December 15, 2008      ECrisis wants you to know that your are being lied to - a lot- consistently and deeply by this Rafael Correa government of one badly undereducated political actor whose entire life is about his own failures and his own pay back efforts, as all good manipulative narcissists. To Correa life is all about power- the power to control all around him by manipulations because he feels aggrieved and wants your affections by controlling your every facet. Of course there is a Cabinet, but well....just look at them: they are vapid cult members and/or agents of DISIP and Cuban Intelligence. You would not hire these people to run your kitchen honestly let alone run a nation. Needless to say, the foundation of any movement toward progress is trust and trusting Correa is never going to let this happen because he knows that the moment he acts honestly, he no longer has power to control you and me through his manipulative activities. He is not trustworthy- not worthy of any trust. He is a liar and he has stolen from Ecuadoreans and now from any one he can. He says he needs to do this to help the poor. This is a huge lie. Correa lies and steals....because he can and it makes him feel better when he does and he feels powerful when he can manipulate all around him. You know well this syndrome in your daily life if you are honest at all. Correa, like all addicts to manipulative living- and he is the super star masterful embodiment of manipulators- only feels good about himself when he is manipulating. And he has manipulated - and will keep right on going- everything he touches. That is what addicts to manipulative living do and as long as Ecuadoreans are not adult enough, are not  honorable and are not ethical, Correa will seduce every one he touches to live in the sewers of disgrace and dishonesty with him.
 
Do print this out and ask yourself HOW you got so far down in to the world of dirty deals and ask yourself why you did nothing to stop this:
       
"In the annals of idiotic political decisions, today's default by Ecuador has to rank pretty high. The country failed to pay a $30.6 million interest payment on its 2012 global bonds, despite the fact that it has $5.65 billion in cash reserves and debt service accounts for less than 1% of Ecuador's GDP.

As a result, Ecuador's economy will suffer greatly. The country is a major exporter, not only of oil, but also of such things as shrimp, bananas, and cut flowers; trying to get trade finance for any of that will now be all but impossible.

But those aren't even the biggest reasons this default is so stupid.

This debt has already been restructured twice, and there's zero chance that bondholders will agree to it being restructured a third time. They know that Ecuador has the ability to pay, and they don't like being bullied."
 
We know....you do not want to hear of this IDIOTIC string of criminal acts by Correa. It makes you sad- or so you say. What it should do is embarrass you in to growing up and reforming your own deceptive irresponsibility and start taking responsibility for your personal manipulations and your criminal cartel government. You tell us this all the time, like the teen age mentality mavens you are. Snap out of it. This is your problem, you caused and created this monstrous deception and you alone can stop it now. And please stop blaming the incompetent US Department of State for helping Ecuadoreans lie a lot. You could have stepped up and politely requested that the USA's Tom Shannon and Dan Fisk stop paying for the Correa propaganda club of State Department contract managers to sell more propaganda and enact a lawless, narcostate in Ecuador. Just because hundreds of paid Americans in Quito are actively paid to lie and cover up Correa's crime spree, you are not required to follow their dishonesty. You could have asked them to grow up, too but....you did not because you are so busy telling us that your own set of adolescent values mean more. And please- stop sending more paid liars/propagandists to the USA to hoodwink pro-socialists like US Senators Reid and Dodd, Lugar,  and Congressman Engle and their pro Marx supporters of George Soros such as Speaker Nancy Pelosi, Congresswoman Schakowsky, McGovern and Congressman Delahunt to tell the USA that Ecuador is a great friend in combating narcotrafficking when we all know this is a lie- a crime- a scam. It is past time to prosecute paid liars who give false witness and testimony before the US government because Ecuador no longer has a government but it does have a criminal cartel boss named Correa. But Ecuadoreans today are all about the high art of giving false witness against their neighbors. Just look at Correa and Iran's false witness against Uribe of Colombia to install Iranian weapons and true evil against Colombia. We cannot begin to fathom why the OAS has not demanded that Iran take its dirty banking and its dirty weapons and terror plans and get out of the Western Hemisphere. But we have a good idea why the OAS is doing nothing: Insulza wants Soros and Chavez's campaign money for Chile and the OAS is too criminally incompetent to stand up for anything any more.

What Shannon, Fisk and the utterly dishonest US Embassy in Quito need to stop doping is furthering Correa's crimes. 

