The U.S. Can't Be the World's Court

May 27, 2009

Wall Street Journal -

John B. Bellinger III, Adjunct Senior Fellow for International and National Security Law

A federal judge in New York recently allowed a lawsuit to proceed against General Motors, Ford and IBM for aiding and abetting crimes against humanity committed by the apartheid government in South Africa. And a lawsuit against Royal Dutch Shell for alleged human-rights abuses in Nigeria is scheduled to begin today in Manhattan. We may be on the verge of a new wave of legal actions against U.S. and foreign corporations in American courts.

The U.S. government can and should be a strong voice for redress of human-rights abuses around the world. But these lawsuits, which are being brought under the 200-year-old Alien Tort Statute, are likely to cause friction between foreign governments and the Obama administration. Congress should step in and clarify the types of human-rights cases that may be heard.

The Alien Tort Statute was part of the first Judiciary Act of 1789, and it gives federal courts jurisdiction to hear suits brought by non-U.S. nationals for offenses "committed in violation of the law of nations or a treaty of the United States." It was intended to promote diplomacy and international commerce by allowing foreigners to bring suit in federal courts for offenses not recognized by state law in the 18th century.
The statute was virtually unused until 1980, when the Second Circuit permitted a suit by two Paraguayans against a former Paraguayan government official for the torture and murder of a family member in Paraguay. That landmark decision opened the door for international human-rights litigation, and the number of suits under the Alien Tort Statute has grown substantially in the last three decades.
In the 1980s, most of the cases involved suits by foreign nationals against officials of their own government for conduct that occurred in a foreign nation. By the 1990s, however, the focus had shifted, with plaintiffs bringing more suits against U.S. and foreign corporations -- not for direct abuses but primarily for aiding and abetting human-rights abuses by foreign governments.

Shell plans rapid North American growth - FT

By Ed Crooks in New York

Published: September 29 2010 00:21 | Last updated: September 29 2010 00:21

Royal Dutch Shell is planning a rapid expansion of its North American business to raise production by 40 per cent to 1m barrels equivalent per day in 2014, including gas, Canadian oil sands and deepwater oil.

The strategy, announced in Canada on Tuesday, is part of Europe’s largest oil company’s plan to meet its “aspiration” of producing 3.7m barrels per day in 2014, compared with 3.15m last year.
The company had previously set an objective of producing 3.5m b/d by 2012.
BP’s Deepwater Horizon disaster and weak natural gas prices have raised concerns about the outlook for the industry in North America, but Shell intends to make the region the focus of its global expansion in the coming decade.

The Fed Makes And Mints Money

The most profitable bank in the United States of America isn't Jamie Dimon's JP Morgan Chase or the rejuvenated Bank of America. In fact, it doesn't have any ATMs, and it pays out almost all its earnings to you and your neighbors.
It's the Federal Reserve, which is expected to post another year of record profits in 2010.
In recent years, America's central bank has come under criticism — much of it justified. Under former Fed Chairman Alan Greenspan and his successor, Ben Bernanke, the Fed slept through the housing/subprime bubble, did a poor job of regulating banks and failed to forecast the deepest recession in 80 years.

http://finance.yahoo.com/banking-budgeting/article/110863/for-uncle-sam-the-fed-prints-and-mints-money?mod=bb-budgeting

Flying saucers - the Economist

TRANSPORTING large, clunky bits of equipment has always posed a challenge. Roads and railways do not reach everywhere, and even if they did, many cumbersome and heavy constructions need to be hauled in pieces, only to be put together at the final destination. Aeroplane cargo faces even tighter restrictions on shape and size, not to mention the need for runways. Heavy-transport helicopters, such as the Mil Mi-26 or Sikorsky S-64 Skycrane, address some of these difficulties, but their payloads are limited to 20 and nine tonnes, respectively, and the huge rotors create a powerful downdraft that makes handling that payload rather tricky. So people have long been looking for other ways round the problem. Now, Skylifter, an Australian aeronautical firm, thinks it has found the perfect solution.

http://www.economist.com/node/17136331

The makings of a trade war with China - WaPo

No one familiar with the Smoot-Hawley tariff of 1930 should relish the prospect of a trade war with China -- but that seems to be where we're headed and probably should be where we are headed. Although the Smoot-Hawley tariff did not cause the Great Depression, it contributed to its severity by provoking widespread retaliation. Confronting China's export subsidies risks a similar tit-for-tat cycle at a time when the global economic recovery is weak. This is a risk, unfortunately, we need to take.

In a decade, China has gone from a huge, poor nation to an economic colossus. Although its per capita income ($6,600 in 2009) is only one-seventh that of the United States ($46,400), the sheer size of its economy gives it a growing global influence. China passed Japan this year as the second-largest national economy. In 2009, it displaced Germany as the biggest exporter and also became the world's largest energy user.

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2010/09/26/AR2010092603332.html

Experts see gold price rising to $1,450 - FT

The price of gold will rise to $1,450 a troy ounce in the next year, according to a poll of bankers, producers and analysts attending the London Bullion Market Association conference in Berlin, the biggest gathering of the precious metal’s industry.
If realised, that would mark a 12.5 per cent increase from current record prices just above $1,300 an ounce. On Tuesday, spot gold traded at $1,289.50.

http://www.ft.com/cms/s/0/a16b0bd2-cafa-11df-bf36-00144feab49a.html

Why the revolution will not be tweeted - the New Yorker

At four-thirty in the afternoon on Monday, February 1, 1960, four college students sat down at the lunch counter at the Woolworth’s in downtown Greensboro, North Carolina. They were freshmen at North Carolina A. & T., a black college a mile or so away.
“I’d like a cup of coffee, please,” one of the four, Ezell Blair, said to the waitress.
“We don’t serve Negroes here,” she replied.
The Woolworth’s lunch counter was a long L-shaped bar that could seat sixty-six people, with a standup snack bar at one end. The seats were for whites. The snack bar was for blacks. Another employee, a black woman who worked at the steam table, approached the students and tried to warn them away. “You’re acting stupid, ignorant!” she said. They didn’t move. Read more http://www.newyorker.com/reporting/2010/10/04/101004fa_fact_gladwell?currentPage=all#ixzz10rDgGgUY

Economies and markets may be at the mercy of long-term forces - the Economist

THE financial world seems to be obsessed with the short term. Fund managers are usually judged on their performance over a three-month period. The television news highlights daily moves in stockmarkets. Lots of hedge funds think in terms of milliseconds.
But some commentators take the opposite tack, arguing that history is subject to “long waves” that cause economies and markets to change direction at regular intervals. Roger Babson, an investment adviser who predicted the 1929 crash, claimed the markets were driven by Newton’s third law of motion: every action has an equal and opposite reaction. Mind you, he also wrote a pamphlet entitled “Gravity—Our Number One Enemy”

http://www.economist.com/node/16994730

U.S. Economy "Close to a Destructive Tipping Point," Glenn Hubbard Says

"America is very close to a destructive tipping point," co-authors Glenn Hubbard and Peter Navarro warn in their new book Seeds of Destruction. "We must change how we conduct our politics and economics...or we will inevitably go the way of all once-great nations and suffer an irreversible decline."
http://finance.yahoo.com/tech-ticker/u.s.-economy-%22close-to-a-destructive-tipping-point%22-glenn-hubbard-says-535457.html?tickers=%5EGPSC,%5EDJI,SPY,UUP,UDN,TBT,TLT&sec=topStories&pos=9&asset=&ccode=