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Wednesday October 8 2008 edition
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Pakistan Facing Bankruptcy 2008-10-07 22:59:30 Pakistan's foreign exchange reserves are so low that the country can only afford one month of imports and faces possible bankruptcy. Officially, the central bank holds $8.14 billion (£4.65 billion) of foreign currency, but if forward liabilities are included, the real reserves may be only $3 billion - enough to buy about 30 days of imports like oil and food. Nine months ago, Pakistan had $16 billion in the coffers. The government is engulfed by crises left behind by Pervez Musharraf, the military ruler who resigned the presidency in August. High oil prices have combined with endemic corruption and mismanagement to inflict huge damage on the economy. Given the country's standing as a frontline state in the U.S.-led "war on terrorism", the economic crisis has profound consequences. Pakistan already faces worsening security as the army clashes with militants in the lawless Tribal Areas on the north-west frontier with Afghanistan. The economic crisis has already placed the future of the new government in doubt after the transition to a civilian rule. President Asif Ali Zardari has faced numerous but unproven allegations of corruption dating from the two governments led by his wife, Benazir Bhutto, who was assassinated last December. Read The Full Story Wall Street Stocks Plunge By Over 508 Points 2008-10-07 19:45:57 On Wall Street, the fear refuses to go away. Stocks plunged on Tuesday afternoon - shedding 200 points in the final hour of trading alone - despite reassurances from the chairman of the Federal Reserve, Ben S. Bernanke, that the central bank was prepared to lower interest rates, words that many investors had said they were waiting to hear. “You are getting all the things that you would think the equity markets would respond very favorably to,” Steve Sachs, director of trading at Rydex Investments, said. “But at this point it just doesn’t seem to be doing it. It’s the attitude of “Sell” - regardless of what the news is.” The Dow Jones industrial average, which had lumbered downward from early in the session, accelerated its losses in the final hour and ended down 508.39 points, breaking below the 9,500 mark to close at 9,447.11. The broader Standard & Poor’s 500-stock index fell by 5.7 percent, ending below 1,000 for the first time in five years. Shares of banks and real estate firms shouldered the biggest losses, with Bank of America, Merrill Lynch and Morgan Stanley all losing about 25 percent. Read The Full Story Big Insurer's Spending Habits Disclosed 2008-10-07 19:45:32 A day after questioning the compensation and spending at the bankrupt Lehman Brothers, lawmakers exploring the causes of the credit crisis were treated on Tuesday to examples of the spending habits at another troubled financial firm. A week after the insurance giant, the American International Group, received an $85 billion federal bailout, its life insurance subsidiary, AIG General, held a week-long retreat for its top sales agents at the exclusive St. Regis Resort in Monarch Beach, California. Expenses for the week, lawmakers were told, totaled $442,000, including $200,000 for hotel rooms, $150,000 for food and $23,000 in spa charges. In addition, the former A.I.G. executive who led the London-based division whose implosion is largely blamed for the insurance giant’s downfall, Joseph J. Cassano, continues to receive $1 million a month from the company, on top of the $280 million he received in the last eight years. And even after A.I.G. reported $5 billion in losses in the final quarter of 2007, its chief executive at the time, Martin J. Sullivan, argued before a compensation committee that executives should receive performance bonuses. He received $5 million. “This unbridled greed, this callous abuse of trust of hard-working Americans’ savings is just so disgusting it is hard to put into words, and the anger level in America is coming, as it often has, at Wall Street," said U.S. Representative Mark Souder, Republican of Indiana. Read The Full Story E.U. Finance Ministers Increase Savings Guarantee 2008-10-07 19:44:58 Finance ministers from the 27 European Union member states met on Tuesday and agreed to increase the E.U. private savings guarantee to 50,000 euros; but the block still has no strategic vision for how to confront the crisis - and none is likely to be forth coming. For almost a week now, the European Union has been struggling to come up with a coordinated reaction to the credit crisis that continues to strangle the continent's financial system. On Tuesday, finance ministers from the 27 member states gathered in Luxembourg for yet another go. The result was an increase to the bloc-wide minimum guarantee on bank deposits from the current 20,000 euros to 50,000 euros ($67,900). Prior to the meeting, France had proposed hiking the minimum protection to 100,000 euros. In addition to the savings guarantees, the ministers pledged "to support systemic financial institutions" according to a statement released by the German Finance Ministry, though they stopped short of establishing