Kamran Akmal hopeful for India tour selection ? Cricket News Roundup ? Part 3 ? August 25, 2012
Pakistan?s wicketkeeper batsman Kamran Akmal has stated that he will be treating the upcoming series against Australia and the ICC World Twenty20 as keys to his selection for Pakistan?s short series against India, scheduled for later this year in
December.
?I am looking forward towards doing well against the Australians and the World T20 championship as it ensures selection in the squad for the India series. I would love to come to India again,? said Akmal.
Akmal was recently cleared by the PCB?s integrity committee, and selected for both the series against Australia (3 ODIs and 3 T20Is to be played from August 28 to September 10 in the UAE) and the ICC World Twenty20, due to take place in Sri Lanka this September.
Later in the year, the Men in Green will also be touring their neighbouring country for a short series, which marks the first time the two teams will be meeting each other on the cricket field since 2007.
With the ICC?s Under-19 World Cup final scheduled to take place between the India and Australia Under-19s, on August 26 in Townsville, India?s skipper Unmukt Chand has claimed that he is confident his side will put up a good show against their hosts.
?I am very optimistic about the final. We have played Australia in Australia and that too at the same venue. We are used to the conditions, and should do well,? Chand said.
India, who won a Quadrangular Under-19 Series in Australia earlier this year in April, have been victorious in all of their matches in the tournament, save the first encounter (against the West Indies Under-19s), while Australia are as yet unbeaten. The
India U-19s have won the tournament twice before (2000, 2008), while Australia have emerged triumphant thrice (1988, 2002, and 2010).
Pakistan?s former skipper and fast bowler Wasim Akram has backed the Men in Green as favourites for the upcoming ICC World Twenty20, going on to advise the team to intensify their batting performances in order to be truly successful in the shorter
formats of the game.
?Pakistan are favourites. Players like Imran Nazir and Abdur Razzaq have the ability to turn a match on its head and there is no reason why Pakistan can't do well,? Akram said, adding that the team?s approach to batting needed to be more ?adventurous? if
they wanted ?more success in the format.?
The Men in Green are due to play a limited-overs series against Australia in the UAE before the head into the mega event. Pakistan lost the final of the inaugural edition of the World T20 in 2007-2008 to India, but went on to win the 2009 competition. However,
England claimed the title during 2010, and all teams will be battling it out for the title once again in Sri Lanka this September.
The United States has collapsed economically, socially, politically, legally, constitutionally, and environmentally. The country that exists today is not even a shell of the country into which I was born. In this article I will deal with America?s economic collapse. In subsequent articles, i will deal with other aspects of American collapse.
Economically, America has descended into poverty. As Peter Edelman says, ?Low-wage work is pandemic.? Today in ?freedom and democracy? America, ?the world?s only superpower,? one fourth of the work force is employed in jobs that pay less than $22,000, the poverty line for a family of four. Some of these lowly-paid persons are young college graduates, burdened by education loans, who share housing with three or four others in the same desperate situation. Other of these persons are single parents only one medical problem or lost job away from homelessness.
Others might be Ph.D.s teaching at universities as adjunct professors for $10,000 per year or less. Education is still touted as the way out of poverty, but increasingly is a path into poverty or into enlistments into the military services.
Edelman, who studies these issues, reports that 20.5 million Americans have incomes less than $9,500 per year, which is half of the poverty definition for a family of three.
There are six million Americans whose only income is food stamps. That means that there are six million Americans who live on the streets or under bridges or in the homes of relatives or friends. Hard-hearted Republicans continue to rail at welfare, but Edelman says, ?basically welfare is gone.?
In my opinion as an economist, the official poverty line is long out of date. The prospect of three people living on $19,000 per year is farfetched. Considering the prices of rent, electricity, water, bread and fast food, one person cannot live in the US on $6,333.33 per year. In Thailand, perhaps, until the dollar collapses, it might be done, but not in the US.
As Dan Ariely (Duke University) and Mike Norton (Harvard University) have shown empirically, 40% of the US population, the 40% less well off, own 0.3%, that is, three-tenths of one percent, of America?s personal wealth. Who owns the other 99.7%? The top 20% have 84% of the country?s wealth. Those Americans in the third and fourth quintiles?essentially America?s middle class?have only 15.7% of the nation?s wealth. Such an unequal distribution of income is unprecedented in the economically developed world.
In my day, confronted with such disparity in the distribution of income and wealth, a disparity that obviously poses a dramatic problem for economic policy, political stability, and the macro management of the economy, Democrats would have demanded corrections, and Republicans would have reluctantly agreed.
But not today. Both political parties whore for money.
The Republicans believe that the suffering of poor Americans is not helping the rich enough. Paul Ryan and Mitt Romney are committed to abolishing every program that addresses needs of what Republicans deride as ?useless eaters.?
The ?useless eaters? are the working poor and the former middle class whose jobs were offshored so that corporate executives could receive multi-millions of dollars in performance pay compensation and their shareholders could make millions of dollars on capital gains. While a handful of executives enjoy yachts and Playboy playmates, tens of millions of Americans barely get by.
