Soros Plays Politics
Investor's Business Daily
Politics: As election season kicks into high gear, who should jump in front of the cameras but George Soros. A string of worshipful media stories suggest he's just talking financial shop. We think it's campaign politics.
After several months of seeming hibernation, the leftist billionaire speculator, who calls himself the "stateless statesman," has somehow gotten himself a lot of sudden press coverage. Starting most prominently with CNBC's Maria Bartiromo, Soros has been telling interviewers that this is "the worst market crisis in 60 years" and "the end of an era."
Ahem. What the media blitz really coincides with is the heating up of the U.S. election. Soros is well-known for his political views, calling last year, for example, for "a certain de-nazification" of America.
Soros hasn't made any overtly political statements since news he funded MoveOn.org, the radical group that smeared Gen. David Petraeus ("General Betray Us") last fall. But he's still making political contributions. On the receiving end are not only the Barack Obama campaign, but also 501(c) nonprofits and 527 political groups that amount to shadow campaigns.
His newest project is said to be a $40 million startup called "Progressive Media USA" and is explicitly targeting John McCain. The big money group is to be led by professional smear campaigner David Brock, otherwise known for the Media Matters group that tries to nudge mainstream news outlets even further leftward.
But don't expect that to figure much in the perfectly baked puff pieces that call Soros "The Face of a Prophet," as the New York Times gushed Friday, and deal out more of his doom and gloom.
"I consider this the biggest financial crisis of my lifetime," the Times quoted him as saying. The dollar, he predicts, will be replaced as a global currency and things will get worse before they get better. A week earlier he told the Financial Times that the current crisis was all Ronald Reagan's and Margaret Thatcher's fault.
The problem with all this negativity is that it amounts to a thinly disguised form of political campaigning. The statements he makes — and he makes a lot of them — influence perceptions, particularly of voters who aren't in the markets themselves. This helps the left in the same way as straight political campaigning.
Soros presents himself to media sycophants as a wise old philosopher with the global good in mind. To us, he looks more like a market speculator with political opinions that get more attention than they deserve.
Barack Obama, The Big Talker
Is A Living Lie
by Thomas Sowell
An e-mail from a reader said that, while Hillary Clinton tells lies, Barack Obama is himself a lie. That is becoming painfully apparent with each new revelation of how drastically his carefully crafted image this election year contrasts with what he has actually been saying and doing for many years.
Sen. Obama's election-year image is that of a man who can bring the country together, overcoming differences of party or race, as well as solving our international problems by talking with Iran and other countries with which we are at odds, and performing other miscellaneous miracles as needed.
There is, of course, not a speck of evidence that Obama has ever transcended party differences in the United States Senate. Voting records analyzed by the National Journal show him to be the farthest left of anyone in the Senate. Nor has he sponsored any significant bipartisan legislation — or any other significant legislation, for that matter.
Obama is all talk — glib talk, exciting talk, confident talk, but still just talk. Some of his recent talk has stirred up controversy because it revealed yet another blatant contradiction between Obama's public image and his reality.
Speaking privately to supporters in heavily left-liberal San Francisco, Obama let down his hair and described working class people in Pennsylvania as so "bitter" that they "cling to guns or religion or antipathy to people who aren't like them."
Like so much that Obama has said and done over the years, this is standard stuff on the far left, where guns and religion are regarded as signs of psychological dysfunction — and where opinions different from those of the left are ascribed to emotions ("bitter" in this case), rather than to arguments that need to be answered.
Like so many others on the left, Obama rejects "stereotypes" when they are stereotypes he doesn't like but blithely throws around his own stereotypes about "a typical white person" or "bitter" gun-toting, religious and racist working-class people.
In politics, the clearer a statement is, the more certain it is to be followed by a "clarification," when people react adversely to what was plainly said. Obama and his supporters were still busy "clarifying" Jeremiah Wright's very plain statements when it suddenly became necessary to "clarify" Obama's own statements in San Francisco.
People who have been cheering whistle-blowers for years have suddenly denounced the person who blew the whistle on what Obama said in private that is so contradictory to what he has been saying in public.
However inconsistent Obama's words, his behavior has been remarkably consistent over the years. He has sought out and joined with the radical, anti-Western left, whether Jeremiah Wright, William Ayers of the terrorist Weatherman underground or pro-Palestinian and anti-Israeli Rashid Khalidi.
