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Anybody else want to run the IMF?
Just because you can do it to the whole world doesn't mean you can do it to a hotel maid.
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New York Police Question IMF Head in Hotel Sex Assault
By Colleen Long
Associated Press
via Yahoo News
Saturday, May 14, 2011
http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20110515/ap_on_re_us/imf_head_assault;_ylt=As...
NEW YORK -- The leader of the International Monetary Fund and a possible candidate for president of France was pulled from an airplane moments before he was to fly to Paris and was being questioned Saturday by police in connection with the sexual assault of a hotel maid, police said.
Dominique Strauss-Kahn, the IMF's managing director, was taken off the Air France flight at John F. Kennedy International Airport by officers from the Port Authority of New York and New Jersey and turned over to police Saturday afternoon, said Paul J. Browne, New York Police Department spokesman.
He was being questioned by the NYPD special victims office. Strauss-Kahn had retained an attorney and was not making statements to police, Browne said. He could face charges of criminal sexual assault.
... Dispatch continues below ...
Sona Drills 85.4g Gold/Ton Over 4 Metres at Elizabeth Gold Deposit,
Extending the Mineralization of the Southwest Vein on the Property
Company Press Release, October 27, 2010
VANCOUVER, British Columbia -- Sona Resources Corp. reports on five drillling holes in the third round of assay results from the recently completed drill program at its 100 percent-owned Elizabeth Gold Deposit Property in the Lillooet Mining District of southern British Columbia. Highlights from the diamond drilling include:
-- Hole E10-66 intersected 17.4g gold/ton over 1.54 metres.
-- Hole E10-67 intersected 96.4g gold/ton over 2.5 metres, including one assay interval of 383g of gold/ton over 0.5 metres.
-- Hole E10-69 intersected 85.4g gold/ton over 4.03 metres, including one assay interval of 230g gold/ton over 1 metre.
Four drill holes, E10-66 to E10-69, targeted the southwestern end of the Southwest Vein, and three of the holes have expanded the mineralized zone in that direction. The Southwest Vein gold mineralization has now been intersected over a strike length of 325 metres, with the deepest hole drilled less than 200 metres from surface.
"The assay results from the Southwest Zone quartz vein continue to be extremely positive," says John P. Thompson, Sona's president and CEO. "We are expanding the Southwest Vein, and this high-grade gold mineralization remains wide open down dip and along strike to the southwest."
For the company's full press release, please visit:
http://sonaresources.com/_resources/news/SONA_NR19_2010.pdf
The woman, 32, told authorities that she entered Strauss-Kahn's room at the luxury Sofitel hotel not far from Manhattan's Times Square at about 1 p.m. Eastern time Saturday and he emerged from the bedroom naked, threw her down, and attacked her, Browne said.
She told authorities that he tried to force her to perform oral sex on him. She somehow broke free and escaped the room and told hotel staff what had happened, authorities said. They called police.
When New York City police detectives arrived moments later, Strauss-Kahn had already left the hotel, leaving behind his cellphone, Browne said. "It looked like he got out of there in a hurry," Browne said.
The NYPD discovered that he was at the airport and contacted the Port Authority, who plucked Kahn from first class on the Air France flight that was scheduled to depart at 4:40 p.m. and was just about to leave the gate.
The maid was taken by police to an area hospital and being treated for minor injuries. John Sheehan, a spokesman for the hotel, said its staff was cooperating with the authorities in the investigation.
Strauss-Kahn was briefly investigated in 2008 over whether he had an improper relationship with a subordinate female employee. The IMF board found his actions "regrettable" and said they "reflected a serious error of judgment."
William Murray, a spokesman for the IMF in Washington, said the IMF had no immediate comment. Strauss-Kahn's offices in Paris couldn't be reached when the news broke overnight in France, nor could French Socialist Party officials.
He was meant to be meeting in Berlin on Sunday with German Chancellor Angela Merkel about aid to debt-laden Greece, and then join EU finance ministers in Brussels on Monday and Tuesday. The IMF is responsible for one-third of Greece's existing loan package, and his expected presence at these meetings underlined the gravity of the Greek crisis.
