Monday, May 16, 2011

Dominique Strauss-Kahn with his American born wife Anne Sinclair, a TV journalist in France, Bob Edme AP photo

Monday Morning EDT/
Monday Evening Japan Time
Feet of Clay Update
Scandal! Scandal at the IMF!


"There is nothing safe about sex. There never will be."- Norman Mailer


"The dirty little secret is that both houses of Congress are irrelevant.... America's domestic policy is now being run by Alan Greenspan and the Federal Reserve, and America's foreign policy is now being run by the International Monetary Fund [IMF]. ...when the president decides to go to war, he no longer needs a declaration of war from Congress."- Robert Reich, 1999

IMF may mean insane mad .. oh, you get it. It is interesting to note managing director of the International Monetary Fund Dominique Strauss-Kahn's problem in New York. In case you hadn't noticed by now, he is accused of sexual assault on a female house staffer in his suite at the luxury hotel Sofitel New York in Times Square. He was arrested yesterday in first class on his plane at John F. Kennedy Airport. He must have been in a hurry since he left his cell phone and personal effects in his room. He is accused of forcing the woman to provide oral sex apparently thinking it was part of the hotel services.
[Vous m'apportez des serviettes fraîches et sucer ma bite. Vous faites cela, bien sûr, il est nécessaire. N'avez-vous pas?]

DSK was denied bail today by Judge Melissa Jackson who deemed him a flight risk.

The New York City Police Department denied that DSK's behavior was protected by diplomatic immunity. The IMF has been awarded diplomatic immunity for its agents only for actions taken during the performance of  their duties. But demanding a blow job from a Argentine Ghanaian  maid may be an excellent metaphor for  official IMF activities.

In the Huffington Post we are given details from a recent interview:

Business Insider has uncovered an interview Strauss-Kahn gave to the French publication Liberation in which the IMF's chief cites "the money, women, and my Jewishness" as the three challenges to his potential bid for France's presidency.
Published just weeks ago, Strauss-Kahn's own words provide an intriguing twist on the developments of the past few days.
When pressed to elaborate, Strauss-Kahn offered the following explanation: "Yes, I love women, so what? ... For years we talk about giant pictures of orgies, but I've never seen anything out ... Let's show them!"
He imagined a scenario in which a woman is paid off to play the role of a victim of a purported assault: "A woman that he would have raped in a parking lot and to whom half a million or a million euros would be promised to make up such a story."


DSK actually seems to foresee the pickle he now is in and proactively refutes it!

Today the IMF temporarily replaced DSK with first deputy managing director John Lipsky. Lipsky is a former U.S. Treasury manager and a former banker at JP Morgan. He was probably the one making the calls at the IMF whilst Dominique was out doing his randy gamboling.

The supposed socialist Strauss-Kahn was previously noted in this blog back in April for his arrogant dismissal of the possibility that the IMF could ever take human rights issues into consideration when making loans to countries that may not have as enlightened leadership as La Belle France.
The International Labor Group's concerns were communicated to the IMF and rejected by Strauss-Kahn as follows:

"I don't believe I'm going to turn the IMF into an institution with a lot of expertise on this question," he told an audience at the Brookings Institution.
"I don't see these topics becoming defined targets for IMF programs," 
-Dominique Strauss-Kahn, April 2011


The New York Times reports that Strauss-Kahn's presidential election campaign in France may be in trouble.
Earlier this month French socialists were enraged when DSK was photographed getting into a Porsche.

I admit the possibility that this is a set up. Even Mr. Strauss-Kahn could not be this stupid; could he?
And the fact that he is a Jew is causing the extreme right wing (read neo-Nazis) extreme agita.

I do believe Americans tend to over-react to normal sexual peccadilloes. But forced oral sex on a housekeeper is generating outrage even in France. Dominique must have some enemies as head of the IMF. Indeed, he richly deserves his enemies. And more stories about his insatiability are now surfacing.
But wait. Here is the NYPD's official complaint against Mr. Strauss-Kahn. It is not pretty reading.

The Business Insider today gives us the story of his affair with Piroska Nagy, Senior Adviser to the Chief Economist of the European Bank for Reconstruction and Development (EBRD). The affair began when she was an economist at the IMF. Piroska was married to former Argentine central bank President, Mario Blejer at the time. Mario was furious. The marriage ended. Dominique stated when the incident became public at the time:
"It was an incident in my private life and at no time did I abuse my position as the fund's managing director."
The story also lists other missteps by DSK:

-- An unnamed actress who said Strauss acted 'like a gorilla' after inviting her back to a Paris flat.
-- Tristane Banon, a French journalist, who Strauss allegedly tried to rape, or at least sexually assault.



Quotes from Dominique Strauss-Kahn


"In Spain you have a lot of rigidities, the labour market doesn't work for numerous reasons, and I think the labour unions, the government, business everybody understands this and knows what should be done...Even in good times you have a lot of people unemployed and also a lot of people on short term or transitority contracts. All these are matters which show the labor market does not work...[The labour market] has to be greater effective, .. the way people are hired, or sometime are fired, are to be done the way it is done in remainder of Europe, no greater no less." -  in Spain, May 2010

"Greek citizens shouldn't fear the IMF; we are there to try to help them." -message to the Greeks, April 24, 2010

"the money, women, and my Jewishness"- DSK's reply to the question about the three greatest challenges to his bid for the French Presidency in Liberation, a French periodical

«Oui, j’aime les femmes, et alors ?» 

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