After years of wars, sanctions and drought, farmer Qais Nima Khamis says it’s time to save the dates _ and bring back Iraq’s long-regaled fruit palm industry, which once led the world market.
Khamis, whose family has been growing the fruit since 1880, is growing hundreds of more date trees this year, aiming to double his grove to up to 1,500 palms. The government is taking its own action to revive Iraq’s lost golden age of dates, supporting farmers with loans and launching nurseries.
It’s just a start, said the 40-year-old Khamis, but “Iraq is now open to all the world, the government started some steps and that has brought some hope.”
During its heyday, in the 1950s and 1960s, Iraq was the world’s No. 1 date producer and exporter and boasted 32 million date palms, more than any other nation in the world. At that time, Iraq produced about 1 million tons of dates annually, said Kamil Mikhlif al-Dulaimi, head of the Agriculture Ministry’s Date Palm Board.
But by 2003, there were only half that number of trees and production fell to 200,000 tons. The southern province of Basra was the worst hit by the slump, with only about a quarter of the 12 million date trees it once had.
“That prompts only deep sadness,” al-Dulaimai said in an interview.
It’s not just an economic issue of getting a bigger slice of a date export market that nets big producers like Iran and Pakistan millions of dollars a year. Being renowned for dates is also a point of pride. Like all Muslims, Iraqis honor the date palm as a blessed plant.
It is mentioned many times in the holy book of Quran which, at one point, states that Mary gave birth to Jesus under a palm tree and she ate its fruit to ease the pain of childbirth. And the prophet Mohammed stressed the benefits of dates as a medicine for several human diseases. A date is the traditional way for Muslims around the world to break their daily sunrise to sunset fast during the holy month of Ramadan.
Now, with the worst years of violence following the 2003 U.S.-led invasion over and oil revenues bubbling on the horizon, Iraq has focused on the date industry as one of several sectors _ including oil, agriculture and infrastructure _ it wants to develop.
The government has begun supporting date farmers with soft loans to plant new orchards and subsidized fertilizers and insecticides. It established the Date Palm Board in 2005 with a mission to more than double to number of trees nationwide to 40 million by 2021.
The board has built 30 nurseries around the country to produce new varieties and it has launched programs to rehabilitate old orchards and build processing and storage facilities. It is aiming to develop tree varieties that produce fruit in two years rather than the four or five it usually takes.
The push has brought some progress. The number of trees has risen to 21 million trees, producing 420,000 tons last year, al-Dulaimi said.
“This is a major leap forward,” al-Dulaimi said proudly. “We are reaping the fruits of these efforts.”
Marhon Abid Falih, a date farmer south of Basra, would like to reap some of those profits. But he’s not sure the government can help.
Iraq’s chronic problems over the decades _ lacking of water, electricity, fuel, and storage _ have forced many farmers to abandon cultivation and find another jobs like in the army or police.
In 2002, Falih’s orchard in the Abu al-Khasib area south of Basra boasted as many as 200 date palm trees. He grew fruits and vegetables in their shade, and hired dozens of workers to help him during harvest. The farm made enough money to meet all his family’s daily needs.
But a year later, his farm was hit by drought and its soil grew bitter. Only about 50 trees survived.
“There is no motive to cultivate anymore,” said Falih, 52.
“It’s not a matter of planting new trees or taking loans,” he said. “There is no a longer benefit from agriculture because of the salinity and dearth of water. All attempts are in vain.”
“We will look for another work and come back only when there is water.”
Leaders of a House panel say they plan to make Obama administration officials answer for putting taxpayers on the hook for a half-billion-dollar loan that went to a now-bankrupt solar panel manufacturer.
The panel is conducting a hearing Wednesday that will examine what went wrong with Solyndra Inc., which had received a federal loan of nearly $528 million and recently filed for bankruptcy. GOP leaders of the subcommittee describe the loan as a “half-billion bust” that raises red flags about the administration’s efforts to generate more jobs in the renewable energy sector.
“It is not the role of government to pick winners and losers in the market,” said Republican Reps. Fred Upton of Michigan and Cliff Stearns of Florida, in a joint statement. Upton is chairman of the House Energy and Commerce Committee, while Stearns oversees the committee’s investigations and oversight panel.
The panel will hear from officials with the Energy Department and the White House Office of Management and Budget, which played the central roles in approving a loan guarantee for Solyndra. The guarantee essentially works as an insurance policy that covers a company’s debt obligation in the event of default. In many cases, the loans come from private banks, but in Solyndra’s case, the financing came from the federal government itself.
Two executives with Solyndra Inc. were also invited to testify but are now expected to appear voluntarily next week. The two Solyndra executives invited to appear before the panel were Brian Harrison, the company’s president and chief executive officer, and W.G. Stover Jr., a senior vice president and chief financial officer.
