Free Republic

Japan's government is to take the unprecedented step of buying factories and machinery directly with taxpayer funds, the latest in a series of radical steps to lift the country out of its deep slump. Premier Shenzo Abe is to spend up to one trillion yen (£7.1bn) buying plant in the electronics, equipment, and carbon fibre industries to force the pace of investment, according to Nikkei news. The disclosure came just a day after Mr Abe vowed to revive Japan's nuclear industry with a fresh generation of reactors, insisting that they would be "completely different" from the Fukishima Daiichi technology.

Farmers' lobby groups on Tuesday demanded clarity on a proposal that agricultural land become a "national asset", which they fear is a move towards nationalisation. Although Land Affairs director-general Thozi Gwanya said the government was not considering nationalisation, and that making land a national asset was just a land reform "option... Land invasion fears...talk of nationalisation of farms could be followed by land invasions, as happened in Zimbabwe... the Chinese communist model in which farmers pay rent to the state which owns the land. More than 90% of the 5.9 million hectares of land the state bought for emerging farmers...

FRANKFURT (AFP) – Germany on Thursday launched its first full bank nationalisation since the republic's birth in 1949, with a key US investor set to pay a high price as officials try to stabilise financial markets. The government, acting through the Financial Markets Stabilisation Fund (SoFFin), said it would offer shareholders in troubled Hypo Real Estate 1.39 euros per share for their stock. That price means the state, which already holds 8.7 percent of the bank, will have to pay about 290 million euros (385 million dollars) to buy out other shareholders. Investors will have two weeks to tender their...

BY KEVIN KINGSBURY AND MAYA JACKSON RANDALL Struggling banking giant Citigroup Inc., moving aggressively to shore up its equity base, announced a stock swap Friday that if successful will leave the government owning more than a third of the company and wipe out nearly three-quarters of existing shareholders' stake. The move is an acknowledgment that more than $50 billion in government capital and a backstop on more than $300 billion in troubled Citigroup assets haven't been enough to stop the bank's slide. It also represents a deepening of the government's role in trying to prop up the U.S. banking sector....

California Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger repeated today on "This Week" that he'd take any state aid money GOP governors like Gov. Mark Sanford, R-S.C. turn down -- a position that has raised the ire of many of his Republican colleagues in Washington, D.C. this weekend. "Governor Sanford says that he does not want to take the money, the federal stimulus package money. And I want to say to him: 'I'll take it.' I'm more than happy to take his money or any other governor in this country that doesn't want to take this money, I take it, because we in California...

US stocks dive on bank nationalisation fears21 Feb 2009, 0342 hrs IST, AFP NEW YORK: US stocks plunged on rumours of bank nationalisations, a day after falling to six-year lows. The Dow Jones Industrial Average fell 98.45 points (1.32 per cent) to 7,367.50 at the closing bell after posting Thursday its lowest closing level since October 9, 2002. The tech-dominated Nasdaq dropped 1.59 points (0.11 per cent) to 1,441.23 and the broad-market Standard and Poor's 500 index shed 8.79 points (1.13 per cent) to 770.15, according to preliminary closing figures. Traders were concerned about rumours of the possible nationalisation of...

Lindsey Graham, the Republican senator from South Carolina, has made himself a point-man in the rising nationalization debate. Graham stepped out this week to advocate government takeovers of certain struggling banks, surprising some fellow Republicans and proving again that the banking crisis has turned many economic orthodoxies upside down. But Graham says he supports only a limited nationalization, and that he's doing so only because the government's current plan isn't yielding results. “I want to bring closure to this, and I want a game plan,” Graham told the Observer on Thursday. “I'm not going to be the Herbert Hoover of...

BY EDWARD LUCEA & KRISHNA GUHA Nationalisation, long regarded in Washington as a folly of Europeans, is gaining rapid ground among US opinion-formers. Stranger still, many of those talking about federal ownership of banks are Republicans. Lindsey Graham, the Republican senator for North Carolina, said that many of his colleagues, including John McCain, the defeated presidential candidate, agreed with his view that nationalisation of some banks should be “on the table”. Mr Graham said that people across the US accepted his argument that it was untenable to keep throwing good money after bad into institutions such as Citigroup and Bank...

The US Federal Reserve is examining the Nordic bank nationalisations of the 1990s as a possible interim solution to the US financial crisis. The Fed has been criticised for its rescue of Bear Stearns, which critics say has degenerated into a taxpayer gift to rich bankers. A senior official at one of the Scandinavian central banks told The Daily Telegraph that Fed strategists had stepped up contacts to learn how Norway, Sweden and Finland managed their traumatic crisis from 1991 to 1993, which brought the region's economy to its knees. It is understood that Fed vice-chairman Don Kohn remains very...

Ecuador yesterday joined the wave of Latin American governments targeting foreign-owned industries when it fulfilled its threat against an American oil company and took "full technical control" of its operations.The offices and installations of Occidental Petroleum were occupied by soldiers earlier this week, provoking a furious response by Washington. But yesterday, a Petroecuador official announced: "We are in control of Occidental's technical operations." State oil officials are expected to replace Occidental executives running oil fields in the Amazon region. While the government of President Alfredo Palacio denied the seizure was part of a wider move to nationalise oil deposits in...

PRESIDENT Evo Morales ordered the military to occupy Bolivia's natural gas fields overnight after nationalising the industry and threatening to expel foreign companies that do not recognize state control. Bolivia has the second-largest natural gas reserves in South America after Venezuela, and disputes over how the impoverished country should manage those riches have sparked several popular revolts since 2003. Ms Morales became president in January on vows to exert more state control over natural resources, reflecting a growing backlash against free markets and foreign investment in Latin America. The president chose Labor Day, May 1, to announce the nationalisation, which...