Minister Of Finance Quotes

In 1891 the Brazilian Minister of Finance decreed the abolition of history; he ordered the destruction of every document which dealt in any way with slavery or the slave trade; a nation-wide burning of the books.

Fortune does not change men, it unmasks them. —SUZANNE NECKER, WIFE OF JACQUES NECKER, MINISTER OF FINANCE

You must be able to communicate properly with the people you want to minister to

How to build and fund a fair and just world isn’t only a question for the key men and key women who work in business and finance and dine with prime ministers in Davos. Most important, it’s a question for you.

Pope Benedict XVI was the first to predict the crisis in the global financial system…Italian Finance Minister Giulio Tremonti said. “The prediction that an undisciplined economy would collapse by its own rules can be found” in an article written by Cardinal Joseph Ratzinger [in 1985], Tremonti said yesterday at Milan’s Cattolica University. —Bloomberg News, November 20, 2008

To fully carry out your purpose as believers, you have to discover where the people you want to minister to are

When there is an agreement between heaven and earth, everything shifts toward godliness.

God is raising up individuals who will carry the full manifestation of his desire. These people will take a leap of faith, in the hope that everything they invest into will prosper and with the goal of delivering to Jesus his great reward.

You have to discover the needs of the people you want to minister to

finance minister is like the numeral zero. Its power depends on the number you place in front of it. The success of a finance minister depends on the support of the prime minister.

Pope Benedict XVI was the first to predict the crisis in the global financial system…Italian Finance Minister Giulio Tremonti said.

Beheading a Queen had not alarmed the populace as much as appointing one Finance Minister would.

You are of course right, Yanis. These targets that they insist on can’t work. But, you must understand that we have put too much into this programme. We cannot go back on it. Your credibility depends on accepting and working within this programme.2 So, there I had it. The head of the IMF was telling the finance minister of a bankrupt government that the policies imposed upon his country couldn’t work. Not that it would be hard to make them work. Not that the probability of them working was low. No, she was acknowledging that, come hell or high water, they couldn’t work. With

There’s a rumor it seems involving the finance minister. He’s supposed to resign any time now,” she said. “Some kind of scandal about a misconstrued comment. He made a comment about the economy that may have been misconstrued. The whole country is analyzing the grammar and syntax of this comment. Or it wasn’t even what he said. It was when he paused. They are trying to construe the meaning of the pause. It could be deeper, even, than grammar. It could be breathing.

Pope Benedict XVI was the first to predict the crisis in the global financial system… Italian Finance Minister Giulio Tremonti said. “The prediction that an undisciplined economy would collapse by its own rules can be found” in an article written by Cardinal Joseph Ratzinger

To Portsmouth the Russians sent Sergey Witte, generally regarded as their ablest political leader and a staunch opponent of the war, who had been the tsar’s minister of finance. It was a curious choice, in that Witte was detested by both the tsar and the tsaritsa, but it proved to be a brilliant one for Russia. Another Russian of German origin, he was considered by the imperial court to be vulgar, cynical, arrogant, boastful, and totally lacking in the modern-day quality of charisma. But on arrival in the United States he set out shamelessly to woo American public opinion, ostentatiously flattering Roosevelt.

Rouvier was the Finance Minister; I knew him by sight, although I had not yet met him. He was not widely liked. Apart from the whiff of indecency that Lucien referred to, he was also rumoured to be less than straightforward in his dealings with his fellow men. To put it another way, he was devious even by the standards of politicians; a long and successful career awaited him.

It may be remarked in passing that success is an ugly thing. Men are deceived by its false resemblances to merit. To the crowd, success ears almost the features of true mastery, and the greatest dupe of this counterfeit talent is History. Juvenal and Tacitus alone mistrust it. In these days an almost official philosophy has come to dwell in the house of Success, wear its livery, receive callers in its ante-chamber. Success in principle and for its own sake. Prosperity presupposes ability. Win a lottery-prize and you are a clever man. Winners are adulated. To be born with a caul is everything; luck is what matters. Be fortunate and you will be thought great. With a handful of tremendous exceptions which constitute the glory of a century, the popular esteem is singularly short-sighted. Gilt is as good as gold. No harm in being a chance arrival provided you arrive. The populace is an aged Narcissus which worships itself and applauds the commonplace. The tremendous qualities of Moses, an Aeschylus, a Dante, a Michelangelo or a Napoleon are readily ascribed by the multitude to any man, in any sphere, who has got what he set out to get - the notary who becomes a deputy, the hack playwright who produces a mock-Corneille, the eunuch who acquires a harem, the journeyman-general who by accident wins the decisive battle of an epoch. The profiteer who supplies the army of the Sambre-et-Meuse with boot-soles of cardboard and earns himself an income of four hundred thousand a year; the huckster who espouses usury and brings her to bed of seven or eight millions; the preacher who becomes bishop by loudly braying; the bailiff of a great estate who so enriches himself that on retirement he is made Minister of Finance - all this is what men call genius, just as they call a painted face beauty and a richly attired figure majesty. The confound the brilliance of the firmament with the star-shaped footprints of a duck in the mud.

Britain, however, under Prime Minister Chamberlain, built up Hitler, granting to him in haste everything that had for a decade been refused to the German Republic - the remilitarization of the Rhineland, the Nazi-terrorized plebiscite in the Saar, German re-armament, naval expansion, the Hitler-Mussolini intervention in Spain. British finance, which had strangled German democracy by demanding impossible reparations, helped Hitler with investments and loans. Every intelligent world citizen knew that these favors were given to Hitler because British Tories saw in him their 'strong-arm gangster' against the Soviets.

The moment American bankers stop lending dollars to Argentina, the country is unable to refinance its mountain of dollar debt. Again, Greece is similar. Even though it has the same currency as Germany, the euro, the chronic Greek trade deficit with Germany translates into a constant flow of loaned euros from Germany to Greece so that the Greeks can keep buying more and more German goods. The slightest interruption in the flow of new loans from the surplus country to the deficit country causes the whole house of cards to collapse. This is when the IMF steps in. Its personnel fly into Buenos Aires or Athens, take black limousines to the finance minister’s office and state their terms: we shall lend you the missing dollars or euros on condition that you impoverish your people and sell the family silver to our mates, the oligarchs of this country and the world. Or words to that effect. That’s when TV screens fill with images of angry, and often hungry, demonstrators in Buenos Aires or Athens. Time and again history has shown that the periodic economic recessions that result from trade imbalances poison the deficit country’s democracy, incite contempt for its people in the surplus country, which then prompts xenophobia in the deficit country. Simply put, sustained trade deficits – and surpluses, their mirror image – never end well.

He thought the sovereignty of the states only enfeebled the union. “The fundamental defect is a want of power in Congress,” he declared. He favored granting Congress supreme power in war, peace, trade, finance, and foreign affairs. Instead of bickering congressional boards, he wanted strong executives and endorsed single ministers for war, foreign affairs, finance, and the navy: “There is always more decision, more dispatch, more secrecy, more responsibility where single men than when bodies are concerned. By a plan of this kind, we should blend the advantages of a monarchy and of a republic in a happy and beneficial union.” Hamilton was especially intent upon subjecting all military forces to centralized congressional control:

Sometimes he wondered if it wasn’t all a giant con, the gaggle of letters after his name, the dinners with Angela Merkel and Narendra Modi, the notes from Gordon Brown and Larry Summers. They were like those fake Oscar statues bought at ‘World’s Greatest Photocopier’ or ‘Best Lightbulb Changer in the Galaxy.’ When he died only his writing would remain, until it was rendered obsolete when oil and coal ran out and the species established its first settlement on Mars. Professor Chandra was the foremost trade economist in the world, could phone any finance minister in any country at any time and have them take his call. And yet, what if he had only convinced himself that the world envied him? What if, in reality, they felt sorry for him with his swollen ego and his Savile Row suits and his sculpted tri-continental accent?

In January 2016, KPMG issued a public statement after the ‘considerable exposure’ its report had received, which, according to KPMG, should not have happened ‘as the work was being conducted under strict rules of confidentiality which were clearly articulated in our letter of engagement as well as in our findings’.23 According to the statement, KPMG submitted a number of drafts to SARS on which they received feedback and their last report was submitted to SARS on 4 December 2015.24 ‘Our mandate was to undertake a documentary review and did not include interviewing individuals named in the report, nor were they given sight of our findings by us.’25 The KPMG report, which had cost the state R23 million, was therefore not a comprehensive forensic investigation but merely a ‘documentary review’. I also wonder how they could claim they didn’t interview anyone named in the report, when I met with the KPMG team on two occasions, at their request. The report contains sweeping statements, is factually incorrect and there is little or no substantiating evidence in too many instances to mention here. The following examples should give the reader an idea, though, of how taxpayers’ money was spent on a KPMG ‘investigation’. Take, for instance, the following finding: ‘We found no evidence indicating that the Minister of Finance, at the time, new about the existence of the Unit in SARS.’26 Firstly, the word ‘new’ means something entirely different from the word ‘knew’. Secondly, since that ‘unit’ was established there have been three ministers of finance and three deputy ministers and two SARS commissioners and deputy commissioners. Which particular minister was being referred to here, and why leave out the deputy ministers and commissioners?

