This is a double-issue, covering March and April, so hold onto your hats. First off, a cautionary note: there are scammers who claim to be IT folk with web pages, vans and other signs of legit business, including an offer to pickup sick laptops and other equipment. But once they have your items, you won’t see them again. Don’t let anyone take your tech items for repair unless you are really sure who the people are. And in this double issue: the big earners now work behind the scenes, not in the president’s chair.

They’re unknowns. Get a hawk’s eye view from our Articles Section. Also see how the physical world around us affects our sense of right and wrong. No, this isn’t the latest elaboration of Stanley Milgram’s work, but a snapshot of the impact of certain smells and the degree of light and darkness on our ethical behaviour. We look at the dilemma posed by Greece and its financial quandary. Greece falsified its data, but many countries do, and not just those in the Club Med belt. Moreover, banks and other financial institutions have encouraged Greece along the debt-default path and now are betting against recovery by selling short on the credit-swap insurance exchange. At some point, nations will have to rein in the financiers and it won’t get easier as time passes. We can’t neglect VANOC’s wretched treatment of other competitors in contrast to Canadian teams. Could it really be true that our athletes had ten times the practice runs in luge than other countries? Perhaps I’m wrong, and this was skiing rather than luge. Still, the egos of Ignatieff and other Own The Podium media slaves make melancholy reading. This country doesn’t belong to Canadians anymore, but a hybrid of fundamentalist Republican and Hollywood guru. The ethos of win-at-any-cost or it’s-OK-because-it’s-within-the-rules is, well, shameful.

Click here to see the calendar of events for this month. Use it as a reference by rolling your mouse over the links or just as a reminder. Bookmark it today!

1) A woman with three daughters passes her neighbour’s house. The neighbour asks the daughters’ ages. The woman answers that their ages multiplied together is 36, and their ages added together is the same number as his address. The neighbour stares at his address. The woman then says she forgot to mention an essential piece of information. The information is that her eldest daughter’s name is Jenny. The neighbour now is able to determine the daughters’ ages. How does the neighbour do it? (NB We’re dealing only with whole integer ages.)

2) Here’s a classic alphametric from 1924. What numbers do the letters stand for?

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The answers to last month’s puzzles were supplied last month.

Here are the answers to this month’s puzzles:

1) The man makes a chart of the possible ages, consisting of the three numbers whose combined product is 36.

There is only one case in which the neighbour needs additional information, and that is if the sum of the ages is 13. The neighbour concludes that when the woman gave the essential information it was to differentiate between the two cases where the sum is 13. The statement that the woman’s eldest daughter’s name is Jenny means that there is only one eldest daughter. This eliminates the possibility of twins age 6. The three ages are therefore 2, 2, and 9.

2)

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The list of the biggest earners in finance usually reads like a Who’s Who of Wall Street. But these days, it reads more like a Who’s That?

It turns out that some of the highest-paid financial executives in America work far from the canyons of Lower Manhattan, at companies that have largely avoided the outcry over the return of hefty paydays on Wall Street.

Topping the list is John G. Stumpf, head of Wells Fargo, the bank based in San Francisco, according to an analysis of 2009 compensation in the industry. Mr. Stumpf was paid a personal best of $18.7 million in cash and stock for 2009 — up 64 percent from 2007, just before the financial crisis struck.

Mr. Stumpf is making twice as much as Lloyd C. Blankfein, his counterpart at Goldman Sachs. Mr. Blankfein — who for many Americans has come to symbolize this new period of Wall Street riches — was paid $9.7 million for 2009, less than some expected.

It is a stunning reversal in the old pecking order of pay. Big names on Wall Street like Mr. Blankfein usually take home far more than staid bankers like Mr. Stumpf, whose bank’s biggest business is making home mortgages and loans to corporations.

But since the bailout, the rules of banker pay are bending. Some of the industry’s biggest names are being paid less than relative unknowns. Chief executives, who are usually at the top of the pay heap, are taking home roughly the same amounts as executives who work for them — and sometimes less.

Mr. Stumpf and other executives have moved up the pay ladder partly because the likes of Mr. Blankfein have moved down. And for all the focus on what top executives earn, what is most startling is how many six-, seven- and eight-figure sums are being awarded to Wall Street bankers and traders whose pay often is unnoticed — if it is disclosed at all.

