|
|
Quebec Wednesday Night #1196 - NAFTA Night - Feb 2, 2005 (B)
-
 03-14-2005, 8:04 |
-
dtnicholson
-
-
-
Joined on 09-30-2004
-
Montreal, Quebec, Canada
-
Posts 53
-
-
|
Quebec Wednesday Night #1196 - NAFTA Night - Feb 2, 2005 (B)
For complete text see: http://www.wednesday-night.com/Wed1196.asp
The UN
The League of Nations was formed in 1919, following the end of World War I, in the hope of preventing the devastating wars that the world had known up until that time. When it was succeeded in 1946 by the United Nations, the new body encompassed most if not all the world’s nations at that time.
Today, we are disappointed by the imperfections and downright failures of the UN, but it is difficult to conceive of what might replace it, and the UN's imperfections are correctible. Recent internal investigations of improprieties and poor governance, along with the release of the first part of the Volcker Report on the Oil-for-Food program, may well result in concrete reforms, but will these satisfy the harshest critics, including those in the U.S.? http://www.economist.com/agenda/displaystory.cfm?story_id=3639483&fsrc=nwl One of the UN's major mandates, under its Charter was to protect the sovereignty of individual member states against invasion, while permitting the breach of their sovereignty in order to prevent or stop genocide, a term that the UN has successfully avoided using in a number of situations, most recently in the case of Darfur. With the release of the report by the U.N. commission of inquiry investigating atrocities in Sudan, which has concluded that the government did not pursue a policy of genocide in the Darfur, the plea by General Romeo Dallaire for UN troops to stop the genocide in Rwanda has once again surfaced in the news. This has been further reinforced through the release of the powerful new film "Hotel Rwanda" http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0395169/
U.S. Social Security Reform
As confirmed by the State of the Union address, the Administration is proposing the privatization of U.S. Social Security. Although opinion is sharply divided as to the validity of the crisis,[See: http://www.wednesday-night.com/SocialSecurity.asp] President Bush insists that social security funding will run out in the not-too-distant future. His "privatizing" proposal would see individuals investing their social security contributions in equities, thereby, presumably stimulating the economy, thus permitting the investors a greater probability of a reasonable income retirement. At present it is hard to predict how successful this attempt will be. It appears to many that the Neocons are simply finding a way of rewarding their Wall Street friends and contributors.
While recent years have proven very profitable for investors, the prospect for the future is unclear. This is not a good time to be buying stocks. It is going to be a difficult environment in the next few months. Since the 1960s every time the Federal Reserve has raised rates, the price/earnings ratio has fallen, so for the next ten or twelve months the environment will be difficult. Although there appears to be some concern about tying social security to uncertain future earnings in the stock market at a given point in the future, there is a belief that in the event of a disastrous future, the government will find it necessary to step in.
QUOTES of the EVENING
[list:c130d6da3c]We have to ask what would Canada be without NAFTA. ... Throughout the world, the small countries have always benefited from free trade
The issue is not to be afraid of China but how to build up Mexico. ... The frontier for North America is in Mexico
It is impossible to improve the situation that we have without a vision of what we want. Canadians are especially at fault because they are the ones most affected ... The Americans don’t have a vision of North America
One of the greatest achievements (of the UN) has been to make it difficult to invade and meddle in different countries … Sadly, for most countries, if you are powerful enough, it doesn’t apply[/list:u:c130d6da3c]
|
|
|
|