Globalization, outsourcing, G20, UN

IBM, Vodafone ink $1 billion IT outsourcing contract

IBM, the world's largest tech services company, has renegotiated its outsourcing contract with Vodafone Essar and signed an extended deal estimated at around $1 billion to manage IT systems for the country's third-biggest phone firm till 2017.

In 2007, Vodafone had signed an over $400-million, five-year outsourcing contract with IBM. The contract was to expire next year. According to at least three people, one of whom was part of the negotiations, both the companies agreed to restructure the contract last month estimated at $800 million-1 billion.

When contacted by ET, a Vodafone Essar spokesman confirmed that the contract with IBM had been renewed but declined to share the exact value of the deal.
http://economictimes.indiatimes.com/tech/ites/ibm-vodafone-ink-1-billion-it-outsourcing-contract/articleshow/9903506.cms

the same day Barry is gonna claim he is adding jobs. LOL

great paradox eh?

Vatican calls for global authority on economy

The Vatican called on Monday for the establishment of a "global public authority" and a "central world bank" to rule over financial institutions that have become outdated and often ineffective in dealing fairly with crises.

The document from the Vatican's Justice and Peace department should please the "Occupy Wall Street" demonstrators and similar movements around the world who have protested against the economic downturn.

"Toward Reforming the International Financial and Monetary Systems in the Context of a Global Public Authority," was at times very specific, calling, for example, for taxation measures on financial transactions.

"The economic and financial crisis which the world is going through calls everyone, individuals and peoples, to examine in depth the principles and the cultural and moral values at the basis of social coexistence," it said.

It condemned what it called "the idolatry of the market" as well as a "neo-liberal thinking" that it said looked exclusively at technical solutions to economic problems.
http://www.reuters.com/article/2011/10/24/us-vatican-economy-idUSTRE79N28X20111024

Vatican sides with anti-capitalist protesters and attacks global financial system

The Vatican aligned itself with anti-capitalism protesters around the world on Monday when it condemned "the idolatry of the market" and called for a radical shake-up of the global financial system.

By demanding that the worst excesses of global capitalism be reined in, the Holy See echoed the message of protesters encamped outside St Paul's Cathedral in London, the indignados of Spain and the Occupy Wall Street movement in the US.

In a forthright statement, the Vatican's Pontifical Council for Justice and Peace called for an end to rampant speculation, the redistribution of wealth, greater ethics and the establishment of a "central world bank" to which national banks would have to cede power.

Such an authority would have "universal jurisdiction" over governments' economic strategies.

Existing financial situations such as the World Bank and International Monetary Fund were outdated and no longer able to deal with the scale of the global financial crisis, which had exposed "selfishness, greed and the hoarding of goods on a grand scale".

The global financial system was riddled with injustice and failure to address that would lead to "growing hostility and even violence", which would undermine democracy.

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/finance/financialcrisis/8846595/Vatican-sides-with-anti-capitalist-protesters-and-attacks-global-financial-system.html


hmmm so is OWS marching in the NWO?

nice link..ties into the vaican calls for a bank for the world

Europe Turns to Asia for Help With Bailout .

European officials have quickly turned to Asia to help bankroll their plan to ease Greece's debt obligations and prevent its fiscal collapse—but it won't be an easy sell.

French President Nicolas Sarkozy called his Chinese counterpart, Hu Jintao, just hours after the deal, and the head of the euro zone's bailout fund was heading to China and Japan, cap in hand. But both Asian powerhouses have made clear that while they are willing to help Europe, they will invest on their own terms.

Mr. Sarkozy's office put out a statement saying he spoke with Mr. Hu to inform him of the euro-zone rescue package, and that the leaders also discussed the priorities for next week's Group of 20 summit in Cannes.

The visit by Klaus Regling, of the European Financial Stability Facility, or EFSF, probably won't bear fruit immediately, as China has stressed it would contribute only through the International Monetary Fund and in conjunction with Brazil, India and Russia, the other major emerging economies that together with China make up the so-called BRIC nations.

"China wants to be a responsible global citizen. It's not impossible that it would put up some money to show its support. But clearly it would prefer to go through the multilateral route," said Dong Tao, chief regional economist for Credit Suisse in Hong Kong.

snip
A big investment by China into Europe's bailout fund would mark a major change in the way China allocates its foreign-exchange reserves. China's State Administration of Foreign Exchange allocates the lion's share of its resources to low-risk—and low-yield—investments. While the low return has long been a source of frustration, the reserve administrators are wary of a political backlash should the national reserves post a significant loss.

