Since she became Argentina's first elected female president at the end of 2007, Cristina Fernandez has often complained that things are tougher for her because she is a woman.

 Some analysts and historians say that while women in power do face sexism, Fernandez's frequent playing of the gender card can be detrimental because it emphasizes a perceived position of weakness.

Only a few months after taking office,  Fernandez got into a messy conflict with farmers over taxes, which did lasting damage to her approval ratings.

"It is harder because I'm a woman," Fernandez said frequently during the farm dispute, which persists more than a year after it began.

In one speech, she said she had committed two sins that explained the ferocity of the attacks against her and her government: first, winning office with lots of votes and second, being a woman.

Since her party was defeated in a June midterm election, the president has kept using the gender issue as sort of a safe-conduct pass.

Last Friday, when she arrived half an hour late to a South American summit in Asuncion, Paraguay, she complained that the media unfairly pick on her when she is late.

"I've attended three international summits in which men arrived late and we had to wait for them for half an hour and nobody reported that story," said Fernandez, who followed her husband, Nestor Kirchner, into the presidency.

Women in power are often more closely observed than men regarding their looks, emotions and families, and Fernandez is no exception. Even prestigious media outlets in Argentina have criticized her makeup and hair, and during her campaign for election she denied reports that she had had cosmetic surgery. She has also been critized for tearing up during speeches or having a masculine attitude. Her inauguration outfit was scrutinized and criticized for copying Spain's Princess Leticia.

In neighboring Chile, President Michelle Bachelet was said to have too masculine a style, and when she was campaigning there was media speculation over whether she could combine the presidency with raising her children as a single parent. She complained about machismo in the political system when she took office and said women were judged differently from men. But nowadays, with her popularity high, she has been silent on the gender issue.

German Chancellor  Angela Merkel has never blamed gender for bad treatment, although her clothes and a low-cut dress she wore to the opera have been criticized.

German media sometimes refer to her as Angie, an informality that Fernandez also faces. Newspapers often call her "Cristina," although no male president has ever been referred to by his first name.

PHOTO CREDIT- Argentine President Cristina Fernandez de Kirchner waves (2nd L) during a group photo at the Fifth Summit of the Americas in Port of Spain April 19, 2009. REUTERS/Chris Wattie

When you are a Bollywood actor in Mumbai, doors open automatically -- or at least so you would think. But as Shabana Azmi, Aamir Ali and now Emraan Hashmi have discovered, there are some doors which remain shut.

Hashmi has complained to the Minorities Commission of Maharashtra that he and members of his family were not allowed to buy a flat in the posh locality of Bandra -- because of his religion.

In his complaint, the actor said he was stopped from completing a purchase of a flat in Bandra’s Pali Hill because the society did not want to allow Muslims.

On the face of it, it seems ridiculous. What’s more, it is illegal.

Abraham Mathai, Vice-Chairman of the state minorities’ commission, told Reuters it would recommend legal action against the building secretary and chairperson if what Hashmi said did happen.

This is not the first time Bollywood is talking about discrimination. Someone as senior and well-respected as Shabana Azmi has spoken about it in the past. Television actor Aamir Ali has also said he found it hard to get a flat in Mumbai.

Unfortunately, this is the first time any one has done anything about this kind of discrimination and Mathai vouches for that.

"I have heard of such cases many times, but this is the first time any one has actually approached us."

Muslims account for about 14 percent of India's 1.1 billion people, making them the biggest minority group.

India is officially a secular nation but high-profile success stories of some Indian Muslims may mask their real status. Reinforcing stereotypes about the community, Muslims are targeted after most bomb attacks.

But was Hashmi denied a house because he was Muslim?

The city of Mumbai prides itself on its spirit. It prides itself on its secularism and cosmopolitanism and what could be a better example of those qualities than the thriving entertainment industry?

If public figures cannot escape discrimination, what hope do ordinary mortals have? Did you ever face this problem?

Be waiting until the main action of the protest had died down and using a low angle, Oded Gal has created a moody street scene of the aftermath of a demonstration in Jerusalem.

View this week's Your View slideshow here.

Earlier I expressed my displeasure with C4C.  I'm unhappy to see the House has voted to expand it.  Reuters:

The U.S. House of Representatives approved on Friday a $2 billion extension of the "Cash-for-Clunkers" automobile sales incentive program.

