Misery Economic Theater 2011

[cheesehead]

Originally Posted by ewmayer

Ah yes, the old "hedonic adjustments" fudging of the CPI ...

Ever nostalgic for the days when buggy whips were still included, eh?

Originally Posted by ewmayer

My Comment: A.k.a. "Too Big to Jail"...

But that's a good one!

[Fusion_power]

Re my cost of living:

1. $400 per month rent (unchanged for 10 years)
2. $250 per month food (up from $200 2 years ago, but I also raise a garden for veggies which keeps it down a bit)
3. $65 per month gas in car (I work from home, so very little gas used, but this is still up $25 from 2 years ago)
4. $100 per month heating or cooling according to season gas heat, electric heat pump air conditioning (unchanged in 3 years).
5. $45 per month water service and garbage collection (up $5 as of 2 years ago)
6. various insurance, car, health, etc. $650/month (up from $450/month 2 years ago)
7. various taxes local, state, federal $2150/month
8. Cellphone $100/month (down $10 from 2 years ago)

Analyzing the above, in the past 3 years, my increase in cost of living has been in gas, food, insurance, and water/garbage service. But the part that hurts the most is to see how much taxes eat away at my income. The taxes I pay exceed my total cost of living.

DarJones

[ewmayer]

Originally Posted by ewmayer

It doesn't take more than a 1-2% loss of discretionary-purchasing power at this point to turn a very-fragile recovery (that's if you believe the government's characterization) into another round of contraction. (Though higher gas prices feed into GDP, so the fact that people have less money to spend on other things - like debt-servicing - won't show up in GDP per se, except via second-order effect.)

Correction needed here: Consumers using money they would have spent on other things to cover the increased cost of fuel (direct and via secind-order effects) is a wash as far as GDP is concerned, but the higher cost of imported oil and petroleum products is subtractive from GDP. (Unless imports are reduced proportionally, which is unlikely in an oil-import-dependent economy like that in the U.S. and many developed(ing) nations). Recall the most-common method of computing GDP, the expenditure method:

GDP = P + I + G + (X - I) = private consumption + gross investment + government spending + (exports - imports) .

Here in the U.S., yesterday's weak ADP payrolls report (used for tracking job creation in a manner independent of the government stats) and sharply-lower ISM numbers (which reflect major margin compression due to higher producer-prices-paid) were followed today by a very bad weekly jobless claims number - After trending below 400,000 for much of the year, the last 3 weeks have been back above that level, and today`s latest number was a whopping 474,000, close to the "5"-led numbers which clearly indicate recessionary contraction in the jobs market. Watch that trend closely in the coming months.

And my note last Friday about the price of silver touching $50/ounce but likely having a significant speculative-bubble component has been brone out ... down 30% since then.

[cheesehead]

Guess what's the second biggest negative balance-of-payments (i.e., exports minus imports) category (behind #1 oil) for the U.S.

- -

According to a TV show: seafood.

[ewmayer]

Was too busy at work last Thursday and Friday (code-checkin-related deadline I was working furiously to meet) to post updates and links, so a bit of catch-up today:

Last Friday the government (BLS, via their monthly "Establishment Survey") released their monthly employment statistics, which were diametrically opposed (and much more bullish) than the previous day`s Household Survey monthly jobs data generated by the independent polling firm ADP. (See my link to those numbers in my post of 05 May above). According to the BLS the U.s. economy added 244,000 jobs in April - roughly double the number needed to keep up with population growth, and about as robust a figure as we have seen for this datum all throughout this alleged (and ever-"nascent", "fragile", etc) "recovery" - while at the same time the unemployment rate *rose* from 8.8% to 9.0%. These 2 data are not necessarily at odds, and indeed the MSM dutifully put the requisite positive spin on the latter number, saying that "unemployment rate rose because people re-entered the workforce in search of ever-more-plentiful jobs being created by the ever-strengthening (but still nascent and fragile and in need of the Fed pumping $100-200B per month into the financial markets to 'maintain confdence') recovery".

Only ... Not so much. If the rise in the unemployment rate were indeed to increased optimism among job-wanters causing many long-term-unemployed (who had magically been deleted from the official "labor force" as a result of their slackerish ways) and causing them to become active job-seekers, then the labor force should necessarily have grown. But it didn`t, and in fact continues to contract in relentless fashion. Mish attempts to resolve the paradox:

Digging Still Deeper In Friday's Jobs Report; What's the Real Unemployment Rate?

