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source: www.mnftiu.cc | get your war on | page thirty-two

Les ménages ne sont pas trop endettés
:: La Banque Royale dénonce 7 mythes sur les finances des ménages

La Banque Royale affirme que la situation financière des ménages nord-américains n’est pas si mal en point. Dans un rapport, les économistes de la Royale dénoncent sept mythes au sujet des finances des ménages.

Ils estiment plutôt que les plus grands risques financiers touchent aux logement, aux transports et aux placements.

«Les idées qui ont cours au sujet des finances des ménages nord- américains sous-estiment la croissance de l'emploi, des revenus et de la productivité», dit John Anania, premier économiste, RBC, Québec. Selon elle, on accorde trop d'importance à des indicateurs erronés et à des convictions mal fondées qui exagèrent les risques pour l'économie.

Mythe 1 : Les ménages nord-américains sont criblés de dettes
Le rapport endettement/revenu est erroné parce qu’il compare la dette totale d'une personne à son revenu d'une seule année, plutôt qu'au revenu réalisé pendant toute sa vie.

Mythe 2 : Les faillites de consommateurs s'aggravent
Le nombre de faillites a augmenté, mais à cause de la croissance de l’économie et des activités de prêts.

Mythe 3 : Le recours accru au crédit renouvelable crée des problèmes
Le danger des prêts renouvelables est exagéré. Leur popularité tient davantage à leur souplesse et s’est faite au détriment des prêts traditionnels.

Mythe 4 : Les ménages auront des problèmes quand les taux monteront
Le risque que les taux montent de façon substantielle est exagéré. De plus, les ménages auraient suffisamment de liquidités pour faire face à leurs besoins.

Mythe 5 : Les ménages n'épargnent pas suffisamment
Le niveau d’épargne des ménages ne tient pas compte de l’appréciation de la valeur de leur maison.

Mythe 6 : Les ménages dépensent le capital investi dans leur maison
Le ménage canadien moyen accumule plutôt un avoir propre
immobilier malgré le fait anecdotique que certains premiers acquéreurs minimisent leur paiement initial ou utilisent leur avoir propre pour financer
d'autres achats.

Mythe 7 : La chute des cours boursiers réduit la qualité du crédit
Les ménages avaient plus investi dans le marché immobilier que dans le marché boursier. Ils ont donc profité de la forte hausse dans l’immobilier.

source: lesaffaires.com | 9 mars 2004

Coincidence?
:: All This Talk Of Civil War, And Now This Carnage.

By Robert Fisk

Odd, isn't it? There never has been a civil war in Iraq. I have never heard a single word of animosity between Sunnis and Shias in Iraq.

Al-Qa'ida has never uttered a threat against Shias - even though al-Qa'ida is a Sunni-only organisation. Yet for weeks, the American occupation authorities have been warning us about civil war, have even produced a letter said to have been written by an al-Qa'ida operative, advocating a Sunni-Shia conflict. Normally sane journalists have enthusiastically taken up this theme. Civil war.

Somehow I don't believe it. No, I don't believe the Americans were behind yesterday's carnage despite the screams of accusation by the Iraqi survivors yesterday. But I do worry about the Iraqi exile groups who think that their own actions might produce what the Americans want: a fear of civil war so intense that Iraqis will go along with any plan the United States produces for Mesopotamia.

I think of the French OAS in Algeria in 1962, setting off bombs among France's Muslim Algerian community. I recall the desperate efforts of the French authorities to set Algerian Muslim against Algerian Muslim which led to half a million dead souls.

And I'm afraid I also think of Ireland and the bombings in Dublin and Monaghan in 1974, which, as the years go by, appear to have an ever closer link, via Protestant "loyalist" paramilitaries, to elements of British military security.

But the bombs in Karbala and Baghdad were clearly co-ordinated. The same brain worked behind them. Was it a Sunni brain? When the occupation authorities' spokesman suggested yesterday that it was the work of al-Qa'ida, he must have known what he was saying: that al-Qa'ida is a Sunni movement, that the victims were Shias.

It's not that I believe al-Qa'ida incapable of such a bloodbath. But I ask myself why the Americans are rubbing this Sunni-Shia thing so hard. Let's turn the glass round the other way. If a violent Sunni movement wished to evict the Americans from Iraq - and there is indeed a resistance movement fighting very cruelly to do just that - why would it want to turn the Shia population of Iraq, 60 per cent of Iraqis, against them? The last thing such a resistance would want is to have the majority of Iraqis against it.

So what about al-Qa'ida? Repeatedly, the Americans have told us that the suicide bombers were "foreigners". And so they may be. But can we have some identities, nationalities? The US Defence Secretary, Donald Rumsfeld, has talked of the hundreds of "foreign" fighters crossing Saudi Arabia's "porous" borders.

The US press have dutifully repeated this. The Iraqi police keep announcing that they have found the bombers' passports, so can we have the numbers?

We are entering a dark and sinister period of Iraqi history. But an occupation authority which should regard civil war as the last prospect it ever wants to contemplate, keeps shouting "civil war" in our ears and I worry about that. Especially when the bombs make it real.

source: The Independent | 03 March 2004