In political propaganda, the ?useless eaters? are not merely a burden on society and the rich. They are leeches who force honest taxpayers to pay for their many hours of comfortable leisure enjoying life, watching sports events, and fishing in trout streams, while they push around their belongings in grocery baskets or sell their bodies for the next MacDonald burger.
The concentration of wealth and power in the US today is far beyond anything my graduate economic professors could image in the 1960s. At four of the world?s best universities that I attended, the opinion was that competition in the free market would prevent great disparities in the distribution of income and wealth. As I was to learn, this belief was based on an ideology, not on reality.
Congress, acting on this erroneous belief in free market perfection, deregulated the US economy in order to create a free market. The immediate consequence was resort to every previous illegal action to monopolize, to commit financial and other fraud, to destroy the productive basis of American consumer incomes, and to redirect income and wealth to the one percent.
The ?democratic? Clinton administration, like the Bush and Obama administrations, was suborned by free market ideology. The Clinton sell-outs to Big Money essentially abolished Aid to Families with Dependent Children. But this sell-out of struggling Americans was not enough to satisfy the Republican Party. Mitt Romney and Paul Ryan want to cut or abolish every program that cushions poverty-stricken Americans from starvation and homelessness.
Republicans claim that the only reason Americans are in need is because the government uses taxpayers? money to subsidize Americans who are unwilling to work. As Republicans see it, while we hard-workers sacrifice our leisure and time with our families, the welfare rabble enjoy the leisure that our tax dollars provide them.
This cock-eyed belief, on top of corporate CEOs maximizing their incomes by offshoring the middle class jobs of millions of Americans, has left Americans in poverty and cities, counties, states, and the federal government without a tax base, resulting in bankruptcies at the state and local level and massive budget deficits at the federal level that threaten the value of the dollar and its role as reserve currency.
The economic destruction of America benefited the mega-rich with multi-billions of dollars with which to enjoy life and its high-priced accompaniments wherever the mega-rich wish. Meanwhile, away from the French Rivera, Homeland Security is collecting sufficient ammunition to keep dispossessed Americans under control.
Dr. Paul Craig Roberts is the father of Reaganomics and the former head of policy at the Department of Treasury. He is a columnist and was previously the editor of the Wall Street Journal. His latest book, ?How the Economy Was Lost: The War of the Worlds,? details why America is disintegrating.
As technology marches ever forwards, there are companies who will want to make sure advertising can keep up. That's why Sony filed a patent for next-gen ads that let you skip through them, but only if you yell a brand name at your TV. More »
GunBroker.com is hosting a special champion-themed Charity Auction. New and existing GunBroker.com site users can currently bid on a one-of-kind experience that includes: a 3-day/2-night trip for two to Colorado Springs, a VIP tour of the Olympic Training Center and an afternoon of shooting with five-time Olympic medalist Kim Rhode.
The biggest geostrategic change of the past decade overlooked by Washington policy wonks in their fixation on their self-proclaimed ?war on terror? is that Latin America has been throwing off the shackles of the Monroe Doctrine.
These ignored developments may well soon refocus Washington?s attention on the Southern Hemisphere, as Venezuela?s President Hugo Chavez reorients his country?s to China.
It is not an inconsiderable element of concern for the Obama administration. According to the U.S. Energy Administration, the United States total crude oil imports now average 9.033 million barrels per day, with the top five exporting countries being Canada (2.666 mbpd), Mexico (1.319 mbpd), Saudi Arabia (1.107 mbpd), with Venezuela in fourth place at 930 thousand barrels per day. Note that two of America?s top four energy importers are south of the Rio Grande.
Furthermore, Venezuela?s reserves according to OPEC now top those of Saudi Arabia, with Venezuela now estimated to have the largest conventional oil reserves and the second-largest natural gas reserves in the Western Hemisphere. Two years ago OPEC reported that of the organization?s 81.33 percent of the globe?s known oil reserves Venezuela had 24.8 percent, exceeding Saudi Arabia with 22.2
So, why is Chavez in Washington?s bad books? Well, among other reasons, for the company he keeps, as the Russian Federation, Iran and Cuba are all allies. Note that the first two are also major oil exporters.
Worse however are the social programs that Chavez has implemented to benefit his people, which not only smack of socialism but offer an alternative to Washington?s proscriptions. Case in point - Venezuela?s health care system. A joint Cuban-Venezuelan medical program, ?Barrio Adentro,? has made health care free and accessible to all Venezuelans. Founded in 2003,? Barrio Adentro expanded Venezuela?s national health care system by employing more than 30,000 Cuban medical professionals as the government equipped clinics and hospitals with advanced high technology diagnostic and surgical equipment.
Something that Americans might consider as the presidential race heats up, with Medicare on the table. Such alternatives hardly please the powers that be in Washington, but are increasingly considered in Latin America.
But, back to energy. Despite the primacy of Venezuelan oil sales to the U.S. Caracas is shifting gears, and China will soon to become Venezuela?s main trade partner, with oil sales surging 60 percent in 2012.
