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Paul Volcker, the former chairman of the Federal Reserve under Presidents Carter and Reagan who later played a role in the Obama administration's response to the financial crisis of 2009, has died at the age of 92. Multiple media outlets reported that Volcker, who raised interest rates as the Fed's chief to combat inflation, had died. In the Obama years, Volcker reemerged to tout a rule, eventually called the Volcker rule, that put tougher constraints on big banks.

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UNITED NATIONS - Secretary-General Kofi Annan (news - web sites)'s new chief of staff heads to Washington on Wednesday to meet with critics and supporters of the United Nations (news - web sites) following a critical report of U.N. actions in the oil-for-food program in Iraq (news - web sites). Mark Malloch Brown's high-profile trip is aimed at informing U.S. lawmakers about ongoing U.N. management and administrative reforms and appears to be the opening salvo in a new offensive by Annan to present the world body in a more positive light. One of the U.S. lawmakers Malloch Brown is scheduled...

SADDAM HUSSEIN has sent his personal jeweller to Thailand on a secret mission to buy millions of dollars worth of diamonds, prompting speculation that he is preparing to flee or send his family into hiding, writes Jon Swain. Sources with knowledge of the trip revealed that the jeweller travelled from Baghdad to Bangkok via Jordan. They said he bought the gems in the Thai capital in a prearranged deal. “He purchased millions of dollars worth,” said one. This was the jeweller’s second recent visit to Bangkok. Three months ago the sources said that Saddam’s son Uday had sent him to...

Throughout the Bush years, liberals repeated "Bush lied, people died" like a mantra. That slander wasn't true then and it's not anymore true now that it has resurfaced. There are many legitimate criticisms of the way the Bush Administration conducted the war in Iraq and even more of the way Obama threw away all the blood and treasure we spent there for the sake of politics, but you have to be malicious or just an imbecile at this point to accuse Bush of lying about WMDs. To begin with, numerous foreign intelligence agencies also believed that Saddam Hussein had an...

The publication yesterday of Paul Volcker's fifth and final report on the U.N.'s Oil for Food program tells us little we didn't know about the broad outlines of the $100 billion scandal. But, oh, are the details ever instructive. The Volcker report confirms that Saddam Hussein demanded, and got, some $1.8 billion in illegal surcharges, kickbacks and bribes from companies doing business in Iraq. It confirms that he steered billions in oil and humanitarian contracts to his politically preferred clients, particularly Russia and France, and smaller sums to agents of influence (or their associates) such as British MP George Galloway,...

U.N. investigators have turned over to Congress boxes of evidence on the Oil-for-Food program, including "proof" that U.N. Secretary-General Kofi Annan lied to the Independent Inquiry Committee probing the scandal, Fox News Channel reporter Jonathan Hunt said Thursday. "One source close to the case told me that in those boxes is the ammunition to prove that Kofi Annan lied to investigators," Hunt told Fox News Radio host Tony Snow. "So this is a very dramatic development indeed." Story Continues Below Hunt said the documents had been in the possession of U.N. investigator Robert Parton, who resigned from the probe two...

UNITED NATIONS (AP) - The United Nations is studying whether it was appropriate for the top U.N. envoy for North Korea to maintain business ties with a South Korean businessman accused of wrongdoing in the U.N. oil-for-food scandal, U.N. officials said Tuesday. U.N. Secretary-General Kofi Annan said he had not known about the ties between Maurice Strong and Tongsun Park, a native of North Korea and citizen of South Korea who was also accused in the 1970s of trying to buy influence in Congress. Strong is the U.N. point man on stalled six-nation talks aimed at persuading North Korea to...

Iraq has protested against UN Secretary-General Kofi Annan's decision to use $US30 million ($A38.2 million) in revenue from a UN oil-for-food program for Iraq to help pay for a corruption investigation in that humanitarian program. In a letter obtained by The Associated Press, Iraq's UN Ambassador Samir Sumaidaie argued that Security Council resolutions do not support the use of money from the oil-for-food program "for an investigation into the internal practices of the United Nations in carrying out its duties". "My government believes that the use of such funds has no legal basis," he said in a letter dated November...

from link... Text: U.S. and Italy Designate 25 New Financiers of Terror ... 19. Miga-Malaysian Swiss, Gulf and African Chamber Ahmed Idris Nasreddin is identified as the President of Miga-Malaysian Swiss, Gulf and African Chamber, and exercises sole signatory authority on behalf of the organization. Fox News already broke the MIGA-Saddam connection (link), although MSM has not covered it. It would be MAJOR if any of the persons or companies named in the CIA report matched any persons or companies officially named as terrorists/terrorist financiers. We can say that officially the CIA has reported that Saddam supported terrorists (not including...

Did Saddam Hussein use any of his ill-gotten billions filched from the United Nations oil-for-food program to help fund Al Qaeda? Investigations have shown that the former Iraqi dictator grafted and smuggled more than $10 billion from the program that for seven years prior to Saddam’s overthrow was meant to bring humanitarian aid to ordinary Iraqis. And the Sept. 11 Commission has shown a tracery of contacts between Saddam and Al Qaeda that continued after billions of oil-for-food dollars began pouring into Saddam’s coffers and Usama bin Laden declared his famous war on the U.S. Now, buried in some of...

An unfriendly ghost roams the regulation-gray corridors and pine-paneled offices of the United Nations: The Iraqi Oil-for-Food scheme, terminated by the Security Council last November, has returned to haunt the beleaguered inhabitants of Amityville-on-the-East-River. If reports are true, Saddam Hussein stole more than $10 billion by exploiting a U.N.-administered program that was supposed to meet humanitarian needs in Iraq. Hundreds of foreign individuals, political parties, and companies illegally profited through back-channel deals with the Iraqi regime. From the scheme's beginnings in 1995, Oil-for-Food was ripe for the plucking by the unscrupulous. Administered by no fewer than ten U.N. agencies, and...