The Democratic proposal would run through September 30, 2010, and tap funds from an Energy Department loan guarantee program included in the economic stimulus package enacted in February.

An expiration date of 9/30/10 is comical.  If the program keeps gobbling up $1 billion per week, another $2b won't get us half way to Labor Day.

According to the article, the President is now fully on board:

The White House supports new funding for the program on grounds the initiative so far has provided a viable, national economic stimulus amid recession.

Earlier this week Tim Geithner promised the Chinese we were going to get serious about the deficit.  I can't imagine they're happy financing the American auto sector...

Could there be hope that this doesn't get through the Senate?

Already a key senator, Energy Committee Chairman Jeff Bingaman, said he opposes using Energy Department funds for the auto program.

Sounds like a technicality to me.  Bingaman doesn't want money to come from the Energy Dept., but he won't stand in the way if the Senate finds $2 billion elsewhere.

When England's bowlers awoke this morning they would have had the sound of stinging criticism ringing in their ears following their poor performance on day one, but how they responded.

They ripped out nine Australian wickets for the cost of 137 runs as the tourists collapsed from 126 for one overnight to 263 all out, with England closing on 116 for two as bad light cut the day’s play short.

The tone was set for the day by a ferocious opening spell by Graham Onions who took wickets with his first two deliveries, crucially that of Shane Watson, unbeaten overnight on 62 and looking in imperious form.

Onions also took the wicket of Ricky Ponting but not before the Australian captain became his country’s leading run scorer in test cricket. Onions also took the final wicket of Australia’s first innings to finish with figures of 4 for 58.

All credit to Andrew Strauss, who has bounced back remarkably from a shaky first test at Cardiff, for opening the bowling this morning with Onions after the Durham man had been splayed about Edgbaston, going at seven runs an over, the night before.

Onions repaid his captain's faith by bowling full and straight and got his just rewards.

It wasn’t long before James Anderson joined the party as England’s premier swing bowler found conditions to his liking to rip through the Australian middle order to end with figures of 5 for 80.

It was a stunning display from Anderson and the delivery that will stick in my mind will be the cherry that dismissed Graham Manou.

Anderson deliberately ran wide of the crease on his run, arrowed the ball into the right hander, swinging it away at the last minute and smashing the wicket keeper’s off stump clean out of the turf. A perfect exhibition of the art of swing bowling.

England’s reply began nervously as Alistar Cook fell for a duck driving at a ball wide of his off stump, a dismissal that will infuriate the Essex opener, who continues to be suspect to that exact delivery.

But cometh the hour, cometh the man and captain Andrew Strauss is making this series his series with another top performance with the bat. Resolute in defence and commanding in attack, he finished the day unbeaten on 64.

Along the way he lost Ravi Bopara for 23, again dismissed playing a loose shot when he was looking set, and Ian Bell should have been out lbw to the luckless Mitchell Johnson, who finally managed to produce the perfect left-arm delivery into the right hander only to be thwarted by the umpires.

Two more wickets for not many runs and Australia will feel they have a chance to level this series at 1-1, but only if the rain stays away, which by the looks of Saturday's forecasts is doubtful.

Another superb day of entertaining and seesawing cricket. Just where is this series going?

[CROSSPOST blog: 14 post: 13662]

Original Post Text:

A half-dozen fake letters, signed by people who don't seem to exist and who work at made-up jobs, are causing a bit of buzz in the environmental world -- mostly because the letters urged a Virginia congressman to vote against a cap-and-trade system to curb climate change.

The Sierra Club calls it "dirty tricks." The Union of Concerned Scientists points out that the PR firm said to be behind the fake-letter lobbying effort has a history of working against climate legislation. Rep. Ed Markey, who chairs a House committee on energy independence and global warming, said the committee will investigate. The Daily Progress newspaper in Charlottesville published a detailed story.

The congressman, Tom Perriello, voted for the cap-and-trade bill anyway. It passed by a slim margin and the Senate is expected to take up this matter in September.

The alleged forgeries came in letters made to look as if they were sent from two civil rights organizations: the local branch of the NAACP and Creciendo Juntos, a network for Charlottesville's Hispanic community -- neither of which oppose cap-and-trade. The Daily Progress tracked the letters to a Washington lobbying firm, Bonner & Associates. A partner at the Bonner firm apologized to Creciendo Juntos, but that probably won't be the end of the matter.

