Catholic Mom

DUBAI, United Arab Emirates – If global investors were looking for reassurances from Dubai that it would stand behind its massive, debt-swamped investment conglomerate, they got none Monday. Instead, the Gulf city-state seemed to wash its hands of the financial woes that have rattled world markets.
The muddled message from Dubai has fueled worries over a possible default by the conglomerate, which is involved in projects around the world — from Gulf banks and ports in 50 countries to luxury retailer Barneys New York and a grandiose six-tower hotel-entertainment complex in Las Vegas.
Many investors are hoping that the conglomerate, Dubai World, will either openly discuss restructuring of some $60 billion in debt with its creditors, or that Dubai's larger, oil-rich neighbor, Abu Dhabi, will step in to restore confidence by promising to foot any bills.
Dubai and Abu Dhabi are the most powerful of the seven highly autonomous statelets that make up the United Arab Emirates, but their sharply different styles have long made them rivals. For any help, Abu Dhabi will likely demand a price, possibly including increased say over Dubai's affairs.
Abu Dhabi, the seat of the UAE's federal government, has been the more conservative, religiously and financially, relying on its oil wealth to fuel growth. Meanwhile, smaller Dubai — without any oil resources — has for the past decade been the freewheeling boomtown, racking up debt as it built extravagant skyscrapers, artificial residential islands and malls complete with indoor ski slopes.
Government-owned Dubai World has been the engine for much of that growth at home and abroad. So it was a bombshell last week when Dubai announced that the conglomerate wanted to defer debt payments until at least May.
The United Arab Emirates' two main stock exchanges registered record declines Monday as they opened for the first time since the announcement, after a long Islamic holiday.
The Dubai Financial Market was down 7.3 percent, while Abu Dhabi's bourse was off over 8 percent. Brokers said they hadn't seen such declines in at least a year.
Mohammed al-Ghussein, managing partner of Atlas Financial Services in Dubai, summed up the day's trading, saying, "The whole screen is red, regardless of the industry."
Global markets leveled after heavy drops last week. Investors appeared to have a better sense of the size of potential losses from Dubai and were reassured for the moment that its woes don't signal a new crunch for credit markets, still recovering from last year's near-shutdown.
But the impact from Dubai's comments Monday could rekindle the same concerns. Investors with strong exposure to Dubai had the sinking feeling that not only is Dubai sticking to the opaque ways that many feel helped cause the mess, it was continuing to deny the city-state even has a problem.
Dubai officials have largely been silent since last week and, when its top financial official made his first comments Monday, it was hardly reassuring.
Abdulrahman al-Saleh distanced the emirate from Dubai World's debt, saying that while the conglomerate was government-owned, it was "established as an independent company."
"Given that the company has various activities and is exposed to various types of risks, the decision, since its establishment, has been that the company is not guaranteed by the (Dubai) government," he said on Dubai TV.
Moreover, lenders should take some of the responsibility for the problems, he said, arguing that they lent money to the company on the basis of the feasibility of its projects, not on assurances provided by Dubai's government.
Further fueling the confusion from Dubai authorities, the only other official to speak out about the debt mess was the emirate's police chief, Lt. Gen. Dhahi Khalfan Tamim.
Tamim said Dubai faces "unfair competition" aimed at "the defiling of the emirate so that it will not be a hub for finance, work or foreign investment." He said the Dubai government's debts "are not worth mentioning" and shouldn't be confused with those of local companies.
Dubai World broke its silence in a pre-dawn announcement Tuesday.

The company said in an e-mailed statement from the Dubai ruler's media office early Tuesday that "constructive" discussions have begun with banks. It said the restructuring would include about $6 billion covered by Islamic bonds issued by its Nakheel subsidiary. Nakheel, which is the real estate developer famous for building Dubai's palm tree-shaped islands, has a roughly $3.5 billion Islamic bond coming due in two weeks and it was considered the litmus test of Dubai World's debt woes.

