Doing business in Iran

I would like to correct several points made in your article on business in Iran (“The over-promised land”, April 23rd). It is simply false that non-Iranian firms operating in Iran are cut off from the American financial system. Under the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action foreign banks and firms may generally engage in business with Iran without risk of being cut off. With very limited exceptions, America’s primary embargo remains in place and prohibits access to the US system by or for Iran, which is something very different from what you described. As the secretary of state John Kerry noted, the United States has no objection to foreign banks engaging with Iranian banks and companies, as long as those banks and companies are not on our sanctions list for non-nuclear reasons.

You also repeated a myth that the Treasury’s Office of Foreign Assets Control has in recent years imposed billions of dollars in fines on foreign companies simply for “dealing with Iran”. OFAC’s enforcement actions were in response to foreign banks routing billions of dollars of transfers through US banks on behalf of sanctioned parties, often doctoring records to avoid detection. Introducing such payments into American banks was illegal and was not simply “dealing with Iran”.

You point to real concerns about the business climate in Iran, and we hope that the government in Tehran will address them quickly. To the extent that banks and firms have questions about American sanctions, I can only repeat the advice of Mr Kerry: do not assume. When in doubt, ask us. The bottom line is this: we are not standing and we will not stand in the way of business permitted under the Iran deal. Assertions to the contrary are flatly inaccurate.

AMBASSADOR STEVE MULL

Lead co-ordinator

Office of Iran Nuclear Implementation

US Department of State

Washington, DC





A rocky road for Rousseff

None of the factors you listed about Brazil’s political situation exempts Dilma Rousseff from responsibility for the wrongdoings of her government (“The great betrayal”, April 23rd). She and the Workers’ Party (PT) must be held liable. The creative accountancy perpetrated by the government is not a mere “technicality”. Falsifying the fiscal surplus destroyed the credibility of our economic policy. According to Datafolha, a pollster, over 60% of Brazilians support her impeachment.

Calling new elections would require a broad consensus to approve a constitutional amendment to allow that to happen. This would take several months and strain our electoral system, which is preparing for municipal elections. Brazil needs solutions. Impeachment could be a first step towards what you call “a thorough clean-up”.

FELIPE ITO ANUATTI

Ribeirão Preto, Brazil





Interesting rates

* Your article accurately describes one of the failures of America’s Congress to adequately fund the America’s Pension Benefit Guaranty Corporation (PBGC)—formed to guarantee the pension funds of corporations that went broke without adequate assets to cover their pension obligations (“Betraying the promise”, April 9th). That failure is minuscule compared to what the almost $20 trillion national debt has done to the long range actuarial soundness of public pension funds, such as Social Security; Medicare; and state and local government pensions, as well as thousands of private corporate pension funds and private 401(k)s.



In order to ensure that they can meet their obligations, most pension funds assume an actuarial return of 6-9%. That much return must be met to satisfy their obligations based on their current level of contributions. They must invest conservatively—usually in government bonds—and if they can only receive a return of 1-2% on these investments the retirement income that pensioners rely on won’t exist. For every 1% rise in interest that the government has to pay to service its $20 trillion debt costs them $200 billion dollars. Even with the historically low interest rates of the last nearly ten years (1-2%) the Treasury can’t raise enough revenue to cover the cost of running the government. In the current fiscal year the deficit will be $400-500 billion dollars, and the government will have to borrow that much to keep operating.



If the government raises interest rates to rescue the pension funds it won’t be able to pay the interest on the debt and will default. But if the rates are held down to 1-2% on government bonds, the pension funds will go broke (except the defined contribution funds, which will simply run out of money much sooner). I think that the government will keep interest rates low so that they can say that they are balancing the budget and that way they don’t have to talk about what that will do to pensioners.

It’s a Catch-22. Does anyone know how to solve the problem? And why is no one talking about it?



ROBERT BAKES

Retired chief justice of the Idaho Supreme Court

Eagle, Idaho





Ringing in the changes

Johnson should not entirely blame the European Union for the changes to English introduced by speakers of other European languages (April 23rd). He used the example of Europeans using “control” to mean “monitor” because contrôler has that meaning in French. But among British bird-ringers “control” was already in widespread use by 1965. It was used in “The Ringer’s Manual”, produced by the British Trust for Ornithology, albeit in the restricted sense of the recapture of a ringed bird in a place other than that at which it had been ringed.

I recall Sir Landsborough Thomson, one of the founding fathers of British bird-ringing, pleading at that time for this usage to be dropped on the ground that “control” had a different and long-established meaning in science. To no avail: even the eminent cannot stem the tide of change in living languages.

PROFESSOR JEREMY GREENWOOD

Centre for Research into Ecological and Environmental Modelling

University of St Andrews

St Andrews, Fife





Starr witness

Your observation that “Republicans have a history of pinning imagined crimes” on Hillary Clinton is strongly supported by a source not usually cited on this point (“Unloved and unstoppable”, April 23rd). In November 1998, Kenneth Starr told the House Judiciary Committee that after years of investigating all accusations, he had nothing negative to report about either Bill or Hillary Clinton regarding Whitewater, the FBI files or the White House travel office. I complained about his delay in telling us this—until after the midterm elections—and asked, as an example, for the date on which he had exonerated the Clintons on the travel-office issue. He replied that there was no such date because there had never been any information implicating them in the first place.

BARNEY FRANK

Former member of Congress

Newton, Massachusetts





The sundowners

If there is any chance that the world is to meet the Paris objectives on climate change, renewable energy such as solar power must surely be a key part of a solution (“The new sunbathers”, April 16th). However, focusing on concerns over the prices bid at recent auctions can be misleading, as those bids take no account of important related costs. You mentioned the investment needed to expand solar grids and for measures to mitigate the intermittency of solar power; these could easily add 50% to the prices quoted in recent bids.

Solar power could become cost-competitive with gas and coal, especially if the costs of carbon were internalised. But we should not compare apples with oranges; that is what advocates of solar power encourage us to do.

ANTHONY FRAYNE

Montreal





A brewing argument

Regarding the Reinheitsgebot, or “German beer purity law” (“Pure swill”, April 23rd). Your withering comments about the quality of German beers were off target. The variation of flavours is wide despite the restrictions on ingredients. I am a member of the Campaign for Real Ale and frustrated at the regular addition of wheat to ales.

LYNDA ATKINSON

Swansea

As a longtime Geordie exile in Germany with a sturdy Teutonic beer belly to prove it, I must take you to task over your vicious assault on the hallowed Reinheitsgebot. The shelves of my local supermarket are replete with cans of fizzy, heartburn-provoking foreign pop masquerading as beer rapidly approaching its best-poured-straight-down-the-toilet date. The Veltins and the Bitburger are being carted off by the crate load.

If it don’t comply with the Reinheitsgebot, it ain’t gonna sell in Germany. Punkt, full stop, period. So who do you think you are kidding, lesser breweries, if you think old Deutschland’s done?

PETER CAIN

Trier, Germany

* Letters appear online only