Obama is also part of a long tradition on the left of being for the working class in the abstract, or as people potentially useful for the purposes of the left, but having disdain or contempt for them as human beings.
"The working class," said Karl Marx, "is revolutionary or it is nothing." That is, they mattered only insofar as they were willing to carry out the Marxist agenda.
Fabian socialist George Bernard Shaw included the working class among the "detestable" people who "have no right to live." He added: "I should despair if I did not know that they will all die presently, and that there is no need on earth why they should be replaced by people like themselves."
Similar statements on the left go back as far as Jean Jacques Rousseau in the 18th century and come forward into our own times.
It is understandable that young people are so strongly attracted to Obama. Youth is another name for inexperience — and experience is what is most needed when dealing with skillful and charismatic demagogues.
Those of us old enough to have seen the type again and again over the years can no longer find them exciting. Instead, they are as tedious as they are dangerous.
Trade, Scapegoat For Job Losses,
Is Now A Driving Force For Gains
by Robert Samuelson *
Almost everyone wishes for a renaissance of American manufacturing, and no one has said so louder than the Democratic presidential candidates and Democratic members of Congress. The trouble is that their deeds don't match their words.
They have blamed trade for almost anything that might ail the U.S. economy — in particular, manufacturing — when the opposite is now true: Only through expanded trade can the economy thrive and manufacturing stage a comeback.
The latest evidence of the gap between political rhetoric and economic reality is the Democratic-controlled House's decision to set aside, possibly indefinitely, the free-trade agreement negotiated with Colombia by the Bush administration.
On economic grounds, there's no reason to reject the agreement. Colombia's exports already enter the U.S. market duty-free under the 1991 Andean Trade Preference Act. Meanwhile, many U.S. exports to Colombia face stiff tariffs — up to 35% on autos, 15% on tractors and 10% on computers — most of which would ultimately go to zero under the agreement.
The tariffs dampen demand for U.S. exports by raising their price and putting them at a competitive disadvantage. Whirlpool exports about $50 million annually of refrigerators, washer-dryers and dishwashers to Colombia from plants in Ohio, Arkansas and Iowa. On a $1,000 refrigerator, a 20% tariff raises the retail price $200 in a fiercely competitive market with appliances also supplied by local firms and imports from Korea and elsewhere.
Misplaced Blame
(Why does Colombia want the agreement? Answer: Congress has to renew Colombia's present duty-free status periodically. The agreement would make it permanent.)
Yet, it's politically convenient to oppose the trade agreement because the popular imagery is that trade destroys U.S. jobs. The loss of almost 4 million U.S. manufacturing jobs since 1998 seems easy to explain by cheap imports or the flight of plants to Mexico, China and other poorer countries.
The truth is murkier: Although this has occurred, job losses also stem from greater efficiency (fewer workers producing more goods) and slumping domestic demand (for communications equipment and computers after the dot-com bust and for housing materials and vehicles now).
Nor has falling factory employment crippled overall U.S. job creation. Look at the numbers. From 1998 to 2007, total nonfarm payroll employment rose 12 million, and unemployment averaged only 4.9% — despite those 4 million lost factory jobs. In the same period, U.S. manufacturing output rose 22%.
No matter. Globalization and trade have become lightning rods for myriad grievances (job insecurity, wage inequality, eroding fringe benefits). But even if trade caused all the factory job loss, its impact is now shifting.
The dollar's dramatic depreciation (down an inflation-adjusted 20% since early 2003 against a basket of currencies) has enhanced the competitiveness of U.S. exports. Their growth now looms as a major source of job creation and economic expansion.
The overall trade deficit is dropping and, except for higher oil prices, would be dropping faster. In 2007, manufacturing exports rose 10.9%, double the 4.9% for manufacturing imports. At some companies, the effect is already noticeable.
Consider Bison Gear & Engineering, a medium-sized firm near Chicago that makes electric motors used for kitchen equipment, packaging machinery and medical devices. Since 2006, exports have increased from 20% of total sales to 30%, chairman Ron Bullock says. Bison has hired about 50 new workers, bringing total employment to 250.
