The Londoner

In a landmark ceremony, Pakistani authorities will formally hand over 2,281 acres of Gwadar Port’s free trade zone to the Chinese Oversees Ports Holding Company Ltd (COPHCL) on November 11 on a 43-year lease. The ceremony would be held in Gwadar on Wednesday and would be attended by the Chinese delegation headed by National Development and Reform Commission Vice Chairman Wang Xiaodao, who has already arrived in Pakistan. The Chinese delegation comprises of all top level officials of the Chinese government and leaders of private companies. The Pakistani delegation would be led by Federal Minister for Planning, Development and Reform Ahsan Iqbal. A senior official of the ministry said that the event would also be attended by Balochistan Chief Minister Dr Abdul Malik and Federal Minister for Ports and Shipping Kamran Michal. The government has already declared Gwadar Port a free trade zone for the next 23 years. The officer said that in this regard, a high-level meeting of both authorit

According to a study of a financial think-tank from Switzerland , there are 415 people in Pakistan , who own more than $30 million each as compared to 310 last year, registering an increase of 33.9 percent, which is a record in Asia . Collective income of these people remained around $50 billion, the study revealed. Only seven to eight business groups of the 22 families continue to operate their businesses significantly and the remaining families have either closed their businesses or have shifted abroad. Dr Ishrat Husain , former governor of the State Bank of Pakistan (SBP), and a renowned economist, said only Dawoods, Adamjees, Sehgals, Shaikhs, Nishats and a few others have survived the economic ups and downs during this period, while Haroons, Batlas, Valikas, Isfahanis, Noons, and Rangoonwalas, have disappeared from the economic scene. The nationalisation process in 70s also affected their economic position, he said, adding that some of the families went abroad and

Progressive tax rates have always puzzled me because they assume that government has different value for citizens based on their incomes . Break government down to the basics and it is essentially a provider of services — defense, transportation, the legal system, schools , etc. — that customers want or need and are willing to pay a price to obtain. In that way, it's little different than a private sector business. Except in the private sector, goods and services have a set value; all customers pay the same. You don't have to scan your 1040 at the gasoline pump to set the price per gallon. Only in government does every customer pay a different price for the same thing. Reader Jon Taub sent me a note last week putting the difference between government and private sector pricing in perspective. Taub, a corporate lawyer for a Detroit business, notes that the top 1 percent of earners pay for 38 percent of the general fund services delivered by the federal governme

Former Japanese Prime Minister Shinzo Abe triumphantly returned to power this week, five years after a humiliating resignation from office. His Liberal Democratic Party (LDP) , which ruled Japan for over half a century before losing the Lower House to the Democratic Party of Japan (DPJ) in 2009, won a landslide victory that gives it a supermajority in the Japanese parliament. Yet the vote appears more to be a punishment for the failures of the DPJ than a reflection of deep support for the LDP. Given voter dissatisfaction with all of Japan's political parties, Abe and the LDP have a small window to convince the public that they have the answers to what ails Japan. Abe needs to hit the ground running. In particular, there are three things he should focus on: One: Economy, economy, economy Japan's voters are concerned most with the state of the economy and their personal finances. After two decades of economic stagnation , and a country that has sunk back

Mervyn King perhaps under-estimates, as many do in this country, the political will that exists on the Continent for keeping the euro show on the road. You might imagine central bankers would have lost their capacity for surprise, after almost four years in which they have made increasingly unconventional and sometimes desperate moves to rescue the world economy. But testifying before a committee of the European Parliament earlier this week, Mario Draghi , the head of the European Central Bank , once again showed his huge talent for knocking an audience back on its heels with one simple sentence. With America on the edge of a fiscal cliff, Japan seemingly permanently paralysed, and China coping with a steeper than expected slowdown, he was asked where in the world there was any glimmer of economic hope.  “The eurozone,” he replied. Well, he would say that, wouldn’t he?   After all, he is the man who said a few month

Plan B Fails, Boehner Marches Toward Cliff People are using words like “meltdown” to describe the failure of the House of Representatives last night to pass “Plan B.” They’re doing that because House votes are traditionally a matter of pure formality, normally having all the suspense of a Politburo vote. John Boehner expected to squeeze 217 votes from his 241 Republican members because, once Boehner had decided on his course, they had no rational choice. It was vote with him or court pure chaos. Some number of his charges – at least a couple dozen – chose chaos. At the same time, the actual stakes of the vote were far from Earth-shaking. Let us consider the progression here. Boehner had been negotiating quite fruitfully with President Obama , and had brought the terms of the emerging agreement closer to where he started than Obama had started, with a deal-hungry Obama apparently ready to move even a bit farther. Then, almo

The Second Great Betrayal: Obama and Cameron Decide that Banks are above the Law One of the “tells” that reveals how embarrassed Lanny Breuer (head of the Criminal Division) and Eric Holder (AG) are by the disgraceful refusal to prosecute HSBC and its officers for their tens of thousands of felonies are the false and misleading statements made by the Department of Justice (DOJ) about the settlement.  The same pattern has been demonstrated by other writers in the case of the false and disingenuous statistics DOJ has trumpeted to attempt to disguise the abject failure of their efforts to prosecute the elite officers who directed the “epidemic” (FBI 2004) of mortgage fraud. HSBC was one of the largest originators of fraudulent mortgage loans through its acquisition of Household Finance . Three recent books by “insiders” have confirmed earlier articles revealing the decisive role that Treasury Secretary Geithner has played in opposing criminal prosecutions of the elite ban

Can The Last Taxpayer Leaving France Please Turn Out The Lights? The fiscal frenzy that has seized French socialists is not only grinding France ’s economy to a halt; it is also attacking the very foundations of French society by destroying entrepreneurship and responsibility. Taxes are raining down on French citizens , and the promised shelters often disappear before they have even been introduced.   The French government’ s 2013 finance bill has announced confiscatory tax rates on incomes and capital gains, and payroll taxes will be increased as well. But the socialists are shooting themselves in the foot, as such tax rates will destroy wealth and drive out entrepreneurs, capital, businesses, and young people . Thus, tax revenues will ultimately not rise but fall. The message could not be clearer: The number of requests by French citizens to leave France are suddenly up

It's Official: Taxpayers Will Lose Big on the GM Bailout President Obama inspects a Chevrelot Silverado during a visit to the DC Auto Show, Jan. 31, 2012 in Washington, D.C. Obama touted his bailout of General Motors and Chrysler three years ago. When the Treasury Department sold its last remaining shares in insurance giant AIG recently, it announced that it had earned a profit on the controversial bailout that began in 2008. That will not be the case for General Motors. Treasury has finalized a plan to sell its remaining stake in the nation's biggest automaker over the next 15 months, beginning with GM buying back 200 million shares from the Treasury by the end of this year. That will leave the government holding about 19 percent of GM's shares, which it plans to sell throughout 2013 and perhaps into 2014. The government's final exit from GM will mark the start of a new era for the carmaker, which