A news release about the hearing did not provide any reason for the delay, but a Solyndra spokesman, David Miller, said numerous factors played a role, including “legal complexities arising from last week’s activities and the urgency of bankruptcy proceedings.”
“It is in the best interest of all interested parties for them to remain in California to engage with potential purchasers,” Miller said.
The release from the Energy and Commerce Committee said lawmakers have been assured of the pair’s appearance next week. Miller said the company was in contact with committee staff and was working with them on a future date.
Republicans on the panel have been highly critical of the loan to Solyndra. They say the company’s financial woes should raise red flags about the federal government’s efforts to jump-start renewable energy projects. Those efforts include the loan guarantee program.
The $862 stimulus bill that Congress passed in early 2009 included money for the loan guarantee program. GOP lawmakers are also using the company’s collapse to attack economic stimulus legislation in general.
Lawmakers also say Solyndra misrepresented the company’s viability when company officials visited Capitol Hill in July. While company officials painted a picture of improving finances, the company was preparing to restate financial statements projecting reduced revenues, according to staff with the Energy Department’s loans program.
The Energy and Commerce subcommittee has been investigating Solyndra for nearly six months. They’ve questioned whether the Energy Department and the White House conducted a proper review of Solyndra’s application for a loan guarantee. They’ve also asserted that politics may have played a role in approving the loan guarantee by pointing out that investors in Solyndra had helped raise money for President Barack Obama’s 2008 campaign.
Solyndra was heralded as one of the nation’s bright spots of green technology innovation, creating a solar tube of sorts that could soak up sunlight from many angles, producing energy more efficiently and using less space. The company’s panels were also light and easy to install, which was meant to save upfront costs.
But over the past few years, other companies caught up and provided similar products at a lower cost.
Administration officials noted that a loan guarantee for Solyndra was sought by both the Bush and Obama administrations and that private investors also put more than $1 billion into the company.
On Tuesday, Missouri lawmakers will start debating $360 million in proposed tax breaks to help turn St. Louis’ underused airport into a bustling international cargo hub.
Yet, as currently written, that bill could commit Missouri to spending $300 million of that to build factories and giant freezers
Investors pulled the most money from global stock funds since 2008 in the past week as the Standard & Poor’s downgrade of Treasuries and the deepening European debt crisis prompted a flight into cash and gold.
Funds that buy global equities suffered $3.5 billion in net withdrawals in the week ended Aug. 10, the most since the second week of October 2008, according to Cameron Brandt, director of research at EPFR Global of Cambridge, Mass.
Investors removed $11.7 billion from funds that invest in U.S. equities, the most since May 2010, following a one-day market plunge that erased $862 billion in U.S. stock values.
“This week had a feeling of capitulation as we saw investors running for cover,” Brandt said in a telephone interview.
“The last time we saw this kind of flight to safety” was in 2008, he said.
Investors have rushed into money-market funds and gold as global equity markets lost $6.8 trillion in value since July 26.
On Aug. 5, S&P downgraded U.S. debt for the first time, sending the benchmark Standard & Poor’s 500 index down by 6.7 percent on the first trading session after the move. In Europe, riots swept across Britain and the sovereign-debt crisis deepened.
U.S. money funds attracted $61 billion in the week ended Aug. 9, according to data from iMoneyNet in Westborough, Mass.
Gold and precious metals funds drew $2.1 billion in the past week, EPFR said.
Honda’s quarterly profit plunged nearly 90 percent to 31.7 billion yen ($406 million) because of sales damage from the quake in northeastern Japan.
Honda Motor Co.’s April-June profit was just a fraction of the 272.4 billion yen profit it posted a year earlier.
But Japan’s No. 3 automaker said Monday it managed to hold up despite the March 11 quake and tsunami, thanks to its growing motorcycle business.
Tokyo-based Honda raised its full year forecasts.
In a healthy recovery, states and localities produce jobs, expand social services and help fuel the nation’s economic growth.
Then there’s the 2011 recovery.
The U.S. economy is moving ahead, however fitfully. Yet state and local governments are still stuck in recession. Short of cash, they cut 30,000 jobs in May, the seventh straight month they’ve shed workers. Rather than add to U.S. economic growth, they’re subtracting from it.
And ordinary Americans are feeling it _ from reduced services to fewer teachers, police officers and firefighters.
Few see the pain subsiding soon. Mark Vitner, senior economist at Wells Fargo Securities, expects state and local governments to slash 20,000 to 30,000 jobs a month through the middle of 2012.
Joel Naroff of Naroff Economic Advisors notes that when states cut spending to balance their budgets, as required annually, a ripple effect multiplies the damage: Companies that do business with states and localities suffer. These companies, in turn, scale back their own hiring.