It is no longer necessary to rely on elegant theories of comparative advantage, more consumer choice or greater competition to favor open trade. Jobs and economic growth will suffice. Indeed, without export-led growth, the economy may face a sluggish future.
Even after today's slowdown (recession?) ends, the outlook is worrisome. Consumers are heavily indebted. Housing will recover but probably not, for many years, to previous highs. Government spending is constrained by growth in the rest of the economy, unless Congress sharply raises taxes or deficits. Exports and related investments are the best hopes.
What House Democrats did was particularly perverse. They suspended Trade Promotion Authority, which mandates that Congress vote up or down on trade agreements within 90 days of their submission.
TPA gives other countries a reason to negotiate in good faith. They can make politically difficult concessions without fearing that Congress will ignore the agreement because it dislikes the U.S concessions.
Raze The Hurdles
Americans do have legitimate trade complaints: China manipulates its currency to aid exporters; other countries restrict imports. It's in the U.S. interest to dismantle these obstacles. Now the suspension of TPA can serve as an excuse — symbolically and substantively — for other countries not to negotiate, just when U.S. firms can most benefit from market openings.
What matters for workers and manufacturers is not what politicians say. It's the consequences of what they do. On trade, many Democrats — and some Republicans, too — are fighting the last war.
* Samuelson is a contributing editor of Newsweek and Washington Post, where he has written about business and economic issues since 1977.
Stalling Free Trade Won't Work
Investor's Business Daily
Congress: House Speaker Nancy Pelosi's bid to stall the Colombia free-trade pact into oblivion is a card she has played before. This time it won't fool anyone. In fact, it may backfire
It sent shock waves across the globe Thursday that the Speaker of the House could kick the America's best Latin American ally in the face as Pelosi did, altering House rules to end a timeline for a treaty vote. Oh, she assured Colombia it was "nothing personal," hoped it wouldn't be "misconstrued" and added that Democrats are "ready to work with" the president to bring a vote to the floor.
But the Big Labor bosses on whose behalf she was acting are on record as being implacably opposed to the pact, no matter how far either Bush or Colombia yield to their demands. That means America's businesses all lose.
Exaggeration? Check out what they're saying:
"The AFL-CIO remains unalterably opposed to passage of the U.S.-Colombia Free Trade Agreement," wrote AFL-CIO chief John Sweeney, in a Nov. 8 letter to Congress.
Meanwhile, Inter Press Services quoted AFL-CIO Policy Director Thea Lee on April 8 as being against compensatory measures: "There's nothing that could be in the Trade Adjustment Assistance program that in our view would be considered an adequate trade-off for the Colombia agreement," she said. "We're not looking for a deal. Period."
With union bosses like that pulling Pelosi's strings, it's no surprise President Bush doesn't believe her claims of good intentions. "That bill is dead unless the speaker schedules a definitive vote," Bush said Monday.
It's not just that Pelosi's beholden to Big Labor.
Pelosi has been adding new demands for costly spending programs unrelated to trade — including mortgage aid, another "stimulus package" and new infrastructure spending (a sop to the AFL-CIO) — and is using Colombia's pact as "leverage."
She has a history of doing this. The Colombia pact passed in 2006 after all the normal legislative processes, including Congressional input, and the deal was sealed. But in 2007, Democrats said they weren't satisfied — so back to the drawing board, which forced Colombia to change provisions on labor and environmental rules. Colombia patiently went along to make the Democrats happy.
Now, the revised pact still isn't good enough. New objections have arisen, along with Pelosi's new pork wish list.
It's obvious this is a game of legislative rope-a-dope, and Pelosi will keep making demands, get them, promise a vote and then ask for more. The game is obvious to President Bush, who says it "stiffs" our ally and he wants it to stop. But it ought to be obvious to Pelosi, too, and there are signs that perhaps she over-reached, politically speaking.
Business groups, like the U.S. Chamber of Commerce, the Business Roundtable and the Consumer Electronics Association are preparing to lobby hard. CEA's first ad features a photo of Hugo Chavez hugging Fidel Castro, saying "Please reject the Colombia free-trade agreement." If that growing pressure isn't enough to call Pelosi on her bid to string Colombia along and rake spoils, nothing is. Unless she gives a date for a vote, she's killing the pact and hoping that America forgets. We think she's in for an unpleasant surprise. |
Google, Citi lead stock rally
NEW YORK (Reuters) - Stocks rose sharply on Friday as a strong profit from Google Inc (GOOG.O: Quote, Profile, Research) fueled a rally in the technology sector and as Citigroup Inc (C.N: Quote, Profile, Research) gave investors hope the credit crisis was nearing an end.