During a recent interview Oil Minister Rafael Ramirez said, ?We are selling 640.000 barrels of petrol per day to China.? This is now equivalent to 2/3 of Venezuela?s oil exports to the U.S., up from 400,000 barrels per day in February. For those with a sense of history, before President Chavez took office in 1999, Venezuela did not ship oil to China, but Chavez has stated that by 2015 he intends to ramp up Venezuelan oil exports to China to one million barrels of crude per day. According to Ramirez, the rise in exports will come from increased production in the natural resource-rich Orinoco Oil Belt in the east of the country.
It is hard to see this emphasis shift as anything but a short-sighted diplomatic disaster for the U.S. Compounding the degradation of Washington, which insists that China in Africa in particular exploits poor nations by buying resources at rock bottom prices, Ramirez said simply, "We are selling oil to China at a better price than what is sold in the U.S. market.'' And, given Washington?s foreign aid stinginess, last week President Chavez announced that China Development Bank will bankroll $4 billion dollars in development projects, to include housing, energy and industrial growth.
Again, those with a sense of history might note that the year Chavez took office, Venezuela exported to the U.S. market 1.5 million bpd.
So, where does Washington go from here? If it wants to preserve its increasingly tenuous foothold in a nation with the world?s largest oil reserves, it might begin by engaging in some honest diplomacy.
And match Chinese rates of pay.
?
[ZH addition - there appears to be more to this whole Venezuela thing - cue: Gratuitous picture of Miss Venezuela]
(Reuters) - Chrysler Group LLC is betting that better fuel economy and a moderate 1 percent increase in price from last year's models will help its line of 2013 Ram 1500 pickup trucks gain ground on industry leaders from Ford and Chevrolet.
The first redesign since 2009 for the biggest-selling vehicle in the Chrysler lineup has led to a pickup truck with more technology and less weight to go along with the usual pickup truck marketing features of power and towing ability, analysts who have driven the new Ram 1500 said.
The Ram 1500 goes on sale in the United States in October.
The starting price will be $23,585, including destination charges, Chrysler said on Friday. The highest-priced version in the Ram 1500 lineup will be a four-wheel-drive "Laramie Longhorn" crew cab at $48,415, including destination charges.
Chrysler, majority-owned by Italy's Fiat SpA , won't be able to topple the top-selling Ford Motor Co F-150 or the No. 2 General Motors Co Chevrolet Silverado in U.S. sales, but this improved Ram offering may narrow the gap, said analysts.
Edmunds.com director of vehicle testing, Dan Edmunds, said the Ram 1500, even an improved offering, faces an uphill battle against Ford and GM because pickup truck customers have fierce brand loyalty.
"There's definitely some technical benefits and there's some real benefits to the customer," Edmunds said. "They've got a good solid product here. The question is - does it overcome years of brand loyalty? That's hard to say."
Sales of the current 2012 versions of the Ram pickup trucks rose 23 percent this year through July in the United States, U.S. market, compared with a 12 percent rise for Ford F-Series pickup sales and a 3.5 percent gain for the Silverado pickups.
Still, Ford's pickup trucks made up 39.5 percent of the lucrative U.S. full-size pickup truck market, followed by 34.7 percent for GM's versions including the Silverado and the GMC Sierra, and 18.3 percent for Ram pickup trucks.
The GM total combines a 25.2-percent full-size pickup truck share of the Silverado and the 9.5 percent share of the Sierra.
The Ram 1500 "is not going to be a class leader in terms of sales volumes and Chrysler knows that," said Aaron Bragman, autos analyst with IHS Automotive. "They don't even have the capacity to do that. What they are is an alternative.
"Chrysler's goal is not to have a segment leader. It's goal is to make quite a bit of money, as all pickups do, and it does that quite well," said Bragman.
Pickup trucks have wider profit margins than do smaller vehicles, which makes the Ram 1500 an important product for Chrysler. Without Chrysler's profits, almost all from North America, parent Fiat would have shown a loss in the second quarter.
FUEL ECONOMY
Fuel economy, because of higher gasoline prices, has become a bigger factor for consumers when selecting a pickup truck in the past few years, said Bob Hegbloom, director of Ram Trucks for Chrysler.
So the Ram Truck brand and Chrysler will emphasize the version with a 3.6-liter, V6 engine and 8-speed automatic transmission that can get 17 miles per gallon of gasoline in the city and 25 mpg on the highway, Hegbloom said, citing estimates by the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency.
The primary model of the Ram 1500 lineup, the 4.7-liter with a V8 engine and a 6-speed automatic will get 14 mpg in the city and 20 mpg on the highway.
The 3.6-liter version of the Ram 1500 with the 8-speed transmission will surpass the upcoming 2013 Ford F-150 pickup truck with a 3.7-liter V6 engine, which gets 17 mpg in the city and 23 mpg on the highway, according to Ford.
GM's 2013 Chevrolet Silverado has a version of that truck with a 5.3-liter, V8 engine that can get 15 mpg in the city and 22 mpg on the highway.
(Corrects market share figures for U.S. full-size truck market in ninth and 10th paragraphs)
(Additional reporting by Deepa Seetharman in Detroit and Ian Geoghegan)