The fact is, employment fell by 190,000 according to the Household Survey and another 131,000 people dropped out of the labor force last month or the unemployment would have been even higher. Fewer people (131,000 to be precise) wanted a lob and looked for jobs in April than in March.

The Obama administration as well as mainstream media wants to play job numbers both ways, that is to say they want to use the Household Survey when it suits their purpose and the Establishment Survey otherwise.

Regardless, close scrutiny of the details in the report shows the headline numbers were far worse than they looked.

I commented on that in my Friday post BLS Jobs Report: Nonfarm Payroll Headline Number Looks Good, Beneath the Surface, Awful where I said ...

In the last year, the civilian population rose by 1,817,000. Yet the labor force dropped by 1,099,000. Those not in the labor force rose by 2,916,000. In January alone, a whopping 319,000 people dropped out of the workforce. In February another 87,000 people dropped out of the labor force. In March 11,000 people dropped out of the labor force. In April, 131,000 dropped out of the labor force. The 4-month total for 2011 is 548,000 people dropped out of the labor force.

Many of those millions who dropped out of the workforce would start looking if they thought jobs were available. Indeed, in a 2-year old recovery, the labor force should be rising sharply as those who stopped looking for jobs, once again started looking. Instead, an additional 548,000 people dropped out of the labor force in the first four months of the year. Were it not for people dropping out of the labor force, the [U3] unemployment rate would be well over 11%.

Ilargi at Automatic Earth Blog in Trojan Lies picked up on my post and commented "Indeed, I’d venture that if you add in all those who’ve left the work force since 2008, you’d end up way above 11%. All in all, the total number of people in the working age population who are not in the labor force hit a new all time high of 86.248 million in April. And Wall Street likes that."

[EWM: Gory numerical details omitted for readability - but folks interested in the actual numbers in play will want to read the full article]

The BLS says those who worked as little as 1 hour last week are considered employed.

According to the BLS, there are now 8,600,000 workers who want a full-time job but instead are working part-time. The BLS labels this group "part-time for economic reasons".

The number of rose by 167,000 last month.

Before companies hire full-time workers, many of those working part-time will see their hours rise first.

If you factor in those working part-time for economic reasons the unemployment rate rises to 15.9%, and if you factor in students and those in forced retirement who really would rather be working, it is likely another 1-2 points higher still.

Op-Ed in WSJ By Leader of the True Finns Party, Opposing European Bank Bailouts

Timo Soini: Why I Won't Support More Bailouts

When I had the honor of leading the True Finn Party to electoral victory in April, we made a solemn promise to oppose the so-called bailouts of euro-zone member states. These bailouts are patently bad for Europe, bad for Finland and bad for the countries that have been forced to accept them. Europe is suffering from the economic gangrene of insolvency—both public and private. And unless we amputate that which cannot be saved, we risk poisoning the whole body.

The official wisdom is that Greece, Ireland and Portugal have been hit by a liquidity crisis, so they needed a momentary infusion of capital, after which everything would return to normal. But this official version is a lie, one that takes the ordinary people of Europe for idiots. They deserve better from politics and their leaders.

To understand the real nature and purpose of the bailouts, we first have to understand who really benefits from them. Let's follow the money.

At the risk of being accused of populism, we'll begin with the obvious: It is not the little guy that benefits. He is being milked and lied to in order to keep the insolvent system running. He is paid less and taxed more to provide the money needed to keep this Ponzi scheme going. Meanwhile, a kind of deadly symbiosis has developed between politicians and banks: Our political leaders borrow ever more money to pay off the banks, which return the favor by lending ever-more money back to our governments, keeping the scheme afloat.

In a true market economy, bad choices get penalized. Not here. When the inevitable failure of overindebted euro-zone countries came to light, a secret pact was made.

Instead of accepting losses on unsound investments—which would have led to the probable collapse and national bailout of some banks—it was decided to transfer the losses to taxpayers via loans, guarantees and opaque constructs such as the European Financial Stability Fund, Ireland's NAMA and a lineup of special-purpose vehicles that make Enron look simple. Some politicians understood this; others just panicked and did as they were told.

