The Star Online: Business
The Star Online: Business |
- IMF chief calls on US to raise borrowing limit
- Geithner says hard times to continue for many
- Swatch from famous moon-bound flag goes to auction
| IMF chief calls on US to raise borrowing limit Posted: 10 Jul 2011 05:42 PM PDT WASHINGTON: The International Monetary Fund's new chief foresees "real nasty consequences" for the U.S. and global economies if the U.S. fails to raise its borrowing limit. Christine Lagarde, the first woman to head the global lending institution, said in an interview broadcast Sunday that it would cause interest rates to rise and stock markets to fall. That would threaten an important IMF goal, which is preserving stability in the world economy, she said. The U.S. borrowing limit is $14.3 trillion. Obama administration officials say the U.S. would begin to default without an agreement by Aug. 2. Lagarde, who took over as managing director on July 5, also addressed the fallout stemming from the sexual assault charges filed against her predecessor, Dominique Strauss-Kahn. Strauss-Kahn resigned in May after he was accused of attacking a hotel maid in New York City. He has denied the charges. New York prosecutors have admitted in recent weeks that their case has weakened and that the accuser has lied about many aspects of her background. Lagarde, a former French finance minister, told ABC television's "This Week" that the scandal caused "a very strange chemistry of frustration, irritation, sometimes anger, sometimes very deep sadness" among the IMF's 2,500 employees. Lagarde said she would be on her "best behavior all the time." "When it comes to ethics and whatever I do, I always think to myself, would my mother approve of that," she said. "And if she did not, then there's something wrong." President Barack Obama and congressional leaders from both parties planned to meet Sunday evening at the White House to resume negotiations on a debt deal. House Speaker John Boehner said Saturday that the talks should aim to reduce the deficit by about $2 trillion over 10 years. That's about half the size of a more ambitious deal that Obama floated last week. Republicans are insisting on deep spending cuts as a condition of voting in favor of raising the debt ceiling. Obama and congressional Democrats are insisting that more tax revenue should be part of the mix. Lagarde did not address the European debt crisis or the IMF's recent aid to Greece. On Friday, the IMF's board approved a $4.2 billion loan to Greece, the latest installment of a bailout package intended to prevent the struggling nation from defaulting on its debt. The IMF has 187 member nations and lends money to countries with troubled finances. - AP Latest business news from AP-Wire Full Feed Generated by Get Full RSS, sponsored by USA Best Price. |
| Geithner says hard times to continue for many Posted: 10 Jul 2011 05:34 PM PDT WASHINGTON: Treasury Secretary Timothy Geithner says many Americans will face hard times for a long time to come. He says President Barack Obama rescued the United States from a second Great Depression and will keep working to strengthen the economy. But Geithner says it will be some time before many people feel like the country is recovering. Geithner tells NBC television's "Meet the Press" that it's a very tough economy. He says that for a lot of people "it's going to feel very hard, harder than anything they've experienced in their lifetime now, for a long time to come." - AP Latest business news from AP-Wire Full Feed Generated by Get Full RSS, sponsored by USA Best Price. |
| Swatch from famous moon-bound flag goes to auction Posted: 10 Jul 2011 05:18 PM PDT LOS ANGELES: It was one small step for man. Now one small strip from the famed flag planted on the moon during the Apollo 11 mission is set to go to auction. "This is the most-viewed flag in American history," said Michael Orenstein, whose west Los Angeles auction house is handling the Sunday sale that features a piece of fabric shorn from the banner as it was being prepared for the world's first lunar landing. Other items on the block include one of the Collier trophies - the so-called Oscars of aviation - that was awarded to the crew of 1962's Mercury 7 mission and a three-ring notebook used by "Deke" Slayton as he trained to be one of the space program's first astronauts. But Orenstein said the sale's gem is the seven-inch (18-centimeter) strip of red and white fabric being auctioned along with a photo bearing Neil Armstrong's autograph on consignment by Tom Moser, the retired NASA engineer who was tasked with designing the moon-bound flag in the weeks before Apollo 11's 1969 launch. "It's right up there with Betsy Ross and the Star Spangled Banner," Orenstein said. NASA's original plans didn't involve planting a flag on the moon because of a United Nations treaty prohibiting nations from claiming celestial entities as their own, Moser said. But after Congress slipped language into an appropriations bill authorizing the flag's placement as a non-territorial marker, Moser was told to design a flag that could survive the trip to the moon and be planted on its surface upon arrival. With the spacecraft's tiny interior too cramped even for a rolled-up flag, Moser devised a way to fix an aluminum tube with a thermal liner for the banner on the outside of the vessel, he said. NASA staff bought an American flag off the shelf of a nearby store and Moser had a hem sewn along its top, so a telescoping aluminum rod could be inserted to hold the banner out straight on the gravity-free moon. (On the moon, the rod didn't extend its full length; the consequent bunching is what makes the flag look like it's blowing in the wind.) Meanwhile, a strip of fabric along the flag's left side was cut to remove a set of grommets, Moser said. "It was put in the trash can and I just took it out and said, 'I'm going to keep that,'" he said. Moser said he had Neil Armstrong sign a photo of the flag planted on the moon when the astronaut returned to Earth and he kept the picture and his rescued scrap of flag together in his NASA office until he retired in 1990. But after hanging onto the photo and flag-swatch assemblage all these years, he finally decided to put them up for auction, although he said he'll miss owning what he sees as a piece of history. Orenstein said he expects the flag remnant and photo to fetch $100,000 to $150,000 and possibly much more. "How do you price something like this?" Orenstein said. "If people recognize it for what it is or appreciate it for what it is, it can just keep going up." Some space scholars, however, appear unimpressed with the artifact. Since the remnant itself was never launched, its connection to the moon-bound banner has little significance, said Louis Parker, exhibits manager at NASA Johnson Space Center in Houston, Texas. "That doesn't give it any more importance than any other piece of fabric that was here on Earth," he said. But Moser insisted that the piece does indeed have value, since it represents the beginning of an era of space exploration that now has an uncertain future as the space shuttle makes its final voyage. "The flag is the icon of the whole accomplishment of the United States being first to the moon and of a great accomplishment for mankind," he said. "Being part of that icon, it has a special meaning." - AP Latest business news from AP-Wire Full Feed Generated by Get Full RSS, sponsored by USA Best Price. |
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