a Europe-wide strategy. "We agree that public intervention has to be decided at national level in a coordinated framework," the statement read, according to Reuters. Read The Full Story American's Retirement Accounts Have Lost $2 Trillion 2008-10-07 15:47:30 Americans' retirement plans have lost as much as $2 trillion in the past 15 months, Congress' top budget analyst estimated Tuesday. The upheaval that has engulfed the financial industry and sent the stock market plummeting is devastating workers' savings, forcing people to hold off on major purchases and consider delaying their retirement, said Peter Orszag, the head of the Congressional Budget Office. As Congress investigates the causes and effects of the financial meltdown, the House Education and Labor Committee was hearing from retirement savings and budget analysts on how the housing, credit and other financial troubles have battered pensions and other retirement funds, which are among the most common forms of savings in the United States. ''Unlike Wall Street executives, America's families don't have a golden parachute to fall back on,'' said Rep. George Miller, D-California, the panel chairman. ''It's clear that their retirement security may be one of the greatest casualties of this financial crisis.'' More than half the people surveyed in an Associated Press-GfK poll taken Sept. 27-30 said they worry they will have to work longer because the value of their retirement savings has declined. Read The Full Story Editorial: The Crisis Agenda 2008-10-07 15:47:10 Intellpuke: This editorial appeared in the New York Times edition for Monday, October 7, 2008. As stocks cratered on Monday and lending and borrowing remained frozen, the Bush administration rushed to implement the $700 billion bailout enacted on Friday. The Treasury Department said that it would soon post help-wanted ads on its Web site for asset managers to run the program and that because of the urgency, the hiring may be “through other than full and open competition.” Is it any wonder that the markets lack confidence? One business day after the bailout was enacted, and it already had a tilting-at-windmills quality. That is why it is vital that Barack Obama and John McCain, one of whom will inherit a real mess, address the financial crisis in real detail at their debate Tuesday night. The most immediate question is how the crisis will affect their plans and promises - because it will. Read The Full Story Child Warning Added To Cold Medicines 2008-10-07 15:46:51 Hoping to head off more severe government restrictions, manufacturers of pediatric cough and cold medicines announced Tuesday that they would voluntarily change their products’ labels to say that they should not be used in children under the age of 4. In addition, for products containing certain antihistamines, new language will be added to the products’ labels warning parents not to use the products to sedate or make a child sleepy. While many parents believe that getting a sick child to sleep is the best medicine for them, using sedatives to achieve this purpose is not recommended by medical experts, who say sedatives can worsen sickness-induced breathing problems. Read The Full Story Editorial: Cut The Warming 2008-10-07 15:45:43 Intellpuke: This editorial appeared in the New York Times edition for Monday, Oct. 6, 2008. For years, while Washington slept, most of the serious work on climate change has occurred in the states, and no state has worked harder than California. The latest example of California’s originality is a new law - the nation’s first - intended to reduce greenhouse gas emissions by curbing urban sprawl and cutting back the time people have to spend in their automobiles. Passenger vehicles are the biggest single source of carbon dioxide in California, producing nearly one-third of the total. Meanwhile, the number of miles driven in California has increased 50 percent faster than the rate of population growth, largely because people have to drive greater distances in their daily lives. The new law has many moving parts, but the basic sequence is straightforward. The state’s Air Resources Board will determine the level of emissions produced by cars and light trucks, including S.U.V.’s, in each of California’s 17 metropolitan planning areas. Emissions-reduction goals for 2020 and 2035 would be assigned to each area. Local governments would then devise strategies for housing development, road-building and other land uses to shorten travel distances, reduce driving and meet the new targets. One obvious solution would be to change zoning laws so developers can build new housing closer to where people work. Another is to improve mass transit - in woefully short supply in California - so commuters don’t have to rely so much on cars. Read The Full Story Global Stocks Sink As Crisis Spirals 2008-10-07 09:20:51 With financial markets in near-meltdown, governments around the world scrambled to find new ways to infuse vast amounts of cash into banks and even directly to companies to help resuscitate the global financial system. The Fedeal Reserve Monday night was weighing a plan that would in effect make it a major funder of a wide range of U.S. businesses facing