Financial Freedom Through Being Debt Free

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Financial freedom has such a nice ring to it, doesn't it? It's almost like a feeling of flying above the clouds. Financial debt on the other hand has a different sound to it.

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This Is Why Russia Is Blocking International Action Against Syria


syria attack protest u.s. embassySyrian President Bashar al-Assad's brutal crackdown on the popular uprising against his rule, which has left some 2,600 people dead since March, has earned him opprobrium across the globe. But international efforts to pressure his regime further are unlikely to be enough to bring it down, so long as Mr. Assad retains the support of one powerful global player: Russia.

A traditional ally with trade ties worth close to $20 billion, Russia has a strong financial stake in the Assad regime's survival. But Moscow's support goes beyond pocketbook issues. As a vast country that has seen its share of uprising and revolution, the one-time superpower tends to support autocracy as the lesser evil and is skeptical of Western intervention – particularly in the wake of NATO's Libya campaign.

As one of five veto-wielding members on the United Nations Security Council, Russia can block any attempt to exert major international pressure on Assad, whether through economic sanctions or military intervention.

“Russia is now a business-oriented country, and the Russian government obviously wants to protect the investments made by its businessmen in Syria,” Yevgeny Satanovsky, president of the independent Institute of Middle Eastern Studies in Moscow. “But … the main reason in being so stubborn [blocking UN action against Syria] is because Moscow perceives that the Western bloc is wrecking stability in the Middle East in pursuit of wrong-headed idealistic goals. A lot of Russians are horrified at what’s going on in the Middle East and they’re happy with their government’s position.”

Russia has been a prominent defender of the Assad regime, dispatching delegations and envoys to the Syrian capital and warning against international intervention similar to the NATO-led campaign against Col. Muammar Qaddafi.

Russian President Dmitry Medvedev said recently that some of those taking part in the Syrian street protests had links to “terrorists,” while another senior Russian foreign ministry official said that “terrorist organizations” could gain power in Syria if Assad’s regime is toppled.

Such comments, which echo those of the Assad regime, have been warmly greeted in Damascus. On Sunday, Assad welcomed the “balanced and constructive Russian position toward the security and stability of Syria.”

True, Moscow is not the only country expressing wariness at sudden change in Syria: the five-nation BRICS bloc (Brazil, Russia, India, China, and South Africa) recently declared they were against intervention in Syria and urged dialogue between the Assad regime and the Syrian opposition. But Russia’s public and repeated defense of the regime has frustrated the Syrian opposition, which is seeking the support of the international community in its bid to oust Assad. Last week, Syrian protesters vented their irritation by staging a “day of anger against Russia.”

Why Russia backs Assad

Russia’s support for the Assad regime is rooted in self-interest, and calculates that Assad could yet prevail against the Syrian opposition movement.

"In fact we see that there is no united opposition in Syria, nor is there NATO support [for the rebellion] as was the case in Libya,” says Georgi Mirsky, an expert with the official Institute of World Economy and International Relations in Moscow. “Arab countries will never agree to even limited military operations against Syria [as they did in Libya]. The Syrian army is not split. Therefore, we see serious reasons to believe the Assad regime can survive. Even if it’s discredited, it could still hold on for a number of years. So there’s no sense of urgency in Moscow to change policies.”

Russia has long-standing commercial, military, and political ties to Syria. According to a recent article in The Moscow Times, Russian investments in Syria in 2009 were valued at $19.4 billion, mainly in arms deals, infrastructure development, energy, and tourism. Russian exports to Syria in 2010 totaled $1.1 billion, the newspaper said.

Other than lucrative business deals, Moscow is seeking to wield greater influence on the global stage after losing some of its prestige with the collapse of the Soviet Union in 1991. It traditionally opposes foreign interventions – which potentially can set precedents for Russia in the future – and serves as a counter-balance to the perceived axis of the United States, the European Union and NATO.