The money did not go to help indebted economies. It flowed through the European Central Bank and recipient states to the coffers of big banks and investment funds.

My Comment: Interestingly, the WSJ heavily censored scrubbed the above online Op-Ed after initially posting it - Denninger compares the before and after versions here.

Mr. Soini`s words - PC-sanitized by the WSJ editorial stooges or not - are as frank, concise and honest as I have heard from any politician with regard to the bailing-out of the big banks and debt-mired Eurozone countries. Mish has more on "Lying ECB liars and the lies they continue to tell" here:

True Finns Party Chairman: Greece, Ireland and Portugal Ruined; Gangrene Spreads; Enron Looks Simple; Spain Next Zombie

[cheesehead]

Speaking of economic impacts:

There's a possibility that the currently-flooding Mississippi River might break through the artificial control structures, into the Atchafalaya River, making that its new main channel and relieving New Orleans of any levee-worry ever again. OTOH, the reduced levee-worry would not be much compensation for other effects.

The current flood will be the strongest test ever for the Old River Control Structure (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Old_Riv...trol_Structure) that prevents this re-channeling.

From http://www.wunderground.com/blog/Jef...?entrynum=1798

Downstream from Memphis, flood waters pouring in from the Arkansas River, Yazoo River, and other tributaries are expected to swell the Mississippi high enough to beat the all-time record at Vicksburg, Mississippi by 1.3' on May 19, and smash the all-time record at Natchez, Mississippi by six feet on May 21, and by 3.2 feet at Red River Landing on May 22. Red River Landing is the site of the Old River Control Structure, the Army Corps' massive engineering structure that keeps the Mississippi River from carving a new path to the Gulf of Mexico. I'll have a detailed post talking about the Old River Control Structure later this week. Its failure would be a serious blow to the U.S. economy, and the great Mississippi flood of 2011 will give the Old River Control Structure its most severe test ever.

May 21, 2011 will not be the end of the world, but it could be the last day our current maps of lower Louisiana are accurate. http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedi...g_May_2011.jpg

http://www.americaswetlandresources....erControl.html has more detail about how this situation developed over the past 500 years, and a more detailed description of what might be the result of a capture by the Atchafalaya.

. . .

In the aftermath of the huge floods that would cause the main flow of the river to jump to the Atchafalaya River, aside from the cost, anxiety, tragedy, and aggravation of dealing with massive amounts of water being in the wrong place, there would be lingering issues that would change the way of life on the lower Mississippi. Instead of 70% flow down the lower Mississippi and 30% flow down the Atchafalaya, the percentages would probably reverse. The Atchafalaya would be a rushing, raging river, even during the fall for a period of time until it scoured the channel and filled in the lower reaches so that the flow would diminish. Morgan City would have to be relocated, as would other communities and many businesses, possibly including the massive infrastructure of the offshore oil and gas industry. Fisheries would be altered measurably all across the delta. Oyster reefs would be immediately destroyed, and would take several years to reestablish and become productive. It would probably take two decades to adapt to the new environment around present day Morgan City. Additionally, pipelines, bridges, and the like that cross the Atchafalaya would be destroyed or rendered unsafe. The ruptured natural gas pipelines would place stress on fuel supplies for energy companies, but they would quickly change to more costly fuel sources and have little or no interruption of service. Imagine the traffic jams when and if bridges on I-10, U.S. 90, and U.S. 190 collapse (what about the railroads)? All trans-state traffic would have to be rerouted to I-20 via I-55 through Jackson, Mississippi, adding up to 615 miles to the trip (not to mention time delays from the traffic jams). The protective levees of the Atchafalaya Basin would have to be upgraded to handle the new pressure from spring flows. And, oh my gosh, think of the negative impact on the crawfish supply!