imminent cash shortages. The Fed also said Monday that it would push $900 billion into the U.S. banking system, a six-fold increase in its program of lending money to banks. The measures followed similar efforts by other central banks and governments around the world over the weekend and Monday to get financial institutions to stop hoarding money and start lending to one another and to their customers. It wasn't enough. Stock markets began a steep tumble in Asia, where most national markets were down considerably, and then declines accelerated in Europe on fears of new bank failures. The French stock index tumbled 9 percent, the German index dropped 7 percent and the British benchmark index fell nearly 8 percent. Russia was off nearly 20 percent. In the United States, the Dow Jones industrial average fell 3.6 percent, closing below the 10,000 level for the first time since 2004. It had been down nearly twice that at one point before staging a late rally. Read The Full Story In Britain, Bank Shares Plunge Again 2008-10-07 09:20:19 Shares in Britain's banks plunged again amid panicky trading Tues morning following emergency talks with the government over a possible injection of billions of pounds of taxpayers' money into the banking sector. Royal Bank of Scotland nosedived by almost 40% to 90p - its lowest point since the recession of the early 1990s - slashing £8bn off its market value. Barclays, Lloyds TSB and HBOS were also hit, as the lack of a coordinated rescue plan for the banking sector alarmed the City. Monday night Britain's bank bosses met with Chancellor of the Exchequer Alistair Darling, to discuss a possible £50 billion ($100 billion) injection of equity. They are due to meet again at the Treasury Tuesday  afternoon. The talks center on the idea of a part-nationalization of the banking system through the injection of capital into the banks via preference shares, which take precedence over ordinary shares during a liquidation, but do not give the holders any voting rights. John Varley, the chief executive of Barclays, insisted this morning that he had not sought any capital from the government. RBS later issued its own denial, telling the London stock market that "contrary to press speculation, RBS did not make a request to government for capital". Read The Full Story California's New Budget Plunges Into The Red 2008-10-07 09:19:51 California's state budget approved only weeks ago is already falling into the red, and lawmakers may be forced to return to Sacramento this month to make emergency spending cuts and take other measures to keep California from running out of cash. The financial pressures on the state are numerous. Revenue is dropping precipitously as the economy falters. The global credit crunch may make it impossible for officials to obtain billions of dollars in short-term loans that they typically rely on at this time of year. A federal judge on Monday put the state on notice that it may need to spend as much as $3.5 billion more on prison health care in this fiscal year than lawmakers had planned. Assembly Speaker Karen Bass (D-Los Angeles) said Monday that an emergency legislative session within weeks is "a big possibility." She and other leaders will meet Wednesday with Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger to consider whether to call the Legislature into action. Read The Full Story Iceland Rescues Second Major Bank 2008-10-07 09:19:21 The Icelandic government this morning seized control of Landsbanki, the second-largest bank in the country, as it sought to avert a financial meltdown. The government moved quickly to use sweeping powers over the country's banks granted in the Reykjavik parliament last night. The board of directors at Landsbanki has been dismissed and the bank put into receivership. U.K. savers trying to access their Landsbanki-run Icesave accounts this morning were faced with a message telling them the bank was unable to process requests for deposits or withdrawals. Icesave offered competitive rates and has more than 200,000 accounts in the U.K. The first €22,000 (roughly £17,000 or $34,000) held in the accounts is secured under an Icelandic compensation scheme, and the remainder up to £50,000 ($100,000) is guaranteed by the British government. On state radio, commerce and banking minister Bjorgvin Sigurdsson sought to reassure people in Iceland that the bank would remain open and continue to run as normal. Read The Full Story	Commentary: Make-Believe Maverick 2008-10-07 22:59:14 Intellpuke: This commentary was written by Tim Dickinson and appears in the Rolling Stone edition for Thursday, October 16, 2008. A closer look at the life and career of John McCain reveals a disturbing record of recklessness and dishonesty. At Fort McNair, an army base located along the Potomac River in the nation's capital, a chance reunion takes place one day between two former POWs. It's the spring of 1974, and Navy commander John Sidney McCain III has returned home from the experience in Hanoi that, according to legend, transformed him from a callow and reckless youth into a serious man of patriotism and purpose. Walking along the grounds at Fort McNair, McCain runs into John Dramesi, an Air Force lieutenant