Adding to investor enthusiasm, robust international sales helped manufacturers Honeywell International (HON.N: Quote, Profile, Research) and Caterpillar Inc (CAT.N: Quote, Profile, Research) post stronger-than-expected earnings. The two Dow components helped lift the blue chip index to a three-month high.
Google's shares rose more than 20 percent after the Internet company said it saw no impact from a weakening economy as it posted a better-than-expected quarterly profit and waved off fears of an online advertising slump.
And while Citigroup's loss was larger than expected, investors took comfort that the bank and its new chief executive, Vikram Pandit, are taking steps to get past credit problems, drive down expenses and restore luster to a stock down by about half over the last year. Citi's shares jumped 7.3 percent to $25.78.
"Google's earnings were just fantastic," said Bruce Zaro, chief technical strategist at Delta Global Advisors in Boston.
"But often it's the reaction to the earnings that is more important than the actual earnings themselves. Citi's shares are probably gaining on the cost-cutting -- it looks as if these companies are really starting to do what they need to."
The Dow Jones industrial average .DJI was up 252.56 points, or 2.00 percent, at 12,873.05. The Standard & Poor's 500 Index .SPX was up 28.18 points, or 2.06 percent, at 1,393.74. The Nasdaq Composite Index .IXIC was up 68.39 points, or 2.92 percent, at 2,410.22.
Google, Caterpillar and Honeywell helped improve investor sentiment about the first-quarter earnings picture. The earnings season had got off to a rough start last week, with disappointments from Alcoa Inc (AA.N: Quote, Profile, Research) and General Electric Co (GE.N: Quote, Profile, Research).
Google's stock soared 21.3 percent to $545.17 on the Nasdaq. Analysts at six brokerages, including Merrill Lynch and Oppenheimer, raised their share price targets on Google.
Other Internet-based shares were trading higher after Google's earnings, including Chinese search engine Baidu.com (BIDU.O: Quote, Profile, Research), up 9 percent to $337.49, and online retailer Amazon.com (AMZN.O: Quote, Profile, Research), up 9.2 percent to $80.86.
Honeywell shares rose 5.6 percent to $60.64 while Caterpillar stock gained 8.2 percent to $85.
Time Warp
The New York Comic Con begins today, and with it comes all the geekery one expects of comic-book conventions. But something a bit more serious is going on in the world of comic books. Two new series, Project Superpowers and The Twelve, have taken heroes from the Golden Age of comics and plopped them down in the middle of the modern world, setting up a collision of 1940s values with a postmodern worldview.
![[comics]](http://s.wsj.net/public/resources/images/ED-AH372_comics_20080417210118.jpg) |
| Project Superpowers' The Fighting Yank |
The Golden Age dawned in the 1930s and was gone by 1950. Historians differ on exactly when it arrived, but the 1938 appearance of Superman in Action Comics is as good a spot as any to plant the marker. Before Superman, comic books were the domain of detectives and jokey juvenilia, the successful titles selling 200,000 to 400,000 copies per issue. Within months, Superman was selling 1.3 million copies per issue. By 1940, he was making nearly $1 million a year for his publisher, DC Comics.
Legions of masked adventurers followed. Many are still part of the popular culture: Batman, Captain America, The Flash among them. Superheroes dominated the industry and simultaneously created a new branch of fiction. The standard superhero was a good-looking man in his 30s with a solid, middle-class day job as a reporter, doctor, lawyer, professor or the like. At night he donned a mask and meted out justice. Many heroes acted as agents of the U.S. government and almost all delighted in thumping foreign saboteurs with Germanic or Japanese names. The first issue of Captain America, published in March 1941, depicted the hero slugging Hitler months before the U.S. formally entered the war.
Golden Age heroes were stern angels. In his first adventure, a six-page story in Detective Comics #27, Batman kills two perfectly pedestrian criminals. As he tosses the second thug into a vat of acid, the Caped Crusader notes that it's "a fitting end for his kind."