Hitler, then, as his future Reichsbank president and Minister of Economics says, was beginning to see the men in Germany who had the money, and he was telling them more or less what they wanted to hear. The party needed large sums to finance election campaigns, pay the bill for its widespread and intensified propaganda, meet the payroll of hundreds of full-time officials and maintain the private armies of the S.A. and the S.S., which by the end of 1930 numbered more than 100,000 men—a larger force than the Reichswehr. The businessmen and the bankers were not the only financial sources—the, party raised sizable sums from dues, assessments, collections and the sale of party newspapers, books and periodicals—but they were the largest. And the more money they gave the Nazis, the less they would have for the other conservative parties which they had been supporting hitherto.

One can hardly fault China for seizing on a great bargain, but for Zambia, the auctioning off of its most lucrative economic resources at fire-sale prices constituted another big stroke of bad national luck. Copper prices were still depressed and the government’s state of near bankruptcy at the time meant that Zambia had little negotiating power. Edith Nawakwi, who was the Zambian finance minister at the time of the sale, said that the country was pressured by its more traditional partners to accept this pittance. “We were told by advisers, who included the International Monetary Fund and the World Bank, that … for the next twenty years, Zambian copper would not make a profit. [Conversely, if we privatized] we would be able to access debt relief, and this was a huge carrot in front of us—like waving medicine in front of a dying woman. We had no option [but to go ahead].” The

Because culture is a matter of ethical habit, it changes very slowly—much more slowly than ideas. When the Berlin Wall was dismantled and communism crumbled in 1989-1990, the governing ideology in Eastern Europe and the Soviet Union changed overnight from Marxism-Leninism to markets and democracy. Similarly, in some Latin American countries, statist or nationalist economic ideologies like import substitution were wiped away in less than a decade by the accession to power of a new president or finance minister. What cannot change nearly as quickly is culture. The experience of many former communist societies is that communism created many habits—excessive dependence on the state, leading to an absence of entrepreneurial energy, an inability to compromise, and a disinclination to cooperate voluntarily in groups like companies or political parties—that have greatly slowed the consolidation of either democracy or a market economy. People in these societies may have given their intellectual assent to the replacement of communism with democracy and capitalism by voting for “democratic” reformers, but they do not have the social habits necessary to make either work.

I was in a terrible quandary. On the one hand, I was convinced that unilateral withdrawals would lead to the creation of a Hamas terrorist enclave that would eventually endanger all of Israel. On the other, I knew that given the public mood and the incredible mobilization of the press, Sharon was guaranteed the votes to carry out his plan, even if I resigned from the government and opposed him. From purely personal considerations, the thing to do was to resign. I could not be part of a government that would endanger Israel’s security so irresponsibly. Yet there was another side to this. If I left the position of finance minister prematurely, Israel’s economic revolution would stop dead in its tracks, perhaps never to be resumed. I decided to adopt a strategy of staying on as finance minister for as long as I could, delaying my resignation to the last possible moment. At the same time I would try to delay the Gaza Disengagement Plan from within the government by leading an effort to minimize its scale and maximize the security arrangements we would get in return. Simultaneously, I would push like mad to get dozens of structural economic reforms passed to change Israel’s economy from a semi-socialist to a capitalist one.

He nodded yes. I acquiesced. Immediately, I was “sucked” out of my body and was taken up in the spirit. When I came into the presence of Jesus, He was smiling and happy to see me again, but no more than I. The Lord began to show me the ways that He would confirm and release me to activate the angel of provision He had assigned to me earlier. Somehow I understood that the time was fast approaching for me to begin to employ this angel in a greater degree. When this encounter was over, I returned to my tiny prayer room with a sovereign knowledge that some things were about to drastically change in my life. I had an understanding that the angel of provision would become very important to these upcoming events. In hindsight, I understand that the Lord was preparing me to take the next step of our journey and move me toward my personal metamorphosis. He was preparing me to go to the next level pertaining to angelic ministry and understanding how to work with God’s angels. The Lord is in the midst of releasing many angels of provision into the realm of earth at this hour. I believe that many people will be assigned angels of provision. These angels will work with you to release finances that will allow you to complete the things that are on your heart. For some it will be evangelism. For others it will be ministering to widows and orphans. Whatever God has placed upon your heart, He can empower angelic ministry to release the provision to accomplish the task. You can access this area of angelic ministry. You do not need to be a superstar or person of great faith. These angels are going to be released to ordinary people. Let’s shift our focus to Africa, and look at how Jesus is actually releasing angels to impact the earth on the African continent.

When Robert Livingston, one of the American plenipotentiaries, asked the French negotiators precisely where the Purchase territories extended north-westwards, since very few Europeans, let alone cartographers, had ever set foot there, he was told that they included whatever France had bought off Spain in 1800, but beyond that they simply didn’t know. ‘If an obscurity did not already exist,’ Napoleon advised, ‘it would perhaps be a good policy to put one there.’98 The deal was done after nearly three weeks of tough haggling in Paris with Livingston and his fellow negotiator James Monroe, all conducted against the backdrop of the deteriorating situation over Amiens, and was concluded only days before the resumption of war. The financing was arranged via the Anglo-Dutch merchant banks Barings Brothers and Hopes, which in effect bought Louisiana from France and sold it on to the United States for $11.25 million of 6 per cent American bonds, meaning that the American government did not have to provide the capital immediately.99 As a result, Barings were paying Napoleon 2 million francs a month even when Britain was at war with France. When the prime minister, Henry Addington, asked the bank to cease the remittances Barings agreed, but Hopes, based on the continent, continued to pay and were backed by Barings – so Napoleon got his money and Barings and Hopes made nearly $3 million from the deal. ‘We have lived long,’ said Livingston when the deal was concluded, ‘but this is the noblest work of our whole lives. The treaty which we have just signed has not been obtained by art or dictated by force; equally advantageous to the two contracting parties, it will change vast solitudes into flourishing districts. From this day the United States take their place among the powers of first rank.

Israel was ahead of the curve, seemingly able to bring the disease under control while others could not. It was then that I made a cardinal mistake. Responding to public pressure, the government lifted restrictions on public gatherings, restaurants, bars, eateries, large parks, swimming pools, and public transportation too quickly. To make matters worse, I gave a press conference in which I thanked Israel’s citizens for their cooperation and then added, “We want to help the economy and ease your lives, to make it possible for you to get out, return to normalcy. Go get a cup of coffee, a glass of beer, have fun.”3 The public did just that and the infection rate soon began to rise again. “Prime Minister, are we out of it?” I was asked by my staff. “Of course not,” I answered. “As long as there’s even one infected person around, the disease will reappear and again spread exponentially.” “So what should we do?” “You ever play an accordion?” I asked. “That’s what we’ll do. We’ll open up and close down the country, depending on the infection rate and our hospitals’ ability to handle the severely ill, until we can get this damn thing under control.” The “accordion policy” was an attempt to strike a balance between keeping the hospitals from crashing and keeping businesses from collapsing. We shelled out billions of shekels to help small businesses, employers, and laid-off workers. This largesse was frowned upon by those who had previously supported my tight fiscal policies. Two prominent officials in the Finance Ministry unabashedly briefed reporters against the government’s economic aid policy. “Prime Minister Netanyahu is working against Finance Minister Netanyahu,” carped my critics. Not quite. Unlike in previous economic crises, the world was awash with cheap credit. The cost of an economic collapse from a general health breakdown would be far greater than the interest payments we would have to make to keep business alive.