colonel who was also imprisoned and tortured in Vietnam. McCain is studying at the National War College, a prestigious graduate program he had to pull strings with the Secretary of the Navy to get into. Dramesi is enrolled, on his own merit, at the Industrial College of the Armed Forces in the building next door. There's a distance between the two men that belies their shared experience in North Vietnam - call it an honor gap. Like many American POWs, McCain broke down under torture and offered a "confession" to his North Vietnamese captors. Dramesi, in contrast, attempted two daring escapes. For the second he was brutalized for a month with daily torture sessions that nearly killed him. His partner in the escape, Lt. Col. Ed Atterberry, didn't survive the mistreatment. But Dramesi never said a disloyal word, and for his heroism was awarded two Air Force Crosses, one of the service's highest distinctions. McCain would later hail him as "one of the toughest guys I've ever met." On the grounds between the two brick colleges, the chitchat between the scion of four-star admirals and the son of a prizefighter turns to their academic travels; both colleges sponsor a trip abroad for young officers to network with military and political leaders in a distant corner of the globe. "I'm going to the Middle East," says Dramesi. "Turkey, Kuwait, Lebanon, Iran." "Why are you going to the Middle East?" asks McCain, dismissively. "It's a place we're probably going to have some problems," says Dramesi. "Why? Where are you going to, John?" "Oh, I'm going to Rio." "What the hell are you going to Rio for?" McCain, a married father of three, shrugs. "I got a better chance of getting laid." Dramesi, who went on to serve as chief war planner for U.S. Air Forces in Europe and commander of a wing of the Strategic Air Command, was not surprised. "McCain says his life changed while he was in Vietnam, and he is now a different man," Dramesi says today. "But he's still the undisciplined, spoiled brat that he was when he went in." Read The Full Story Republicans Brace For McCain Defeat 2008-10-07 19:45:45 Voters lose faith in party amid economic meltdown. John McCain is heading to near-certain defeat in the presidential election because American voters no longer trust Republicans on the economy, a strategist for the party warned Tuesday. Steve Lombardo, who has worked on Republican campaigns since 1992 and advised McCain's opponent, Mitt Romney, in the primaries, said it would take a major external event, such as a terrorist attack or a crippling error by Barack Obama, for McCain to make a comeback. "Basically unless there is some external event the dynamics of this race are being driven almost entirely by the financial situation here in the United States and globally, and that works for Barack Obama," Lombardo told the Guardian. "If there isn't some sort of event or, God forbid, a terrorist attack that moves the election on to foreign affairs or national security, it is unlikely that McCain can regain the lead, just because voters have decided that the base of the problems they face are the Republican party, George Bush, and, by extension, John McCain." Read The Full Story Commentary: Leaders 'Don't Grasp Scale Of The Abyss Facing E.U.' 2008-10-07 19:45:13 Intellpuke: The following commentary is from Spiegel's column "The World From Berlin" and appeared in the Spiegel Online edition for Monday, October 6, 2008. The E.U.'s failure to agree on a unified strategy to tackle the financial crisis shows that its leaders don't grasp how serious it is, write German commentators. It's time for politicians to stop blaming bankers and to realize that, at this point, only the state can avert a very dangerous crisis of confidence. The European Union's failure to come up with a unified approach to tackling the financial crisis at Saturday's summit meeting of the E.U.'s four biggest economies shows that European politicians haven't yet realized the dimension of the risks facing the financial system, write German media commentators. Governments effectively agreed to go it alone in shoring up troubled financial institutions in their countries - the wrong response given how interwoven Europe's financial markets are. The divisions were highlighted on Sunday when Germany became the latest country to give a state guarantee for bank deposits in a move that has put other countries like the United Kingdom under pressure to follow suit. Read The Full Story More Men Are Unabashedly Embracing Their Love Of Cats 2008-10-07 18:52:14 Submitted by Daisy Miller via Email: IF you ask Adam Fulrath who is the love of his life, he will barely blink an eye before responding: Parappa. Mr. Fulrath, a 37-year-old design director at Time Out New York, keeps five photographs of Parappa, a shorthaired, bicolored, mixed-breed cat, on his desktop. He knows that it might be considered a little weird that a grown man would be so enamored with his kitty, but Mr. Fulrath, who is into video games and comic books and calls himself a “straight, geeky guy,” doesn’t care. “She’s my primary relationship,” he said. Mr. Fulrath is one of a growing number of single â€" and yes, heterosexual â€" men who seem to be coming out of