BIS Review

Bank for International Settlements

BIS Review No 139 available

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Thu 11/12/09

Please find BIS Review No 139 attached as an Adobe Acrobat (PDF) file. Alternatively, you can access this BIS Review on the Bank for International Settlements’ website by clicking on http://www.bis.org/review/index.htm.

What’s included?

BIS Review No 139 (11 November 2009)

Ardian Fullani: Financial supervision and measures to strengthen financial stability

Emsley D Tromp: Recent economic developments and their implications for the Sint Maarten hospitality and trade industry

Jan F Qvigstad: Outlook for the Norwegian economy

Ric Battellino: Australia’s foreign trade and investment relationships

Andrew G Haldane: Banking on the state

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BIS Review

Bank for International Settlements

BIS Review No 139 available

http://www.bis.org/review/index.htm

Press, Service (press@bis.org)

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Thu 11/12/09

BIS Review

Bank for International Settlements

BIS Review No 141 available

Fri 11/13/09

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Please find BIS Review No 141 attached as an Adobe Acrobat (PDF) file. Alternatively, you can access this BIS Review on the Bank for International Settlements’ website by clicking on http://www.bis.org/review/index.htm.

What’s included?

BIS Review No 141 (13 November 2009)

Zeti Akhtar Aziz: Islamic finance – a central bank’s perspective

Denton Rarawa: The current state of the Solomon Islands economy‘ and thoughts on the future

Daniel K Tarullo: Supervising and resolving large financial institutions

José Manuel González-Páramo: The response of the Eurosystem to the financial crisis

Jürgen Stark: Monetary policy before, during and after the financial crisis

e-mail press@bis.org.

BIS Review

Bank for International Settlements

BIS Review No 141 available

http://www.bis.org/review/index.htm

Fri 11/13/09

BIS Review

Bank for International Settlements

BIS Review No 142 available

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Mon 11/16/09

Please find BIS Review No 142 attached as an Adobe Acrobat (PDF) file. Alternatively, you can access this BIS Review on the Bank for International Settlements’ website by clicking on http://www.bis.org/review/index.htm.

What’s included?

BIS Review No 142 (16 November 2009)

Mario Draghi: 2009 World Savings Day

Norman T L Chan: Remarks for TraHK 10th Anniversary

Rundheersing Bheenick: Commitment to regional cooperation in Africa – COMESA

Ewart S Williams: The global financial crisis – institutional management and regional opportunities

Gertrude Tumpel-Gugerell: The road less travelled – exploring the nexus of macro-prudential and monetary policy

Stephen G Cecchetti: Residential property price indices

e-mail press@bis.org.

BIS Review

Bank for International Settlements

BIS Review No 142 available

http://www.bis.org/review/index.htm

Press, Service (press@bis.org)

Publications, Service (Publications@bis.org)

Mon 11/16/09

London Economic Conference:

World Monetary and Economic Conference

June 12 1933

The London Conference of 1933 was the World Monetary and Economic Conference which had as its object the checking of the world depression by means of currency stabilization and economic agreements.

The London Economic Conference was a meeting that took place between representatives of 66 nations in the June 1933. Held at London’s Geological Museum, the purpose was to attack global depression, revive international trade, and stabilize international currencies.

However, while vacationing on his yacht in the North Pacific, Franklin D. Roosevelt issued a radio message to London, condemning the conference for trying to stabilize currency, and he indirectly declared that the United States would not participate in the negotiations.^[1][2]

^Background

^{When the world economy collapsed after World War I, it was greatly assumed that the United States would serve as a hegemon. The agenda for the Conference, drafted amongst representatives of six major nations who met in Geneva in 1932, strongly stated that intergovernmental debts should be settled as they represented a major obstacle in the road to recover from the Great Depression.}

^{Europeans believed that “the settlement should relieve the world”[3], while American experts like Senator Borah held that “the troubles of the world were really due to the War, and to the persistence of Europe in keeping great armaments, and to the mismanagement of the silver;” therefore, he was not willing to postpone, reduce, or cancel the payment of debts “and have Europe go ahead with a programme which has practically sunk the world into its present economic condition.”[4]}

^{Contradictory Actions}

^{The hope that the United States would continue adherence to the gold standard quickly vanished when President Roosevelt declared, the day after assuming office, the Emergency Banking Act of 1933 and banned gold exports, via Executive Order No. 6102, formally taking the nation off the gold standard.}