Construction finally began that winter, and by early 1974 Syncrude’s Mildred Lake site bustled with 1,500 construction workers. But the deal remained tentative as cost estimates grew beyond the initial $1.5 billion to $2 billion or more and the federal government’s new budget arrived with punitive new taxes for oil and gas exports. Then, in the first week of December, one of the Syncrude partners, Atlantic Richfield, summarily quit the consortium, leaving a 30 percent hole in its financing. A mad scramble ensued in search of a solution. Phone calls pinged back and forth between government officials in Edmonton and Ottawa. Finally, on the morning of February 3, 1975, executives from the Syn-crude partner companies and cabinet ministers from the Alberta, Ontario and federal governments met without fanfare and outside the media’s brightest spotlights at an airport hotel in Winnipeg to negotiate a deal to save the project. Lougheed and Ontario premier Bill Davis both attended, along with their energy ministers. Federal mines minister Donald Macdonald represented Pierre Trudeau’s government, accompanied by Trudeau’s ambitious Treasury Board president, Jean Chrétien. Macdonald and Davis, both Upper Canadian patricians in the classic mould, were put off by Lougheed’s blunt style. By midday, the Albertans were convinced Macdonald would not be willing to compromise enough to reach a deal. Rumours in Lougheed’s camp after the fact had it that over lunch, Chrétien persuaded the mines minister to accept the offer on the table. Two days later, Chrétien rose in the House of Commons to announce that the federal government would be taking a 15 percent equity stake in the Syn-crude project, with Alberta owning 10 percent and Ontario the remaining 5 percent. In the coming years, it would be Lougheed, with his steadfast support and multimillion-dollar investments in SAGD, who would be seen as the Patch’s great public sector champion. But it was Chrétien, “the little guy from Shawinigan,” whose backroom deal-making skills had saved Syncrude

When I spoke to you here the last time, my old party comrades, I did so fully conscious of victory as hardly a mortal has been able to do before me. In spite of this, a concern weighed heavily on me. It was clear to me that, ultimately, behind this war was that incendiary who has always lived off the quarrels of nations: the international Jew. I would no longer have been a National Socialist had I ever distanced myself from this realization. We followed his traces over many years. In this Reich, probably for the first time, we scientifically resolved this problem for all time, according to plan, and really understood the words of a great Jew who said that the racial question was the key to world history. Therefore, we knew quite well-above all, I knew-that the driving force behind these occurrences was the Jew. And that, as always in history, there were blockheads ready to stand up for him: partly spineless, paid characters, partly people who want to make deals and, at no time, flinch from having blood spilled for these deals. I have come to know these Jews as the incendiaries of the world. After all, in the previous years, you saw how they slowly poisoned the people via the press, radio, film, and theater. You saw how this poisoning continued. You saw how their finances, their money transactions, had to work in this sense. And, in the first days of the war, certain Englishmen-all of them shareholders in the armament industry-said it openly: “The war must last three years at least. It will not and must not end before three years.”-That is what they said. That was only natural, since their capital was tied up and they could not hope to secure an amortization in less than three years. Certainly, my party comrades, for us National Socialists, this almost defies comprehension. But that is how things are in the democratic world. You can be prime minister or minister of war and, at the same time, own portfolios of countless shares in the armament industry. Interests are explained that way. We once came to know this danger as the driving force in our domestic struggle. We had this black-red-golden coalition in front of us; this mixture of hypocrisy and abuse of religion on the one hand, and financial interests on the other; and, finally, their truly Jewish-Marxist goals. We completely finished off this coalition at home in a hard struggle. Now, we stand facing this enemy abroad. He inspired this international coalition against the German Volk and the German Reich. First, he used Poland as a dummy, and later pressed France, Belgium, Holland, and Norway to serve him. From the start, England was a driving force here. Understandably, the power which would one day confront us is most clearly ruled by this Jewish spirit: the Soviet Union. It happens to be the greatest servant of Jewry. Time meanwhile has proved what we National Socialists maintained for many years: it is truly a state in which the whole national intelligentsia has been slaughtered, and where only spiritless, forcibly proletarianized subhumans remain. Above them, there is the gigantic organization of the Jewish commissars, that is, established slaveowners. Frequently people wondered whether, in the long run, nationalist tendencies would not be victorious there. But they completely forgot that the bearers of a conscious nationalist view no longer existed. That, in the end, the man who temporarily became the ruler of this state, is nothing other than an instrument in the hands of this almighty Jewry. If Stalin is on stage and steps in front of the curtain, then Kaganovich and all those Jews stand behind him, Jews who, in ten-thousandfold ramifications, control this mighty empire. Speech in the Löwenbräukeller Munich, November 8, 1941

Indian Express (Indian Express) - Clip This Article at Location 721 | Added on Sunday, 30 November 2014 20:28:42 Fifth column: Hope and audacity Ministers, high officials, clerks and peons now report for duty on time and are no longer to be seen taking long lunch breaks to soak in winter sunshine in Delhi’s parks. Reform is needed not just in economic matters but in every area of governance. Does the Prime Minister know how hard it is to get a passport? Tavleen Singh | 807 words At the end of six months of the Modi sarkar are we seeing signs that it is confusing efficiency with reform? I ask the question because so far there is no sign of real reform in any area of governance. And, because some of Narendra Modi’s most ardent supporters are now beginning to get worried. Last week I met a man who dedicated a whole year to helping Modi become Prime Minister and he seemed despondent. When I asked how he thought the government was doing, he said he would answer in the words of the management guru Peter Drucker, “There is nothing quite so useless as doing with great efficiency something that should not be done at all.” We can certainly not fault this government on efficiency. Ministers, high officials, clerks and peons now report for duty on time and are no longer to be seen taking long lunch breaks to soak in winter sunshine in Delhi’s parks. The Prime Minister’s Office hums with more noise and activity than we have seen in a decade but, despite this, there are no signs of the policy changes that are vital if we are to see real reform. The Planning Commission has been abolished but there are many, many other leftovers from socialist times that must go. Do we need a Ministry of Information & Broadcasting in an age when the Internet has made propaganda futile? Do we need a meddlesome University Grants Commission? Do we need the government to continue wasting our money on a hopeless airline and badly run hotels? We do not. What we do need is for the government to make policies that will convince investors that India is a safe bet once more. We do not need a new government that simply implements more efficiently bad policies that it inherited from the last government. It was because of those policies that investors fled and the economy stopped growing. Unless this changes through better policies, the jobs that the Prime Minister promises young people at election rallies will not come. So far signals are so mixed that investors continue to shy away. The Finance Minister promises to end tax terrorism but in the next breath orders tax inspectors to go forth in search of black money. Vodafone has been given temporary relief by the courts but the retroactive tax remains valid. And, although we hear that the government has grandiose plans to improve the decrepit transport systems, power stations and ports it inherited, it continues to refuse to pay those who have to build them. The infrastructure industry is owed more than Rs 1.5 lakh continued... crore in government dues and this has crippled major companies. No amount of efficiency in announcing new projects will make a difference unless old dues are cleared. Reform is needed not just in economic matters but in every area of governance. Does the Prime Minister know how hard it is to get a passport? Does he know that a police check is required even if you just want to get a few pages added to your passport? Does he know how hard it is to do routine things like registering property? Does he know that no amount of efficiency will improve healthcare services that are broken? No amount of efficiency will improve educational services that have long been in terminal decline because of bad policies and interfering officials. At the same time, the licence raj that strangles private investment in schools and colleges remains in place. Modi’s popularity with ordinary people has increased since he became Prime Minister, as we saw from his rallies in Kashmir last week, but it will not la

One of them, in 1925 the newly elected Finance Minister, Anatole de Monzie, when making his inaugural speech forthrightly declared: “Gentlemen, the treasury is empty.” It was a mistake. De Monzie survived this spark of lucidity by only a few hours; that afternoon he found himself removed from office.

What if every company strategised around a Doughnut table, asking itself: is our brand a Doughnut brand, whose core business helps to bring humanity into that safe and just space? Imagine if the G20 finance ministers—representing the world’s most powerful economies—met around a Doughnut-shaped conference table to discuss how to design a global financial system that served to bring humanity into that sweet spot. These would be world-changing conversations.

Since the cost of loyalty was going up, there was an urgent need to increase income, and that’s why the Finance Ministry ordered the peasants to pay higher taxes. Today I am free to say that it was His Unrivaled Majesty’s decision, but because the Emperor, as a gracious benefactor, could not issue vexatious or plaguing decrees, any proclamation that put a new burden on the shoulders of the people was issued in the name of some ministry. If the people could not shoulder that burden and started a rebellion, His Majesty scolded the ministry and replaced the minister—although he never did so immediately, to avoid creating the humiliating impression that the monarch allows the unbridled mob to put his Palace in order. On the contrary, when he saw the need to demonstrate monarchical supremacy he would raise the most disliked officials to higher positions, as if to say, “Get an eyeload of who’s really in charge here, of who makes the impossible possible!” His Noble Majesty asserted his force and authority by benevolently needling his subjects.