the cat closet and unabashedly embracing their feline side. To that end, they are posting photographs and videos of their little buddies on YouTube and on Web sites like menandcats.com, and Twittering about them to anyone who will listen. Read The Full Story Bernanke Hints At Interest Rate Cut 2008-10-07 15:47:21 The Federal Reserve chairman Ben S. Bernanke said on Tuesday that the turmoil in the financial markets had increased the risk to overall growth and that federal regulators would have to be vigilant to halt the slide. “Over all, the combination of the incoming data and recent financial developments suggests that the outlook for economic growth has worsened and that the downside risks to growth have increased,” Bernanke told members of the National Association for Business Economics. In an address that was at once sobering but hopeful, at least for the long term, Bernanke hinted strongly that the Fed’s Board of Governors would probably lower interest rates at its next meeting, on Oct. 28 and 29. And he said that, however reluctantly, the Fed would continue to aggressively use all the tools it has to help ease the financial turmoil. “These are momentous steps,” he said, “but they are being taken to address a problem of historic dimensions.” Only a few weeks ago, the Fed’s official posture was that inflation was a serious concern. But now, even though the outlook remains uncertain, inflation has eased somewhat. “In light of these developments, the Federal Reserve will need to consider whether the current stance of policy remains appropriate,” said Bernanke. Read The Full Story Iceland Seeks Emergency Loan From Russia 2008-10-07 15:47:00 Iceland said Tuesday that it was seeking a $5.4 billion emergency loan from Russia, had pegged its currency to an index and had taken control of one of its largest banks as the North Atlantic island struggled to keep its economy afloat. Iceland’s prime minister said the talks about a loan began “some months ago”, but the situation of the country’s banks and economy deteriorated so rapidly over the last two days that a loan agreement became urgently needed. Details of the loan discussions remained unclear on Tuesday as Iceland’s central bank said it had a confirmation from Russian Prime Minister Vladimir V. Putin that a loan would be granted while a deputy Russian finance minister, Dmitri Pankin, told the Interfax news agency that no decision had been made. Iceland said Russia, home to some branches of Icelandic banks, would grant the loan for the next three to four years with an interest rate of up to half a percentage point above the interbank lending rate. Read The Full Story Australia, Japan Move To Shield Economies From Crisis 2008-10-07 15:46:35 Australia and Japan both sought to shield their economies from the global financial crisis on Tuesday, with the Australian central bank cutting its key interest rate, and the Bank of Japan dampened speculation of coordinated rate cuts by major economies. In Sydney, the Reserve Bank of Australia cut its benchmark rate far more aggressively than expected - by a full percentage point to 6 percent, twice as much as most observers had projected and the biggest cut since 1992. In Tokyo, the Bank of Japan, as expected, kept its key interest rate unchanged at 0.5 percent, having little leeway to cut borrowing costs further. The central bank appeared to play down the chance of coordinating a rate cut with other major central banks, but the bank’s governor, Masaaki Shirakawa, said coordination could involve working together with other central banks to supply markets with liquidity. The Associated Press quoted Shirakawa as saying that each country should manage monetary policy independently. “It is not desirable to undertake policy coordination that would involve measures inappropriate for each country’s economic and price situation,” said Shirakawa, according to The A.P. The comments threw cold water on expectations that financial officials from the Group of 7 countries might propose a coordinated, emergency policy move during their meeting later this week. Read The Full Story Federal Judge Orders Chinese Muslims Released From Guantanamo Bay 2008-10-07 15:45:22 A federal judge on Tuesday ordered the Bush administration to immediately release 17 Chinese Muslims who have been held for seven years at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, and to allow them to stay in the United States, because they are no longer considered enemy combatants. The ruling, handed down by Federal District Judge Ricardo M. Urbina, marked the first time that any United States court rejected government arguments and ordered the release of detainees from Guantanamo Bay, an American naval base in Cuba, since the detention center there opened in 2002. Judge Urbina said that the detention of the 17 prisoners - members of the Uighur ethnic group, a restive Muslim minority in western China - was unlawful, noting that the Constitution prohibits indefinite imprisonment without charges. “I think the moment has arrived for the court to shine the light of constitutionality on the reasons for the detention,” he said. The judge ordered the 17 detainees, all of whom are men, brought to his courtroom next Friday, but the government suggested that it would immediately appeal the ruling, and that perhaps immigration officials might detain the men on their arrival in the United States. Read The Full Story Will Bailout Be Enough? 