                "all of Ecuador's assets, ultimately, are US assets. "

Will these arrogant and lazy actors to abandon US laws and treaties while cheering the narcostate of Ecuador commit treason as defined by US law? We hope they are all in for consultations to protect and defend U.S. assets from Correa's planned burglary. If not, sedition would be a kind charge. Financial theft is less kind under criminal sentencing.

Here is more:
 
"...They face, however a formidable adversary: Argentina was careful to repatriate all its attachable assets before it defaulted, and the only reason the pension funds got attached is that they weren't nationalized at the time. Argentina also has seriously heavyweight legal representation, in the form of Cleary Gottlieb -- which used to represent Ecuador, too, until Ecuador fired them earlier this year and denounced them as criminals.

Ecuador's bonds are all issued under New York law, and the country needs a good New York law firm to defend itself. Unfortunately, it's having to make do with Foley Hoag in Boston instead.

Even with Cleary, Ecuador would have had a hard time defending itself against well-funded antagonists such as Elliott Associates and Greylock Capital, who are expert at navigating the legal system. With Foley Hoag, it has no chance, for one big reason: Ecuador has dollarized. The dollar is the legal currency of Ecuador; there is no other. As a result, all of Ecuador's assets, ultimately, are US assets.

Ecuador's bondholders will vote to accelerate its debt very quickly. As a result, Ecuador won't have to just pay its $30 million coupon payment any more: it will have to pay the full $510 million principal amount. And the chances are that the 2015s and 2030s will be accelerated too. What's more, if it doesn't pay up in full, its creditors will surely find a way to take the money anyway."
And because you are trained and manipulated now to pretend that no truth is worthwhile, no one in Ecuador speaks the truth any more to make their wives and children feel better about their in house training gang for liars. But the truth just got said because you did not. You say- we are shocked! at Correa's behaviors. No- you are not so stop lying to yourself and to us.  You helped him steal and you helped him lie and you can stop your addiction to dishonesty now.

Rafael Correa has hired some of the smelliest and most expensive US propagandists. Or as Ambassador Heather Hodges [ who must be recalled for instructions because she is causing harm to US laws and persons of the USA] wants you to know- Barack Hussein Obama's people will be greased by her suggested lawyers and lobbyists and she wants you to know that the USA will do nothing about Correa's crimes because she and her boss Peter Romero want you to forget about her conspiracy to steal and cheat because, as she has said many many times- her preferred US AID contractors will have more jobs  next year, the FARC will be happy in Ecuador and Congressman McGovern will see to it that justice is not done for Chevron-Texaco or Occidental or global bond holders, that is- American financial structures. Hodges, like Jewell before her, is a disgrace. We care no more about her role in the late 1990s to cover up Peru's Montesinos payments yearly from the US CIA, blessed by Romero and Madeline Albright because a massive gold mine of monetary interest to Romero and Soros in Peru would be theirs in return. No- we care only for Ms Hodges's dishonesty today. She needs to cease and desists her complicity in Correa's crime spree.
 
Once again- for or five billion here and there as stolen from others, in this case debt default, does not sound like a lot. But the costs that will accrue from the attendant add ons from Correa's default which is not necessary- are staggering. Worse, your behavior to enable and co-appease Correa to continue to steal, lie and  plunder will cost you billions and plunge Ecuador in to a closed, dirty place where only evil grows. This is because you refused to stand up to Correa's evil. Now you will get even more evil: Iran. And the FARC. And every other vermin crawling on Earth.
 
Today's PORTFOLIO of 12-12-08 runs here is the source of the above detailed scathing critique on Ecuador's Culture of Manipulation- well taught and well managed now by every single Mother in Ecuador [just ask them]. But this is not the whole story. The intrepid writer forgot to write about Correa's support from US Congressional pro FARC backers and his Soros actors for deceptions. But this article says that Americans do not like being bullied and will fight extortion and bullying. Ecuadoreans think bullying and lying is their new national anthem. They know this because their mothers and their wives have taught them this. We believe that extortion and bullying is a crime. You should too.
           
Ecuador's bonds are all issued under New York law, and the country needs a good New York law firm to defend itself. Unfortunately, it's having to make do with Foley Hoag in Boston instead.

Even with Cleary, Ecuador would have had a hard time defending itself against well-funded antagonists such as Elliott Associates and Greylock Capital, who are expert at navigating the legal system. With Foley Hoag, it has no chance, for one big reason: Ecuador has dollarized. The dollar is the legal currency of Ecuador; there is no other. As a result, all of Ecuador's assets, ultimately, are US assets.

