Not so banana republic ... more like a developed nation exercising its sovereign rights to protect its nature and people

A Brazilian federal prosecutor filed criminal charges on Wednesday against Chevron and drill-rig operator Transocean for a November oil spill, raising the stakes in a legal saga that has added to Chevron's woes in Latin America and could slow Brazil's offshore oil boom.

Prosecutor Eduardo Santos de Oliveira also filed criminal charges against 17 local executives and employees at Chevron and Transocean, owner of the world's largest oil rig fleet. Among the defendants is George Buck, 46, a U.S. national in charge of Chevron's operations in Brazil, the prosecutor's office said in a statement.
"The spilling of oil affected the entire maritime ecosystem, possibly pushing some species to extinction, and caused impacts on economic activity in the region," Santos de Oliveira, a prosecutor in the oil district of Campos de Goytacazes, said in the filing. "The employees of Chevron and Transocean caused a contamination time bomb of prolonged effect."

The charges stem from a 3,000-barrel leak in the Frade field, about 120 km (75 miles) off the coast of Rio de Janeiro state. They include: failure to realize protocols to contain the leak; failure to take steps to kill the well and stop the drilling process; breach of licenses, legal norms and regulation, including altering documents; and failure to meet legal and contractual duties.

Chevron criminal charges for oil spill

A Brazilian prosecutor plans to file criminal charges against Chevron Corp and some of its local managers within weeks, adding the threat of prison sentences to an $11 billion civil lawsuit as punishment for a November offshore oil spill.

The filing in federal court in Campos, Brazil, will likely include a request for criminal indictment of George Buck, chief executive of Chevron's Brazil unit, as well as other staff, three Brazilian government officials involved in the case told Reuters.

Transocean Ltd, whose rig was used in the operation, and some of its employees in Brazil are also expected to be charged, according to the officials, who requested anonymity because the case has not been presented to a judge. It is up to a judge to determine whether to accept the charges and proceed with indictments.

2011 the year governments woke up to the good money in oil spills!!! (oh yeah and they're bad for the environment/community too)

Brazil’s threatened indictment of Chevron Corp. (CVX) and Transocean Ltd. (RIG) executives after offshore oil leaks shows that regulators from the North Sea to the Indian Ocean are stepping up scrutiny after BP Plc’s 2010 disaster.



Brazilian authorities have said they may prosecute employees, shut operations and exact more than $10 billion in fines after the leaks at the Frade field 230 miles (370 kilometers) off the coast of Rio de Janeiro. The spill occurred 19 months after an explosion in the Gulf of Mexico killed 11 workers and triggered the biggest offshore U.S. oil spill.

Governments around the world are paying closer attention to how energy explorers drill into high-pressure deposits of crude and natural gas as much as 8 miles beneath the sea surface. Chevron’s Brazil incident took place after a ConocoPhillips (COP) leak in China and prior to what may be Nigeria’s biggest spill in a decade at a Royal Dutch Shell Plc facility.


“There’s been just such a rash of them that governments have got to act tough” with oil companies, Allen Brooks, a managing director at energy-investment bank PPHB LP in Houston and Chevron shareholder, said in a phone interview. Since the BP accident “every spill after that is heightened in terms of media attention and obviously government concern.”


ConocoPhillips was criticized by the People’s Daily, China’s Communist Party newspaper, for “negligence, cover-ups and cheating” in its handling of a June leak in Bohai Bay. Premier Wen Jiabao ordered a “thorough” investigation in September.

In Nigeria, Royal Dutch Shell (RDSA) shut its 200,000 barrel-a-day Bonga field this week after a tanker-loading accident caused less than 40,000 barrels of crude to leak.

A Financially Inclusive World...you may call us dreamers but we're not the only ones....come and join us!!!

Letter from the CEO of ACCION:


Fifty years ago this year, ACCION was founded on the belief that we can create a better world by helping people to help themselves. Half a century later, we continue to fulfill this mission by providing high-quality, affordable financial services with dignity to those who need it most – those living in poverty.



Our vision is to build a financially inclusive world with access to economic opportunity for all. Over the last year, your support has enabled us to advance our mission and vision in many ways, including the provision of loans and other key financial services to millions.