“There’s a whole slew of private companies that have to cut back when they don’t get the (government) contracts they had been getting,” Naroff said. “You can’t balance a budget and say everything’s going to be beautiful.”
Moody’s Analytics estimates that each job in state and local government supports an additional 1.3 jobs elsewhere in the economy.
The cutbacks stretch across the country:
_ Monticello, Ga., has cut its police force in half _ to five. It had planned to eliminate the force entirely until it found the money to keep some officers, says Police Chief Bobby Norris.
_ Zanesville, Ohio, just cut nearly 50 jobs from its schools, mostly through layoffs. “People have to realize: There’s just so much money,” says school Superintendent Terry Martin, who had to close a $7.2 million budget gap through 2016. “We have to watch every dime that we spend.”
_ In Alameda, Calif., police and firefighters last week couldn’t save a drowning man in the ocean because the fire department had cut funding for water rescue training, wet suits and other equipment.
The Great Recession officially ended two years ago this month. By the same point during previous recoveries, state and local governments were engines of growth: In the two years after the 1990-91 recession ended, for example, they’d added 430,000 jobs. At the same point after the 2001 recession ended, they had added 249,000 cheap business cards.
This time is different. More than 467,000 state and local government jobs have vanished since the recession officially ended in June 2009, including 188,000 in schools.
The Great Recession of 2007-2009, the longest and deepest downturn since the 1930s, dried up state and local tax revenue. It also escalated demands for social programs like Medicaid and unemployment benefits and “ate through their rainy-day funds,” notes Michael Gapen, senior U.S. economist at Barclays Capital.
For a while, federal stimulus spending cushioned the blow to state and local finances. But that money is running out. And it probably won’t be replenished. The federal government is preparing to cut its own spending to shrink huge budget deficits.
States like Wisconsin, New Jersey and Ohio have first-term governors who “are trying to make their names by cutting spending,” Naroff says. “It wasn’t the `in thing’ before to become a governor and immediately slash and burn. Now, you’ve got economic and political realities that are different from any time before.”
Analysts hold out hope that state governments might be on the verge of a rebound. State tax revenue is forecast to rise 2.1 percent in the fiscal year that starts July 1, according to a report last week from the National Governors Association and the National Association of State Budget Officers.
But 29 states say they’ll still spend less in the 2012 fiscal year than in 2008. And local governments are still waiting for a recovery in tax revenue. They rely heavily on property tax revenue, which continues to sink with the collapse in home prices in many areas.
“The state revenues are coming back, but the local revenues probably haven’t seen the worst of it,” says Christopher Hoene, director of research at the National League of Cities. “We still have another year to go for sure.”
Steven Leslie, financial services analyst for the Economist Intelligence Unit, a research firm, predicts that tight government spending at the local, state and federal levels will persist during a prolonged period of slow growth.
“If I were going to tell college graduates what careers to follow,” he says, “I wouldn’t recommend public service.”
The chairman of one of the world’s leading telecommunications companies says that cyber attacks are being developed so rapidly that a new nonproliferation treaty is needed to control their use.
BT Group PLC Chairman Michael Rake says the world’s militaries are being drawn into a 21st-century arms race and suggested that an international pact could help bring it under control.
Rake told a group of policymakers and business leaders in London Wednesday that it was “critical to try to move toward some sort of cyber technology nonproliferation treaty.”
He gave few details, and many there dismissed the idea. But some were supportive, with one academic suggesting using the U.N.’s telecommunications agency as an cyber-nonproliferation watchdog.
The European Central Bank may step up its inflation fight as up to a third of its Governing Council is replaced this year.
An unprecedented seven seats on the ECB’s 23-member council may change hands in a year marked by the retirement of President Jean-Claude Trichet. The new generation of central bankers under the likely leadership of Italy’s Mario Draghi will reinforce the ECB’s inflation-fighting resolve, say economists at Citigroup Inc. and Societe Generale SA.
“In the short-term, the ECB may turn more hawkish,” said Klaus Baader, co-chief euro-area economist at Societe Generale in London. “Draghi will want to show he’s not lax about inflation risks and the new members will keep their voices down, strengthening the influence of established hawks like chief economist Juergen Stark.”
Germany, the only one of the four biggest euro countries yet to endorse Draghi, gets a new Bundesbank president today. Jens Weidmann, who replaces Axel Weber on the ECB council, is due to speak at noon in Frankfurt. He and Luc Coene, the new Belgian central bank governor, may support further ECB rate increases to curb mounting inflation pressures.
“Weidmann won’t rank behind Weber in terms of hawkishness,” said Juergen Michels, chief euro-area economist at Citigroup in London. “It also doesn’t seem that the successors of outgoing council members will be less focused on inflation fighting.”
