Category Archives: Denmark
Your Quick Guide To The IMF-World Bank Meetings Today
World leaders are meeting in Washington, D.C., to attend a joint IMF-World Bank meeting.
Their focus? The funding available to the IMF, specifically to support the ongoing debt and bank crises in Europe.
Countries in Europe and Asia have expressed interest and even firm commitments in contributing more money to the fund. The U.S. and Canada, however, have said they won’t contribute any more cash to an effort EU leaders should be able to resolve themselves.
While we could hear more pledges over the course of the day, so far Japan, Switzerland, Poland, Sweden, Denmark, Norway, and the euro area have all made dollar commitments totaling $320 billion, according to Bloomberg:
Read more: BI
Related articles
- Selected Headlines from Business Insider, April 19, 2012 (jhaines6.wordpress.com)
- IMF Director LaGarde responds to move to rescind U.S. tax dollars (humanevents.com)
- IMF Exploits Euro-Crisis to Create Global Money Power (mb50.wordpress.com)
Punch Drunk in the Oval Office
Could someone get the President some new speechwriters? President Obama is woefully in need of new vocabulary, as a recent expose by Danish television hilariously and embarrassingly reveals.
For leaders of smaller nations, a meeting and a photo op with the American President in the White House is always a huge thrill. And so Danish Prime Minister Helle Thorning-Schmidt was no exception when she received the presidential treatment on February 24, basking in the glow of President Obama’s approval. The President (rightly) praised Denmark’s military contribution in Afghanistan and Libya, saying that the small Nordic country of 4.5 million people ”punches above its weight.”
As sweet as this praise must have been to the ears of the Danish prime minister, it was soon tempered by revelations that President Obama is very free with the use of this phrase. Danish television clipped together a montage showing Obama complimenting the leaders of Norway, Ireland, and the Philippines in exactly the same words, all for ”punching above their weight.” President Obama apparently has not used the expression about the British, despite the fact that he borrowed it from British Foreign Minister Douglas Hurd.
The conservative Danish newspaper Jyllands–Posten noted that Obama must really be pleased with the Danes, as he said the same thing to the previous Danish prime minister, Lars Løkke Rasmussen, during his state visit last year, sitting in the very same armchairs under the same picture of George Washington. Meanwhile, an editorial in the left-of-center newspaper Politiken grumbled that it was the unfortunate Danish desire to ”punch above their weight” that had gotten the Danes involved in the Iraq war and other American affairs. The newspaper advocated that Danes stick to their own bantam weight class in the future.
The real question might be, however, whether the United States under President Obama is punching below its weight, making the contributions of others seem all the greater. From premature military withdrawals from Iraq and Afghanistan to selling out U.S. missile defense to the Russians and mouthing mechanical blandishments to U.S. allies like the Danes, President Obama is squandering a great foreign policy legacy.
Helle C. Dale is Senior Fellow in Public Diplomacy at The Heritage Foundation—and a native of Denmark.
Posted in American Leadership
Related articles
- The Danish Jon Stewart Schools Obama on Using the Same ‘Punch’ Lines with Every Ally (newsbusters.org)
- Punch Drunk: Danish Television Captures the President Delivering The Same Back-Handed Compliment To A Series Of “Little Countries” (jonathanturley.org)
- Danish TV Host Mocks Obama for His Rhetoric “Maybe the copy key got stuck on the presidential speechwriter’s keyboard.” (blogginghounds.wordpress.com)
Continents of the World
Mb50's "Liquid Mud" Rant 