Despite this progress, more than 2.7 billion people remain excluded from the world’s financial systems and the opportunity such access can create. With your support we can continue to bridge this gap, bringing life-changing microfinance services to the poor.

This year, ACCION made significant progress in all three of our strategic focus areas.


First, we are building the next generation of top-tier microfinance institutions – enabling these institutions to deliver a range of high-quality, affordable financial services. Highlights include:

• Inaugurating ACCION Microfinanças in Brazil, in June – a new MFI in the heart of the Amazon, where half of the region’s 14 million inhabitants live in poverty.

• Creating microfinance services for rural clients in Latin America through a grant from the Inter-American Development Bank. Over 130,000 clients in Peru, the Dominican Republic, Nicaragua, Colombia and Ecuador have already been reached with rural credit products. Micro-savings programs that help clients recover from natural disasters and other unexpected events have been rolled out in Peru, Colombia and the Dominican Republic.
• Building and strengthening EB-ACCION Microfinance, a new microfinance institution in Cameroon, where more than 65 percent of the actively employed population lacks access to any form of secure, financial services.

• Providing secure savings accounts for more than 250,000 low-income people served by our partners in Tanzania, Nigeria and Cameroon, and proudly recognizing the achievement of both ACCION Microfinance Bank (AMfB) in Nigeria as ‘Microfinance Bank of the Year,' and EB-ACCION Savings and Loans in Ghana as African Banker’s ‘Microfinance Institution/Project of the Year 2011.’

• Strengthening our pioneering microfinance work in Chifeng, Inner Mongolia, China through partnership with the International Finance Corporation.

• Redoubling our commitment to the future of Indian microfinance, through equity investments and guarantees for our Mumbai- and Bihar-based partners, Swadhaar and Saija.

• Increasing opportunity here at home by working ever more closely with the ACCION U.S. Network – the largest microlending network in the country. Since inception, the Network has extended more than $300 million in small, working-capital loans.

• Continuing to explore un-served and underserved countries and regions of the world, such as Kenya, the Philippines, Pakistan and beyond, where our management, investment and governance skills can help foster financial inclusion.

Second, we are fueling innovation in financial inclusion, providing funding and technical assistance to promising start-ups and sustainable technologies beyond MFIs that serve people at the bottom of the pyramid:

• ACCION’s Frontier Investments Group continued to invest in ground-breaking financial services this year, such as mobile payments in Zambia, cashless payments in Peru, and a new technology services company in India staffed by people with disabilities.

• We are developing plans for the launch of a new venture capital fund that will provide patient capital to very small start-ups whose experimental but promising business models could catalyze the next leap in financial inclusion.

Third, we are proud to report that your support is helping us to build a strong microfinance industry with the highest possible standards:

• Through the Smart Campaign, ACCION’s Center for Financial Inclusion is helping to direct the industry’s first-ever, global consumer-protection initiative. With over 2,400 signatories serving more than 40 million clients in 130 countries, the Campaign is helping to ensure quality delivery of services, worldwide.

• We are helping to build industry capacity at training centers in India, Ghana and China, and in the last three years have taught more than 3,000 industry professionals new skills for delivering high-quality services.

• We continue to publish leading-edge, thought-provoking research on the industry, such as the recent reports on the state of client protection, and ‘opportunities and obstacles’ to financial inclusion.

• And we are expanding our collaboration with other industry leaders, including the ACCION Network of partners in Latin America and a working group of microfinance organization CEOs, on a common agenda to address key industry challenges. Our goal is to redouble the industry’s commitment to consumer protection, pricing transparency and meaningful measurement of social impact.

ACCION’s work has helped the microfinance industry to grow by orders of magnitude – from reaching tens of thousands of the world’s poor a few decades ago, to approximately 200 million today. Yet we know that much more remains to be done. That is why we are asking you for your continued support for our work around the globe.

As we look ahead to our next 50 years, we renew our pledge to build a truly financially inclusive world, where all of society can benefit from all that society offers. Thank you again for your participation. It has already made a difference; together, we can do so much more.

If Exxon & others paid taxes; we'd have the $2 trillion to put into US infrastructure; and guess what... employment problem solved!!!