How much senior executives earn, in cash and stock, is made public in corporate filings. This year, the results are surprising, according to an analysis by Equilar, an executive compensation research firm.

Leaders in the pay sweepstakes include the heads of the credit card giants Visa, Mastercard Worldwide, Capital One Financial and American Express. Joseph W. Saunders, who runs Visa, was paid about $15.5 million, a figure that vastly eclipses the compensation for top executives at Bank of America and Citigroup.

Ajay Banga, the president of MasterCard Worldwide; Laurence D. Fink, the chairman and chief executive of the giant money management company BlackRock; and Richard B. Handler, the boss at the Jefferies Group, a midsize investment bank that is virtually unknown outside financial circles, were each paid about $13 million. Executives at certain discount brokerages, insurance companies and regional banks were close behind.

The big money, as ever, is in Wall Street trading. But pay for employees with few executive responsibilities is typically exempted from disclosure requirements. Brokers and asset managers also land windfalls that are often undisclosed.

“There are probably thousands of people that are in the Millionaire Club — or even the Ten Millionaire Club — that have gotten no heat,” said Alan Johnson, a longtime Wall Street compensation consultant.

To be sure, a handful of prominent companies dominate the well-paid list. Senior managers from JPMorgan Chase and Goldman Sachs occupy many of the top spots. Few of those executives are boldface names, however.

While Jamie Dimon, JPMorgan’s chairman and chief executive, appears to be the second-highest-paid banker, at $17.6 million, one of his subordinates collected nearly as much: Ina R. Drew, JPMorgan’s chief investment officer.

Ms. Drew, whose correct calls on interest rates helped the bank earn several billion dollars of profit, was paid about $13 million.

Despite the spotlight on Mr. Blankfein’s pay at Goldman, little was said about how much Gordon Nixon of Royal Bank of Canada received. His paycheck was roughly the same amount as Mr. Blankfein’s, $9.7 million, though he is hardly a household name.

The Equilar analysis provides an early peek at 2009 pay and is not a comprehensive review. For consistency, any stock or options that were subject to performance hurdles were valued at the target levels; in practice, many executives receive larger payouts for surpassing the company’s financial goals.

Wells Fargo posted strong results, even as it struggled to contend with rising mortgage and commercial real estate losses and accepted a bailout from the government in 2008.

As it rebounded last year, the bank dribbled out the details of its large stock grants for Mr. Stumpf. In August, Wells announced that he would receive $900,000 in salary and about $6.5 million in various types of restricted stock. On New Year’s Eve, Wells issued a statement saying that Mr. Stumpf would receive another allotment of so-called performance shares — worth up to $15.4 million.

That means his pay package could easily top $24 million in a year in which Wells was among the last of the big banks to repay the bailout money.

“We believe we have the very best leadership team in financial services today, and a key to retaining that talent for the long term is to compensate our senior leaders competitively and to align their interests with those of our shareholders,” Stephen W. Sanger, who leads Wells Fargo’s compensation committee, said in a statement last December.

On pay, Wall Street seems to have reverted to its old ways. James P. Gorman, Morgan Stanley’s new chief executive, could receive $11 million to $13 million, even though the company posted an annual loss.

Mark Lake, a Morgan Stanley spokesman, said that Mr. Gorman received that compensation because, as president, he was responsible for integrating the vast Smith Barney brokerage unit and was the prospective chief executive.

Bank of America’s highest-paid executive was the chief architect of its ill-fated acquisition of Merrill Lynch, Gregory L. Curl. He was awarded more than $9.2 million in stock, most of which will be paid out monthly over the next three years.

Brian T. Moynihan, Bank of America’s new chief executive, will be paid about $6.1 million, thanks to a similar large stock grant.

Jefferies Group, a midsize investment bank that had a strong year, rewarded its top executives handsomely. And more pay is coming down the pike. In mid-January, Mr. Handler received a $39 million stock grant and another executive received about $29 million. The stock award, subject to certain performance goals, is payable over the next three years and will come on top of any salary and bonuses the executives get.

One of the highest-compensated financial executives for 2009 was paid well when he was employed — and then even more when he quit. After leaving Visa in July, Hans Morris, the company’s president, collected an exit package valued at $24 million.

“The ride is essentially over, and he is still getting grants,” said Brian Foley, an independent compensation consultant.