Jack Bonner, the president of Bonner & Associates, responded to a call for comment by e-mail: "We take our business very seriously. A temporary employee—lied to us—and contrary to our policies sent these letters. We—no one else—we on our own found this out. We immediately fired the person. We then, called those effected, explained what happened and apologized. In the case of the group in the story—we did it in person and by letter. This should not have happened—we had a bad employee—but through our internal checks, we found the problem, and on our own initiative took the step to notify the affected group."

Interesting thing about the Bonner firm: its acknowledged specialty is "grassroots" lobbying -- even though grassroots politics used to mean efforts that come from the ground up, from the rank-and-file members of a group. The Union of Concerned Scientists, which strongly favors the legislation that Bonner's clients presumably oppose, pointed reporters to a now-defunct Web site Bonner put up for the Western Fuels Association to oppose the carbon-capping Kyoto Protocol back in the 1990s.

The association said the site generated 20,000 e-mails in opposition, including one from a mythical "George Jetson." The cartoon character complained that he would have to pay an extra $24,239,987.52 a year if Congress ratified the Kyoto pact. They didn't, and the United States is now the only industrialized country that hasn't joined the protocol.

Carl Pope, Sierra Club's executive director, praised Perriello for voting for the bill and for looking into the efforts of "the dirty, old business-as-usual players who tried to sway his vote." Pope also noted that other members of Congress may have received the same kind of forged letters, urging them to vote against the bill: "It is disturbing, to say the least, to think that some congresspeople may have, in good faith, voted thinking they were representing their communities when in fact they were not."

So the question is: did this lobbying effort, and others, sway the vote on the climate bill in the House? Will the same efforts come into play in September in the Senate? And is this an outrage, or just the way Washington works?

Photo credit: REUTERS/Jonathan Ernst (U.S. Capitol dome, February 24, 2009)

A half-dozen fake letters, signed by people who don't seem to exist and who work at made-up jobs, are causing a bit of buzz in the environmental world -- mostly because the letters urged a Virginia congressman to vote against a cap-and-trade system to curb climate change.

The Sierra Club calls it "dirty tricks." The Union of Concerned Scientists points out that the PR firm said to be behind the fake-letter lobbying effort has a history of working against climate legislation. Rep. Ed Markey, who chairs a House committee on energy independence and global warming, said the committee will investigate. The Daily Progress newspaper in Charlottesville published a detailed story.

The congressman, Tom Perriello, voted for the cap-and-trade bill anyway. It passed by a slim margin and the Senate is expected to take up this matter in September.

The alleged forgeries came in letters made to look as if they were sent from two civil rights organizations: the local branch of the NAACP and Creciendo Juntos, a network for Charlottesville's Hispanic community -- neither of which oppose cap-and-trade. The Daily Progress tracked the letters to a Washington lobbying firm, Bonner & Associates. A partner at the Bonner firm apologized to Creciendo Juntos, but that probably won't be the end of the matter.

Jack Bonner, the president of Bonner & Associates, responded to a call for comment by e-mail: "We take our business very seriously. A temporary employee—lied to us—and contrary to our policies sent these letters. We—no one else—we on our own found this out. We immediately fired the person. We then, called those effected, explained what happened and apologized. In the case of the group in the story—we did it in person and by letter. This should not have happened—we had a bad employee—but through our internal checks, we found the problem, and on our own initiative took the step to notify the affected group."

Interesting thing about the Bonner firm: its acknowledged specialty is "grassroots" lobbying -- even though grassroots politics used to mean efforts that come from the ground up, from the rank-and-file members of a group. The Union of Concerned Scientists, which strongly favors the legislation that Bonner's clients presumably oppose, pointed reporters to a now-defunct Web site Bonner put up for the Western Fuels Association to oppose the carbon-capping Kyoto Protocol back in the 1990s.

The association said the site generated 20,000 e-mails in opposition, including one from a mythical "George Jetson." The cartoon character complained that he would have to pay an extra $24,239,987.52 a year if Congress ratified the Kyoto pact. They didn't, and the United States is now the only industrialized country that hasn't joined the protocol.