Furthermore, Russia – with a multitude of ethnic and religious sects, as well as nationalist minorities – has an innate suspicion of popular uprisings and their uncertain outcomes, from ousting a regime to plunging a country into chaos. While the West optimistically embraces the Arab Spring as a welcome shift toward democracy in the region, Russia takes the more hard-nosed view that the outcome will be instability and bloodshed.

“Western idealism has contributed to chaos in the Middle East, and for once Russian foreign policy is right not to want any part of it,” says Mr. Satanovsky from the Institute of Middle Eastern Studies in Moscow. “The minimum we can expect in Syria is civil war, with rivers of blood. Yes, it is a cruel dictatorship, but Russia sees only worse things taking its place.”

Russia-Syria arms deals

Russian-Syrian ties are perhaps strongest in the field of arms sales. The Soviet Union was Syria’s main supplier of weapons during the cold war, leaving Damascus saddled with a $13.4 billion arms debt.

Although trade dwindled following the collapse of the Soviet Union, it picked up again beginning in 2005 when Moscow wrote off almost 75 percent of the debt. Russia and Syria have signed arms deals worth some $4 billion since 2006. They include the sale of MiG 29 fighter jets, Yak-130 jet trainers, Pantsir and Buk air defense systems, and P-800 Yakhont anti-ship missiles. Syria also hopes to receive Iskandar ballistic missiles and S-300 anti-aircraft missiles, the latter of which would pose significant threats to hostile aircraft operating in Syrian skies.

Much of the funding for the arms deals reportedly is underwritten by Iran, which signed several defense agreements with Syria from 2005. That enables some of the weapons allegedly to be quietly transferred to Iran thus circumventing a United Nations ban of arms exports to the Islamic Republic.

Russia also operates a naval supply and maintenance site near the Syrian port city of Tartous on the Mediterranean. The Soviet-era facility has been in Russian hands since 1971 but fell into disrepair in 1992. However, the port is undergoing a major refurbishment which will grant Russian naval vessels a permanent base in the Mediterranean after 2012. Presently, Russia’s only other warm-water naval facility is at Sevastopol in the nearly-landlocked Black Sea. All Russian shipping exiting the Black Sea must sail through the narrow Bosporus channel, which lies within Turkish waters.

However, the billions of dollars in investments and the strategic naval facility in Tartous could all be jeopardized if the Assad regime is overthrown or the country descends into violent chaos. As it is, Moscow, which has criticized the NATO-led intervention in Libya, is waiting to see if the new authorities in Tripoli will honor some $10 billion worth of business deals reached with the Qaddafi regime.

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Source: http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/businessinsider/~3/ozwidfPQgIQ/this-is-why-russia-is-blocking-international-action-against-syria-2011-9

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Google Wallet Is Live Now! Here's How To Get It (S, GOOG)


google wallet

Google Wallet is live!

That means you can start paying for stuff at participating merchants, you'll need to update your Nexus S 4G.

(Google Wallet is only available for the Nexus S 4G on Sprint for now.)

Engadget found this support page from Samsung that says what to do:

  • Open Settings.
  • Tap About Phone.
  • Scroll down to Build Number.
  • The Build Number should read GWK74.
  • If it does not, you'll have to wait for an over the air update from Sprint.

The updates should be rolling out now, so keep your eye on your phone's notifications. We'll have a full review of how it works later this week.

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Source: http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/businessinsider/~3/l1PnKtbcmm4/how-to-get-google-wallet-2011-9

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Financial System of More and Less Developed Countries

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In more developed nations, monetary and financial policy plays a major direct and indirect role in governmental efforts designed to expand economic activity in times of unemployment and surplus capacity and to contract that activity in times of excess demand and inflation. Basically, monetary policy works on two principal economic variables: the aggregate supply of money in circulation and the level of interest rates.

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Three Reasons People Think ETFs Are The New CDOs


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The Financial Stability Board wrote a report in April this year saying that ETFs might present new, unexpected risks to financial stability.

The full report is available for download by clicking here.

Essentially, the report says that regulators should watch these relatively new products because they can be molded into just about anything, and they're hot thanks to the extended period of low interest rates, which is pushing investors to create leverage in new areas.