We have been controlling the price of agricultural commodities, so that a larger number of people get cheaper grains. This has affected the farmers badly. The erstwhile finance minister Arun Jaitley said that the number of people involved in farming has to reduce like in other countries. They cite the USA as an example—only 2 per cent of the people are involved in farming, why should 50 per cent of the people do it here? But our country is different. Farming alone is going to get you food. Tomorrow, if there is an even bigger crisis and we become dependent—that is what WTO [World Trade Organisation] wants—the solution is to import, as it’s cheaper. But the moment you become an importer, the prices will keep changing and there will be another crisis.

By 2006, they had created an international exemplar of interconnectedness. Estonian software engineers had not only created Skype; they were helping to build a new society, where the only rituals requiring you to show up in person and present a document were marriage, divorce, and buying property. Everything else was online—government, banking, finance, insurance, communications, broadcast and print media, the balloting for elections. Wi-Fi was strong, ever present, and free. People began to call their homeland e-Estonia. They had created the first country whose political and social architectures were framed by an internet infrastructure—and perhaps the most technologically sophisticated nation on earth. In April 2007, the authorities in Tallinn decided to move the Bronze Soldier from its pedestal to a military cemetery. Estonian patriots found it offensive, Russian nationalists came to Estonia to rally around it, and the statue became a flash point of confrontation. Russia’s foreign affairs minister, Sergey Lavrov, called the decision disgusting; he warned of serious consequences for Estonia. An angry mob of Russians ran riot in the capital. In Moscow, young thugs laid siege to the Estonian embassy and forced it to shut down. And then Putin waged political warfare in a way that made Estonia’s strength its weakness.

First, that capitalists invest in the pursuit of high returns; when and where returns go down, capital accumulation tends to go down as well. Second, that as capitalists as a class accumulate more and more capital, the productivity of capital becomes lower because there are not enough workers to work with it. In economics this is known as diminishing returns. It has a long pedigree. French economist Anne Robert Jacques Turgot, who was briefly France’s finance minister and one of the many experts who tried unsuccessfully to head off France’s headlong descent into the economic chaos that eventually precipitated the French Revolution, wrote about it in 1767.30 Karl Marx took it as a premise. As he saw it, this was why capitalism was doomed: the insatiable greed of the capitalist class in the pursuit of more and more capital will drive the return on capital into the ground (in Marxist parlance this is called the “falling rate of profit”) and precipitate the crises that eventually end capitalism.31

I think we are a democracy, but we are also an indisciplined democracy. A crisis concentrates the mind probably as nothing else. But when I became finance minister, in the very first week I said India is in the midst of a deep crisis, we are going to convert this crisis into an opportunity.

But in September 1966, the most glamourous and charismatic of the new generation of Fianna Fáil politicians, the minister for education Donogh O’Malley, suddenly announced that he was going to introduce free secondary education for all students the following year. He did not consult the minister for finance, Jack Lynch, in advance. More daringly, he did not consult the Catholic bishops. He calculated, rightly, that the measure would be so popular that both the state and the church would have to fall in line with his demarche. (He also told primary school managers to go ahead and arrange for ‘adequate sanitation and heating’ and send the bill to his department.

The result was the common agricultural policy, with prices of the main products supported at levels decided by the Council of Ministers, through variable levies on imports from outside the Community and purchase of surplus production into storage at the support level. Farmers’ incomes were bolstered by high prices paid by the consumer, together with subsidies from the Community’s taxpayers to finance the surpluses that resulted from the high prices. While this was tenable in the EEC’s early years, once the UK became a member new tensions arose. The British model of free trade had meant that prices had been much lower, so membership of the CAP meant a triple blow of: higher prices for food; high levels of British contributions to the budget because of import levies on foodstuffs; and low receipts from the budget because of the small size of its agricultural sector.

To guard against possible contagion effects on the rest of Europe, we also recommended that the Europeans construct a credible “firewall”—basically, a joint loan fund with enough heft to give capital markets confidence that in an emergency the eurozone stood behind its members’ debts. Once again, our European counterparts had other ideas. As far as the Germans, the Dutch, and many of the other eurozone members were concerned, the Greeks had brought their troubles on themselves with their shoddy governance and spendthrift ways. Although Merkel assured me that “we won’t do a Lehman” by letting Greece default, both she and her austerity-minded finance minister, Wolfgang Schäuble, appeared determined to condition any assistance on an adequate penance, despite our warnings that squeezing an already battered Greek economy too hard would be counterproductive.

My dear General, the Belgian state, will shortly issue a government loan of fifty million, France is writing one of two and a half billion, please ask Lambert to inform you of the condition of the French operation, as for the Belgian loan, leave it to me to try and get information from the ministers, but don't say anything to Lambert, if the French government loan yields 5 or 6 percent I will invest a large sum in it, if the interest is lower then I won't subscribe to it.

The provincial government has allocated Rs189 billion for the Public Sector Development Programme (PSDP) and all areas of the province would get development schemes and no area would be ignored.

The government will also receive resources from mines and minerals, and other such revenue generating departments. During the current financial year, Balochistan received its complete share from the federal government as projected in the federal budget for 2020-21.

The government has included 3,836 development schemes in the PSDP 2021-22. These include 2,285 new and 1,501 ongoing schemes. During the next financial year, 1,647 development schemes will be completed as funds have already been released for these schemes that also include those schemes which had been launched many years back. The government has allocated Rs112 billion for the ongoing development schemes while 20% development budget has been allocated for new schemes. All efforts would be made to complete development projects in time.

My nation trade: My finance Minister: My Prime Minister: Our trades: Export @ Rs150 per & then Import @ Rs 950 per

Although Britain went along with the League’s economic sanctions, it stopped short of more extreme measures, such as cutting off all supplies of oil. Prime Minister Stanley Baldwin instructed his foreign secretary, Sir Samuel Hoare, “Keep us out of the war, Sam. We are not ready for it.”25

- A specific working strategy (How we will reach them) - Finance (How much it will cost to reach them) and - Facilities (Where we will reach them) STRATEGY IMPLEMENTATION It answers the questions: where do we begin, when, and with whom? This step involves determining specific action steps, deciding our priorities, setting deadlines and allocating tasks. MINISTRY CONTINGENCIES This process answers the question: How will we handle pleasant and not so pleasant surprises that could affect the strategy? Churches need to prepare for contingencies both harmful and helpful. Potentially harmful contingencies are: heart attack during the service, a mentally deranged person worshiping with us, an accusation of 419 or sexual molestation against a minister, an HIV/AID baby in the children church, an epileptic patient in the teens church. Pleasant surprises like: large financial donations, visit of a celebrity, General overseer, a revival etc. Even the smallest contingency, helpful or harmful, if handled poorly, could ultimately hurt the growth of a church MINISTRY EVALUATION It asks the question, How are we doing? Churches that do not evaluate what they are doing and the people doing it, will struggle to improve. What gets evaluated gets done, and usually gets done well.

11 Downing Street was the official residence of the Chancellor of the Exchequer, the minister in charge of the British government’s finances. As the old saying had it, if you owe the bank ten thousand pounds, you have a problem; if you owe the bank ten million pounds, the bank has a problem; and if you owe the bank ten billion pounds, the Chancellor has a problem. The New Management took a drastic approach to dealing with problems—they simply went away, as did the skeletons of the people who created them—so Rupert was always at pains to keep Number Eleven briefed, ideally well in advance, about his more adventurous money-making initiatives.

The economics exam at Lucknow University for the bachelor of commerce (BCom) asked students to evaluate schemes launched by Modi, such as Digital India (to develop digitization throughout the country) and Startup India, or to describe job-creation schemes.86 The civil service exam went even further. In Madhya Pradesh, candidates to join the state administration were thus asked in 2016: “The Swachh Bharat campaign led by the honorable Prime Minister has a great impact on the society because 1) People understood the importance of cleanliness, and 2) People across the country like the campaign.”87 The trap was obviously only discernible to Modi supporters: both answers were correct! The nationalist tone of textbook rewriting deliberately extols ancient Indian knowledge systems over contemporary science.88 For instance, the minister of state for human resource development responsible for higher education, Satya Pal Singh, denied the validity of the theory of evolution89 and in one of his speeches claimed that it was an Indian who invented the airplane.90 The deputy chief minister of Uttar Pradesh maintained that the test-tube baby procedure had existed in ancient India because Ram’s wife, Sita, was born in an earthen pot, while the chief minister of Tripura, Biplab Kumar Deb, explained that the technologies of satellites and the internet existed in ancient India.91 In the same vein, the education minister of Rajasthan claimed that the law of gravity had been discovered in India in the seventh century.92 And along the same lines, another BJP minister—health, education, and finance minister in Assam—claimed that cancer patients were paying for their “sins.”93

(Background: Finance Minister talks about launching war on other countries) " Finance Minister should stick to crunching numbers instead of countries, first! But maybe, he is trying to recalculate the balance sheets of peace and security with receipts of explosive!