(eric dash, New York Times, 10February2010)

The smell of citrus promotes generosity, while dim rooms increase dishonesty and selfish behaviour, psychology researchers suggest in recent studies.

Chen-Bo Zhong, a psychologist at the University of Toronto, and his colleagues in the U.S. have conducted a series of small experiments designed to test how changes in an environment — differences in lighting or smell — can affect human behaviour.

In one experiment, participants were given $10 in change and 20 mathematical problems, and sent into either a room brightly lit with florescent lights or one with a third as many lights on.

The subjects were asked to complete as many of the problems as they could in five minutes and to keep 50 cents for each problem they solved. They were asked to put the rest of the change in an envelope when they were done.

Typically, the participants were able to complete seven problems in the time allowed, but since the test was anonymous, they could keep as much of the money as they wanted without getting caught.

While the tests had no names or numbers on them, the problems themselves revealed whether the participant had been in a brightly lit room or a dim one.

“What we found was that participants randomly assigned to the dimmer room … were more likely to lie or cheat compared with participants in the well-lit room,” Zhong said.

Zhong said that the rooms with the dim lighting created a sense of anonymity, what he calls illusory anonymity.

“The idea is that when we experience darkness, we disregard what other people may still be able to see or hear or observe,” he said. “The illusory sense of anonymity can license unethical behaviour.”

In interviews with the participants after the experiments about what happened and what determined their behaviour, few of the participants even noticed the difference in lighting.

In a similar study, participants were asked to wear either a pair of sunglasses or a pair of glasses with clear lenses.

“What we found was that wearing a pair of sunglasses led to greater self-interested behaviour,” said Zhong.

Zhong said the sunglasses didn’t make the participants anonymous or less visible, of course, but still had an effect on their behaviour, making them less likely to see themselves from another person’s perspective.

“We perceive ourselves to be anonymous even if the darkness only applies to ourselves, as in the case where we wear a pair of sunglasses or are in a room that is dim but not exactly dark,” Zhong said.

Zhong likened the sunglasses experiment to toddlers playing peek-a-boo.

“This is almost like kids playing a hide-and-seek game who will close their eyes and think that other people won’t be able to see them,” he said.

The subconscious changes in behaviour weren’t limited to visual changes. Zhong conducted similar experiments that used the sense of smell.

Participants were randomly assigned to rooms, some sprayed with citrus-scented window cleaner. In some of the experiments, the participants played a game of trust with an anonymous partner, again involving money.

The way the game typically works is that one partner is given a sum of money and told to put some or all of the money in an envelope. He is told his anonymous partner will receive triple that amount and will give some of the money back. Of course, the second partner could just keep all the money.

In Zhong’s experiment, the participants played the role of the second partner and were all told their partner had given them the full mount, $4, which was then tripled to $12.

The participants were free to anonymously return some or none of the money.

“What we found was that in the citrus-scented room, people were more likely to engage in good behaviours,” Zhong said. “They were more likely to honour the trust that other people displayed.”

Zhong said that it would be interesting to see how the findings would translate to real-world situations.

“Based on the experiments we have conducted and the findings we’ve found, I think it’s reasonable to speculate that people in a real environment, where they can smell these scents that are associated with purity and cleanliness, also may tend to be behave more ethically or socially,” he said.

In another paper published prior to Zhong’s, researchers found people eating cookies in a citrus scented room were less likely to leave crumbs behind than those in an unscented room.

Zhong said he wanted to take that finding to the next level, to explore the “metaphorical and psychological connections between physical cleanliness and moral purity.”

English is full of metaphors relating cleanliness to moral behaviour, from “clean conscience” to “money laundering” to “dirty jokes.”

In previous research, Zhong and his colleagues explored the connection between unethical behaviour and physical cleanliness, something Zhong called the Lady Macbeth effect, after the Shakespeare character who obsessively washed her hands because of her role in the murder of the king (”Out, damn spot. Out, I say!”).

“We asked people to recall unethical behaviours they have done, like lying to parents or betraying their friends,” Zhong said. Another group was asked about their prior ethical acts.

The participants were then asked to rate items on a list of products by how much they wanted them. The participants who were asked about their unethical behaviour were more likely than the other group to rate cleaning products higher than household products that have nothing to do with cleaning, such as CDs.

Zhong said these findings suggest that abstract concepts, such as morality, or even time, are connected to physical experience. We think “back” to the past and look “forward” to the future, for example.