Today's comic books are very different animals. For starters, even as superheroes have swamped the cineplex, comic-book circulation has plummeted. A top book these days might sell only 100,000 copies a month. Yet, on many levels, today's comics are superior products. The quality of paper and printing is vastly improved. Hurried and crude cartoons have grown into complicated, often beautiful artwork.
But most striking is the quality of the writing. The modern industry has found a place for professional writers -- including screenwriter Joss Whedon and novelists Brad Meltzer and Jodi Picoult -- to work in the medium. The result has been a steady increase in the sophistication and literary ambition of comics. Simple-minded, patriotic Golden Age heroes like Major Victory have given way to brooding figures like Wolverine and Marvel's popular X-Men, who worry about civil rights and the integration of mutants with Homo sapiens.
There have been other changes, too. Today's heroes, for example, are likely to lack gainful employment. Also, the general worldview of comic creators roughly approaches that of the rest of the creative class. So the mores of comic books have grown more cosmopolitan. Superheroes almost never kill these days, even when confronted with the most dastardly enemy. They also tend to take a more hostile view of authority figures, especially those in the U.S. government.
Yet some Golden Age characters seem to be making a comeback. In the past few months two publishers, the industry giant Marvel and the small independent Dynamite, have launched titles that resurrect heroes from nearly 70 years ago and drop them into the modern world.
Dynamite's Project Superpowers grew out of creative ambition and economic necessity. Looking to expand into more original content, the publisher found a number of forgotten Golden Age superheroes now in the public domain. Then it asked artist Alex Ross and writer Jim Krueger to reimagine these '40s characters. Project Superpowers' principal protagonist is a yesteryear hero named The Fighting Yank, who wears a tri-corner hat and is guided by the ghost of an ancestor who fought in the American Revolution.
While the costume may be old-fashioned, the plot is modern. The Fighting Yank awakens decades later to find that the mission the U.S. government gave him at the close of World War II was evil and has turned modern America into a dystopia, complete with a giant corporation overseeing an antiseptic police state. And his ancestor was in on the con, too: "My ghostly relative from the American Revolution," the Yank muses, "well, he might just as well have been Benedict Arnold." The Yank must free the other forgotten Golden Age heroes from a mystical urn in order to rescue modern America from the fascism he helped create.
In Marvel's series The Twelve, a dozen minor heroes are captured by the German SS in the closing days of World War II and placed in suspended animation. They are rediscovered in 2008 and brought to life in modern America. Created by J. Michael Straczynski and Chris Weston, The Twelve uses long buried characters whose rights Marvel already owned.
In many ways, The Twelve's superheroes are Golden Age archetypes. For instance, there's Rockman, who first appeared in USA Comics in 1941, when his origins were described as follows: "From the depths of the Earth comes a mysterious and powerful figure to inflict terrible punishment upon those who would endanger the peace and prosperity of the world's greatest nation -- the United States of America!"
The Twelve is a meditation on America, past and present. The heroes find themselves in an imperfect modern world but begin to realize that the America they knew in the past wasn't all that great either, shot through as it was with racism, prejudice and deceit. One hero, Mr. E., is a Jew who spent the '30s and '40s ignoring his family and passing himself off as a Gentile in order to live the high life.
Other Golden Age adventures are on the way to comic shops, with Marvel and Dynamite set to begin two more series with characters from the era. Dynamite's Joe Rybandt says that the "simplicity in the Golden Age is refreshing compared to the very gray times we live in now." The old characters become "blank slates" upon which we can project the hopes and fears of the present as well as misgivings about the past.
It's all very serious and introspective -- and certainly both Project Superpowers and The Twelve are wonderfully entertaining. Yet every once in a while it would be nice to see The Fighting Yank deck Ayman al-Zawahiri and toss a few of his henchman into a vat of acid. It's all well and good to critically examine the past. But we do ourselves a disservice if, in our attempts to find nuance, we diminish the virtues of those who confronted darker times than ours and found the will to act.
Obama's Tax Evasion
The parsons of the press corps are furious with Charlie Gibson and George Stephanopoulos of ABC News, which means the pair must have done a pretty good job moderating Wednesday's Democratic debate in Philadelphia. Barack Obama had an off-night, so his media choir wants to shoot the questioners.