The lower Mississippi would still have a copious amount of water, but it would be slack compared to today. Shipping could continue to be an important industry, but it would be interrupted for a time. The slack water would allow (cause) the thalweg to fill in and stop deep-draft shipping. However, after intensive dredging efforts it may be found that a 50 ft channel can be easily maintained because of the tremendous decrease in sediment. New Orleans, possibly Baton Rouge, and all other cities and towns along the lower Mississippi would no longer be able to get their drinking water from the river. It would become too salty, since the lower fresh water flow would not offset the tidal movement of the Gulf. Can you imagine the cost of piping or trucking enough drinking (and flushing, etc.) water from north of Lake Pontchartrain to supply the needs of Greater New Orleans? Can you imagine Greater New Orleans without water for drinking and sanitation? Even when the water was just barely increasing in salinity, there would be severe damage to water heaters, fire sprinklers, fire truck pumping systems, and more. The quality of our coffee! As mentioned above, the fisheries (especially those associated with the fresh water river) would suddenly change. And what about the massive petrochemical industry corridor? Aside from the impact on shipping, which they could weather over time, industry could no longer use fresh river water for thermo-electric cooling. The saltier water would corrode all the pipes and related instrumentation. Of course, industry would change to salt-tolerant materials, but that would be costly and time consuming. Also, the sugarcane industry would have problems without sufficient fresh water.

All of this adjustment, and we have not delved into the intensity of impact on people's lives during the crisis and the adjustment period. All normal routines would stop. Businesses would be closed, as would schools, normal government, etc., etc. Virtually the entire population would spend months and months just coping - just putting their and others' lives back together. Imagine the emotional strain to the population - people losing a lifetime of accomplishment. This would be a tragedy of monumental proportions. It would interrupt life much like World War II.

One can also imagine the impact on the nation. Massive use of Federal dollars to protect and restore Louisiana's infrastructure. Loss of natural gas (there would be brown-outs throughout the eastern seaboard). Commerce would be interrupted by restriction of travel and Louisiana's inability to focus on supplying items traditionally demanded from her natural resources by the nation. Prices of all Louisiana products (from the natural resources [fisheries, oil, gas] to industrial products [polyvinylchloride, polyethylene, etc.]) would soar. The interruption of the pogie fisheries would be very negative for such food industries as chicken, catfish, and hogs (see the last section of the notes). New Orleans is one of the most important ports in the nation, and it would suddenly cease to function; all shipping and related industries on the Mississippi River would stop. International trade would be further imbalanced. The massive fertilizer business would shut down and the agriculture industry would falter.

And what about the economy of south Louisiana? For a period of time, all the revenue would dry up and tourism would collapse. Even Mardi Gras would possibly come to a halt!!! Only the mosquitoes would do well! And probably the cockroaches and Formosan termites.

Long term, we would adapt. Once the drinking and sanitation water issues were resolved, tourism would return. Coastal erosion could be reversed on the west side of the present-day Mississippi River. Shrimp, oysters, and other fisheries would probably flourish after a number of years due to new marshes being produced and nutrient rich sediments being redistributed.

This would obviously place a lot of stress on at least two generations of residents. We would survive, but it would be a new Louisiana and Mississippi River delta.

http://www.cwi.colostate.edu/publications/is/50.pdf is a 1983 study of the situation.

It notes (page 63) that failure of the five most vulnerable interstate natural gas pipelines crossing the Atchafalaya basin would reduce natural gas supplies to 28 states, including Connecticut (23%), Massachusetts (18%), and Rhode Island (25%). These figures are from 1983, but they give an idea of potential natural gas distribution disruption after an Atchafalaya capture.

[ewmayer]

Matt Taibbi`s latest on the Vampire Squid:

The People vs. Goldman Sachs: A Senate committee has laid out the evidence. Now the Justice Department should bring criminal charges

You'll pardon me if I don't hold my breath for any justice department task force here - as a person wise in the ways of Washington said, "It's said that there's a different set of laws for the rich than for the poor. The truth is, for the rich there is no law."

--------------------------

So it's been an interesting week for the legions of commodities speculators ... oil had a 1-day drop of around 10% last week, another big one today. Of course while oil was rising, gas prices were marching up in lockstep, with little or no time-delay between the two. Now that oil is down over 10% in the past week, gas prices at my local station have dropped a whopping - wait for it - 0.5% fr the cheapest grade, and not at all for the others. Woo hoo! A reader of my local paper expresses what I think is a typical sentiment here:

Pain at the pump stems from greed

It is a crime how, if the price of a barrel of oil goes up, gas goes up the same day. The same day. And keeps going up with the price. When the price of a barrel of oil goes down, the price of gas stays the same for almost a month or more, usually taking three months to go back down. A law should be enacted that oil cannot be traded as a commodity because of greed and its effect on the world economy. The oil-producing countries and oil companies have already made enough profit off the rest of the world.

