China’s secret? It owes Americans nearly $1 trillion
China has a secret: It owes American investors hundreds of billions of dollars.
The Chinese government doesn’t like to talk about it and the U.S. government doesn’t want to raise it. But decades ago, Beijing defaulted on debt owed to Americans, as well as investors and governments around the world. In one case, it was paid. In the rest it was not. More than 20,000 American investors own this debt. The U.S. government may also own Chinese war debt, unpaid since World War II.
With the simple stroke of an executive proclamation, President Barack Obama can begin the process of addressing this issue. A 1930s-era law has established a quasi-public agency within the Securities and Exchange Commission, known as the Corporation of Foreign Securities Holders, which can arbitrate this dispute, much as a predecessor agency did for decades. China can both afford and benefit from this solution; it will afford goodwill at a time when relations between the world’s two superpowers are strained.
The story begins nearly 100 years ago, in 1913, when the government of China began issuing bonds to foreign investors and governments for infrastructure work to modernize the country. As the country fell into civil war in 1927, paying these debts became increasingly difficult and the government fell into default. Even so, in April 1938, the Nationalist government of China began to issue U.S.-dollar denominated bonds to finance the war against Japan’s brutal invasion.
Locked in a pitched battle for survival, the government issued these bonds into 1940. As part of its wartime financial aid, the U.S. government further provided a $500 million credit to China in March 1942, shipping gold there and helping to stabilize the currency. In return, it appears that the U.S. government redeemed some of these dollar-denominated bonds. But China doesn’t appear to have repaid this debt either, according to State Department records, and the declaration of the People’s Republic of China in 1949 ended decades of political, military and financial cooperation.
Read More»Officials: Stolen guns, equipment sold on auction sites
By The Daily News, Jacksonville, N.C.
May 15–Camp Lejeune Marines used websites like eBay, Craigslist and Lejeune Yard Sales to sell more than $2 million in stolen combat equipment to the highest bidder, including those in China, Naval investigators said Monday.
Altogether, more than 60 people have been implicated in a two-year undercover operation by agents with Naval Criminal Investigative Service to staunch the flow of stolen guns and gear aboard Lejeune and other military installations, said Ed Buice, public affairs officer for NCIS in Quantico, Va.
“The case is still active and ongoing in partnership with several other local, state and federal law enforcement agencies,” he said. “I can’t go into much detail.”
The NCIS probe has spilled over into the Army and Air Force with soldiers and airmen being investigated as well, as first reported in The Daily News.
The operation so far has resulted in the recovery of $1.8 million in stolen weapons and equipment and ballooned to include the FBI; Homeland Security; the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives; the Defense Logistics Agency; the N.C. State Bureau of Investigations, and several local law enforcement agencies including the Onslow County Sheriff’s Office and the Jacksonville Police Department.
Buice said it all began with a tip to the NCIS Carolinas Field Office aboard Lejeune that stolen government property was being sold on auction websites.
The special agent-in-charge of NCIS Carolinas, Joe Kennedy, could not be reached for comment.
NCIS agents found equipment not only was being sold online, but guns and ammunition were being sold at yard sales and in clandestine face-to-face deals.
“NCIS did an in-depth analysis of the cases and saw there was definitely a growing problem,” Buice said. “Undercover agents have worked extensively to build cases against those involved during the last two years.”
Agents found that some military members were selling guns, or attempting to sell guns, to street gangs in North Carolina and elsewhere, according to a government official familiar with the operation.
So far 47 service members and 21 civilians have been charged. About half of those have been to trial with many pleading guilty to the offenses, Buice said.
The Daily News has requested but not yet received a complete list of those who have been charged.
Read More»Best of #StateReads: Why Louisiana Leads the World in Imprisonment
By Daniel C. Vock, Stateline.org
May 16–This week’s collection of #StateReads covers why Louisiana has the highest imprisonment rate in the world, the rise of education advocacy groups that often combat teacher unions in statehouses and questionable investments by the teachers’ pension fund in Texas.