The United States is falling dramatically behind much of the world in rebuilding and expanding an overloaded and deteriorating transportation network it needs to remain competitive in the global marketplace, according to a new study by the Urban Land Institute.


Burdened with soaring deficits and with long-term transportation plans stalled in Congress, the United States has fallen behind three emerging economic competitors — Brazil, China and India, the institute said.

“Over the next five to 10 years, public concerns will grow over evident declines in the condition of infrastructure,” the report says. “At some attention-getting point after infrastructure limps along, platforms for reinvesting in America could gain significant traction and public support.”

The report is the latest in a series of studies to conclude that the nation will face dire long-term consequences if major investment in transportation revitalization is postponed.

“Infrastructure should be part of the larger conversation about ‘what do you want government to do and how do you want to pay for it?’ ” said Jay Zukerman of Ernst & Young, which conducted the institute’s study.

The report lends global perspective to an issue addressed last fall by a panel of 80 experts led by former transportation secretaries Norman Y. Mineta and Samuel K. Skinner. That group concluded that as much as $262 billion a year must be spent on U.S. highways, rail networks and air transportation systems.

Congress has failed to approve the two major bills that allow for long-term funding and planning for aviation and transportation. The Federal Aviation Administration has been operating under a funding bill that expired in 2007 and has been extended 18 times. The surface transportation act, which provides the balance of federal transportation funding, expired in 2009 and has been extended seven times.

As Congress debates how much should be spent and where to find the money, China has a plan to spend $1 trillion on high-speed rail, highways and other infrastructure in five years. India is nearing the end of a $500 billion investment phase that has seen major highway improvements, and plans to double that amount by 2017. Brazil plans to spend $900 billion on energy and transportation projects by 2014.

The United States, the institute report concludes, needs to invest $2 trillion to rebuild roads, bridges, water lines, sewage systems and dams that are reaching the end of their planned life cycles.

The report says the desire of Congress to curtail spending will push costs onto “budget-busted” state and local governments. It points to highways and water treatment plants, built with federal funds 40 to 50 years ago, that will become financial burdens to local governments as the time comes for replacement.

“We’re seeing less federal support and less local revenues because of unemployment,” said Maureen McAvey, executive vice president of the institute, a non-profit group that analyzes policies and programs. “Some of the ambitions some growing cities had just a few years about are being cut back or put on hold.”

30% Of (USA) Americans Rapidly Approach Poverty; meanwhile Brazil lifts 13% of its population out of poverty with a mandate of eliminating it by 2015!!!

A shocking report from Brookings exposes just how massive America's poverty problem is. America's poor have been rocked by the dual economic downturns since 2000. The result is that poverty grew at twice the rate of U.S. population growth from 2000 – 2008 during the Bush administration, and now encompasses 50 million Americans.

Now let’s turn to an emerging market…Brazil.

On a cool July evening, Brazilian President Dilma Rousseff hosts a cocktail party for 50 leaders of her governing coalition, Bloomberg Markets magazine reports in its November issue. Speaking from the foot of a red-carpeted staircase in the living room of Alvorada Palace, where she lives with her mother and aunt, Rousseff tells the gathered politicians that these are the best times for Brazil, according to four people who attended.

“The world is going through economic and financial turbulence,” says Rousseff, who’s dressed in a black pantsuit. “But we’re living through a great moment.”

In a toast, Dilma, as she’s known to almost all Brazilians, juxtaposes the task of managing the country’s new economic prosperity with U.S. President Barack Obama’s struggle with the Republicans to get the U.S. government budget under control.

“And up there, they only have two parties,” she jokes.

Brazil has 27.

Rousseff, 63, inherited just about everything a president could want from her mentor and predecessor, Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva: an economy growing at a 7.5 percent annual pace and unemployment, at 5.3 percent, that was the lowest since at least 2001. Brazil’s Bovespa stock market index rose six-fold during Lula’s eight-year tenure, as iron ore, soybean and sugar exports boomed, driven in large part by demand from China.

Lula pulled 24.5 million people out of poverty in his years in office, according to data compiled by the Getulio Vargas Foundation, and Rousseff says that in the next four years, she will eliminate extreme poverty in Brazil.