"Ecuador's bondholders will vote to accelerate its debt very quickly. As a result, Ecuador won't have to just pay its $30 million coupon payment any more: it will have to pay the full $510 million principal amount. And the chances are that the 2015s and 2030s will be accelerated too. What's more, if it doesn't pay up in full, its creditors will surely find a way to take the money anyway.

The only hope for Ecuador now -- and it's a slim one indeed -- is that this whole thing has been engineered by people holding Ecuador's credit default swaps, and that once they've been paid out, the government will quickly act to cure the default. (Incidentally, the single biggest writer of default protection on Ecuador is... Venezuela. You can be quite sure that the leftist solidarity between
Rafael Correa and Hugo Chavez is no longer.)

If this default isn't cured in a matter of days, Ecuador is going to lose billions of dollars it can ill afford to see go. Surely Correa knows this -- and surely he knows, too, that whenever Latin American presidents announce a debt default, they rarely last long in office. Which makes this decision even more inexplicable. But there's Ecuador for you: always bet against the country taking the logical and sensible course of action, and you're likely to make a lot of money."

Ecuador Default May Hit ‘True Monsters’ Harder Than Argentina

By Lester Pimentel and Stephan Chuffer

Dec. 15 (Bloomberg) -- Ecuador may saddle investors with the biggest losses in a government bond restructuring since at least World War II after President Rafael Correa fulfilled a two-year pledge to default on debt he calls “illegitimate.”
The country’s three dollar-denominated bonds, with a total face value of $3.9 billion, fell below 25 cents on the dollar on Dec. 12 following Correa’s announcement that he wouldn’t make a $30.6 million interest payment due today, according to JPMorgan Chase & Co.

Investors expect to recover less than the 30 cents that Argentina paid in a 2005 settlement that was the harshest since the war, according to Arturo Porzecanski, an international finance professor at American University in Washington. Correa said in a Dec. 13 radio address that he wants to force a “big discount” on creditors, a group he referred to a day earlier as “true monsters who won’t hesitate to crush the country.”

“You have to assume he’s going to continue to play hardball,” said David Bessey, who manages more than $8 billion of emerging-market debt for Prudential Financial Inc. in Newark, New Jersey. It may take Ecuador the “better part of a decade” to regain access to international capital markets, he said. “It’s a rare thing to not pay when you can.”

The default is Ecuador’s second in a decade and seventh in its 178-year history, according to a study by Federico Sturzenegger, a former secretary of economic policy in Argentina, and Jeromin Zettelmeyer, a former assistant to the Western Hemisphere Department director at the International Monetary Fund. In 1999, Ecuador halted payments on $6.5 billion of bonds that had been restructured just five years earlier.

‘Again and Again’

“It’s practically the same obligation being discounted and forgiven again and again,” Porzecanski said. “It could well end up being a more punishing restructuring than Argentina has delivered.”

While a five-month, 66 percent plunge in oil, the South American country’s biggest export, has crimped revenue, the government can still pay its debts, said Matias Silvani, who helps manage $12 billion of emerging-market debt at JPMorgan Asset Management in New York. Ecuador has $5.7 billion of foreign reserves, according to the central bank.

Total debt of $10 billion equals about 21 percent of the country’s gross domestic product today. Its debt equaled 97 percent of GDP in 1999. Argentina’s debt had swelled to 150 percent of GDP when it carried out the biggest sovereign default ever in 2001.
Vulture Lawsuits

Ecuador’s default in 1999 “was due to a solvency issue,” Silvani said. “Now they do have the money to pay. This is a purely willingness to pay issue.”

Ecuador paid bondholders 60 cents on the dollar in a restructuring in 2000, double the 30 cents Argentina paid five years later. About 25 percent of bondholders rejected Argentina’s offer and the country is still unable to access international capital markets as it fends off creditor lawsuits.

Correa, a 45-year-old economist who won election in 2006 promising to spend on the poor before paying debt, said Dec. 13 that his government is preparing to defeat legal challenges from “vultures.” The day before, he ordered officials not to make the $30.6 million interest payment due today on $510 million of 12 percent bonds maturing in 2012.

The bonds were “always structured for the benefit of the creditors, trampling on the national interests, dignity and sovereignty of our countries,” Correa told reporters in Guayaquil. “It is now time to bring in justice and dignity.”

Prayed, Lost Sleep

He had invoked a one-month grace period on the interest payment in November, saying he wanted to analyze an audit commission’s report on the legality of the debt. Correa, who counts Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez among his closest allies, said in his radio address that he prayed to God and “lost a lot of sleep” as he weighed his options.