China's $400 billion sovereign-wealth fund, China Investment Corp., is fully invested and currently doesn't have the resources to make a significant contribution to Europe's bailout.

An investment through the IMF could take days or weeks to work out, and the Nov. 3-4 meeting of the G-20 industrial and developing nations in Cannes, France, would be the logical venue for progress toward that end, analysts said.

http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424052970203687504577001042833142800.html?mod=googlenews_wsj

sounds like a plan. China the new powerhouse.

yeah and also brazil and russia

Deloitte Plans More Asia Growth .

Despite fears of a global economic slowdown, Deloitte Touche Tohmatsu Limited expects to expand its global work force in the current fiscal year by as much as in 2010, with growth especially robust in some Asian countries.

Barry Salzberg, global chief executive officer of the international network of accounting, consulting and auditing firms, said in an interview with The Wall Street Journal last week in Singapore that Deloitte's work force grew by 12,000 last year, and that he expects a similar pace of hiring in the fiscal year ending next May. Deloitte has also said it expects by 2015 to increase the total to 250,000 people, from 182,000 today.

"We will hire these people in the markets growing fastest for us," said Mr. Salzberg, who is based in New York. In addition to Vietnam, he said, Deloitte is growing very quickly in South Korea.

"The opportunity for sustained growth is much higher" in Asia than elsewhere in the world, said Mr. Salzberg. "It has been a fast-growing market and I expect it to continue to do so." Australia, already one of the top five markets for Deloitte, is also growing faster than Europe and the U.S., he said.

And while a sluggish U.S. economy and Europe's debt crisis threaten growth in Asia—which Mr. Salzberg said "will not be able to insulate itself from the rest of the world"—"sound budgets and reserves" in Asia should help get it through any global economic turmoil, he said.

http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424052970203804204577015091833733900.html?mod=googlenews_wsj

EU Asks Tech Giants for Patent Details


The European Commission has requested information on patents from tech giants Apple Inc. and Samsung Electronics Co. which could lead to the opening of legal proceedings in a highly contentious area of patent law.

"The Commission has sent requests for information to Apple and Samsung concerning the enforcement of standards-essential patents in the mobile telephony sector," the European Union's antitrust body said Friday.

"Such requests for information are standard procedure in antitrust investigations to allow the Commission to establish the relevant facts in a case."

Standards-essential patents are patents which cover an area which is crucial to compliance with an industry standard, such as 3G or WiFi.

Unlike regular patents, they must be licensed on a fair, reasonable, and non-discriminatory basis—known as FRAND. This means infringement cannot lead to injunctions on use, or extraordinarily high royalty payments.

They are just the latest aspect of a global battle between Samsung and Apple over patents for smartphones and tablet computers.



Read more: http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424052970203716204577017801278975164.html#ixzz1ckgFRxr9

The New Authoritarianism: From Decaying Democracies to Technocratic Dictatorships and Beyond

snip
The Transition to a Colonial ‘Technocratic’ Dictatorship


The naked rule by foreign bankers is disguised by an ideology which describes it as rule by technocrats who are experts, apolitical and above private interests. The reality behind the technocratic rhetoric is that the officials appointed have a career of working with and for big financial private and international interests. Lucas Papdemos, the appointed Greek Prime Minister, worked for the Federal Reserve Bank of Boston and, as head of the Greek Central Bank, was responsible for cooking the books covering up the fraudulent budgetary accounts leading Greece to financial disaster. Mario Monti, the appointed Prime Minister of Italy was employed by the European Union and Goldman Sachs.

These appointments by the banks are based on their total loyalty and unstinting commitments to impose the harshest regressive policies on the working populations of Greece and Italy . The so-called technocrats are not subject to party factions, nor remotely responsive to any social protests.

They are free of all political commitments … except one, to secure the payment of the debt to foreign bondholders – especially the loans owed to major European and North American financial institutions. The technocrats are totally dependent on the foreign banks for their appointments and tenure in office. They have not a smattering of a political organizational base in the countries they govern. They rule because, foreign bankers threatened to bankrupt the countries if they were not appointed. They have zero independence, in the sense that the ‘technocrats’ are merely instruments and direct representatives of the Euro-American bankers.