LOUIS XIV’s finance minister, Jean-Baptiste Colbert, believed that “the art of taxation consists in so plucking the goose as to obtain the largest possible amount of feathers with the smallest possible amount of hissing.

The weapons were delivered aboard the Sky Bird in mid-1992 – with two UN arms embargoes being violated by a single deal. In order to avoid detection, the shipping manifests were altered. Repeating their previous ruse, it was claimed that the shipment was intended for the Lebanese Christian militia.27 Umag, a port city in Croatia, was the real destination, with an end-user certificate provided by the Finance Minister, Martinovic.

I'd like you to see that we are interfering too drastically. WE can't just assume so completely that Azerbaijan is in the hands of dangerous men and vicious Bolsheviks. I suppose it's all in the way you see Iran. I'd like you to see that Iranians are just as serious about their politics as we are: perhaps more so. The Iranian is a vigorous individual with definite ideas about the right and wrong done to him. It's easy for these journalists to laugh at the idea of political spontaneity among the Iranians because they look on these people as dirty, stupid, childlike natives who stare open-mouthed while the wonders of the west are offered to them. …... They are not like that at all. They want proper government, the same as anybody else. They have certainly tried hard enough to get it, but they haven't had a chance. We have done a great deal to prevent them getting real government. It may shock you, but we have always wanted corrupt administrations. Since the Reuter concessions sixty years ago we have begaved like American gangsters using threats, money, and even war to extort privileges and concessions which amounted to owning the country. At one time we had complete control over the administration, over the entire wealth of the land, the banks, and the army. It's rather silly to say the Iranians are un-political when you realize how quickly we had to hand back those concessions. This country rose to a man against us. We gave in hastily, but we managed to cling desperately to our oil concessions. [MacGregor] I think you are worrying yourself unduly [Essex]. We can't be too bad an influence. We may not be reformers ourselves... but we do not fight people who are really trying to improve the country. You must admit that we did not resist the last Shah, and he certainly reformed the place as best as it could be reformed. [MacGregor] It has become a habit to pass all compliments to Reza Shah,...even though we dethroned him. All reforms and modernizations are supposed to be his idea. Yet he simply took over the power of a popular revolution which we resisted at the time. He took power as a despot and he was little better than his predecessors. These people are getting fed up with despots. They obviously want to achieve some kind of better government, particularly in Azerbaijan.… That revolt in Azerbaijan doesn't have to be a Russian idea. It is really the continuation of five or six revolutions, all of them trying to get rid of corrupt governments. This time they seen to be succeeding. Our idea is to stop it.... Every level of government in Iran is corrupt from top to bottom, including the court, the police, and the parliament. Government is organized corruption. The ministers prey on the population like buzzards; they arragne taxes, laws, finances, famines; everything to the purpose of making money. The last Shah might have wiped out some of it; but that meant he became the biggest grafter of them all. He controlled the little fellows, and took the best of everything for himself. By the end of his rule he owned about a fifth of this entire country. He is not the hero we think he is, and his police regime was as brutal as anything the Germans had. Though we co-operated with him, he was a little tougher than the others and he always held out for more. Once, he threatened to wipe out our oil concession but we brought him off. He could always be bought off, like all the other grafters.

The new GST: A halfway house In spite of all the favourable features of the GST, it introduces the anomaly of having an origin-based tax on interstate trade he proposed GST would be a single levy. 1141 words From a roadblock during the UPA regime, the incessant efforts of the BJP government have finally paved way for the introduction of the goods and services tax (GST). This would, no doubt, be a major reform in the existing indirect tax system of the country. With a view to introducing the GST, Union finance minister Arun Jaitley has introduced the Constitution (122nd Amendment) Bill 2014 in Parliament. The new tax would be implemented from April 1, 2016. Both the government and the taxpayers will have enough time to understand the implications of the new tax and its administrative nuances. Unlike the 119th Amendment Bill, which lapsed with the dissolution of the previous Lok Sabha, the new Bill will hopefully see the light of the day as it takes into account the objections of the state governments regarding buoyancy of the tax and the autonomy of the states. It proposes setting up of the GST Council, which will be a joint forum of the Centre and the states. This council would function under the chairmanship of the Union finance minister with all the state finance ministers as its members. It will make recommendations to the Union and the states on the taxes, cesses and surcharges levied by the Union, the states and the local bodies, which may be subsumed in the GST; the rates including floor rates with bands of goods and services tax; any special rate or rates for a specified period to raise additional resources during any natural calamity or disaster etc. However, all the recommendations will have to be supported by not less than three-fourth of the weighted votes—the Centre having one-third votes and the states having two-third votes. Thus, no change can be implemented without the consent of both the Centre and the states. The proposed GST would be a single levy. It would aim at creating an integrated national market for goods and services by replacing the plethora of indirect taxes levied by the Centre and the states. While central taxes to be subsumed include central excise duty (CenVAT), additional excise duties, service tax, additional customs duty (CVD) and special additional duty of customs (SAD), the state taxes that fall in this category include VAT/sales tax, entertainment tax, octroi, entry tax, purchase tax and luxury tax. Therefore, all taxes on goods and services, except alcoholic liquor for human consumption, will be brought under the purview of the GST. Irrespective of whether we currently levy GST on these items or not, it is important to bring these items under the Constitution Amendment Bill because the exclusion of these items from the GST does not provide any flexibility to levy GST on these items in the future. Any change in the future would then require another Constitutional Amendment. From a futuristic approach, it is prudent not to confine the scope of the tax under the bindings of the Constitution. The Constitution should demarcate the broad areas of taxing powers as has been the case with sales tax and Union excise duty in the past. Currently, the rationale of exclusion of these commodities from the purview of the GST is solely based on revenue considerations. No other considerations of tax policy or tax administration have gone into excluding petroleum products from the purview of the GST. However, the long-term perspective of a rational tax policy for the GST shows that, at present, these taxes constitute more than half of the retail prices of motor fuel. In a scenario where motor fuel prices are deregulated, the taxation policy would have to be flexible and linked to the global crude oil prices to ensure that prices are held stable and less pressure exerted on the economy during the increasing price trends. The trend of taxation of motor fuel all over the world suggests that these items

The agency had set up fake local internet cafes equipped with key-logging software. This allowed GCHQ to hack delegates’ passwords, which could be exploited later. GCHQ also penetrated their BlackBerrys to monitor email messages and phone calls. A team of 45 analysts kept a real-time log of who phoned whom during the summit. Turkey’s finance minister and 15 other members of his delegation were among the targets. This had, of course, nothing whatever to do with terrorism. The

I know what you’re thinking,” said David Brin, the finance minister, coming up to me. “That all this is a shocking waste of money.

Some of the greatest mantles and anointings to ever be released on the earth are still available. These are not just for the ministry world. God wants to pour out anointing in every field known to humankind, bringing him glory and furthering his reward.

Change the value system of the people you are ministering to

Find out the needs of the people you are ministering to and help them overcome their fears

Taking her cue from the points I had made, Christine seconded my appeals for debt relief and lower tax rates as prerequisites for a Greek recovery. Then she addressed me with calm and gentle honesty: You are of course right, Yanis. These targets that they insist on can’t work. But, you must understand that we have put too much into this programme. We cannot go back on it. Your credibility depends on accepting and working within this programme.2 So, there I had it. The head of the IMF was telling the finance minister of a bankrupt government that the policies imposed upon his country couldn’t work. Not that it would be hard to make them work. Not that the probability of them working was low. No, she was acknowledging that, come hell or high water, they couldn’t work. With

Finance Minister Mike de Jong steered government into its fifth straight year of austerity measures and cutbacks. The Liberals had been taking an axe to government spending since 2009, cutting millions. They’d reduced the advertising budget. Banned all but essential travel. Slashed office expenses. Cancelled service contracts. Fired some government employees. Instituted a hiring freeze within the civil service. Cracked down on compensation and bonuses for Crown corporation executives. And sold more than one hundred surplus government properties and assets. Clark would add to that a sweeping “core review” of the entire government, designed to hunt down red tape, eliminate duplication, and remove barriers to economic growth and job creation.