The commission, which the president created last year, said in a 172-page report in November that the bonds due in 2012 and 2030 “show serious signs of illegality,” including issuance without proper government authorization.

Those two securities were sold in the 2000 restructuring. Correa, who earned a Ph.D. at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, also said after receiving the report on Nov. 20 that the 9.375 percent bonds due in 2015 are marred by irregularities. Government supporters chanted “we owe nothing” and “the debt is paid” as Correa spoke in Quito that day.

Annul the Debt

“This country is not one where the culture puts any value on paying debt,” said Michael Atkin, who helps oversee $12 billion of fixed-income assets as head of sovereign research at Putnam Investments in Boston.

The 2012 bonds plummeted to 23 cents on the dollar, pushing the yield to 66 percent, on Dec. 12 from 31 cents the day before and 97.5 cents three months earlier, according to JPMorgan. The $2.7 billion of bonds due 2030 sank to 20 cents and the $650 million of bonds maturing in 2015 slid to 23 cents.

The government will present a restructuring proposal to creditors “in coming days,” Correa said Dec. 12. He said the government would simultaneously try to have the debt annulled in international courts, an effort that Porzecanski said has little chance of success.

Correa’s “been pretty outspoken in showing a lack of interest in working with bondholders,” said Prudential’s Bessey, who declined to say if he holds Ecuador bonds. “It’s hard to imagine he would turn around and pursue a friendly restructuring.” 
 
And if that is not enough, here is a timely piece on Ecuador's other banking and finance cartel partner: Iran. We share this today because Ecuadoreans would rather stage cheerless and hyperactive cocktail parties than actually know with whom their nation just merged. This cocktail party life in shallowness has gifted the entire nation of Ecuador with what it deserves: shallow, hyperactive, dishonest, uneducated manipulating fools. Here then is a small update on your new partner for evil, because you chose to do nothing except run away:

This is your new bride: Iran and she is not pretty but you did marry her for social status and money, as usual. It is a marriage of convenience and, as with almost all Ecuadorean marriages today, is a mockery, a lie and is built on dysfunction. In fact it has gotten so bad that we know that anyone who is married in Ecuador is involved with a dishonest dysfunctional marriage just as the government of Ecuador is involved with dishonest, dysfunctional marriages with Chavez and Ahmadinejad to purposefully live off of someone else's money while never contributing one meaningful effort to build and sustain Ecuador except to populate its environs while pretending that this is the highest purpose on earth. Like Chavez's failed nation, millions of irresponsible, vapid idiots are Ecuadoreans today because their own families cared more about manipulative living that in functional living. Iran is the same- only worse and you just married this hell hole for money and global prestige. Ecuador irresponsibly lives now off of someone else's money because one and all are instructed that this is the way to live when it is not.
       
Iran’s Brain Drain Problem

Educated Iranians are leaving the country in droves. Can you blame them?
 
December 15, 2008 - by Meir Javedanfar                                            Pajamas Media

According to the International Monetary Fund (IMF), Iran has the world’s highest rate of brain drain. Every year, more than 150,000 highly educated Iranians leave their country. The majority emigrate to the U.S., Europe, Canada, and Australia. The damage caused by this phenomenon is estimated to be $40 billion a year.

The rates of Iran’s brain drain are reaching such astronomical figures that the Iranian press is beginning to suspect that a conspiracy is involved, schemed and carried out by the West with the help of Iran’s neighbors. This was indicated recently in an article published by Tabnak, which is Iran’s most popular online news agency. Its owner, Mohsen Rezai, has close connections to government officials such as Ayatollah Rafsanjani, and senior officers within Iran’s Islamic Revolutionary Guards Corps (IRGC).

One event which has strengthened this conspiracy theory is the defection of Ali Reza Asgari, a top IRGC general, in March 2007.

According to Western media reports, he was lured away by the promise of millions of dollars and a better future. His defection is believed to have caused considerable damage to Iran’s intelligence network and nuclear program. Another is a CIA-engineered nuclear brain drain from Iran, which was carried out in 2005 with limited success.

Some pro-government elements in Iran now suspect that the West wants to weaken Iran’s economic infrastructure to the point of collapse by luring away its top graduates and professionals. The methods applied in such cases to lure away Iran’s top talent are much less cloak and dagger, as was the case with Asgari. They include an increase in the number of issued student visas and work permits. And many of those who are moving abroad are succeeding. One only has to look at top technology companies and universities in the U.S. One successful Iranian among many is Anousheh Ansari, the first female space tourist and leading telecommunications entrepreneur. There is also Firouz Naderi, NASA director of the Mars project, as well as many others.