The conglomerate emphasized that the proposed restructuring would not include a number of its other portfolio companies, including Infinity World Holding, Istithmar World and Ports & Free Zone World.

While the statement offered the first taste of clarity for a financial world eager for some transparency, it did not deal with the broader issue of how the company and Dubai itself would deal with the overall debt.

One possibility is that Abu Dhabi will step in, more to salvage the UAE's creditworthiness and economy than out of any filial or legal obligation to Dubai. Abu Dhabi's rulers appear to be furious over Dubai's handling of last week's debt announcement, showing it by remaining silent amid the crisis.

"Abu Dhabi's leaders have long viewed Dubai's economic growth model as excessively risky, and they now feel vindicated," Hani Sabra, a Middle East expert with the New York-based Eurasia Group, wrote in a recent report.

But it also can't allow Dubai or Dubai World to fail. "Some of Dubai's largest creditors are domestic Emirati banks in Dubai and Abu Dhabi, and Abu Dhabi does not want Dubai's troubles to spook international investors away from the UAE as a whole," he said.

In a move to partly allay liquidity concerns, the UAE's Abu Dhabi-based central bank on Sunday reaffirmed it was standing behind local and foreign banks in the country by offering additional funds at a low cost.

The move was ostensibly to ward of a run on the banks. The conglomerate, alone, is responsible for about 75 percent of Dubai's at least $80 billion in liabilities.

Abu Dhabi could earn additional political leverage by stepping up.

Intervening "gives Abu Dhabi the leverage it needs to extend its influence more broadly across the UAE federation," wrote Sabra.

"Abu Dhabi wants to get the message across that it will not simply write blank checks," he said. "In the medium and long term, Dubai's financial model will change to look more like Abu Dhabi's as Dubai's rulers lose political clout."

___

El-Tablawy reported from Cairo and AP Business Writer Adam Schreck contributed from Georgetown, Malaysia.

The Nation -- When Yiang Jiemian, president of the Shanghai Institutes for International Studies, gets together with his brother, Yang Jiechi, China's minister of foreign affairs, they don't talk strategy or politics. "We talk about our grandfather," he says, with a smile.

We're sitting in a conference room at SIIS, though, and Yang Jiemian is talking strategy with a few visiting journalists. I ask Dr. Yang about China's view of US policy in the Middle East and central Asia. What, exactly, is his opinion of the notion that the United States is seeking to control that crucial region, including its oil and natural gas reserves, as part of a strategy of containing China? President Obama has just left Shanghai, the sprawling city of 19 million people, and he told China that the United States does not want to contain or limit China's influence in Asia or the world. Yet the United States and China don't always agree on Iran, Afghanistan, and other questions.

"There might be a slight difference of understanding between our two cultures, our two languages," says Yang, who is flanked by a team of strategists and area specialists. ""When America talks about strategy, it implies military, security, confrontation. In China, we have a much broader view of the idea of 'strategy.' We mean something that is long-term and systematic."

Is he concerned about the idea of US hegemony in the Middle East? Could it be a detriment to China, which is excruciatingly dependent on that part of the world for its energy? "If you ask different people in China, you will get different answers," he says. "Personally, I'm concerned about the possibility that these things could be part of a plan to 'contain' China." But, he adds, China's view is to work cooperatively with all countries in the region, and with the United States, to deal with what he calls a critical transition that the countries of central Asia and the Middle East need to make.

On Iran, Yang made it clear that, despite his pleas, Obama isn't likely to get much support from Beijing over confrontation and sanctions against Iran if the nuclear talks don't move quickly. "China and the United States have similar views on some issues regarding Iran, and we have some differences," he says. He points out that China has supported limited, targeted sanctions against Iran at the UN Security Council in recent years, and he notes that China and the US both support the strengthening of the Nuclear Nonproliferation Treaty. "We will work together to persuade Iran to become part of the mainstream of the world community," he says. "But China supports Iran's right to the peaceful use of nuclear energy, and we oppose a military solution to the problem." Adds a colleague, "Most of us believe that Iran's nuclear program is for peaceful uses."