We thought the debate was one of the best yet, precisely because it probed the evasive rhetoric we've heard from both Democratic candidates throughout the campaign. Nowhere was this more apparent than during the exchanges between Mr. Gibson and Mr. Obama over taxes.
![[Barack Obama]](http://s.wsj.net/public/resources/images/HC-GL648_Obama_20080316233637.gif)
Time and again, the rookie Senator has said he would not raise taxes on middle-class earners, whom he describes as people with annual income lower than between $200,000 and $250,000. On Wednesday night, he repeated the vow. "I not only have pledged not to raise their taxes," said the Senator, "I've been the first candidate in this race to specifically say I would cut their taxes."
But Mr. Obama has also said he's open to raising – indeed, nearly doubling to 28% – the current top capital gains tax rate of 15%, which would in fact be a tax hike on some 100 million Americans who own stock, including millions of people who fit Mr. Obama's definition of middle class.
Mr. Gibson dared to point out this inconsistency, which regularly goes unmentioned in Mr. Obama's fawning press coverage. But Mr. Gibson also probed a little deeper, asking the candidate why he wants to increase the capital gains tax when history shows that a higher rate brings in less revenue.
"Bill Clinton in 1997 signed legislation that dropped the capital gains tax to 20%," said Mr. Gibson. "And George Bush has taken it down to 15%. And in each instance, when the rate dropped, revenues from the tax increased. The government took in more money. And in the 1980s, when the tax was increased to 28%, the revenues went down. So why raise it at all, especially given the fact that 100 million people in this country own stock and would be affected?"
Mr. Obama answered by citing rich hedge fund managers. Raising the capital gains tax is necessary, he said, "to make sure . . . that our tax system is fair and that we are able to finance health care for Americans who currently don't have it and that we're able to invest in our infrastructure and invest in our schools. And you can't do that for free."
But Mr. Gibson had noted that higher rates yield less revenue. So the news anchor tried again: "But history shows that when you drop the capital gains tax, the revenues go up?" Mr. Obama responded that this "might happen or it might not. It depends on what's happening on Wall Street and how business is going." And then he went on a riff about John McCain and the housing market.
![[Obama's Tax Evasion]](http://s.wsj.net/public/resources/images/ED-AH376_1capga_20080417205212.gif)
This is instructive. The facts about capital gains rates and revenues are well known to our readers, but we'll repeat them as a public service to the Obama campaign. As the nearby chart shows, when the tax rate has risen over the past half century, capital gains realizations have fallen and along with them tax revenue. The most recent such episode was in the early 1990s, when Mr. Obama was old enough to be paying attention. That's one reason Jack Kennedy proposed cutting the capital gains rate. And it's one reason Bill Clinton went along with a rate cut to 20% from 28% in 1997.
Either the young Illinois Senator is ignorant of this revenue data, or he doesn't really care because he's a true income redistributionist who prefers high tax rates as a matter of ideological dogma regardless of the revenue consequences. Neither one is a recommendation for President.
For her part, Hillary Clinton said that she, too, was open to hiking the capital gains tax rate, just not by as much as her rival. "I wouldn't raise it above the 20% if I raised it at all," she said. Of course, she too promised during Wednesday's debate not to raise "a single tax on middle-class Americans, people making less than $250,000 a year."
Both candidates would have voters believe that taxes on investment income only affect the rich. But that's not what Internal Revenue Service returns show. The reality is that the Clinton and Obama rate increases would hit millions of Americans who make well under $200,000. In 2005, 47% of all tax returns reporting capital gains were from households with incomes below $50,000, and 79% came from households with incomes below $100,000.
* * *
By the way, a higher capital gains tax rate isn't the only middle-class tax increase that Mr. Obama is proposing. He also wants to lift the cap on wages subject to the payroll tax. That cap was $97,500 in 2007 and is $102,000 this year. "Those are a heck of a lot of people between $97,000 and $200[,000] and $250,000," said Mr. Gibson. "If you raise the payroll taxes, that's going to raise taxes on them." Ignoring the no-tax pledge he had made five minutes earlier, Mr. Obama explained that such a tax increase was nevertheless necessary.
In other words he dodged the question, as he so often does with impunity. But thanks to Mr. Gibson's persistence, for 90 minutes Wednesday night Mr. Obama didn't get away with it. The voters learned a lot about Mr. Obama, who needs to learn a lot more about taxes and revenue.