Carl Pope, Sierra Club's executive director, praised Perriello for voting for the bill and for looking into the efforts of "the dirty, old business-as-usual players who tried to sway his vote." Pope also noted that other members of Congress may have received the same kind of forged letters, urging them to vote against the bill: "It is disturbing, to say the least, to think that some congresspeople may have, in good faith, voted thinking they were representing their communities when in fact they were not."

So the question is: did this lobbying effort, and others, sway the vote on the climate bill in the House? Will the same efforts come into play in September in the Senate? And is this an outrage, or just the way Washington works?

Photo credit: REUTERS/Jonathan Ernst (U.S. Capitol dome, February 24, 2009)

Barring any unexpected stumbles, and revisions aside, today will be the last time this year that Americans are told their economy is shrinking.

Indeed, the modest one percent decline in second-quarter gross domestic product could be followed by growth rates as high as three percent in the final six months of the year.

But good economic news can be dangerous, as the Great Depression showed. As growth bounced back after 1933, complacency set in, leading to premature demands for an unwinding of government stimulus and tighter monetary policy.

The result was a second downturn in 1937, as Depression scholar and Obama adviser Christina Romer has pointed out.

A repeat of this blunder becomes more likely the better the figures start to look. The U.S. economy is far from ready to walk without the crutch of government money, and won't be for some time.

The dependence of the economy on government support was graphically illustrated by today's GDP figures. The 10.9 percent jump in federal government spending was one of the few positives on the GDP ledger between April and June.

Support from Uncle Sam was invaluable in propping up ailing consumer finances. Real disposable income actually increased by 3.2 percent, despite the appalling state of the labor market. This government infusion will continue into the final six months of the year as the "cash for clunkers" program works its magic on auto sales and infrastructure spending picks up.

In the second half of the year, GDP figures are likely to overstate the underlying vibrancy of the U.S. economy still more. A statistical quirk of the GDP figures ensures that as large negatives turn into zeros, growth turns positive.

For example, much of the boost to GDP in the end of the year is expected to come from a slowing of the pace at which companies draw down inventories. Even if the rate of decline halves, this will give a powerful fillip to headline GDP growth.

Lurking beneath the encouraging growth figures will be a struggling economy. Business may start to draw down stocks less quickly, but there is still no sign they plan to invest in future production.

Investment fell 8.9 percent in the second quarter even after an almost 40 percent slide in the first. There is also no reason to expect that consumers will become less dependent on government largess.

The Employment Cost Index showed private compensation up only 1.5 percent over the past 12 months -- a record low. An outright decline in wages is increasingly likely as unemployment rises. For a better gauge of economic health in coming months policy makers should look to unemployment, consumer spending and business investment.

So, alarming as Federal deficits have become, lawmakers need to resist any temptation to withdraw precious government funds from the economy over the coming year. Fed officials should not be too quick to play down the possible need for further credit easing.

If anything, another tap on the accelerator is still in order.

By Huw Jones
LONDON, July 31 (Reuters) - British government plans to revamp banking supervision fail to end a muddle over who is in charge and reform of the country's top market watchdog falls short of what's needed, a group of UK lawmakers said on Friday.
Britain, hit hard by the credit crunch, was forced to nationalise Northern Rock and Bradford & Bingley banks, engineer a speedy merger of Lloyds and HBOS, and take a majority stake in RBS, all at huge cost to the taxpayer.

Parliament's treasury committee said in a cross-party report on the banking crisis published on Friday that the government's proposed changes to the tripartite system of financial supervision were "largely cosmetic".
But Financial Secretary at the Treasury Stephen Timms said he did not agree, saying the changes "were pretty far reaching".

The government is looking to improve how the finance ministry, Bank of England and the Financial Services Authority work together to better spot build up of risks before banks are destabilised and require rescuing.

The report said such a revamp still left unclear who decides a bank needs winding up or saving.

"Where responsibility lies for strategic decisions and executive action was, and remains, a muddle", the report said.

"When the dust eventually settles, the new system must answer the question 'Who gets fired?' if and when the next crisis occurs," it added.

Lawmakers were told regulators occupied "wormholes", only able to see one part of the financial system and unable to appreciate how risks in the broader picture were building up.

Timms said: "Securing the stability of the economy clearly is a big task and it does require different organisations to work together...I don't think that can be avoided.