Strauss-Kahn took over as head of the IMF in November 2007. The 187-nation lending agency is headquartered in Washington and provides help in the form of emergency loans for countries facing severe financial problems.
Strauss-Kahn won praise for his leadership at the IMF during the financial crisis of 2008 and the severe global recession that followed.
More recently he has directed the IMF's participation in bailout efforts to keep a European debt crisis which began in Greece from destabilizing the global economy.
In October 2008 Strauss-Kahn issued an apology to the IMF staff after accusations that he had a sexual relationship with an IMF subordinate.
"While this incident constituted an error in judgment on my part, for which I take full responsibility, I firmly believe that I have not abused my position," Strauss-Kahn wrote in an email to IMF staff.
The board found that the relationship was consensual. The IMF employee left the fund and took a job with the European Bank for Reconstruction and Development.
Before taking the top post at the IMF, Strauss-Kahn had been a member of the French National Assembly and had served as France's minister of economy, finance, and industry from June 1997 to November 1999.
He had been viewed as a leading contender to run on the Socialist Party's ticket to challenge the re-election of French President Nicolas Sarkozy.
Strauss-Kahn, dubbed DSK in France, was seen as the strongest possible challenger to Sarkozy in next year's presidential elections. Strauss-Kahn has not declared his candidacy, staying vague in interviews while feeding speculation that he wants France's top job.
The New York accusations come amid French media reports about Strauss-Kahn's lifestyle, including luxury cars and suits, that some have dubbed a smear campaign.
He sought the Socialist Party's endorsement in the last elections, in 2007, but came in second in a primary to Segolene Royal. Royal, the first woman to get so close to France's presidency, lost to Sarkozy in the runoff.
After Sarkozy won, the new president championed Strauss-Kahn as a candidate to run the IMF. Sarkozy's backers touted the move as a sign of the conservative president's campaign of openness to leftists -- but political strategists saw it as a way for Sarkozy to get a potential challenger far away from the French limelight.
The global financial crisis thrust Strauss-Kahn into an unexpectedly prominent role and boosted his global standing in time to consider a 2012 French presidential bid.
He is credited with preparing France for the adoption of the euro by taming its deficit and persuading then-Prime Minister Lionel Jospin to sign up to an EU pact of fiscal prudence.
A former economics professor, Strauss-Kahn joined the Socialist party in 1976 and was elected to parliament in 1986 from the Val-d'Oise district, north of Paris. He went on to become mayor of Sarcelles, a working-class immigrant suburb of Paris.
His first government post was industry minister under former President Francois Mitterrand. As finance minister, he reduced France's debt repayments through a raft of privatizations including the sale of shares in France Telecom SA and Air France.
Strauss-Kahn is a married father of four. His third wife, Anne Sinclair, is a New York-born journalist who hosted a popular weekly news broadcast in France in the 1980s.
A security guard stood watch outside the Sofitel near busy Times Square on Saturday night, keeping everyone but guests out of the building.
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... Dispatch continues below ...
Wall Street Journal Publishes Lewis Lehrman's Call for the Gold Standard
In its April 26 edition The Wall Street Journal published an important essay by the Lehrman Institute's chairman, Lewis E. Lehrman, explaining why a gold-convertible dollar is critical to eliminating the shocking federal deficit.
"Experience and the operations of the Federal Reserve System compel me to predict that U.S. Rep. Paul Ryan's heroic efforts to balance the budget by 2015 without raising taxes will not end in success -- even with a Republican majority in both Houses and a Republican president in 2012. ...
"What persistent debtor could resist permanent credit financing? For a government, an individual, or an enterprise, 'a deficit without tears' leads to the corrupt euphoria of limitless spending. For example, with new credit the Fed will have bought $600 billion of U.S. Treasuries between November 2010 and June 2011, a rate of purchase that approximates the annualized budget deficit. Commodity, equity, and emerging-market inflation are only a few of the volatile consequences of this Fed credit policy."
To read more, and to sign up for The Gold Standard Now's free, noncommercial, weekly report, "Prosperity through Gold," please visit:
http://www.thegoldstandardnow.org/gata