Carter meets Hamas supremo in Damascus
©AFP - Louai Beshara
DAMASCUS (AFP) - Former US president Jimmy Carter met exiled Hamas leader Khaled Meshaal in the Syrian capital on Friday despite strong opposition from Israel and the White House.
The controversial meeting was being held at a Hamas office and attended by top Islamist leaders Musa Abu Marzuq and Mohmmed Nazzal, an AFP photographer at the scene said.
Abu Marzuq said Carter and Meshaal would discuss the fate of Corporal Gilad Shalit, an Israeli soldier captured by Hamas and other Palestinian militants in June 2006.
"They will also hold talks on a truce (with Israel) and ending the sanctions on the Palestinian people," he told AFP ahead of the meeting.
Carter, who is on a regional tour to promote Middle East peace, earlier met Syrian President Bashar al-Assad.
State news agency Sana later said they discussed the peace process and relations between the two countries.
The two men expressed "their support for dialogue in arriving at political solutions to problems" and considered it important to "mobilise efforts to reduce the suffering of the Palestinians and to lift the (Israeli) blockade" on the Gaza Strip.
Carter is on a nine-day regional tour that has already seen him visit Israel, the West Bank and Egypt, where on Thursday he met with top Gaza-based Hamas leaders Mahmud Zahar and Said Siam.
That meeting took place in Cairo after Israel barred the former president from visiting the Gaza Strip, which the Islamists have ruled since seizing it in June.
©AFP/File - Ramzi Haidar
"We had common points of view and the talks will continue today during the meeting with the political leadership of Hamas in Damascus," Zahar said in a telephone interview with AFP from Gaza.
"President Carter talked of humanitarian proposals linked to the truce," he said in reference to attempts to halt the bloodshed in Gaza, where 18 Palestinians and three Israeli soldiers were killed in the latest explosion of violence on Wednesday.
Israel has snubbed Carter, winner of the 2002 Nobel Peace prize, over his plans to talk with Hamas, considered a terrorist organisation by the Jewish state, the United States and European Union.
However, Israeli minister Eli Yishai says he is ready to meet Meshaal to negotiate the release of prisoners held by the Islamist movement, according to Friday's Haaretz daily.
©AFP/File - Cris Bouroncle
"I am ready to meet with all necessary Hamas members," the newspaper quoted the deputy prime minister as telling former Carter during a meeting this week.
During the Israeli leg of his visit, Carter met Shalit's parents and pledged to take up with Meshaal calls for his release.
Washington has said the former president, seen as the architect of the historic 1979 Egypt-Israel peace treaty, is acting in a personal capacity.
In Beirut, US Assistant Secretary of State for Near Eastern Affairs David Welch said Carter's conversations with Hamas leaders risked being "misrepresented."
"We are concerned to advance peace here. We see no intention on the part of Hamas in doing so and there is some risk that these conversations will be misrepresented by Hamas," he said.
But Carter insists he is not acting as a mediator and has been urging talks with Hamas and Syria, saying peace cannot be reached without them.
"I think it's absolutely crucial that in a final dreamed-about and prayed-for peace agreement for this region that Hamas be involved and that Syria be involved," he said in Israel on Monday.
Carter's tour will also include US allies Saudi Arabia and Jordan.
Google Soars Most Since IPO; Profit Trumps Estimates (Update3)
April 18 (Bloomberg) -- Google Inc. posted the biggest gain since its initial public offering after profit trounced analysts' estimates, spurred by overseas growth and a bigger-than-predicted jump in the number of users clicking on text advertisements.
Google, owner of the most popular Internet search engine, advanced $77.96 to $527.50 at 9:48 a.m. New York time in Nasdaq Stock Market trading. The shares, which debuted in August 2004, reached $535.50 earlier, a 19 percent increase.
International sales soared 55 percent, outpacing total growth and allaying concerns that Google is suffering from a U.S. economic slump. Excluding some costs, profit topped the average Wall Street estimate by 32 cents a share and beat predictions of all but one of the 26 analysts surveyed by Bloomberg.
``They have a very resilient model in any type of economy,'' said Steve Weinstein, an analyst at Pacific Crest Securities in Portland, Oregon, who recommends buying the shares. ``They have strong exposure in the U.K., which had a strong first quarter. A lot of other parts of the world are early in their adoption of Internet advertising.''
