a “regulator” in that area to start with. This means erecting a government to make laws, build courts, hire enforcement officers, or even agree on an arbitrary body elected to take these responsibilities if you are an anarchist.


Now, when a Loan Officer knowingly approves a loan to a borrower who will most likely default, does he commit a crime or not? He and his superiors who allow such practices, have compromised the long-term “interests” of the shareholders, the seller really, for now, the “real” owner of the money lent. When someone else introduces what is known as Teaser-Rates, where unqualified borrowers are lured into borrowing amounts they can never repay, by setting up a scheme of Introductory Payments which are significantly LOWER than Real payments to come, overtly promoting the business and covertly to delay the delinquency, or the discovery of default on such a loan, again, that should that person, his bosses and watchdogs all combined be locked up?


These officers and managers deliberately act AGAINST the best interests of their OWN employer, their own shareholders, for now, the real owners who pay their FAT salaries and bonuses hoping that such generous compensation will make those officers look after the owners “self” interests. They trust them to protect their assets. Such hope was proved false. Such trust was systemically ill-placed. Why? Because the more those officers lend, the more they make “temporary” profits of money which is not really theirs or even owned by their company. Everybody borrows from somebody else. And the leverage ratios are staggering. They can reach 1:100. Meaning that an intermediary could have debts of $100 million (in funds borrowed from real banks or yet some other intermediaries) and assets of $101 million (in toxic loans to unqualified mortgages). This company has an equity of only $1 million but is gambling with $100 million! Great! What makes things even better, they securitize their toxic assets yet with some third company which means they transfer the risk to another entity. And the other company transfers the risk to another. And so on. It is the perfect bubble. A perfect pyramid scheme of defrauding the real owners of the money, the simple depositors in real banks, of their hard-earned money.


A Pyramid Scheme?

El Rayan and El Saad of Egypt’s famous pyramid scheme of the 80’s are innocent kindergarten toddlers compared to these guys whom we can never really blame because we all knew and all watched. So, the loan officers and the CEOs get their FAT bonuses for these seemingly marvelous achievements. These achievements, however, are short-lived. Like all fraudulent schemes. Eventually they are exposed when the pay-back comes. Like all bubbles, they eventually burst. Into tears. Only someone else’s tears. So, have the officers and their superiors committed a crime? It depends. By the time the company, or the economy for that matter, collapses, those officers would have retired - or are happy to retire - and live comfortably on the ILLEGAL or semi-legal fortunes they had made by abusing the power given to them.


The Perfect Theory is based on one assumption. That a seller would always work to achieve his best economic interests. But what happened here is that the SELLER (who really owns the business) is different from the SELLER who represented him at the time of giving the loans or selling the merchandise. Both people (albeit being labeled as the seller) have Different Interests. This is a clear case of Conflict of Interests. Worse, the managers who set the Lending Policies inside the seller's organization have a different set of interests as well. Worst still. The Short-Term Investors who bought the stocks of the Sellers company, do NOT really care about the Long-Term interests of the Company. Because they make a quick buck of capital gains (speculation) and then they sell the stocks and go their way. Another set of conflicting interests. Worse still. Even the long-term owners, they do not really own the money which their employees had lent or even a fraction of it. Their highly leveraged company borrowed the money. They will not, in theory, suffer from the consequences because their toxic waste is securitized with some other company who in-turn transfers the risk to another company and so on. The chain is long, sophisticated, complicated and everyone is closing an eye or even two.


The money, at the end of a very long chain, truth be said, is owned by some poor guy who deposits his savings in a local bank. Or a group of guys who cut a piece of their salary and save it in a pension fund. Or some foreigner, Arab, Japanese or Korean High Net-worth Individual or Foreign Bank (and its depositors) who trusts Uncle Sam enough to buy treasury bills which are systemically used to cover an $11 trillion public budget deficit and rising and an enormous amount of US private consumer credit. Truth be said, everyone is accused of greed. Everyone, one way or another, knew, or at least felt that it was too good to be true. Well, guess what? It ain’t true.


Governance

Now, to prevent all these crimes and misdemeanors, regular police cannot go snooping around in the books and policy guideline papers of investment companies and banks. Hence a lucrative job of someone else is created. This is the SEC, Securities and Exchange Commission. Here the regulator’s job will be to install measures and policy guidelines to make sure that the practices of the management provide a balance between the interests of all stakeholders involved. These guidelines become amongst the Rules of INTERNAL GOVERNANCE of every investment company. But we still have a big PR job to try to rid the public of this blinding greed. Then figure out what to do with the United States of America who insists on providing unsustainable lifestyle to its lucky citizens on the expense of the rest of the world. By the way, the $11 trillion, these are just the public debt. Private US debt to foreign creditors is probably many times more than that.

Splitting of “Self”

The simple Conflict of Interests has arisen from complexities and sophistication, sometimes deliberate over-sophistication designed to boggle anyone who tries to trace the leakage. For instance, conflict of interest and the “splitting of the self” came when we separated Management from Ownership. A modern management MUST-DO. It came with these fancy derivatives which transfer risk and responsibility to someone else. It came when speculation became more lucrative, and therefore more important, than working the land, producing gadgets or waiting on tables, serving others, providing real value. Today, some argue that out of each $1, ninety four cents would come from virtual economy. Where no real value is added. Fiction money. This is when “the self was split”. It reminds me of “splitting the atom”. It unleashes such a great deal of uncontrollable power. And I am not just talking about heat, pressure or radiation. I meant the power to corrupt human conscience.