“Human perception or cognition are not as abstract as we typically assume,” Zhong said. “We don’t simply store information in our brain. Instead, our cognition is much richer than that. For every abstract construct we associate physiological experience.”

The metaphorical connections could even transcend language barriers, although Zhong said there hasn’t been research to see if the behaviour is consistent across cultures.

“In Chinese, we refer to a pair of dirty hands, for example, to refer to someone who steals.”

(john bowman, CBC News, 15February2010)

As the Greek Government has to raise more than €50 billion of public debt this year from markets that already question its ability to honour its debts, the 64,000-dollar question remains: how willing are Greece’s EU partners to bail it out?

There is the widespread view that Greece will be supported if default looks likely. After all, Joaquín Almunia, the former Monetary Affairs Commissioner, said as much at Davos. But the outlook became muddied at last week’s meeting of the Council of the European Union. There was clearly friction between Angela Merkel, the German Chancellor, mindful of taxpayers’ resistance to bailing out Greece in the name of EU solidarity, and President Sarkozy of France, who not only supported a bailout but, taking the opportunity afforded by crisis to further political union, also pushed for a centralised “economic government”.

For seasoned euro-watchers the current crisis comes as no surprise. The obsessive determination with which Europe’s politicians drove the euro project forward in the 1990s was, I remember, quite alarming. As the 1980s had been the decade of the single market, the 1990s would be the decade of the single currency. End of story. The European project must proceed irrespective of economic or popular considerations. A united European Union was Europe’s destiny.

The 1992 crisis in the exchange- rate mechanism culminating in Britain’s eviction, provided a thousand warnings. Without true structural economic convergence and/or a centralised economic government, some would struggle with a regime of a single interest rate and a common exchange rate, being deprived of key economic weapons, including devaluation.

True, there were the “eligibility criteria” concerning convergence on debt, deficits, inflation and interest rates. But they were flawed. The eurozone’s economies began to diverge almost from its very launch in 1999. In the early 2000s German economic growth was weak and the European Central Bank kept rates low to accommodate Germany’s circumstances. But these rates were significantly too low for the peripheral countries of Greece, Spain, Portugal and Ireland (sometimes known as the “Club Med”) and helped to fuel spending and property booms. Wage inflation was also a feature of the boom times, undermining competitiveness. The accession of the low-cost Eastern European countries exacerbated their plight. Meanwhile Germany, with Lutheran discipline, went on a cost-cutting spree, sharpening its international competitiveness and boosting its trade surpluses.

The Club Med’s public deficits, reflecting the recession, have exploded. And they are now being exhorted, in accordance with the rules of the eurozone, to cut their borrowing sharply. Even though still in recession they are facing tough fiscal retrenchment, which can only delay recovery further.

Economic salvation could come if Germany changed the habit of a lifetime and stimulated rapid domestic demand-led growth, but this is highly unlikely. Alternatively a huge extension of transfers from the richer EU countries to the poorer may be a way out but whether this would be acceptable to the taxpayers of Germany, the UK or the Netherlands is doubtful.

Then there is the special problem of Greece, which must be held responsible for much of its unique plight. It falsified vital data in order to join the euro, its public sector is bloated, tax evasion is a way of life and it has made little attempt to sharpen up its economy in order to thrive within the eurozone. Greece has, moreover, been generously subsidised by the EU. In 2008 it received net receipts from the EU budget of €6.2 billion, the most for any EU member state, €550 for each of its 11.3 million citizens.

The Greek Government said last October that public borrowing as a share of GDP was heading for 13 per cent in 2009 and, under pressure from Brussels, announced a stability plan to get borrowing down to 3 per cent of GDP by 2012. If a bailout is agreed, Brussels will insist that this fiscal consolidation goes ahead, as a minimum. Moreover, the Commission will strictly monitor and drive the programme, crippling Greece’s fiscal autonomy in the process. These developments will be politically unpalatable and probably trigger further industrial and social unrest. Unsurprisingly, the Greek Government is already resisting pressure for new austerity measures.

The eurozone is at a crossroads and, while the time is not ripe to address the fundamental problems of the euro, decisions over the Greek predicament are urgent. The EU broadly has two choices. It can guarantee a bailout for Greece, if needed, imposing tough conditions on the country. And it can hope that this will solve the current euro crisis. But this risks, as a minimum, demands from Spain, Portugal and Ireland for similar treatment.

