Pope Calls For A True World Political Authority

Pope Benedict XVI on Tuesday condemned the “grave deviations and failures” of capitalism exposed by the financial crisis and issued a strong call for ” to oversee a return to ethics in the global economy.

The pontiff’s call for stronger government regulation was made in his third and eagerly awaited encyclical, Charity in Truth, which the Vatican chose to issue on the eve of the G8 summit of rich nations being held in Italy.

His attack on unbridled capitalism and unregulated market forces was also accompanied by a strong critique of some international aid agencies, which he accused of encouraging abortion, sterilisation and imposing contraception. The pontiff, elected to the papacy in 2005, stirred controversy on his first visit to Africa in March when he said that use of condoms exacerbated the Aids crisis.

While the pontiff’s call for a new political authority is unlikely to go down well with the G8 heads of government, his plea for financiers in particular to refocus on ethics will be reflected in a G8 communiqué bearing the imprint of Italy and Germany in their push for stronger and more co-ordinated “global standards”.

In common with some of the more regulatory-minded members of the G8, the pope does not reject globalisation outright but seeks more forceful implementation of common rules and standards.

Pope Benedict’s emphasis on the need for “forms of redistribution of wealth” is also likely to fuel the debate at the summit – to be attended by 39 heads of government and international institutions – over the failure of several rich nations, most notably Italy and France, to honour past aid commitments.

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Cashless Society By 2012, Says Visa Chief

Peter Ayliffe said that, by 2012, using credit and debit cards should be cheaper and more convenient than cash.

Some retailers could soon start surcharging customers if they choose to buy products with cash, because of the greater cost of processing these payments, he warned.

Visa Europe briefed the British Retail Consortium last month on new “contactless” cards that can be waved in front of a scanner to make small payments.

However, the consortium dismissed this vision and claimed that card processing fees, which regulators are investigating, are still too high.

One member of the consurtium said that the estimated “interchange” fee charged to retailers amounts to some 4p for each transaction.

Nick Mourant, treasurer at Tesco, said: “There is a duopoly between Mastercard and Visa in the UK. Their setting of fees is anti-competitive.”

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Cash To Become Extinct As Chips Take Off

Cash is accelerating down the path to extinction as new technologies threaten to mark the end of loose change within a decade.

Bank and credit union bosses say cash won’t be alone, with wallets and credit cards also likely to disappear too.

They told The Advertiser’s round table forum that cash and cards will be replaced by computer chips embedded in mobile phones, watches or other portable devices.

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Building A New World Order For The Man of Sin

Events unfolding since 9/11 portend a near future in which a man of superior intelligence, wit, charm, and diplomacy will emerge on the world scene as a savior. He will seemingly possess a transcendent wisdom that enables him to solve problems and to offer solutions for many of today’s most perplexing issues.

His popularity will be widespread and his fans will include young and old, religious and non-religious, male and female. Talk show hosts will interview his colleagues, news anchors will cover his movements, scholars will applaud his uncanny ability at resolving what has escaped the rest of us, and the poor will bow down at his table. He will, in all human respects, appeal to the best idea of society. But his profound comprehension and irresistible presence will be the result of an invisible network of thousands of years of collective knowledge. He will, like the god Vulcan, represent the embodiment of a very old super-intellegent spirit.

As Jesus Christ was the “seed of the woman” (Gen. 3:15), he will be the “seed of the serpent.” Moreover, though his arrival in the form of a man was foretold by numerous Scriptures, the broad masses will not immediately recognize him for what he actually is—paganism’s ultimate incarnation; the “beast” of Revelation 13:1.

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Fingers Likely To Replace ID Cards In U.S.

Beginning in March, students at University of California, Irvine were no longer required to show their ID cards to gain access to the Anteater Recreation Center, instead, they only had to place their hands in a scanner and type in their personal identification numbers.

Campus officials said the “hand geometry” system has been available for less than two months and almost 9,000 students have signed up to use it. With it, people no longer have to worry whether they have carried their ID or not. Their fingers are their IDs.

The hand scanner does not take fingerprints of handprints. It records a series of specific measurements and analyzes more than 31,000 points and 90 measurements on the hand, including length, width, thickness and surface area and compares the data with that on file for a member’s personal identification number (PIN). It is also called the “hand geometry” system.

Although the university currently does not have any public plans to use the scanners at other major venues, it is possible that such scanners will go into wider use if they continue to prove to be fast and efficient.

The California State University in Fullerton, Southern California, started to use the system at its fitness center a year ago.

Right now, only a few special facilities or places have used the hand geometry system. But possibly people will soon find they do not have to bring their ID cards with them when they go to the airport, check in at hotels or draw money from banks.

The system will have a wider application in the military. The Pentagon has developed its own Defense Biometric Identification System, also called DBIDS, which has already been introduced to U.S. Air Force bases around the world.

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China Proposes One Global Currency

China’s central bank on Monday proposed replacing the US dollar as the international reserve currency with a new global system controlled by the International Monetary Fund.

In an essay posted on the People’s Bank of China’s website, Zhou Xiaochuan, the central bank’s governor, said the goal would be to create a reserve currency “that is disconnected from individual nations and is able to remain stable in the long run, thus removing the inherent deficiencies caused by using credit-based national currencies”.

Analysts said the proposal was an indication of Beijing’s fears that actions being taken to save the domestic US economy would have a negative impact on China.

“This is a clear sign that China, as the largest holder of US dollar financial assets, is concerned about the potential inflationary risk of the US Federal Reserve printing money,” said Qu Hongbin, chief China economist for HSBC.

Although Mr Zhou did not mention the US dollar, the essay gave a pointed critique of the current dollar-dominated monetary system.

“The outbreak of the [current] crisis and its spillover to the entire world reflected the inherent vulnerabilities and systemic risks in the existing international monetary system,” Mr Zhou wrote.

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End Of The Road For Plastic Credit Cards

Britain’s biggest credit card provider Barclaycard is to boost its contactless payment system which it believes will mean the physical plastic credit card will die out in the foreseeable future.

Barclaycard, owned by Barclays Plc, introduced its first contactless credit card as the OnePulse product one year ago, in which a microchip allows customers to pay for goods by touching the card against a reader without having to remove it from their wallet or purse.

The group now plans to issue over one million contactless cards by the end of this year. Barclaycard then plans to make it possible to put the chip into a mobile phone or key fob, meaning the need to carry a plastic credit card will disappear.

“In time you won’t have to carry a plastic credit card around with you if you don’t want to, although some people will chose to for nostalgic reasons,” Barclaycard Chief Executive Officer Antony Jenkins said in a statement on Monday.

“If I had said to you 10 years ago that you couldn’t pay with a cheque at the supermarket, you wouldn’t have believed me. That is now the reality, and we see plastic cards going the same way eventually,” Jenkins added.

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