‘Too Accommodative’
ECB policy makers, who raised the benchmark rate by a quarter point to 1.25 percent last month, next convene on May 5 in Helsinki. Some economists expect them to signal that another move will come as soon as June.
Monetary policy is “still too accommodative,” Belgium’s Coene said in an interview on April 18, striking a tougher tone than his predecessor Guy Quaden, who on March 31 endorsed a “cautious” rate increase.
Draghi has also sharpened his language. While Trichet said last month’s rate step wasn’t necessarily the start of a series, Draghi signaled more to come. “Monetary policy must take into account the emergence of inflationary tensions, pushed by rising food and energy prices,” he said on April 13.
Most economists and investors predict two more quarter- point increases in the ECB’s benchmark rate this year, taking it to 1.75 percent.
“We believe the ECB has to raise interest rates higher than markets expect,” Andrew Bosomworth, a fund manager at Pacific Investment Management Co., wrote in a guest commentary for Germany’s Boersen-Zeitung on April 28. “The ECB’s benchmark rate is still too low in light of economic growth and inflation expectations.”
Faster Inflation
Inflation, which the ECB aims to keep just below 2 percent, accelerated to 2.8 percent last month. Incoming policy makers will have to weigh that against the risk of inflaming the sovereign debt crisis that’s afflicting peripheral nations such as Ireland, Greece and Portugal.
As the representative of Europe’s largest economy, Weidmann will be central to those deliberations. He helped steer Germany through the financial crisis as Chancellor Angela Merkel’s chief economic advisor from 2006.
Weidmann, 43, today becomes the youngest president in the Bundesbank’s 54-year history and the youngest ECB council member. Fluent in both English and French, he is a former student and prot?g? of Weber, who made a name for himself as one of the most hawkish ECB policy makers.
ECB Exodus
Next month, Belgium’s Peter Praet will replace Gertrude Tumpel-Gugerell on the ECB’s Executive Board, whose six members together with the central bankers of the 17 euro nations comprise the Governing Council.
In July, Malta’s central bank governor Michael Bonello will be replaced by Josef Bonnici, and Nout Wellink will step down as head of the Dutch central bank. Lex Hoogduin, 54, has been tipped by academics and bank officials as his likely replacement.
The selection of Draghi to succeed Trichet, whose term ends on Oct. 31, may force two further changes.
Italy would need to appoint a new governor to join the ECB’s council in Draghi’s stead, and Lorenzo Bini Smaghi would probably have to make way for a new French policy maker on the six-member board to avoid Italy dominating the ECB’s top decision-making body.
Trichet Succession
European leaders will decide on a successor for Trichet in June, Merkel’s spokesman Steffen Seibert said last week. French President Nicolas Sarkozy, Italy’s Prime Minister Silvio Berlusconi and Spanish Finance Minister Elena Salgado have expressed support, with Belgium, Luxembourg and Portugal also backing the Italian’s candidacy.
Estonia’s adoption of the euro on Jan. 1 saw Andres Lipstok join the ECB council this year, bringing the potential number of new faces to eight.
Bonello said in an April 15 interview that, while changes on the Governing Council may shuffle the deck chairs, all policy makers will keep the ECB’s primary mandate in mind.
“I am sure that the new members will share a similar commitment to the ECB’s mission as the departing members,” he said. “It might change the distribution of views, but at the end of the day all members will be fully committed to what we have to do, and that’s to pursue the single mandate that we have, price stability.”
Witnesses say tanks rolled into an Abidjan neighborhood hours after a mortar attack that left up to 30 people dead.
Soldiers burned shops and cars in the Abobo neighborhood, which is under the control of fights loyal to internationally recognized president Alassane Ouattara.
There were no known casualties in the early Friday incursion by soldiers loyal to his rival, Laurent Gbagbo, who refuses to leave the presidency months after the election.
Abidjan, Ivory Coast’s biggest city, has seen daily battles for weeks now between the supporters of each man claiming to be president.
On Thursday, the U.N. said Gbagbo’s forces fired on and around a market, killing up to 30 people and wounding as many as 60 others.
Jury selection has begun in the New York City trial of a once-powerful hedge fund boss accused of making more than $50 million by trading secret information in the stock market.
Raj Rajaratnam (rah-juh-RUHT’-nuhm) was introduced Tuesday to prospective jurors.
The one-time billionaire sat atop the hedge fund world until he was arrested on federal charges. He has pleaded not guilty.
The jury is expected to hear dozens of secretly taped conversations between the founder of the Galleon Group and partners in the hedge fund industry payday loans guaranteed no fax.
Rajaratnam, of New York City, has remained free on $100 million bail since his October 2009 arrest.
Authorities brought charges against two dozen others in the probe. Nineteen have pleaded guilty.
Powered by WordPress -- XHTML 1.0