Or, alternatively, it could bite on a very hard bullet and ask Greece to leave the eurozone, not least “pour encourager les autres”. (I am aware that there are apparently no formal procedures for this.) The financial repercussions would be tremendous, but financial crises eventually resolve themselves and if this boil has to burst, it’s better to do it sooner rather than later. The political fallout would, however, be shattering. The eviction of Greece would be the first serious retreat of the European project and would represent a terrific loss of political face for the believers in European integration and solidarity.

The EU, with Germany playing a pivotal role, can therefore be expected to support Greece this time. But, for the sake of the long-term viability of the eurozone, it would be far better to evict Greece now and direct the beleaguered country to the IMF for some long overdue economic discipline.

(ruth lea, The Times, 16February2010)

Regarded as brilliant and charismatic Mullah Abdul Ghani Baradar was the second most powerful figure in the Afghanistan Taleban.

The military commander who is said to have developed the Taleban tactic of planting “flowers” – improvised explosive devices (IEDs) – along roadsides has been described by terrorism experts as even more cunning and dangerous than Taleban supreme leader (his old friend) Mullah Omar.

Mullah Badar has been credited for rebuilding the Taleban into an effective fighting force and has been running the group’s daily affairs for many years, since Mullah Omar was forced to take a less active role in the organisation due to his failing health.

Besides heading up Taleban military operations and running its budgets, he also ran the group’s leadership council, known as the Quetta Shura, named because its leaders have been thought to be hiding near Quetta, the capital of Pakistan’s western province of Baluchistan. A photograph of him has yet to surface.

Born in 1968 in Weetmak, a village in Afghanistan’s Oruzgan Province, the young Mullah Baradar participated in the Afghan Mujahedeen war against the Soviet forces.

It was during this war that he came to know Mullah Omar; the pair fought alongside each other against the Communist forces and some reports suggest the two even married a pair of sisters.

After the withdrawal of the Soviet forces and collapse of the communist regime in Kabul in 1992 , Mullah Baradar and Mullah Omar both settled down in southern Afghanistan district of Maiwand where they ran their own madrassa.

When Mullah Omar started a revolt against the local warlords in 1994 with a force of some 30 men, Mullah Baradar was among its first recruits. This was the beginning the Taleban movement which swept Kabul in 1996, establishing a hard line conservative regime.

Mullah Baradar became Mullah Omar’s most trusted military commander. He first served as Taleban corps commander for western Afghanistan, and later as the Kabul garrison commander, where he directed the fight against rival mujahedin commanders in the north of the country.

He was at the side of Mullah Omar when U.S. bombs pounded Kandahar in November 2001. According to some reports it was Mullah Baradar who hopped on a motorcycle and drove his old friend to safety in the mountains.

Many terrorism experts described Mullah Bradar as the most skilled military leader who spearheaded the fighting in southern Afghanistan. His forces were responsible for inflicting heavy casualties on the Western forces last year.

He conducted the Taleban’s day-to-day operations, both military and financial. He allocated Taleban funds, appoints military commanders and designs military tactics,

Mullah Baradar was quoted last year as telling his fighters to not to confront US soldiers with their superior firepower, but to operate using guerrilla tactics.

Mullah Baradar was believed to have often travelled to Karachi to meet other members of the Quetta Shura who had moved to the port in recent months.

The sprawling city on the Arabia sea coast with a population of more than 16 million has become a haven for the Taleban leadership.

(zahid hussain, Times Online, 16February2010)

An Olympic luge athlete injured in a crash at the Whistler Sliding Centre in November warned Canadian officials about safety hazards at the track months before a competitor was killed last week at the Vancouver Games in an accident on the same course.

Werner Hoeger, who competed in the Turin and Salt Lake Games for Venezuela, said he lost consciousness and sustained a concussion during a botched training run on Nov. 13 after his sled caromed off an opening in the wall near the women’s start ramp.

His injury most likely prevented him from attempting to qualify for the Olympics, he said. In a volley of letters and e-mail messages sent to Canadian and international luge officials since his crash, Hoeger warned that the track was unsafe and raised the same issues — including a lack of access to practice runs — now being debated after Nodar Kumaritashvili of the Republic of Georgia died on Friday.