The UPA government, instead of implementing the Supreme Court order—which would have been the defining indicator of its bona fides in retrieving the black money looted from the people of India— instead demanded a recall of the order. This establishes its complete mala fide, connivance and conspiracy, and confirms that it has no intention of taking any substantive steps to recover the black money stashed away abroad, or take any serious action to combat this grievous economic crime impoverishing our nation—the 21st century version of UPA imperialism. The nation should be informed that no investigation has taken place regarding the issues before it since the Supreme Court judgement, but the finance minister chose to conceal these extremely pertinent facts in his Paper. The White Paper coyly discussed the dimensions of black money stashed away abroad by quoting statistics that are more than a decade old, saying that these are being researched upon by three agencies whose report is expected in September 2012. From this it would appear that the government had no knowledge of the quantum of black money lying abroad. One wonders why the government presented the paper at this stage. Interestingly, the Paper officially disclosed a figure regarding Indian accounts held with Swiss banks, at around only US $213 billion (as against $88 billion projected by the International Monetary Fund, and $213.2 billion by GFI), down 60% between 2006 and 2010. A reasonable conclusion that can be drawn is that black money holders, in anticipation of international and national public pressure (not governmental) transferred their money to other safe havens, the safest, it is said, being India. The last two years have seen several enabling statutes and mechanisms to stealthily repatriate the ill-gotten wealth back to India. I am also given to understand that there is evidence of a huge disparity between export figures, particularly of metals quoted by the government, and actual exports through data available from independent sources. The same applies to figures regarding FIIs. The game is clear. Use every government tool and instrument available to repatriate the money to India, without disclosure, culpability or punishment. There must be ways, and ways that we can never fathom or document, but the black money holders control legislation, either through being important politicians, or big businesses, who can buy safe passage, necessary loopholes and escape routes through statute or legislation. The finance minister through his negligence and active cooperation with the criminals allowed the stolen money to be removed from the accounts in which it was held and only a small fraction now remains, which too he is determined to place beyond the reach of the people of India who are its legitimate owners.

Promotions and appointments are controlled by a rite of passage in the civil service called empanelment, which decides whether civil servants, predominantly officers of the IAS, can serve in Government of India as joint secretaries, additional secretaries and secretaries. Though officially the selection is done by a committee chaired by the cabinet secretary and comprising the home secretary, secretary personnel, and principal secretary to prime minister, and then approved by the Appointments Committee of the Cabinet, no one really knows how it is actually done. The rules are changed whenever required to assist a political favourite as files apparently fly between South Block and 10 Janpath. Pencil entries are made deleting and adding candidates as per the dictates of the powerful, and the minutes of the original selection committee are signed only after agreements between the political masters, business houses and captive or powerful bureaucrats are reached. These proceedings are then smoothly approved by the Appointments Committee of the Cabinet comprising the home minister and prime minister. The same controlling clique proceeds to appoint the convenient bureaucrat to high profile, lucrative ministries such as defence, home, finance, civil aviation, telecommunication, petroleum, urban development, steel etc. while officers without clout are consigned to residual ministries, normally the social sector ones. Potential for commissions and kickbacks determine which ministries must have captive bureaucrats, and these are the ministries that the DMK has traditionally claimed. The UPA added another dimension that cemented the politician-bureaucrat nexus by decreeing informally and formally that ministers have the right of choice of their secretaries. This meant that the empanelled secretary had to do the rounds of ministries where vacancies were imminent, and solicit his case for selection, unless some higher politician or business house had already spoken for him. And it would be naive to think that such an appointment would be pro bono publico. An honest bureaucrat has nowhere to turn for redressal as the relevant fora were also clearly controlled by the same mafia. With a sense of resignation all they could do is attempt a joke, ‘the Nair you are, the higher you are’!

The nuclear deal was the crowning glory of Manmohan Singh’s first term. As Narasimha Rao’s finance minister, he had made history by opening up the economy. Now, he had made history once again, by giving India a new status as a world power.

P. C. Bhattacharya was the first non-ICS man to be appointed to the job and he had a soft ride. But in what would cause a major uproar today in Parliament and in the media, when the rupee was devalued by a huge 36 per cent in 1966, he was merely informed. The decision had been taken by Indira Gandhi in March that year when she visited the United States and met the representatives of the World Bank and IMF. But she kept it to herself till June. Even the finance minister didn’t know, let alone the poor RBI governor.

If our identity in our secular job is inconsistent with our ministry for God, we then fragment in the ways we approach daily activities in each sphere. By compartmentalizing our lives, we will not be flowing out of our spiritual core, which is dependent on him. God endowed the Hebrew culture with such complete truths about how to function without separating from oneself or other members of one’s community. The Hebrew mindset did not compartmentalize or separate one area of life from another. In fact, it taught—and in some Jewish circles still teaches—the most holistic way of living, where everything in life is connected and flows together.

If we overcome the spirit of the world in whatever occupation we choose, God will give us dominion and power—a new means to operate in a higher role than that available in the natural. God is placing those who come into agreement with heaven in roles of authority far surpassing what any mere human can give. Just as Paul observed in Ephesians 1 and 2, it is important to understand this authority so that we can overcome the dynamics of striving to achieve it, even in the midst of secular occupations.

Consider what it might look like if we were without this divine grace in the Western world. We would probably become like many third world countries held hostage in poverty and hunger. Perhaps it would take time for our economic structures to collapse, but it would become obvious to everyone that we had been divinely blessed and that this blessing was no longer available. This is why it is so important for us—especially individuals in the secular arena—to humble ourselves.

It is not in God’s nature to control us, so if we begin to work in a lesser way than we were designed to, he can only invite us into a higher place. If we do not respond to God when he draws us, then we become stumbling blocks because of our own self-centered desires. Even good Christian people can become the enemies of what God wants to accomplish: If their agenda and will do not imitate his, then they are against His. This is why it is so important to let our spirit and understanding be disciplined by God’s Word so that we can comprehend his desires and will.

It is not in God’s nature to control us, so if we begin to work in a lesser way than we were designed to, he can only invite us into a higher place. If we do not respond to God when he draws us, then we become stumbling blocks because of our own self-centered desires. Even good Christian people can become the enemies of what God wants to accomplish: If their agenda and will do not imitate his, then they are against His. This is why it is so important to let our spirit and understanding be disciplined by God’s Word so that we can comprehend his desires and will. The main reason our desires do not match those of heaven is that we are motivated by materialism and pride, which Satan loves to play off of and manipulate. We may then use the very attributes God has given us to gain a selfish status that is counterproductive.

Why do the wicked prosper?” In essence, there are many answers, but they all boil down to one common denominator: The wicked prosper because God will not control human nature. He will only invite us into his affections.

The disobedient are prospering now only in a very limited earthly economy. God, however, calls us to live in a much higher economy—that of heaven.

Why do the wicked prosper?” In essence, there are many answers, but they all boil down to one common denominator: The wicked prosper because God will not control human nature. He will only invite us into his affections. God is looking at the panorama of eternity. He is not threatened when humanity steps in his way. He gave us free will, for better or for worse. He is all-knowing and can maneuver around or break through any human dynamic in ways we do not understand. The disobedient are prospering now only in a very limited earthly economy. God, however, calls us to live in a much higher economy—that of heaven. Once you begin to prosper in heaven’s money management program, you will never covet earthly prosperity again. You will never claim justice by entreating God for your natural provisions to meet your earthly needs. Instead, you will long for even more kingdom provision, which not only satisfies earthly needs but also goes far beyond—linking you to the heartbeat of heaven.

Finance Minister Ryutaro Hashimoto, the man who had no time for Yashwant Sinha in early 1991 did visit India in late 1991 but no investment was forthcoming.

A corrupt and dynastic political party is antithetical to the rule of law and to carefully crafted constitutional checks and balances to prevent abuse of power. A tendency towards autocracy and consequent institutional subversion is inevitable with a party thus configured. The result is a prime minister bereft of real power, subservient to the dynastic head and a mute spectator to the loot and plunder of the nation’s resources; a president who is a loyal camp follower and will faithfully rubber stamp the decisions ordained by the dynasty: witness how unhesitatingly President Fakhruddin Ali Ahmed signed the Proclamation of Emergency at Mrs. Gandhi’s bidding in 1975 and ponder whether Mrs. Pratibha Patil, (besieged as she was by her co-operative sugar factory in liquidation, her co-operative bank bankrupt, and her family embroiled in the murder case of a popular intra-party rival in Jalgaon at the time of her nomination by Mrs. Sonia Gandhi), would have done otherwise; or for that matter whether President Pranab Mukherjee, whose many acts of subversion of the Constitution during the Emergency have been documented by the Shah Commission, is so radically transformed that he would now protect it; a judiciary accused of judicial overreach when it censures the government or brings its ministers to book while its inconvenient judgments are subjected to review or Presidential Reference; a CAG whose findings against the government’s decisions are vilified as being patently erroneous, in excess of jurisdiction and even motivated, although that august body, the Constituent Assembly had opined that as the guardian of the nation’s finances, the CAG was as important a Constitutional functionary as the justices of the Supreme Court; a CVC appointed despite the taint of corruption and over the protest of the leader of the Opposition, whose appointment was finally quashed by the Supreme Court; and a CBI whose only role on empirical evidence is to falsely implicate political opponents and wrongly exonerate the regime’s members and cronies.