Terrence Healy
Santa Clara

Due to the increased volatility (and clear signs of speculative excess) in many of these markets, some of the big commodities-trading venues (e.g. COMEX) have been hiking margin requirements. If you're fully leveraged that means you have to sell part of your position, so it's a good way to see how much speculative leverage there is in a particular market. Let's see ... silver, which ZeroHedge has been pumping relentlessly for the past few months, would appear to have been just a wee bit frothy based on the result:

[ewmayer]

Mish's latest on the accelerating bust in Oz:

Economic Bust in Australia: Near-Record Corporate Bankruptcies, Employment Drops Unexpectedly; Rise in Bad Home Loans; Record Low Property Transactions

And Barry Ritholtz has a delicious take-Microsoft-to-the-woodshed post in the wake of their ludicrous (but hopefully ultimate-demise-hastening) purchase of Skype:

How Microsoft Caused the DotCom Bubble and why their Skype ‘Hail Mary’ is irrelevant

Galleon Hedge Fund manager Raj Rajnaratnam convicted yesterday on all 14 insider-trading counts, faces many years in prison. Since that is 2008-financial-crisis-unrelated, our running total of criminal convictions related to that crime wave remains at a massive 1. And since the Feds (as I predicted they would) appear to be doing all they can to bury the whole MERS mortgage-fraud issue under what (relative to the ill-gotten gains involved) amounts to a wrist-slap fine coupled with blanket immunity forever-after, don't expect to see any criminal convictions on that front, either. The fact that leading state AGs are openly in the banks' pockets does not inspire confidence that perhaps the state AGs will rebel against DC's attempts to whitewash the issue:

...in response to queries from TIME, [Iowa attorney general Tom] Miller says he initiated fundraising calls to several national firms that represent big banks after he had announced his intention to investigate the foreclosure mess. “In September and October, I tried to reach out to people that I’d worked with and I thought had respect for me and potential support for me and tried to raise money from them,” Miller says. “And a number of them were from national firms.”

------------------------

And on a David-Hasselhoff-related note (which I'm sure forum owner and DH-fan-for-life Xyzzy will appreciate): Many people made fun of the Hoff and his buddies on the long-running SoCal lifeguard drama Baywatch for playing vapid, shallow characters. But their real-world counterparts, while many of them still may be vapid and shallow (I can't say - they don't let us NoCal nerds hang out with them), are having the last laugh when it comes to job pay and benefits:

Orange County Lifeguards Make $200K Annually, Can Retire at Age 50 With 90% Pay

[ewmayer]

This story which broke over the weekend would be worthy of the "News of the Weird" section of the local paper, if not for the fact that the charges are so serious and the accused is of such a high profile:

I.M.F. Chief, Apprehended at Airport, Is Accused of Sexual Attack

The managing director of the International Monetary Fund, Dominique Strauss-Kahn, was taken off an Air France plane at Kennedy International Airport minutes before it was to depart for Paris on Saturday, in connection with the sexual attack of a maid at a Midtown Manhattan hotel, the authorities said.

Mr. Strauss-Kahn, 62, who was widely expected to become the Socialist candidate for the French presidency, was apprehended by detectives of the Port Authority of New York and New Jersey in the first-class section of the jetliner, and immediately turned over to detectives from the Midtown South Precinct, officials said.

The New York Police Department arrested Mr. Strauss-Kahn at 2:15 a.m. Sunday “on charges of criminal sexual act, attempted rape, and an unlawful imprisonment in connection with a sexual assault on a 32-year-old chambermaid in the luxury suite of a Midtown Manhattan hotel yesterday” about 1 p.m., Deputy Commissioner Paul J. Browne, the department’s chief spokesman, said.

Reached by telephone, Benjamin Brafman, a lawyer, said he would be representing Mr. Strauss-Kahn with William Taylor, a lawyer in Washington.

“We have not yet been able to meet with our client and we may have more to say tomorrow,” said Mr. Brafman, who said he had been contacted late Saturday night. He said Mr. Strauss-Kahn was being housed at the police department’s Special Victims Unit.

Early Sunday morning, Mr. Brafman said that his client “will plead not guilty.”

Mr. Strauss-Kahn, a former French finance minister, had been expected to declare his candidacy soon, after three and a half years as the leader of the fund, which is based in Washington. He was considered by many to have done a good job in a period of intense global economic strain, when the institution itself had become vital to the smooth running of the world and the European economy.