Hoeger was experienced — he competed in the past two Winter Games — but he was not a medal contender. His highest World Cup ranking was 52nd.

At age 56, he was trying to become the oldest competitor in these Games. Kumaritashvili was young and inexperienced. At age 21, he was ranked 44th in the World Cup standings this season.

He had completed 26 runs on the course at Whistler. The Canadian team’s luge athletes made an average of 250 runs.

Hoeger and athletes from other nations with small, underfinanced luge teams said Canadian officials were not sympathetic to their requests for additional practice time even as evidence mounted that the track was faster and more challenging than originally designed.

“For the smaller nations, there should have been more,” said Ioan Apostol, a former Olympic luge athlete from Romania who is the director of development for the International Luge Federation. “It is very fast and very technical at the same time.”

He added that he petitioned Canadian officials for extra runs at the course for the athletes he oversees. His division provides coaching and financial assistance to countries without strong luge teams, including Georgia.

Olympic host countries have traditionally guarded access to their tracks in the hopes of establishing home-course advantage, but some said what set the Canadians apart was their reluctance to grant extra time to developing athletes unlikely to challenge them for medals.

Meanwhile, athletes were attaining unprecedented speeds on the Whistler track. Designed for speeds of 137 kilometres per hour, or 85 miles per hour, the track was delivering speeds beyond 153 km/h., or 95 mph.

The Canadians’ position was all the more frustrating, the athletes said, because they had granted extra training runs to the powerful Russian team as part of a reciprocal arrangement in advance of the Sochi Games in 2014.

“There’s two groups of people: there’s the haves and the have-nots,” said Rubén González, 47, a member of the Argentine luge team who finished in last place in the men’s singles luge competition Sunday. “You know that going in.”

John Gibson, a spokesman for the Whistler Sliding Centre, said in an e-mail message that those who run the site have gone out of their way to allow athletes to train there, and an international luge official said the Canadians were within the rules for providing access to the track. “We have actually surpassed the requirements set forth by the international sport federations in terms of athlete access,” Gibson said.

A spokesman for the Canadian Luge Association declined to comment, but officials have said in the past that athletes have received almost three times the number of training runs than were offered in the run-up to the Turin Games in 2006.

Hoeger, who was born in Venezuela and moved to the United States when he was 16, was hoping to qualify for the Vancouver Games and become the oldest competitor at this year’s Games.

He is a former kinesiology professor at Boise State University and has written several textbooks on fitness.

His training was stalled in the fall of 2008, when he injured an ankle while training at the Lake Placid course. He did not recuperate from the injury in enough time to participate in international training at the Whistler Sliding Centre.

Requests for makeup runs were denied.

Hoeger returned to Whistler last February for training. After attempting to learn the course systematically from easier, lower starting points, then progressing to the harder starts, Hoeger said officials instructed him to make his seventh run from the most challenging, men’s start.

Hoeger refused, saying doing so “would be suicidal” because he had not yet learned the course.

“I knew the track was extremely difficult,” said Hoeger, whose highest World Cup ranking was 52nd. “I had heard enough horror stories. Every athlete treats this track with the utmost respect. Nearly every athlete is scared to death of this track.”

He returned a final time in November 2009 for the designated international training session. On his fourth run from the men’s start, he crashed because he said a barricade was not in place to prevent his sled from hitting the entrance ramp at the women’s start.

He believes he lost consciousness between Curves 2 and 3 and says he has no memory of traveling through Curves 3, 4 and 5 before coming to rest at Curve 6, about a third of the way down the course.

Medical officials transported Hoeger by ambulance to the Whistler Health Care Centre. Hoeger said he sustained a third-grade concussion and still deals with lightheadedness and a loss of balance.

The same day, officials sent a notice to athletes that the barricade “will be in place whenever men’s start is in use.”

“There should have been a wall up,” González said. “It’s not mandatory. Sometimes they put it up. Sometimes they don’t. It’s stupid that it isn’t mandatory on every track.” González said he felt safe on the track at Whistler.

Hoeger noted that although his accident was not as severe as the one that caused Kumaritashvili’s death, officials reacted similarly. “After the fact, they decided they were going to put up the wall,” Hoeger said. “These are the luge experts. They should know and understand the sport.”

Vancouver organizers and luge officials have said Kumaritashvili’s accident was caused by his errors and not by “deficiencies in the track.”