In a separate conversation, an expert from another thinktank says that Iran's negotiations with the P5 + 1, including China and the United States, may go on for a long time. "The important word is patience," he says. "Not sanctions." The talks are just starting. When I tell him that Obama is under pressure from neoconservatives and hawks in Congress to end the talks quickly if there is no immediate result, he scoffs. "We must approach Iran with patience. It is not just a question of months, but perhaps of years. And perhaps, in two or three years, the leaders of Iran will change." In that, he is echoing the notion of some US and Israeli diplomats with whom I've talked, who suggest that the political turmoil in Iran means that the "political clock" in Iran is ticking faster than the "nuclear clock." Iran, US intelligence believes, is several years away from being able to build a nuclear bomb, if that is indeed Tehran's intention.

China, overwhelmingly concerned about economic growth and domestic political stability, is worried that instability in the Persian Gulf and Central Asia, including Afghanistan, could threaten China's energy lifeline and undermine China's surging economy.

What's true of Iran is also true of the war in Afghanistan, China believes. Wang Xiaoshu is vice president of the Shanghai Association for Friendship with Foreign Countries, a kind of "foreign minister" for the city of Shanghai. The US intervention in Afghanistan is "not wise," he says, adding that no country has successfully invaded Afghanistan in centuries and that NATO cannot solve the problem militarily. He stresses that because of the US invasion and the current stalemate, the situation in Afghanistan and Pakistan is very dangerous. "China's interest is stability in the region, and a crisis there means that the entire region could become inflamed," says Wang.

Yang, of SIIS, expresses concern over Obama's turn from Iraq to "AfPak." "It is natural for us to think that there is now a US and NATO presence at China's Western border." (Afghanistan and China share a border in China's far west.) "We hope," he says, "that the United States respects China's interests." In conversations, though, the Chinese officials and experts seem to believe that, in essence, Afghanistan is America's mess and that there is little or nothing that China can do to help the United States clean it up.

That's unfortunate, because under the right circumstances China might be able to help convince Pakistan, China's ally, to reign in the Afghan Taliban and brings the Taliban to the negotiating table. But that, of course, won't work unless Obama signals that he's prepared to draw down US forces there. As long as the United States is escalating the war, China's isn't going to providing any help. It's our quagmire, not theirs.

Like this article? Try 4 issues of The Nation at home (and online) FREE.

SIMI VALLEY, Calif. – A 28-year-old clerk at a Christian bookstore in Simi Valley has been arrested on charges of peeping at customers in the restroom with a video camera. Police said the man was cited and released on suspicion of peeping by means of an electronic device Sunday after a customer spotted the device hidden among boxes in the corner of the bathroom of the Family Christian Book Store.
The 40-year-old woman and her husband called police to report the suspiciously placed camera.
Sgt. Dwight Thompson said the recording shows the suspect hiding the video camera in the bathroom because it was taping as he positioned it.
Thompson says investigators believe the incident was isolated because the victim and the suspect are the only people seen on the video.

However, the remaining vast tracts of unsettled land were often used as a commons, or, in the American west, "open range." As degradation of habitat developed due to overgrazing and a tragedy of the commons situation arose, common areas began to either be allocated to individual landowners via mechanisms such as the Homestead Act and Desert Land Act and fenced in, or, if kept in public hands, leased to individual users for limited purposes, with fences built to separate tracts of public and private land.

The "open range" tradition of requiring landowners to fence out unwanted livestock was dominant in most of the rural west until very late in the 20th century, and even today, a few isolated regions of the west still have open range statutes on the books. Today, across the nation, each state is free to develop its own laws regarding fences, but in most cases for both rural and urban property owners, the laws are designed to require adjacent landowners to share the responsibility for maintaining a common boundary fenceline, and the fence is generally constructed on the surveyed property line as precisely as possible.

http://www.vikingfence.com/dallas-fort-worth-fence-experts