^{Later in May he approved the Thomas Amendment, a legislation that “required the President to pursue a policy of inflation through the issue of paper money.” [5]}

^{Roosevelt’s declaration during his inaugural speech of 1933: “I shall spare no effort to restore world trade by international economic readjustment, but the emergency at home cannot wait on that accomplishment” represented a clear signal to the participants in the Conference that he would resist foreign designs to revive the international economy.[6]}

^{Secretary of State to Roosevelt, Cordell Hull, led the American delegation to the Conference. The President ordered Hull not to enter into any discussions regarding currency stabilization. However by the time the Conference gathered, President Roosevelt had changed his mind into currency manipulation to raise prices, and had American banking experts Oliver Sprague and James Paul Warburg conduct currency stabilization talks with their British and French counterparts.[7]}

^{Roosevelt’s Rejection}

^{When the Conference opened on June 12, 1933, all attention rested on the tripartite currency discussions happening outside the Conference. By June 15, the unofficial American appointees with Montagu Norman of the Bank of England and Clement Moret of the Bank of France had drafted a plan for temporary stabilization.}

^{In spite of attempts at secrecy, word of their plan escaped before an official announcement could be made and the reaction was destructive in the U.S. as stock and commodity markets were depressed and the foreign exchange value of the dollar rose.}

^{Although Roosevelt was considering shifting again his diplomatic policy regarding a new median dollar-pound rate, he eventually decided not to enter into any commitment, even a tentative one.}

^{On June 17, fearing the British and the French would seek to control their own exchange rates, President Roosevelt rejected the agreement they had reached with their British and French counterparts in spite of his negotiators’ pleas for his understanding that the plan was only a temporary device full of escape clauses.[8]}

^{Roosevelt’s rejection of the agreement gathered an overwhelmingly negative response from the British, French, and internationalists in the United States. British Prime Minister Ramsay Macdonald feared “Roosevelt’s actions would destroy the Conference” and Georges Bonnet, rapporteur of the French Monetary Commission, is said to have “exploded.”}

^{Critics ascertain nationalism as a key player in Roosevelt’s decision to reject the agreement and indirectly causing the collapse of the Conference.[9]}

^Footnotes

^{1. Baily, Thomas A.; & Kennedy, David M. (1994). The American Pageant (10th ed.). D.C. Heath and Company. ISBN 0-669-33892-3.}

^{2. London Economic Conference – TIME}

^{3. League of Nations, Draft Annotated Agenda, Official Number: C.48.M.18 (Conference M.E.1) II (Geneva: League of nations, 1933) 7-9; Foreign Relations of the United States, 1933 I (Washington: Government Printing Office, 1950) 453, 462-6.}

^{4. The World Economic Conference, Herbert Samuel, International Affairs (Royal Institute of International Affairs 1931-1939), Vol. 12, No. 4. (Jul., 1933) 445.}

^{5. Roosevelt’s 1933 Monetary Experiment, Elmus Wicker, The Journal of American History, Vol. 57, No. 4. (Mar., 1971) 867.}

^{6. Roosevelt: America’s Strategist, M. A. Fitzsimons, The Review of Politics, Vol. 7, No. 3. (Jul., 1945), 283.}

^{7. The Ordeal of Cordell Hull, Julius W. Pratt, The Review of Politics, Vol. 28, No. 1. (Jan., 1966) 83.}

^{8. Roosevelt’s Monetary Diplomacy in 1933, Jeannette P. Nichols, The American Historical Review, Vol. 56, No. 2. (Jan., 1951), 313.}

^{9. The London Monetary and Economic Conference of 1933: A Public Goods Analysis, Rodney J. Morrison, American Journal of Economics and Sociology, Vol. 52, No. 3. (Jul., 1993), pp. 312, 314.}

^Other

^{· Online Time Magazine article from Monday, Jun. 19, 1933}

^{· H. G. Wells in his 1933 book The Shape of Things to Come gives a detailed description of the conference, making fun of the various participants’ ineptness and incompetence but also expressing the writer’s poignant disappointment with their failure and its likely dire consequences. This is expressed in the title given by Wells to the relevant chapter: “The London Conference: the Crowning Failure of the Old Governments; The Spread of Dictatorships and Fascisms“.}

Event posted

Event: Islamic Finance Petrodollar

Recycling and Economic Development

Harvard USA 18 November 2009

Harvard Law School

Islamic Finance Project Organisation

update@islamic-finance.com

www.islamic-finance.com

Sun 11/15/09

Dear Sir

The following event details have recently been posted at www.islamic-finance.com:

Event: Islamic Finance Petrodollar Recycling and

Economic Development

Details: A presentation by Mahmoud El-Gamal. With panelists Eric Chaney, Samuel Hayes, Baber Johansen and Jahingir Sultan

Organisation: Harvard Law School Islamic Finance Project Organisation

Country: United States of America

Start Date: 2009-11-18 End Date: 2009-11-18

Location: 2.30 – 4.30 p.m.