They said they made changes to the course the next day in part to reassure athletes that it was safe.

Hoeger’s chafing over the November accident and previous lack of access to the track escalated into a series of exchanges between him and officials from the International Olympic Committee, the international luge federation, the Vancouver organizing committee and the Canadian Luge Association.

At one point, Hoeger’s lawyer, Bryan Storer, also exchanged messages with officials. In an interview, Storer said Hoeger had not decided whether to sue.

Hoeger began the correspondence, copies of which he provided to The New York Times, after he was not allowed to make up training sessions. “I knew I was done after the crash,” Hoeger said of his goal to make the Vancouver Games. “I knew there was no way I would get back on the sled. I wanted to know why.”

He demanded that Ed Moffat of Canada be removed as race director for luge at the Olympics, that all athletes be offered equal runs in the future, that Canada forfeit the surplus runs negotiated for the 2014 Winter Games in Sochi and that the Canadian Luge Association be reprimanded for unethical actions and failing to provide a safe sliding environment.

“I have to question the integrity of the Canadian Luge Association and the fairness of the next Olympic Games to be held on Canadian soil,” he wrote in a November letter to Moffat.

In a letter responding to Hoeger’s demands, Svein Romstad, secretary general of the international luge federation, said that Moffat had acted with integrity, that the Canadians had the right to enter into training arrangements with other teams, and that they had followed all international luge rules.

His request for make-up runs, Romstad wrote, could “only be defined as special treatment if it had been granted.”

Although Apostol said extra runs were eventually granted, they were scheduled for a week in January when most of his athletes were busy competing in events in Europe and could not afford to travel to Whistler.

He said he was drafting a proposal to allow more runs for less experienced teams and to limit speeds on future tracks.

“They made it really inconvenient,” said Michelle Despain Hoeger, Werner Hoeger’s daughter-in-law, who competed in luge for Argentina in 2006. She narrowly missed qualifying for the Olympics this year.

Romstad said the Canadians granted requests for additional training time after it became clear that athletes were attaining speeds in excess of 137 km/h, or 85 mph., the original estimate of the track’s maximum speed.

“In recognition of that, we did get extra training for the totality of the athletes that were available to participate in all of the training that we offered,” Romstad said.

He said the training in January was set aside for athletes from unseeded teams, with the intent of giving less experienced competitors additional time to train.

But ultimately, allocating track time is the responsibility of the Canadians, he said. “The F.I.L. does not own the track,” he said.

Although Romstad said he sympathized with athletes like Hoeger and others, “I have to go with what is right and wrong within our rules,” he said.

(jonathan abrams & katie thomas, New York Times, 18February2010)

Maquillage de comptes ou habillage légal de bilan ? Sous le feu des critiques pour leur responsabilité dans la crise financière, les banques de Wall Street, Goldman Sachs en particulier, sont au coeur d’un nouveau scandale. Cette fois, il ne s’agit plus de “subprimes”, ces crédits hypothécaires explosifs vendus à des ménages modestes, mais de produits financiers sophistiqués proposés à des Etats endettés pour enjoliver leurs comptes.

Encore une fois, la Grèce est au coeur de cette affaire. Mais le pays est, semble-t-il, loin d’être le seul à avoir eu recours à des astuces financières conseillées par des banques de New York et de Londres. Le Royaume-Uni, l’Allemagne, l’Italie le Portugal ont, eux aussi, “optimisé” leurs comptes avec l’aide de Goldman Sachs, JP Morgan, Barclays ou encore “feu Lehman Brothers”.

Dans le cas grec, la très controversée Goldman Sachs aurait, selon la presse allemande et américaine, offert ses services à Athènes pour réduire, en 2001, ses déficits en utilisant des “swaps de devises”. Un outil qui permet de se protéger des effets de changes en transformant en euros la dette initialement émise en dollars et en yens.

“Légal !”, affirment les autorités grecques. Sauf que le taux de change utilisé ici aurait été exagérément favorable. Bilan de l’opération : 1 milliard d’euros de dette gommée pour le pays et 300 millions de commissions empochés par la banque.

“Ce serait une honte s’il s’avérait que les banques, qui nous ont déjà amenés au bord du précipice, ont également participé à la falsification des statistiques budgétaires de la Grèce”, a réagi la chancelière allemande, Angela Merkel, mercredi 17 février.