Contrary to the mischievous remarks of some of them that he had been converted to economic liberalization after becoming finance minister, the fact is that he had always been an advocate of trade liberalization and a critic of export pessimism.

Manmohan had thought very highly of Atal ever since the mid-1990s. Apparently, Atal had sternly criticized Manmohan in the Lok Sabha when he was the finance minister. Manmohan was so taken aback that he went to submit his resignation to his boss Narasimha Rao.

The Chinese renminbi was fixed against the dollar from July of 2005 until June 2009. With a fixed exchange rate, a currency’s value is matched to the value of another single currency or to a basket of other currencies. So when a country pegs its currency to the dollar, the value of the currency rises and falls with the dollar. This action helped China survive the global financial crisis. But China removed the dollar peg after the global financial crisis ended last year. Meanwhile, Japan has also seen the value of the yen grow stronger. With the U.S. economy continuing to lag and growing fiscal uncertainty in European countries, the yen has continued to gain strength because it was the only currency that was stable. So countries like China expanded their purchases of the yen, resulting in the yen’s appreciation. As the yen continued to rise against the dollar, the Japanese government intervened in the currency market in September for the first time since March 2004. This is not the first global currency war the world has seen. In 1985, the finance ministers of West Germany, France, the U.S., Japan and the UK gathered at the Plaza Hotel in New York to sign the Plaza Accord. Under the deal, the countries agreed to bring down the U.S. dollar exchange rate in relation to the Japanese yen and German mark. As the recent currency war continues to spread around the globe, some countries are now saying that there is a need for a new Plaza Accord to stabilize the world economy and the global financial market.

allegations involve fiddling with the books of his failed 2012 election campaign, crooked financial dealing in connection with a Pakistani arms contract and assorted other transgressions. Mr. Sarkozy has repeatedly dismissed the accusations as unfounded, and prosecutors last year dropped a formal investigation into whether he had taken advantage of an octogenarian heiress, Liliane Bettencourt, to extract campaign financing. Mr. Sarkozy’s former prime minister, François Fillon, said justice must be allowed to run its course, but demanded more dignified treatment for a man who had served as France’s head of state. “As a former president of the republic,” Mr. Fillon said, “he has the right to respect.” Maïa de la Baume contributed reporting. When

allegations involve fiddling with the books of his failed 2012 election campaign, crooked financial dealing in connection with a Pakistani arms contract and assorted other transgressions. Mr. Sarkozy has repeatedly dismissed the accusations as unfounded, and prosecutors last year dropped a formal investigation into whether he had taken advantage of an octogenarian heiress, Liliane Bettencourt, to extract campaign financing. Mr. Sarkozy’s former prime minister, François Fillon, said justice must be allowed to run its course, but demanded more dignified treatment for a man who had served as France’s head of state. “As a former president of the republic,” Mr. Fillon said, “he has the right to respect.” Maïa de la Baume contributed

At the G-20 meeting in Paris in 2011, finance ministers expressed fears that U.S.-driven global inflation was threatening global stability. George Melloan was among those who made the connection between this unrest and QE. He acknowledged in the Wall Street Journal: “Probably few of the protesters in the streets connect their economic travail to Washington. But central bankers do.” To appreciate the depth of political upheaval created by the 2008 financial crisis, just tally the power shifts that occurred in its wake. In addition to the turmoil in the Middle East, 13 out of 17 European governments changed over as a result of the initial financial crisis. In the United States, the stock market panic in September 2008 reversed the slight lead of John McCain and helped sweep the far-left Barack Obama into office.

The question is whether the ECB will be able to fight low inflation by itself. Mr Draghi signalled that the central bank could only do so much when he called last week for governments in the eurozone to do more to boost growth by loosening fiscal policy and introducing structural reforms. Wolfgang Schäuble, Germany’s finance minister, told Bloomberg News this week that monetary policy had “come to the end” of its instruments, stating: “I don’t think that the ECB’s monetary policy has the instruments to fight deflation.

In April, 1926, France and the United States finally negotiated a war debt settlement at forty cents on the dollar. The [French] budget was at last fully balanced. Still the franc kept falling. By May, the exchange rate stood at over thirty to the dollar. With a currency in free-fall, prices now rising at 2% a month - over 25% a year - and the Government apparently impotent, everyone made the obvious comparison with the situation in Germany four years earlier. In fact, there was no real parallel. Germany in 1922 had lost all control of its budget deficit and in that single year expanded the money supply ten fold. By contrast, the French had largely solved their fiscal problems and its money supply was under control. The main trouble was the fear that the deep divisions between the right and left had made France ungovernable. The specter of chronic political chaos associated with revolving door governments and finance ministers was exacerbated by the uncertainty over the governments ability to fund itself given the overhang of more than $10 billion in short term debt. It was this psychology of fear, a generalized loss of nerve, that seemed to have gripped French investors and was driving the downward spiral of the franc. The risk was that international speculators, those traditional bugaboos of the Left, would create a self-fulfilling meltdown as they shorted the currency in the hope of repurchasing it later at a lower price thereby compounding the very downward trend that they were trying to exploit. It was the obverse of a bubble where excessive optimism translates into rising prices which then induces even more buying. Now excessive pessimism was translating into falling prices which were inducing even more selling. In the face of this all embracing miasma of gloom neither the politicians nor the financial establishment seemed to have any clue what to do.

Chou was more combatively challenged by the brilliant and opinionated finance minister, Morarji Desai. When the Chinese leader asked how the Indians could have allowed their soil to be used by Tibetan dissidents, Desai answered that ‘in our country everybody holds conventions; the Algerians do so and so do the Indians sometimes [against their Government]’. Then he cleverly (or perhaps mischievously) added: ‘The Chinese Prime Minister is aware that Lenin sought asylum in the UK but nobody restricted his political activities. We in India do not encourage anyone to conspire against China but we cannot prevent people from expressing their opinions. Freedom of speech is the basis of our democracy.

Conservative elites first turned to populism as a political strategy thanks to Richard Nixon. His festering resentment of the Establishment’s clubby exclusivity prepared him emotionally to reach out to the “silent majority,” with whom he shared that hostility. Nixon excoriated “our leadership class, the ministers, the college professors, and other teachers… the business leadership class… they have all really let down and become soft.” He looked forward to a new party of independent conservatism resting on a defense of traditional cultural and social norms governing race and religion and the family. It would include elements of blue-collar America estranged from their customary home in the Democratic Party. Proceeding in fits and starts, this strategic experiment proved its viability during the Reagan era, just when the businessman as populist hero was first flexing his spiritual muscles. Claiming common ground with the folkways of the “good ole boy” working class fell within the comfort zone of a rising milieu of movers and shakers and their political enablers. It was a “politics of recognition”—a rediscovery of the “forgotten man”—or what might be termed identity politics from above. Soon enough, Bill Clinton perfected the art of the faux Bubba. By that time we were living in the age of the Bubba wannabe—Ross Perot as the “simple country billionaire.” The most improbable members of the “new tycoonery” by then had mastered the art of pandering to populist sentiment. Citibank’s chairman Walter Wriston, who did yeoman work to eviscerate public oversight of the financial sector, proclaimed, “Markets are voting machines; they function by taking referenda” and gave “power to the people.” His bank plastered New York City with clever broadsides linking finance to every material craving, while simultaneously implying that such seductions were unworthy of the people and that the bank knew it. Its $1 billion “Live Richly” ad campaign included folksy homilies: what was then the world’s largest bank invited us to “open a craving account” and pointed out that “money can’t buy you happiness. But it can buy you marshmallows, which are kinda the same thing.” Cuter still and brimming with down-home family values, Citibank’s ads also reminded everybody, “He who dies with the most toys is still dead,” and that “the best table in the city is still the one with your family around it.” Yale preppie George W. Bush, in real life a man with distinctly subpar instincts for the life of the daredevil businessman, was “eating pork rinds and playing horseshoes.” His friends, maverick capitalists all, drove Range Rovers and pickup trucks, donning bib overalls as a kind of political camouflage.

