Shut Out of the Debt Markets, Catalonia Asks Madrid for Emergency Aid

The following is an excerpt from an article in 

The New York Times
Wednesday, August 29, 2012

Shut Out of the Debt Markets, Catalonia Asks Madrid for Emergency Aid

By RAPHAEL MINDER

MADRID — The most economically important region of Spain, Catalonia, asked the national government on Tuesday for more than 5 billion euros in emergency financing, underscoring a growing regional debt burden as the country struggles to pull out of its economic tailspin.

Catalonia says it can no longer obtain loans in the financial markets to support its debt. Just last month, the Valencia and Murcia regions both said that they would need help from a new 18 billion euro, or $23 billion, fund set up by the Spanish government.

The government of the Spanish prime minister, Mariano Rajoy, has been struggling to meet its budgetary commitments to the euro zone and avoid requiring a Greek-style bailout. Already, Europe has committed to lending Spain up to 100 billion euros to prop up its banking industry.

Whether Spain will itself have to request a European rescue depends in part on whether its 17 semiautonomous regions can clean up their finances and stick to budgetary targets this year. The fact that a region like Catalonia cannot meet its debt-financing obligations “is the big problem in this country at the moment,” Mr. Rajoy said Tuesday.

Mr. Rajoy was speaking after meeting on Tuesday in Madrid with Herman Van Rompuy, the president of the European Council, the administrative arm of the European Union. Both denied that Spain was already negotiating aid beyond the bank bailout. Mr. Van Rompuy said it would be up to Spain to decide whether to apply for more aid.

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Conflict Minerals

Excerpt from an article in

The New York Times

Tuesday, March 20, 2012

Use of ‘Conflict Minerals’ Gets More Scrutiny

By EDWARD WYATT

WASHINGTON — An iPhone can do a lot of things. But can it arm Congolese rebels?

That is the question being debated by a battalion of lobbyists from electronics makers, mining companies and international aid organizations that has descended on the Securities and Exchange Commission in recent months seeking to influence the drafting of a Dodd-Frank regulation that has nothing to do with the financial crisis.

Tacked onto the end of that encyclopedic digest of financial reform is an odd provision. It requires publicly traded companies whose products use certain minerals commonly mined in strife-torn areas of Central Africa to report to shareholders and the S.E.C. whether their mineral supply comes from the Democratic Republic of Congo.

The measure is aimed at cutting off the brutal militia groups that have often taken over the mining and sale of so-called conflict minerals to finance their military aims. Just about every company affected by the law says they support it, but many business groups have also been pushing aggressively to put wiggle room in the restrictions, calling for lengthy phase-in periods, exemptions for minimal use of the minerals and loose definitions of what types of uses are covered.

Nearly every consumer product that includes electronic parts uses a derivative of one of the four minerals: columbite-tantalite, which when refined is used in palm-size cellphones and giant turbines; cassiterite, an important source of the tin used in coffee cans and circuit boards; wolframite, used to produce tungsten for light bulbs and machine tools; and gold, commonly used as an electronic conductor (and, of course, jewelry).

Given their broad application, the minerals have been a primary target of humanitarian groups concerned about genocide, sexual violence, child soldiers and other issues that have been common outgrowths of conflicts in Central Africa.