Google, based in Mountain View, California, had dropped 35 percent on the Nasdaq this year before today, making it the seventh worst performer in the Nasdaq 100 Index. Still, the shares are up more than fivefold from their IPO. In 15 quarters as a public company, the company has exceeded analysts' estimates 12 times.
Profit Gains
Net income last quarter rose 30 percent to $1.31 billion, or $4.12 a share, from $1 billion, or $3.18, a year earlier. Sales, excluding revenue passed on to partner sites, climbed 46 percent to $3.7 billion. That beat the average estimate of $3.59 billion in the Bloomberg survey.
Excluding costs from stock options, profit was $4.84 a share, topping analysts' average estimate of $4.52.
Analysts at Citigroup Inc. and Merrill Lynch & Co. raised their price targets for the stock to $630 and $600, respectively. Jefferies & Co. analyst Youssef Squali in New York boosted his rating to ``buy'' from ``hold.''
The U.K. accounted for 15 percent of Google revenue in the period, up from 14 percent in the fourth quarter. That country's economy expanded 2.8 percent in the fourth quarter, compared with 0.6 percent growth in the U.S.
Analysts had relied on data from industry research firm ComScore Inc., which showed little growth in the number of clicks on Web advertisements -- so-called paid clicks. That led Wall Street to predict a slump in online advertising.
ComScore, which issues monthly reports on ad-click numbers, said the growth had slowed to 1.8 percent in the first quarter. In yesterday's report, Google cited an increase of 20 percent.
Different Data
The discrepancy may stem from the way ComScore measures the data. The Reston, Virginia-based company only tracks domestic ad clicks and doesn't include results from Google's AdSense service, which places ads on Web sites such as online newspapers and blogs. Google gets almost all of its revenue from four-line text ads that mainly run alongside its search results.
``We've been pretty happy with our paid-click growth,'' Google co-founder Sergey Brin said in an interview after the report. ``Across the board, we're performing well.''
ComScore spokesman Andrew Lipsman declined to comment. Shares of the data provider fell as much as 3.9 percent today.
Google captured 63 percent of Web queries worldwide in February, up from 62 percent in December, according to ComScore. International sales accounted for 51 percent of revenue last quarter, up from 48 percent in the fourth quarter.
``I don't think that number is going to go down,'' Chief Executive Officer Eric Schmidt said on a conference call. He credited some of that overseas expansion to market share growth and sales gains in China.
Technology Rebound?
Technology companies such as Intel Corp. and International Business Machines Corp. also reported results that topped analysts' estimates this week, following a quarter when the Nasdaq Composite Index tumbled 14 percent. Even so, the recent results don't make the whole industry attractive, Weinstein said.
``There are a lot of opportunities on a company-by-company basis,'' he said. ``Certain companies can take more control over their growth and how they drive it.''
Trying to catch up with Google, Microsoft Corp. has bid $44.6 billion for Yahoo! Inc., a transaction that would combine the second- and third-biggest U.S. search engines. While Yahoo rejected the bid in February, analysts and shareholders say the board may eventually agree to the purchase.
Google's performance in the first quarter increases the pressure on Microsoft, said David Garrity, director of research at Dinosaur Securities Inc. in New York.
In a Corner
The earnings ``put Steve Ballmer and Microsoft in a little bit of a corner, which probably people at Google don't feel so bad about,'' Garrity said today in a Bloomberg Television interview. ``This does set things up very well.''
Douglas Anmuth, an analyst at Lehman Brothers Holdings Inc. in New York, had expected a drop in finance-related searches last quarter to curb sales growth at Google. Financial firms cut back spending after the subprime mortgage meltdown spurred the near- collapse of lender Countrywide Financial Corp. and investment bank Bear Stearns Cos.
``I was surprised their revenue growth was so strong,'' said Jane Snorek, who helps manage more than $70 billion in assets at First American Funds in Minneapolis. Still, the economic concerns haven't disappeared, she said. ``They can't be immune. None of those worries go away,'' she said.
Consumer sentiment in the U.S. fell to its lowest level since 1982 this month, according to a preliminary report from Reuters and the University of Michigan, as employers cut hundreds of thousands of jobs and oil prices climbed to a record.
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