These examples of extraordinary journalism about state government were recommended in tweets using the #StateReads hashtag on Twitter and in email submissions to dvock@stateline.org.
“Louisiana Incarcerated” — The Times-Picayune
“Louisiana,” writes Cindy Chang (@CindyChangTP), “is the world’s prison capital.” The state has twice the number of people in prison per capita as the national average, which means it leads the world, too. The Times-Picayune is running an eight-part series on the factors for the high rate and its consequences. Counties and private prison companies benefit from building new prisons for state prisoners and offer the inmates few services. Meanwhile, a state penitentiary in Angola offers far more generous programs, such as training for vocational skills, but the programs are of little use, because the vast majority of prisoners there are serving life sentences.
“The changing face of education advocacy” — Education Week
Reporters Stephen Sawchuk (@TeacherBeat) and Sean Cavanagh (@EdWeekSCavanagh) examine the sudden rise of groups lobbying state legislators and getting involved in statehouse races to push their recipe for improving schools. Groups such as Stand for Children, StudentsFirst and Democrats for Education Reform champion ideas including increased use of charter schools, performance reviews for teachers and higher academic standards for schools and students. “Though the record of their electoral success is mixed,” Sawchuk writes, “such groups’ overall influence appears to be growing, and it has already helped alter the landscape of education policy, particularly at the state level.” Education Week’s series also looks at how the groups made headway in states and how they are funded.
“Texas teachers’ pension fund invests in casinos, loses $99 million” — The Dallas Morning News
Read More»The Philadelphia Inquirer Karen Heller column
By Karen Heller, The Philadelphia Inquirer
May 16–This may well be Temple’s moment, even with slashed state funding and the search for a new leader. The university has soared in popularity, moving beyond being a commuter school to attracting students from across the state and nation, the tuition a bargain compared with that of private institutions.
During the last decade, undergraduate enrollment exploded by more than a third, students spilling into the surrounding North Central Philadelphia neighborhood of handsome 19th-century brick rowhouses. Currently, 7,000 students reside right off campus — more than live in the dorms.
Real estate speculators, some from New York and California, are feasting on the demand. It’s Northward Ho! Most students left last week at the end of spring semester, but the area’s narrow streets remain clogged with cranes, trucks, Tyvek-enveloped structures, and hillocks of debris, a situation residents say has intensified in the last six months. You’d be hard-pressed to find a neighborhood with a higher volume of construction.
And a neighborhood North Central Philadelphia is. The area, with a rich African American history, is in danger of losing its identity and residents to absentee landlords and transient renters with nominal personal investment in the community. Even the area’s name is a source of friction: Rental properties are draped with “Templetown” banners. Efforts have been made to brand it as “Temple” as opposed to the names residents call home, North Central Philadelphia or the Cecil B. Moore Community.
“This was Philadelphia’s Harlem,” says the Rev. William B. Moore as we tour the myriad construction sites, silt spilling into sewers, bricks tumbling onto the sidewalk, few Dumpsters, four electric meters affixed to housing designated for one family. It’s the Wild North of speculation.
“We’re not against development,” Moore says. “What we’re against is out-of-control development that’s thumbing its nose at the residents.”
Read More»Bangladesh announces probe into Grameen Bank units
DHAKA, Bangladesh – Bangladesh says a four-member commission will investigate 54 businesses linked to the pioneering microlender Grameen Bank.
Finance Minister A.M.A. Muhith recently said the bank’s board had not authorized most of the affiliates. U.S. Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton urged Bangladesh’s government on a recent visit here to not to do anything that might undermine the effectiveness of bank.
A Finance Ministry statement on Wednesday said the commission will suggest “future steps to be taken about Grameen Bank and its affiliates.” It will be headed by a former government official and must submit a report in three months.
The bank and its founder Muhammad Yunus were awarded the Nobel Peace Prize for the bank’s efforts to lift people from poverty.
A service of YellowBrix, Inc.
Read More»