Phone Taps & Oil Crisis

In the American media, the main news seems to be Vice President Cheney's  brief visit to the hospital !!
 
This reminds me of the joke by Conan O' Brien on the Late Night show:  "Scientist announced a device that can be placed in a pacemaker and will call your doctor whenever you are having heart trouble. When told about it, Dick Cheney said, "I can't afford those kind of phone bills."

Speaking about phones - the biggest political story in Indian media now-a-days is the phone tapping allegation by various leaders (Amar Singh, Advani, Chandrababu Naidu etc.) of the opposition. What can be a better topic for this round of everything connected.

Phone tapping and politics have had a long history. A far more serious political scandal (compared to the current Indian one) developed in Lithuania in 2004 when its President Rolandsas Paksas was sacked by the country's parliament after secret service phone taps on the President revealed his alleged connections with a member of the Russian mafia. Such a strong step was taken by the parliament to possibly demonstrate its adherence to democratic principles as it was around this time that Lithuania was joining the NATO and EU, a transition crucial for the country's economic health.

Earlier, in 1991, when Lithuania declared independence from the Soviet Union, it had undergone an economic upheaval for a brief period when it was trying to introduce its new currency Litas to replace the ruble. Even prior to the transition problems, Lithuania had trouble setting up a stabilization fund of USD $200 million to back up the new currency. During the time of crisis, the IMF had stepped in with a loan to save the day.

The IMF was set up following the Bretton Woods conference in 1944 and was responsible for making US dollar the principal 'reserve currency' in the world by setting the value of one ounce of gold at $35 (and making USD convertible to gold)

..this meant that other countries would peg their currencies to the U.S. dollar, and—once convertibility was restored—would buy and sell U.S. dollars to keep market exchange rates within 1 percent, plus or minus, of parity. Thus, the U.S. dollar took over the role that gold had played under the gold standard in the international financial system.

This worked well till the 1970s when the U.S  balance of payment deficits (due to financing loans, foreign aid, cold war) became too much to bear and eventually the US decided to end the system of gold convertibility and usher in the era of floating currencies. The person who played a pivotal role in those decisions was then the under secretary of the Treasury for international monetary affairs, Paul Volcker.

Volcker went on to become the Chairman for the Federal Reserve and was succeeded by Alan Greenspan. More recently, the UN assigned him to research possible corruption in Iraqi Oil for Food program, the outcome of which was the Volcker report which had a prominent Indian link. And it was during those controversial times in Indian politics,  that the leaders of the opposition are accusing that their phone lines were tapped by the government.

Politician phone tapping - Lithuanian president sacking - IMF bailout for currency launching - floating currency system starting - Volcker reporting - Politician phone tapping .... everything is connected