Pound Hall 335 Harvard Law School

Email: nazimali@law.harvard.edu

Contact name: Nazim Ali

Wassalam

Administration Section

www.islamic-finance.com

London

Event posted

Harvard USA 18 November 2009

Harvard Law School

Islamic Finance Project Organisation

update@islamic-finance.com

www.islamic-finance.com

Event: Islamic Finance Petrodollar

Recycling and Economic Development

Sun 11/15/09

“White Noise” or the Non-additivity of the World

Author Don DeLillo

Country United States

Language English

Genre(s) Novel

Publisher Viking Adult

Publication date 21 Jan 1985

Media type Print (Hardback & Paperback)

Pages 326 pp (hardback first edition)

ISBN 0-670-80373-1

OCLC Number 11067880

Dewey Decimal 813/.54 19

LC Classification PS3554.E4425 W48 1985

Subjects

White Noise explores several themes that emerged during the mid-to-late twentieth century, e.g., rampant consumerism, media saturation, novelty intellectualism, underground conspiracies, the disintegration and re-integration of the family, and the potentially positive virtues of human violence.

The title “white noise” may be a metaphor pointing to the confluence of all of those aforementioned symptoms.

Title

DeLillo wanted to call the book Panasonic, from the Greek word “pan” meaning “all” and the Latin word “sonus”, meaning “sound”. Panasonic is a registered trademark of the Matsushita corporation, and it appears that Matsushita opposed titling the work Panasonic and that DeLillo’s publisher denied his request on that basis. [1] (The word still appears at the end of Chapter 32.)

White Noise is the eighth novel by Don DeLillo, and is an example of postmodern literature. Widely considered his “breakout” work, the book won the National Book Award in 1985 and brought him to the attention of a much larger audience. Time Magazine included the novel in its TIME 100 Best English-language Novels from 1923 to 2005.^[1]

^{1. http://www.time.com/time/2005/100books/the_complete_list.html}

^{2. p. 139, original Penguin paperback edition}

^{3. p. 193, original Penguin paperback edition}

^{Chapter 42 of “Moby Dick,” called The Whiteness of the Whale is also about reality as not adding up to one white thing but rather to white noise, ie non-additivity.}

^{“White Noise” or the non-additivity of the world}

PAUL VOLCKER AND THE EMERGING WORLD

AND U.S POLICY-FORMATION

Paul Volcker, former Fed Chairman appeared on “Charlie Rose” tv interview and discussion show on the two last days of September 2009.

He said repeatedly that nobody could have or did foresee the rise to importance of the “emerging world” when he thinks back to decades past.

In fact, Cambridge Forecast Group stressed this very point in our telephone conversation with him in 1979 when he was NY Fed Chief, before going to Washington.

We discussed the following CFG newsletter which makes these analytics very clear:

CAMBRIDGE FORECAST GROUP: CFG NEWSLETTER NUMBER 1 JUNE 1979 MEGA …

http://cambridgeforecast.wordpress.com/2009/02/07/cfg-1979-newsletter-number-1/

CAMBRIDGE FORECAST GROUP: CFG NEWSLETTER NUMBER 1 JUNE 1979 MEGA-FORECAST

In fact, Washington is on a “wrong-way Corrigan” pathway since there is no way to go back to high wages/full employment and US jobs and wages are dependent on Third World development and not the other way.

Not understanding this new global architecture leads to bewilderment and inapposite policy-formation.

PAUL VOLCKER AND THE EMERGING WORLD AND U.S POLICY-FORMATION

German Newspapers in the 1963 movie

“The Great Escape.”

The newspaper that “Ashley-Pitt” (David McCallum) reads on the train, after the breakout from the prisoners camp, is the Völkischer Beobachter, a real newspaper produced for 25 years by the National Socialist German Workers Party.

It served as a propaganda sheet for the Nazis and helped bring Hitler to power. At its height, it had a circulation of approximately 1.4 million.