"The question is can we put in place a framework to make sure they make the right judgments, and I think that is what the White Paper does."

The committee said no new supervisory responsibilities should be decided until decisions were made about the precise tools for intervening in a future crisis.

The report offers little that is radical or not already being addressed at national, European Union or global levels. Many of its more domestically-focused recommendations may fall by the wayside in any case.

The UK opposition Conservative Party, tipped in the opinion polls to win an election due by June 2010, wants far more radical action such as abolishing the FSA and making the Bank of England fully responsible for prudential supervision.

The committee reiterated its criticisms from earlier reports that the FSA "failed dreadfully" to supervise banks in the run-up to the credit crunch but it was changing for the better.

"The FSA must develop the confidence to take unpopular decisions when the economic boom begins again, in the face of both industry and the political class," the report said.

The lawmaker panel also recommended that senior banking officials should have a qualification in banking.

The FSA said the committee report acknowledged it had identified and rectified "historic mistakes", that the financial sector has clearly felt this change in approach, and it was actively making judgments about what might happen in future.

"We are using these experts judgments to test the robustness of firms' business models, their governance framework and to assess whether individuals are fit to run them -- regardless of their individual qualifications," the FSA said.

The report said the FSA needed "automatic tools to put sand in the wheels of financial expansion" without having to prove beyond doubt such action is needed.

The government should ensure there are no banks "too big to save" and a "tax on size" through higher capital requirements would make very big, complicated banks less of a risk, the report said.
The FSA should not rule out a trading ban at retail banks, it added.

(Reporting by Huw Jones, editing by Stephen Nisbet/Toby Chopra) ((Reuters messaging: huw.jones.reuters.com@reuters.net; + 44 207 542 3326; huw.jones@thomsonreuters.com))

See also: Factbox on committee recommendations

One of the many mysteries swirling around high-frequency trading is just how profitable the lightning-fast buying and selling of stocks, options and commodities really is.

The Tabb Group, a financial services industry research firm, recently estimated that the 300 securities firms and hedge funds that specialize in rapid-fire algorithmic trading took in some $21 billion in profits last year. But when pressed on how it arrived at this figure, Tabb representatives won't say.

My colleague Felix Salmon, on his Reuters blog, says the Tabb figure "is not obviously unreasonable," but he would like to know more about how the firm got the figure. So would I, and until Tabb comes forward with more information, I'm not sure how reliable a statistic it is to keep quoting.

Of course, the dozen or so Wall Street firms and hedge funds that are the leaders in high-frequency trading -- either serving as a market maker or trading for their own account -- aren't much help either. Most prefer to say simply nothing on the subject, leaving us in a very dark pool on the issue of high-frequency profits.

To be fair, Goldman Sachs recently came out and said "even using the broadest definition, high-frequency shares trading accounted for less than one percent of Goldman Sachs' total revenue in the first half of 2009."

In the first half of the year Goldman's total net revenues were $23.2 billion. The dollars generated from high-frequency trading would appear to be a rather negligible $232 million. The firm adds that less than one percent of its daily value at risk -- the amount of money it could lose from trading -- is due to high-frequency trading.

But Goldman is talking only about high-frequency trading of stocks, not options and commodities. In options trading alone, Goldman's algorithmic-driven platform is estimated by a market source to account for 15 percent of the daily trading volume.

By comparison, the high-frequency options volume leader is the giant hedge fund Citadel Investment Group, controlling some 25 percent of the daily trading activity.

Additionally, there's a great deal of latitude for firms to decide what it considers to be proceeds from high-frequency trading. Bernard Donefer, a professor at CUNY Baruch College and a critic of automated trading strategies, says "nowhere in the market is a trade marked as a high frequency trade."

So it's entirely up to each firm to determine what constitutes a high-frequency, algorithmic-manufactured trade.

One thing we do know is that a lot of money is being sunk into high-frequency trading technology. The Wall Street Journal reports that NYSE Euronext is spending millons of dollars to construct a new hub for high-octane trading in Mahwah, New Jersey.

By its own admission, Citadel "has expended and continues to expend hundreds of millions of dollars" on building and maintaining its high-frequency trading platforms.

Add it all up and that's a lot of money Wall Street is committing to high-frequency trading. And if we know anything about Wall Street, it doesn't invest money in something unless it can generate a sizable return on investment