2008-10-07 09:20:36 What went wrong? Last week, the nation's political leaders said the financial system would collapse unless they passed a $700 billion rescue package for Wall Street. On Monday, the first day of trading after the plan passed, the financial system continued to melt down anyway. Here's why: The plan developed by Treasury Secretary Henry M. Paulson, Jr., to buy troubled U.S. mortgage assets might not start for another month. And, despite its huge price tag, it already seems paltry compared with the scale of the rapidly evolving global crisis. "People are realizing that the Paulson plan is not going to be nearly enough. It's not because the plan is ill-conceived. It looks like it's the right thing to do, but the problem is just growing astronomically," said Martin Evans, a professor of finance and economics at Georgetown University.  The bailout plan is focused on buttressing U.S. financial institutions. But it was global markets that plunged Monday, as investors sold off commodities in Brazil, currency in Mexico, bank stocks in Russia and the short-term debt of the state of California. Robert B. Zoellick, president of the World Bank, said the global financial system may have reached a "tipping point" - the moment when a crisis cascades into a full-blown meltdown and becomes extremely difficult for governments to contain. Read The Full Story U.K. Warned: End Fossil Fuel Use 2008-10-07 09:20:05 Britain must abandon using almost all fossil fuels to produce power in 20 years' time, the government's climate change watchdog will warn Tuesday. The independent Climate Change Committee will publish its advice to the government that the U.K. should set a 2050 target of cutting all greenhouse gas emissions by at least 80 percent -including the emissions from aviation and transport, which were previously excluded. Because it is unlikely that emissions from aviation and shipping will be cut so dramatically, other sectors, particularly power generation, would have to reduce emissions by much more, with big increases in energy efficiency, wind and tide power, and probably new nuclear generators, Lord Turner of Ecchinswell, the committee chairman, told the Guardian. "We have to almost totally decarbonize the power sector by 2030, well before 2050," he said. The committee will say the far-reaching changes would cost about 1-2% of the value of the economy in 2050, although growth would still be strong. "Rather than be twice present levels, [gross domestic product] would be 1 or 2% less than that," added Turner. Read The Full Story Crisis Strikes 'Real Economy' 2008-10-07 09:19:35 Robert Bassam, used-car magnate, isn't driving his $415,000 Lamborghini these days, or his Porsche, and he has even warehoused his usual get-around-town car, a BMW 750. Instead, he's puttering along in a four-cylinder Hyundai Accent hatchback. It's more politically correct, he says. And economically correct: He doesn't feel like riding in luxury when the economy is tanking. "Don't you feel it? I feel it in the air - the negativity!" he says as he walks across the lot of Easterns Select, his dealership near Tysons Corner, Virginia. The air is actually rather crisp and sparkling, but in his showroom, and in dealerships across the nation, the mood is gloomy and getting gloomier. The figures for U.S. auto sales in September were stomach-churning. Bassam, a former pizza deliveryman who built Easterns Automotive Group into a regional powerhouse, has been forced to mark his 20th anniversary in the business by closing two of his 16 branches and laying off 60 employees. Wall Street's problems are being shipped express delivery to Leesburg Pike and every other Main Street in America. It's like a contagion, and it comes in the form of credit, or the lack of it. Read The Full Story Two Japanese, American Win Nobel Prize For Physics 2008-10-07 09:18:50 Two Japanese scientists and a Tokyo-born American shared the 2008 Nobel Prize for physics for discoveries in sub-atomic particles, the prize committee said on Tuesday. The Nobel committee lauded Yoichiro Nambu, a Tokyo-born American citizen, and Makoto Kobayashi and Toshihide Maskawa, of Japan, for separate work that helped explain why the universe is made up mostly of matter and not anti-matter via processes known as broken symmetries. They helped figure out the existence and behavior of the very tiniest particles known as quarks. Nambu, a professor at the University of Chicago, was recognized for his discovery of the mechanism of spontaneous broken symmetry. It helps underlie the Standard Model of physics, which unites three of the four fundamental forces of nature: strong, weak and electromagnetic, leaving out gravity. Nambu also influenced the development of quantum chromodynamics, a theory that describes some of the interactions between protons and neutrons, which make up atoms, and the quarks that make up the protons and neutrons. Read The Full Story
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