The “technocrats” by the nature of their appointments are colonial officials explicitly appointed at the behest of imperial bankers and sustained by them. Secondly, neither they nor their colonial mentors were elected by the people over whom they govern. They are imposed by economic coercion and political blackmail. Thirdly, the measures they adopt are designed to inflict the maximum pain by totally altering the basic relation-between labor and capital, by maximizing the power of the latter to hire, fire, fix salaries and working conditions. In other words, the technocratic agenda imposes a political and economic dictatorship.

http://www.globalresearch.ca/index.php?context=va&aid=27908


now google it and see what comes up:

Romney vs. Gingrich: The technocrat and the self-anointed great statesman
http://articles.baltimoresun.com/2011-11-28/news/bs-ed-goldberg-romney-gingrich-20111128_1_mitt-romney-newt-gingrich-gingrich-romney


Tim Geithner, technocrat
http://www.scpr.org/blogs/economy/2011/11/28/3887/tim-geithner-technocrat/


Content Section In Newsweek Magazine
Can Monti Save Italy? The Trouble With Technocrats
http://www.thedailybeast.com/newsweek/2011/11/20/can-monti-save-italy-the-trouble-with-technocrats.html

new buzz word..

China State Construction Plans U.S. Takeover in $2 Billion Push


China State Construction Engineering Corp. (601668), the nation’s biggest builder by market value, intends to buy a U.S. construction company next year as it begins investing as much as $2 billion in the world’s largest economy.

The builder has shortlisted two potential takeover targets, including one with annual sales of about $1 billion, Vice President Chen Guocai said today at a conference in Hong Kong. He declined to elaborate on the companies or on how much the builder may spend on its first U.S. acquisition.

China State, which renovated the Alexander Hamilton Bridge in New York, also plans private-public partnerships in the U.S. over the next five years to help pare its reliance on domestic and emerging markets. The company wants to boost the proportion of overseas sales earned in the U.S. to 15 percent from 5 percent within five years, he said.

“We need to balance our overseas business,” he said. The so-called Arab Spring movements could disrupt sales in Africa and the Middle East, where the company has been “very successful,” he said.
http://www.bloomberg.com/news/2011-12-05/china-state-construction-plans-u-s-takeover-in-2-billion-push.html

has US cost of labor finally become cheap enough for China?

well when it does..ww3 starts

Why is Bill Gates selling nuclear tech to China?

TerraPower, a nuclear-power start-up backed by Microsoft founder Bill Gates, former Microsoft chief technology officer Nathan Myhrvold and a handful of top-tier Silicon Valley venture capitalists, has been in negotiations to sell its breakthrough traveling wave reactor technology to China's National Nuclear Corporation.

The negotiations between Gates and China should be a wake-up call for the United States government for both obvious and not-so-obvious reasons.

Here’s why: This move illustrates how free innovators are to travel anywhere in the world and take advantage of conditions that are most attractive for future growth.

TerraPower’s “fourth generation” nuclear technology promises to revolutionize the energy sector within two decades by making it possible to power a nuclear plant with depleted uranium for decades at a time, without the need for refueling or waste removal.

http://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/innovations/post/why-is-bill-gates-selling-nukes-to-china/2010/12/20/gIQA3FPmuO_blog.html?hpid=z5

technology transfer

Iraqi Telco Calls In FTI Consulting To Support Pioneering 2012 IPO

Asiacell, Iraq's largest private telecoms company, has tapped FTI Consulting ahead of a proposed $1bn IPO later this year.

The mobile operator, which is part-owned by Qatar Telecom, was required to list at least 25 percent of its shares on the Iraq Stock Exchange (ISX) before August 2011. That deadline has passed, but Asiacell is expected to list this year, in a move that values the overall company at more than $4bn.

Is is understood that FTI Consulting has been brought aboard to handle public and investor relations around the listing, thanks to its experience of telco listings both within the region and beyond. An FTI spokesperson confirmed the appointment but declined to provide further details.

The IPOs of Asiacell, and Iraq’s two other mobile players - Zain and Kotek - represent a watershed in the development of Iraq’s capital markets, marking the first Western-structured offerings - including a roadshow and bookbuilding - to take place in the country. They are also likely to be viewed as evidence of stable economic progress in the war-torn nation.

As an initial step, FTI recently handled the announcement that Asiacell has converted to a private joint stock company. The firm is leading the account out of its Middle East HQ in Dubai; it does not have an Iraqi office, but is understood to be working with a local partner firm in the country.

The listings are expected to spark foreign interest in ISX, which was one of the best performing global stock markets in 2011, albeit from a tiny base. The trio of mobile operators have been reluctant to list too soon, for fear that an under-developed market may result in poor returns.
http://www.holmesreport.com/news-info/11278/Iraqi-Telco-Calls-In-FTI-Consulting-To-Support-Pioneering-2012-IPO.aspx

fti consulting's experience is in fraud...to be watched