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New World Order Title: And the rich got richer When it comes to dry reads, it ranks somewhere between Welding and Metal Fabrication Monthly and the collected speeches of Alistair Darling. And yet a newly-published report from the Egyptian government's investment authority, GAFI, is one of the most significant and explosive pieces of writing to appear anywhere in the Middle East in recent years. snip Since 1991, the year Egypt yoked itself to an IMF structural adjustment programme and embarked on a series of wide-ranging economic reforms, the country has been something of a poster child for neoliberal economists who point to its remarkable levels of annual GDP growth as proof that "Washington consensus" blueprints for the developing world can work. Coming on the back of an economic crisis precipitated partly by profligate government spending on arms sales (subsidised by US aid), the regime of President Hosni Mubarak signed up to an IMF loan that was conditional on economic liberalisation. Those conditions – relaxed price controls, reduced subsidies, an opening up of trade – were met with gleeful abandon. Snip Then 2004 brought a new cabinet which swiftly cut the top rate of tax from 42% to 20%, leaving multimillionaires paying exactly the same proportion of their income into government coffers as those on an annual salary of less than £500. Special economic zones were created, foreign investment reached dizzying heights ($13bn in 2008) and, in the past three years, economic growth has clocked in at a consistently high 7%. The minimum wage, incidentally, has remained fixed at less than £4 a month throughout. The global business community applauded Mubarak's rule as "bold", "impressive" and "prudent". snip The conference was entitled "Just for you". Whom that "you" was wasn't specified, but it can't have been any of the 90% shut out of Cairo's miraculous economic boom. As the eminent Egyptian economics professor Galal Amin argues, "Those who continue to preach the trickle-down theory are likely to be the ones who do not really care whether anything trickles down at all." Post Comment Private Reply Ignore Thread Top • Page Up • Full Thread • Page Down • Bottom/Latest Begin Trace Mode for Comment # 2. The economics behind the Egyptian revolution.
#2. To: lucysmom (#1) Re: DOOM Investing Post Sat Feb 05, 2011 10:48 am by mcgowanjm New Info InComing: First Confirmation Gas to Israel halted. Angry Arab: Saturday, February 05, 2011 Al-Arabiyyah TV Al-Arabiyyah's coverage has become inconsistent: as the correspondents of the news station of King Fahd's brother-in-law suffer attacks and harassment from government goons, the reality on the ground speaks against the strong ally of House of Saud. But the editorial and general studio-based coverage is still solidly pro-Mubarak. When the gas pipe line was bombed yesterday, the station was at pains to insist that this targeted pipe line carries gas to Jordan, not Israel. But they still could not explain why the gas to Israel has been halted. Explain it, you tools of the Saudi royal family. Posted by As'ad at 7:19 AM
El Rehab–Homs section The third section has a total length of 319 kilometres (198 mi) from Jordan to Syria. A 90 kilometres (56 mi) stretch runs from the Jordan–Syrian border to the Deir Ali power station. From there the pipeline runs through Damascus to the Al Rayan gas compressor station near Homs. This sections includes four launching/receiving stations, 12 valve stations and a fiscal metering station with a capacity of 1.1 bcm, and it supplies Tishreen and Deir Ali power stations. The section was completed in February 2008, and it was built by the Syrian Petroleum Company and Stroytransgaz, a subsidiary of Gazprom.
Jordan/Syria/Lebanon All Have Power Stations on this Line. All are now looking elsewhere. This could be it. The Point of no return. Unless the Saudis have something going up into Jordan as well.
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