Saturday, September 04, 2010
ToDaZeD Coinky Dink
See Ya!
[Obama’sOval Office Rehab“No Victory Lap” in Iraq Speech - 8/31]
In completely unrelated nooz…
In a bid to fend off the threat of a nationwide financial crisis, the Afghan government scrambled to come up with the funds to bail out Afghanistan’s largest bank on Saturday after lines of frantic depositors mobbed the bank for a third day.
On Wednesday and Thursday, panicked depositors withdrew almost $180 million, more than a third of the $500 million the bank had on hand before the onset of the crisis. The bank was closed on Friday, the Muslim day of rest, and reopened Saturday.
...
The U.S. says it will not finance a rescue of Kabul Bank. “No U.S. taxpayer funds will be used to support Kabul Bank,” said a spokeswoman for the U.S. Treasury, Marti Adams.
But some U.S. officials say the fragile state of Afghanistan’s finances—it collected less than $1 billion in revenue last year is dependent on donor nations for most of its annual budget—could result in U.S. and other donor funds indirectly assisting an Afghan government bailout the bank.
...Mahmud Karzai, the president’s brother and third-largest shareholder with a 7% stake, says the lender’s assets are roughly equal to the $1.3 billion in deposits it held before last week.
Eight years ago, Mahmoud Karzai [The older brother of Hamid Karzai, the Afghan president] was running a handful of modest restaurants in San Francisco, Boston and Baltimore. Today, Mr. Karzai, an immigrant waiter-turned-restaurant owner, is one of Afghanistan’s most prosperous businessmen.
Mahmoud Karzai has major interests in the country’s only cement factory, its dominant bank, its most ambitious real estate development, its only Toyota distributorship and four coal mines.
...Mahmoud Karzai, an American citizen, kept his Maryland home, but travels back and forth to Kabul from a multimillion-dollar retreat in Dubai owned by his business partner.
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