His apprehension came at about 4:40 p.m., when two detectives of the Port Authority suddenly boarded Air France Flight 23, as the plane idled at the departure gate, said John P. L. Kelly, a spokesman for the agency.

“It was 10 minutes before its scheduled departure,” Mr. Kelly said. “They were just about to close the doors.”

Mr. Kelly said that Mr. Strauss-Kahn was traveling alone and that he was not handcuffed during the apprehension.

“He complied with the detectives’ directions,” Mr. Kelly said.

The Port Authority officers were acting on information from the Police Department, whose detectives had been investigating the assault of a female employee of Sofitel New York, at 45 West 44th Street, near Times Square. Working quickly, the city detectives learned he had boarded a flight at Kennedy Airport to leave the country.

Though Mr. Strauss-Kahn received generally high marks for his stewardship of the fund, his reputation was tarnished in 2008 by an affair with a Hungarian economist who was a subordinate there. The fund decided to stand by him despite concluding that he had shown poor judgment in the affair. Mr. Strauss-Kahn issued an apology to I.M.F. employees and to his wife, Anne Sinclair, an American-born French journalist whom he married in 1991.

In his statement then, Mr. Strauss-Kahn said, “I am grateful that the board has confirmed that there was no abuse of authority on my part, but I accept that this incident represents a serious error of judgment.” The economist, Piroska Nagy, left the fund as part of a buyout of nearly 600 employees instituted by Mr. Strauss-Kahn to cut costs.

In the New York case, Mr. Browne said that it was about 1 p.m. on Saturday when the maid, a 32-year-old woman, entered Mr. Strauss-Kahn’s suite — Room 2806 — believing it was unoccupied. Mr. Browne said that the suite, which cost $3,000 a night, had a foyer, a conference room, a living room and a bedroom, and that Mr. Strauss-Khan had checked in on Friday.

As she was in the foyer, “he came out of the bathroom, fully naked, and attempted to sexually assault her,” Mr. Browne said, adding, “He grabs her, according to her account, and pulls her into the bedroom and onto the bed.” He locked the door to the suite, Mr. Browne said.

“She fights him off, and he then drags her down the hallway to the bathroom, where he sexually assaults her a second time,” Mr. Browne added.

At some point during the assault, the woman broke free, Mr. Browne said, and “she fled, reported it to other hotel personnel, who called 911.” He added, “When the police arrived, he was not there.” Mr. Browne said Mr. Strauss-Kahn appeared to have left in a hurry. In the room, investigators found his cellphone, which he had left behind, and one law enforcement official said that the investigation uncovered forensic evidence that would contain DNA.

Mr. Browne added, “We learned that he was on an Air France plane,” and the plane was held at the gate, where Mr. Strauss-Kahn was taken into custody. Later Saturday night, Mr. Browne said Mr. Strauss-Kahn was in a police holding cell.

My Comment: I wonder if there is a subtext here, of financial despots - like despots of all kinds - believing themselves to be above the law. My guess is that Mr. Strauss-Kahn believed himself to be diplomatically immune.

Update: It appears that Mr. Strauss-Kahn has been denied bail. Not that he`s a "flight risk" or anything...

This ABC News article explains why diplomatic immunity apparently does not apply:

According to senior police officials Strauss-Kahn has no diplomatic immunity, despite his position with the IMF, which makes him technically an administrative official with the United Nations.

Strauss-Kahn was in New York on private business when the incident allegedly occurred, so any diplomatic immunity would apparently not apply in the case.

[R.D. Silverman]

Originally Posted by ewmayer

Matt Taibbi`s latest on the Vampire Squid:

<snip, snip>

A law should be enacted that oil cannot be traded as a commodity because of greed and its effect on the world economy.

Amen. Actually, commodities trading is IMO, little more than legalized
gambling using borrowed money. It should be outlawed ENTIRELY.

Why should e.g. Internet Poker be illegal? Can you say "hypocrisy"?

[moebius]

Originally Posted by ewmayer

This story which broke over the weekend .......

I.M.F. Chief, Apprehended at Airport, Is Accused of Sexual Attack

Not the first statesman who is accused or convicted for such an act.
I refer to Moshe Katsav, Muammar al-Gaddafi, Bill Clinton.....