Those blaming the West for this phenomenon may be getting carried away with their conspiracy theories. Nevertheless, the Iranian government has every reason to be concerned. One example is Iran’s airline sector. Already beset by maintenance problems due to sanctions, it now has to deal with the new phenomenon of pilot shortages. Increasing numbers of Iranian pilots are leaving their $450-a-month jobs in Iran for $7,000 monthly salaries paid by newly established Persian Gulf airlines. This phenomenon is damaging Iran’s struggling tourism and transportation sector.

Other impacted sectors are Iran’s oil and gas. Iran relies on these sectors for 80% of its export receipts. Decaying infrastructure, corruption, and low wages are forcing some of Iran’s top oil engineers to look for new jobs. Increasing numbers of such engineers are finding it easier to get work abroad for higher wages and better conditions due to an increase in investment by oil-rich countries of the Persian Gulf.

Perhaps one area which is worrying the Iranian government the most is Iran’s nuclear program. For years, the best and the brightest within Iran have been recruited by the Atomic Energy Organization of Iran (AEOI). Its top scientists are reported to receive Western-style salaries and benefits. More importantly, this organization has been the only sector in Iran which benefited from a brain gain by recruiting Iranian engineers and scientists from places such as the United States. With runaway inflation figures and increasing risk against the lives of such scientists, more may now be tempted to defect. Meanwhile, top graduates that the AEOI wants to recruit may now decide to look elsewhere, thus causing further damage to Iran’s nuclear ambitions.

Proportionally, graduates from Tehran’s Sharif University, dubbed “Iran’s MIT,” seem to make up the largest proportion of graduates who leave the country. The parliament (Majlis) has decided to take the unprecedented step of summoning Saeed Sohrab, the head of the university, to see why so many graduates from Iran’s top university prefer to live and work abroad. This alone will not be enough to stop this damaging phenomenon. What is needed is urgent and concrete action by Iran’s leaders.

However, some officials, such as Ahmadinejad, have no interest in tackling this problem. Unlike some government officials, President Ahmadinejad does not even believe that the brain drain phenomenon exists. During a trip to the UAE in April 2007, he openly stated that there is “no brain drain in Iran.” He even said that he fully supports Iranians “traveling abroad.” Ahmadinejad, who prides himself on being a staunch follower of Imam Khomeini, belongs to a group of right-wing extremists who believe in Khomeini’s teachings, declared publicly in 1980 by the founder of the revolution:

The enemies of the Islamic revolution say that the country’s best brains are escaping. I don’t care that they are escaping. These university-educated people who are always concerned about Western science and civilization should be allowed to leave. We don’t want Western science and know-how. If you think that this is not your place, you are free to go.

The fact that Ahmadinejad and his supporters do not want to address Iran’s brain drain problem is likely to cause more divisions within the Iranian government. This is because more moderate politicians see this phenomenon as severely damaging, and they are right. If unchecked, this phenomenon could contribute to factors which could cause the eventual downfall of the regime. A country of 70 million cannot afford to see its important economic infrastructure fall apart due to a shortage of skills. Especially not Iran, because stability is of utmost importance to its rulers. With oil prices falling and Iran needing to develop its non-oil sector, it is very likely that the extremists will be cornered. It’s either them or the economic progress of the country. One of them will have to win. For the sake of his government, Ayatollah Khamenei should make sure it is the latter.
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ECrisis asks again- when did addicts ever do anything correctly while still addicted and co-enabled by all around them? The answer is never. All efforts are engineered to protect the manipulator in our jobs, our governments, out schools and our homes, which is where this stupid non-ethic began, however much our manipulative home leaders want to lie some more and tell us that they are busy teaching ethics and clean living. Or worse- they tell us that they cannot help anything or any body, which is of course the biggest lie of all.

Iran is a nightmare of over 70 million people, all mostly stupid [with some exceptions] and mostly cut off from the real world while trained in hatred and co opted by their government with no meaningful liberties and no way out even as Ahmadinejad ramps up his plan to repopulate the globe with his particularly disgusting race of stupid and ridiculously aberrant cult actors, also called Iran's paid state minions. These are Ecuador's new partners in aggressive militarization.
 
-Pedro Camargo for ECrisis