From the Prime Minister, a busy politician, it is not expected that he knows all the secrets of finances and of the Minister of Finances it is only expected that he understands his budget. Both the Prime Minister and Queen are advised by members of the treasury that attend to the City. Today, these treasury members are no more than errand boys. The City gives orders to the servants of the treasury and they in turn pass the orders on to the Prime Minister. The leaders of the City tell Parliament what has to happen and where. Theoretically, England is governed by the Prime Minister and a small group of advisors, but in actuality it is the small clique of Rothschilds that rule the City and also dictate British Parliament. A lot of effort is taken to keep this image up in order to create the impression that the Prime Minister and his administration determine what happens to the country. In reality, however, they are mere puppets on strings manipulated by the immensely rich Illuminati, who really determine what happens behind the scenes.

The late Shri T.T. Krishnamachari – a great finance minister of this country – used to say that a finance minister who wanted to do something had to be aware that there were man-eaters on the streets of Delhi.

In the words of the German finance minister, Wolfgang Schaeuble, as reported by the International Herald Tribune (Castle and Erlanger 2011): ‘In recent months it has become clear: the answer to the crisis can only mean more Europe. . .Without. . . further steps toward stronger European institutions, eventually Europe will lose its effectiveness. We have to look beyond the national state.’ Other members of the Berlin government, possibly including the Chancellor herself, seem to share the view that the crisis could, paradoxically, bring the EU much closer to a political union. The crisis, they argue, cannot be resolved without a much tighter coordination of the fiscal and social policies of the members of the euro zone, even if this implies additional limits on national sovereignty. Also the leader of the opposition Social-Democratic Party, Sigmar Gabriel, is of the opinion that the crisis calls for political union.

The Warburg family is the most important ally of the Rothschilds, and the history of this family is at least equally interesting. The book The Warburgs shows that the bloodline of this family dates back to the year 1001.[28] Whilst fleeing from the Muslims, they established themselves in Spain. There they were pursued by Fernando of Aragon and Isabella of Castile and moved to Lombardy. According to the annals of the city of Warburg, in 1559, Simon von Cassel was entitled to establish himself in this city in Westphalia, and he changed his surname to Warburg. The city register proves that he was a banker and a trader. The real banking tradition was beginning to take shape when three generations later Jacob Samuel Warburg immigrated to Altona in 1668. His grandson Markus Gumprich Warburg moved to Hamburg in 1774, where his two sons founded the well-known bank Warburg & Co. in 1798. With the passage of time, this bank did business throughout the entire world. By 1814, Warburg & Co had business relations with the Rothschilds in London. According to Joseph Wechsberg in his book The Merchant Bankers, the Warburgs regarded themselves equal to the Rothschild, Oppenheimer and Mendelsohn families.[29] These families regularly met in Paris, London and Berlin. It was an unwritten rule that these families let their descendants marry amongst themselves. The Warburgs married, just like the Rothschilds, within houses (bloodlines). That’s how this family got themselves involved with the prosperous banking family Gunzberg from St. Petersburg, with the Rosenbergs from Kiev, with the Oppenheims and Goldschmidts from Germany, with the Oppenheimers from South Africa and with the Schiffs from the United States.[30] The best-known Warburgs were Max Warburg (1867-1946), Paul Warburg (1868-1932) and Felix Warburg (1871-1937). Max Warburg served his apprenticeship with the Rothschilds in London, where he asserted himself as an expert in the field of international finances. Furthermore, he occupied himself intensively with politics and, since 1903, regularly met with the German minister of finance. Max Warburg advised, at the request of monarch Bernhard von Bülow, the German emperor on financial affairs. Additionally, he was head of the secret service. Five days after the armistice of November 11, 1918 he was delegated by the German government as a peace negotiator at a peace committee in Versailles. Max Warburg was also one of the directors of the Deutsche Reichsbank and had financial importances in the war between Japan and Russia and in the Moroccan crisis of 1911. Felix Warburg was familiarized with the diamond trade by his uncle, the well-known banker Oppenheim. He married Frieda Schiff and settled in New York. By marrying Schiff’s daughter he became partner at Kuhn, Loeb & Co. Paul Warburg became acquainted with the youngest daughter of banker Salomon Loeb, Nina. It didn’t take long before they married. Paul Warburg left Germany and also became a partner with Kuhn, Loeb & Co. in New York. During the First World War he was a member of the Federal Reserve Board, and in that position he had a controlling influence on the development of American financial policies. As a financial expert, he was often consulted by the government. The Warburgs invested millions of dollars in various projects which all served one purpose: one absolute world government. That’s how the war of Japan against Russia (1904-1905) was financed by the Warburgs bank Kuhn, Loeb & Co.[31] The purpose of this war was destroying the csardom. As said before, in testimony before the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, James P. Warburg said: “We shall have a world government, whether or not we like it. The question is only whether world government

Finally, Peter Costello was one of the earliest advocates of a Canadian idea to create the G20 meetings of finance ministers and central bank governors. Kevin Rudd worked to upgrade the group to include leaders’ meetings. He was also important in designing the G20 intervention that arrested the collapse of the world economy in 2009, as Gordon Brown has attested. This is a good example of how the work of one Australian government can be built upon by another, years later. It happened to involve both sides of Australian politics; petty political vanities did not obstruct action in the national interest.

Swachh Bharat, Clean Ganga: Tax sops likely for CSR investments PTI | 296 words Finance minister Arun Jaitley is likely to provide tax incentives in Budget to encourage companies to participate in Swachh Bharat Abhiyan and Clean Ganga campaign as part of the mandatory 2% CSR spending.

Finally, policymakers had to weigh what might happen if Greece, after a default, also abandoned the euro and returned to its own currency. One reason to do so would be to regain monetary policy independence, which might help the Greek government respond to the economic crash that was likely to follow a default. But if Greece left the euro, fears that other countries might follow would no doubt increase. Even the possibility that the eurozone might break apart would inflict damage. For example, bank depositors in a country thought to be at risk of leaving the euro would worry that their euro-denominated deposits might be forcibly converted to the new, and presumably less valuable, national currency. To avoid that risk, depositors might withdraw their euros from their own country’s banks in favor of, say, German banks (which, in an era of cross-border branching, might simply mean walking a block down the street or clicking on a bank’s website). These withdrawals could quickly degenerate into a full-fledged run on the suspect country’s banks. For these reasons, finance ministers and especially central bank governors in Europe generally, if grudgingly, concluded that they would have to assist Greece. ECB president Jean-Claude Trichet, who had decried the Lehman failure, was particularly adamant on this point and sought to persuade other European policymakers.

Both Mussolini’s biographer, Margharita Sarfatti, and his Minister of Finance, Guido Jung, were Jews. When Hitler came to power, Mussolini set himself up as the European protector of the Jew and was hailed by Stefan Zweig as ‘wunderbar Mussolini’.

The talks collapsed when Yanis Varoufakis, the Greek finance minister, objected to a draft statement according to which Athens would drop its fierce opposition to prolonging its bailout. The draft, obtained by the Financial Times, said Greece would agree to a six-month “technical extension”. “This would bridge the time for Greece authorities and the eurogroup to work on a follow-up arrangement,” reads the statement.

... honor must precede honorariums.

Napoleon was in his bath, soaking in cologne-scented water, when his brothers came in to protest the decision to sell Louisiana.24 “You will have no need to lead the opposition,” Napoleon told his brothers, “for I repeat there will be no debate, for the reason that the project … conceived by me, negotiated by me, shall be ratified and executed by me, alone.25 Do you comprehend me?” “I renounce Louisiana,” Napoleon announced to finance minister Barbé-Marbois, early on the morning of Monday, April 11, 1803.26 Within hours, foreign minister Charles Maurice de Talleyrand was enquiring whether the United States would be interested in the entire territory. “It is not only New Orleans that I will cede, it is the whole colony without any reservation. I know the price of what I abandon.… I renounce it with the greatest regret. But to attempt obstinately to retain it would be folly.” Livingston knew what he had to do. “The field open to us is infinitely larger than our instructions contemplated,” Livingston told Madison, and the chance “must not be missed.”27 He and Monroe, who had arrived in Paris, negotiated a treaty giving the United States the Louisiana Territory—a landmass so vast the borders were unclear even to the buyers and the sellers—for about $15 million, or three cents an acre.28 Word

Facebook, in an annual report issued that February, threatened an even harsher version of its Australia strategy, warning that, if the E.U. went ahead, it would “likely be unable to offer a number of our most significant products and services, including Facebook and Instagram, in Europe.” Germany’s finance minister shrugged off the coercion, telling reporters that, ever since he had given up social media four years earlier, “life has been fantastic.” France’s finance minister, almost daring the company to follow through, announced, “we would live very well without Facebook.