The headline for the issue seen in the film translates roughly to “Day after day, the Soviets have high, bloody losses.” Given that the escape in the film occurs in the summer of 1944, this too can be viewed as propaganda. The Nazis had transferred hundreds of thousands of troops to Normandy to stop the Allied advances after D-Day, allowing for the Soviet’s to launch Operation Bagration on 22 June, which pushed the Nazis back into Poland by the beginning of 13 July and sparked the Warsaw uprising.

In all, the Soviet advance caused German losses of approximately 670,000 dead, missing, wounded and sick, including 160,000 captured. Although the date of the escape is unclear, given the green pastures around the Alps that the escapees encounter, one can easily surmise that the newspaper was putting a positive spin on the battles in the east.

Völkischer Beobachter

The Völkischer Beobachter (“Völkisch Observer”, or less strictly “Racist Observer”) was the newspaper of the National Socialist German Workers’ Party (NSDAP or Nazi Party) from 1920. It first appeared weekly, then daily from February 8, 1923. For twenty-five years it formed part of the official public face of the Nazi party.

The “fighting paper of the National Socialist movement of Greater Germany” (Kampfblatt der nationalsozialistischen Bewegung Großdeutschlands) had its origin in the Münchner Beobachter (“Munich Observer”), which in 1918 was acquired by the Thule Society and in August 1919 was renamed Völkischer Beobachter. The NSDAP purchased it in December 1920 on the initiative of Dietrich Eckart, who became the first editor.

The circulation of the paper was initially about 8,000 but increased to 25,000 in autumn 1923 due to strong demand during the Occupation of the Ruhr. In that year Alfred Rosenberg became editor. With the prohibition of the NSDAP after the Beer Hall Putsch of November 9, 1923, the paper also had to cease publication, which resumed however on the party’s refoundation on February 26, 1925. The circulation rose along with the success of the Nazi movement, reaching more than 120,000 in 1931 and 1.7 million by 1944.

Perhaps the most notorious article printed was an interview with Hans Frank, Governor-General of occupied Poland, on June 6, 1940. The occasion was a widely distributed proclamation in Czechoslovakia announcing the execution of seven Czech students. This is what he said:

If I had to order a distribution of posters announcing such an event every time I order a shooting of seven Poles, there would not be enough trees in the Polish forests to supply the necessary paper.^[1]

^{At the beginning of May 1945, a few days after the German surrender in World War II, the Völkischer Beobachter ceased publication. Due to the advance dating practices of many periodicals, the last issue was dated 11 May 1945 and contained a review of a survival guide, “Essbares aus deutschen Feldern und Wäldern” (subsistence in the German fields and forests).}

^References

^{1. Czapski, J. (1987) The Inhuman Land. Polish Cultural Foundation, London. p.306 ISBN 0 85065 164 6.}

^{Also: Davies, N. (2003) Rising ‘44. Macmillan, London. p.84 ISBN 978-0333905685, which gives a translation of the original quotation: In Prague, big red posters were put up on which one could read that seven Czechs had been shot today. I said to myself, ‘If I had to put up a poster for every seven Poles shot, the forests of Poland would not be sufficient to manufacture the paper.’}

German Newspapers in the 1963 movie

“The Great Escape”

BIS Review

Bank for International Settlements

BIS Review No 140 available

Press, Service (press@bis.org)

Publications, Service (Publications@bis.org)

Fri 11/13/09

Please find BIS Review No 140 attached as an Adobe Acrobat (PDF) file. Alternatively, you can access this BIS Review on the Bank for International Settlements’ website by clicking on http://www.bis.org/review/index.htm.

What’s included?

BIS Review No 140 (12 November 2009)

Emsley D Tromp: Recent international economic developments and related challenges for the Netherlands Antilles

Jan F Qvigstad: On transparency

A D Mminele: South Africa amidst the crisis

Thomas Jordan: Real estate, mortgages and monetary policy

Daniel K Tarullo: Financial regulation – past and future

please e-mail press@bis.org.

BIS Review

Bank for International Settlements

BIS Review No 140 available

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Fri 11/13/09

OTC derivatives market activity in the first half of 2009

Bank for International Settlements

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Thu 11/12/09

The Bank for International Settlements has released its semiannual statistics on the global over-the-counter (OTC) derivatives market.

OTC derivatives market activity in the first half of 2009 is now available on the BIS website.

OTC derivatives market activity in the first half of 2009

Regards,

Communications

Bank for International Settlements

OTC derivatives market activity in the first half of 2009

Bank for International Settlements

BIS website

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Thu 11/12/09