La Grèce a-t-elle triché ? Peut-être, mais dans les faits, le savoir-faire des banques américaines a profité à de nombreux pays. “Il s’agit d’opérations naturelles, qui participent de la bonne gestion de la dette”, assure un émetteur de dette souveraine en Europe. Les mécaniques sont variées. “Elles n’ont de limites que la créativité des financiers”, indique un ancien haut responsable de banque.

L’Italie a fait partie des pays les plus friands de cette ingénierie financière. Le pays a notamment multiplié les opérations de titrisation de sa dette. Autrement dit, l’Etat a revendu au marché ses créances sous forme de titres financiers pour se débarrasser de sa dette. La Belgique, de son côté, a titrisé des arriérés fiscaux, se souvient un opérateur sur le marché de la dette : “C’était en 2006.” Le pays a ainsi évité d’emprunter de l’argent, faute d’avoir perçu à temps les sommes dues par les contribuables.

Certains Etats ont vendu de la dette indexée “sur un peu n’importe quoi”, indique un opérateur de marché. Exemple : ces emprunts grecs émis en 2000, dont le remboursement des intérêts était adossé aux profits attendus de la loterie nationale !

“Quand on est “limite”, on a forcément la tentation d’utiliser ces astuces-là pour essayer de réduire sa dette, commente René Defossez, stratège sur le marché des taux chez Natixis . Ce n’est pas très orthodoxe, mais ce n’est pas forcément contestable.”

La France n’a pas été pas absente du jeu. Le pays assure n’avoir jamais eu recours aux services de Goldman Sachs. “Nous ne faisons sans doute pas d’opérations assez “funky’’sur la dette française”, indique-t-on au Trésor.

Mais jusqu’en 2002, le pays a utilisé des outils financiers complexes de couverture (des “swaps de taux”) pour modifier les échéances de remboursements de sa créance. A première vue, grâce à ces artifices, tout le monde est gagnant. “Pour les Etats, ces opérations permettent de reporter la dette à plus tard. Et pour les banques, ce sont des promesses de marges juteuses”, indique Emmanuel Fruchard, consultant en risques financiers. Les établissements empocheraient en moyenne 1 % voire plus des montants de dettes émis.

Sur ce “marché”, les banques anglo-saxonnes ont été particulièrement actives et recherchées. Du fait de leur savoir-faire, mais aussi “en faisant miroiter un accès direct à des investisseurs étrangers comme des fonds de pensions”, indique l’économiste Philippe Brossard, de l’agence Macrorama. Pour lui, “fignoler” de la sorte la structure des déficits publics n’est pas sans risque. Si l’Etat semble gagnant à court terme, il peut être contraint par la banque à rembourser des intérêts beaucoup plus lourds à long terme. Le New York Times raconte ainsi que le ministre grec des finances avait dénoncé, en 2005, l’opération de Goldman Sachs, se plaignant du fait que l’Etat devait rembourser de grosses sommes à la banque américaine jusqu’en… 2019. ” En utilisant des outils sophistiqués, les Etats se rendent dépendants des banques, ajoute M. Brossard. Certains avaient traité avec Lehman Brothers et se sont inquiétés lorsque l’établissement a fait faillite.”

Conscient du danger, Eurostat, l’institut européen de statistiques, censé valider ces opérations, a mis en 2008 le holà à certaines pratiques, en déconseillant, notamment le recours à la titrisation.

Est-ce assez ? Pour Michel Sapin, ancien ministre français des finances et secrétaire national du Parti socialiste à l’économie, “une régulation plus contraignante est absolument nécessaire sur le marché. D’autant plus qu’il s’agit ici de la signature d’un Etat”.

(claire gatinois et marie de vergès, Le Monde, 19February2010)

When America attacks a country, it’s best to gloss America as NATO. And a war that might last another ten years, if America wins, should be described from the outset as almost won. Two news stories about Afghanistan, from TimesOnline of 13 February 2010, described the same event in instructive terms: 1) Wave upon wave of helicopters ferried the first of more than 15,000 NATO-led troops to the last major Taleban stronghold; 2) US-led assault, including 4,000 British troops, launched in Afghanistan in push to seize control of the enemy stronghold. The first presents the war as almost won. And except to Clio (the muse of history), it doesn’t matter who leads.

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