And because they're dangerous.

The board found that three things about ETFs pose potential risks to financial stability:

  • The provider might might face difficulties liquidating the collateral and may be faced with the difficult choice of either suspending redemptions or maintaining them and facing a liquidity shortfall and the bank level. The expectation of on-demand liquidity may create the conditions for acute redemption pressures on certain types of ETFs in situations of market stress, which could in turn affect the liquidity of the large asset managers and banks active in this market.
  • A bank default could result in contagion. Since the swap counterparty is typically the bank also acting as ETF provider, or a group of banks acting as counterparties, investors may be exposed if the bank defaults. Therefore, problems at those banks that are most active in swap-based ETFs may constitute a powerful source of contagion and systemic risk.
  • ETFs might create risks for market liquidity. In the event of a market sell-off or an unwind in any particular ETF, there is a risk that investors massively demand redemption. Were redemptions to be made in cash, this could raise issues as to the exit strategies and liquidity risk of ETF providers and swap counterparties. The use of ETFs as collateral in a long chain of secured lending and rehypothecation may create operational risks and contribute to the build up of leverage. 

The FSB brings up these risks in part because the ETF market has boomed recently. The boom can in part be traced to the current period of protracted low interest rates, which provides incentives for re-leveraging in non-standard market segments.

Whatever the reason, the industry grew at an average of 40% year over year over the past 10 years, says the report. And while most of that growth has been in "plain vanilla" ETFs (like the one that tracks the S&P 500 for example), that are backed by physical assets, in Europe much of that growth has been in "synthetic" ETFs that are created by entering into an asset swap (ie an OTC derivative), with a counterparty*. They up make much more of the ETF market in Europe, reaching 45% of that market.

And ETFs are an area where innovation is booming too. ETFs have branched out to other asset classes (fixed-income, credit, emerging markets, commodities) where liquidity is typically thinner and transparency lower.

Given their recent boom, their underlying assets (or lack thereof), and the relatively little that is understood about the risks they might pose, might ETFs be the new CDOs? The FT's Gillian Tett talked about this back in May. 

She wrote:

The central problem is that the ETF sector – just like those “boring” CDOs five years ago – is currently in the grip of a wave of investor enthusiasm that risks turning a fundamentally sensible innovation bad... And some ETFs are now using leverage; others are starting to purchase riskier assets such as risky loans... And precisely because the market has exploded with such stunning speed, it may be changing flows in unpredictable ways.

Of course there are reasons to take all this with a grain of salt. For example: At the end of Q3 2010, the global ETF industry had $1.2 trillion in assets under management, which is tiny compared to the hedge fund industry, for example. And the new products (leveraged ETFs, inverse ETFs and leveraged-inverse ETFs) only represented 3% of the total ETF market in 2010.

But now we have two instances where "rogue traders" lost billions for their firms trading (or falsely accounting for trading) ETFs.

Of course it was allegedly made via fraudulent accounting and not any flaws inherent in the ETFs. But for products that are supposedly so transparent, some surprisingly large losses have resulted from a couple of back office employees trading them.

Don't miss: Synthetic equity: a way to buy stocks without actually buying stocks >

* The provider (typically a bank's asset management arm) sells ETF shares to investors in exchange for cash, which is then invested in a collateral basket, the return of which is swapped by the derivatives desk of the same bank for the return of an index.

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Source: http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/businessinsider/~3/TDrUwz_zQR8/etfs-the-new-cdos-2011

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Free Debt Counseling

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A lot of economic experts are saying that we're still in for the long haul as far as the recession goes, and with the unemployment rate still teetering around 9.2% it could get a little scary for a lot of consumers out there. In this current economic climate consumers with unmanageable credit card debt may be in a world of hurt, here are some basics on the type of free help you can get that will get you on the right track.

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What I've Learned As an SBA Workout Consultant

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Article that discusses lessons learned in my time as an SBA workout consultant. Offers insights that borrowers can use.

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Source: http://ezinearticles.com/6563158

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