With freedom also comes responsibility.


With great power comes even greater responsibility.


Let us hope that those who have power and the liberty of using that power have actively operating conscience and an adequate sense of responsibility.

Sorious" Talk

"Sorious" Talk

George Soros Thinks that we

Are nowhere near the Bottom

By:

Wael Nawara

When someone like Soros talk about the financial crisis, the world has learned, from bitter experience, to listen. Soros predicted the global economic crisis several times before. In 1993, Soros predicted the collapse of the British Pound and made some 1 billion dollars in profit practically overnight as he had been backing his predictions with heavy investment in forward Forex contracts for a few weeks or months before the actual collapse happened. Amidst the current economic crisis, the 78-year-old still managed to make a profit of $1.1 billion last year alone and a total of $2.9 Billion since he came out of retirement back to managing his funds in 2007.

In the nineties, Mahathir, former prime minister of Malaysia, then blamed Soros for the Asian currency problems when all Soros had done was to discover, point out, aggressively exploit and profit from, serious structural flaws and loop-holes in the Asian markets.

Last year, Soros again predicted the collapse of the global financial system. In April 2008 he had a famous interview with Judy Woodruff where he predicted the coming crisis. He even wrote a book outlining the dangers of believing in misconceptions such as the total blind faith in market self-corrections. Soros was one of the few people to anticipate, prepare for and nake vast profits from the current economic collapse. In that book, The New Paradigm for Financial Markets, which came out many months before the collapse of Lehman Brothers in Sep 2008, Soros wrote that "we are in the midst of a financial crisis the likes of which we haven't seen since the Great Depression." In the book he put forward a general theory of "reflexivity", emphasizing how important misconceptions are in shaping history.

Soros believes that the world needs to recognize that the financial system, as it currently operates, is built on false premises. Market "fundamentalists" insist that markets are self-correcting; and Soros thinks this to be false because it's generally the intervention of the authorities that saves the markets when they get into trouble. Soros names only some of the crises which occurred since 1982 where the authorities had to intervene: the international banking crisis in 1982, the bankruptcy of Continental Illinois in 1984, and the failure of Long-Term Capital Management in 1998. Each time, the authorities bailed out the market, or helped companies to do so. But as "intervention" was seen as a "dirty" word for years, even decades, officials were reluctant to install or inact regulations necessary to curb unsafe practices carrying risks which are bigger than the system's capacity to bear. It is like driving at 150 mph, two feet behind a giant truck. The truck will eventually stop or slow down and you will just crash because you neglected to have a proper safety distance. But while the drive went by, everyone was high, intoxicated by speed, euphoria and adrenaline.

It was not just Soros who warned of the crisis to come. Several others including NYU economics professor Nouriel Roubini who predicted the collapse in Feb 2007 and even one Fed governor, Edward Gramlich, who warned of a coming crisis in subprime mortgages in a speech in 2004 and a book published in 2007. But the authorities didn't want to see it coming, possibly because it was not ideologically acceptable. For instance, Greenspan once spoke about the "irrational exuberance" of the market. This comment was not well-received and so he stopped talking about it. It is the regulators' job to stop an asset bubble from forming. They did not do that assuming that the market will correct itself. But by the time this happened, there was just too much water head behind the dam. The fall was painful and triggered a chain reaction which hit the banking system, the stock markets and the global economic system as a whole in a massive domino effect.

For instance the credit-default swaps had grown to make to a staggering $45 trillion market that was entirely unregulated according to Soros. This is more than five times the total of the US government bond market. Knowing that the US national debt has reached about 11 trillion dollars, allowing betting of $45 trillion dollars on house loan defaults is similar to someone gambling with five times the money that he owes to others! People like that are usually declared insane and locked up.

In addition to being a billionaire, a genius in the world of finance, investment and speculation, George Soros is a big-time philanthropist and a political activist! He was born in a Jewish family in Hungary in 1930. He is the founder of "Open Society Institute", a New York - based foundation which gives grants in several places around the world supporting open societies, education, media, reform and development. This foundation operates in Egypt through civil society partner organizations.

In 2007, Soros asserted that America should pressure Israel to negotiate with the Hamas-led unity government in the Palestinian territories regardless of whether Hamas recognizes the right of the Jewish state to exist. Soros went on to say that one reason America has not embraced this policy is because of the influence of the American Israel Public Affairs Committee (AIPAC). Democrats and Republicans were quick to denounce these "opinions" and deny his claims that AIPAC drives American foreign policy. Soros has been a generous supporter of the Democratic Party causes and campaigns. Soros wrote another book arguing that the entire idea of a "war on terror" is a misleading concept that has caused unprecedented decline in the political influence and military power of the United States.

Now the question is, what is going to happen in the coming G20 meeting? Will the "big boys" have enough courage and long-term focus to do what necessary to rebuild the global financial system on sound basis? And on the short term, what measures will be taken by governments and central banks to prevent the world from sliding into a total financial chaos? What is the future of the US Dollar as a global reserve currency? The dangers and the risks are clear and present calling for serious orchestrated actions between governments and central banks before things get much worse.

Sources:

http://www.reuters.com/article/newsOne/idUSTRE51K0A920090221

http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/worldnews/article-1164771/Im-having-good-crisis-says-hedge-fund-manager-1billion-world-plunged-recession.html

http://www.winkydog.net/2009/03/26/george-soros-making-billions-financial-crisis/

http://www.nybooks.com/articles/21352

http://www.nysun.com/national/obama-rebuffs-soros/50846/