This morning's key headlines from
GenerationalDynamics.com
- Kofi Annan resigns in failure as Syria envoy
- Investors and banksters disappointed again, this time by ECB
- The 'mini flash crash' software bug will be expensive
- China restricts Ramadan fasting for Uighurs in Xinjiang province
Kofi Annan resigns in failure as Syria envoy
Kofi Annan
A bitter and angry Kofi Annan resigned his role on Thursday as special
peace envoy to Syria for the United Nations and the Arab League.
He'll continue as envoy until the end of August, when his mandate
expires. He said he could no longer do the job, blaming his decision
on what he described as Syrian government intransigence, on increasing
militancy by Syrian rebels and on finger-pointing and name-calling by
members of the United Nations Security Council. The finger-pointing
and name-calling continued after Annan's announcement, as Russian and
Western diplomats blamed each other for the failure of the Annan
mission.
Day Press News (Syria)
When the Kofi Annan "peace plan" was announced in March, I called it
"farcical", and time has
shown that criticism to be an understatement. As I've suggested
several times in the past, the "peace plan" has actually made things
worse, because it provided a fig leaf behind which the Bashar al-Assad
regime could hide while it was slaughtering and exterminating innocent
civilians, and behind which the Russians could hide as they provided
support for the al-Assad regime to conduct its extermination program.
Having said that, I'm surprised that Annan resigned. Syria is in a
generational Awakening era, and so the fears that this civil war will
spiral out of control are completely unfounded. Just as the Iraq
"civil war" had to collapse in an Awakening era, the Syria war has to
collapse. It's not possible to predict which side will be declared
the "winner" once the war collapses, but right now the trends appear
to indicate that al-Assad's regime will collapse with the war. This
conclusion is supported by the fact that 2/3 of the population are
Sunnis, while al-Assad's Alewite sect is a small minority. I had
expected that when the war collapsed, Annan would then declare that he
had brought peace to Syria, but now that he's resigned, he may not be
able to make that claim.
Investors and banksters disappointed again, this time by ECB
On Wednesday, traders and banksters were disappointed that U.S.
Federal Reserve chairman Ben Bernanke didn't announce a big new
quantitative easing program, with lots of new "printed" money to pay
their 7-digit salaries and bonuses. On Thursday, they were
disappointed again, this time by European Central Bank (ECB) president
Mario Draghi, who failed to announce a European quantitative easing
program that where the ECB would purchase toxic bonds issued by Spain
and Italy. Last week, Draghi announced that the ECB would do
"whatever it takes to preserve the euro." On Thursday, he said "The
euro is irreversible." However, instead of announcing a big new
liquidity program for traders and banksters, he merely announced
"guidance" for measures that might be taken in September. It's worth
remembering that the ECB initiated its LTRO program last December,
pouring 1.1 trillion euros into Europe's banking system. It kept bond
yields (interest rates) down, but they popped up again as soon as the
program ended in March. The banks were supposed to lend all that
money to businesses to hire employees, but people and businesses have
been badly burned in the last decade, and will remain cautious for the
rest of their lives, like the survivors of the Great Depression. As
for now, Europe is on vacation till the end of August.
Spiegel
The 'mini flash crash' software bug will be expensive
The "mini flash crash" that occurred on Wednesday was caused by a bug
in the trading software of Knight Capital Group, as we
reported yesterday. The bug caused the
company to send numerous erroneous orders in 140 stocks listed on the
NY Stock Exchange. The errors will cost the company $440 million, and
may throw the company into bankruptcy.
AP
It's been very interesting to me to see the generational parallels
between the computer industry and the financial industry. As a Senior
Software Engineer, I've seen some of the same contempt for rigorous
development and testing practices in some younger Gen-X programmers as
the contempt for rigorous financial practices that I've reported on in
Gen-X financial engineers. (From 2008:
"Boomers and Gen-Xers: Dumbing down IT") I saw an
interview on Thursday morning with Knight Capital CEO Thomas Joyce,
where he indicated that inadequate software testing had led to the
software bug making it into production. Based on my personal
experiences of the last ten years, I can well believe that some of the
younger programmers decided not to test the software simply because
some Boomer had told them that they should. So it cost the company
$440 million. I'll be following this situation, as the technical
details of the mini flash crash leak out in the next few weeks.
China restricts Ramadan fasting for Uighurs in Xinjiang province
In a policy that's certain to infuriate the nine million mostly Muslim
ethnic Uighurs living in China's north west Xinjiang province, China
has banned Muslim officials and students from fasting during Ramada or
even to attend mosques. The government statement urged party leaders
to bring "gifts" of food to local village leaders to ensure that they
were eating during Ramadan. During Ramadan, Muslims fast from dawn to
dusk and strive to be more pious and charitable, and banning fasting
strikes at the heart of a very important Muslim ritual.
AFP
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