Letter of Credit Forum

Uncle Sam wants you (r money) . Anyone remember the times when health care reform for 30 billion was too expensive ? Now that the TARP flood gates of 700 billion dollars are being opened (car manufacturers are on the list, anybody else out there ?) some US policy makers devise plans to fill the treasury coffers.  

A Credit transaction will be substantially determined 

Article 4 UCP (entitled "Credits v. Contracts") confirms (as did Article 3 UCP 500), that a "A credit by its nature is a separate transaction from the sale or other contract on which it may be based." In this regard there is no change to the UCP 500: a letter of credit is not a contract to the benefit of a third party; under no circumstances can the beneficiary avail itself of the relation between applicant and issuing Bank.

Letters of Credit blamed for collapse of international trade Several bloggers (see here) claim that the collapse of the Baltic Dry Index (an index of the cost of chartering bulk cargo vessels for goods like ore, cotton, grain, etc.) is the result of the collapse of trade credit based on letters of credit.

Similar to the definitions of Article 2 UCP 600, Article 3 UCP 600 concentrates all the rules for interpretation in a single article. Whether this leads to the simplification, as the ICC intended, remains to be seen. As with the definitions,  the practicioner might not always easily see to which passage to apply these interpretations.

a) new organization of the material
One of the most important structural changes of the Uniform Customs and Practices consists of the concentration of the definitions in article 2. In the UCP 500 these definitions had been mentioned for each transport document and thus the same text was repeated. The objective of the UCP 600 was to reduce this redundancy.

The UCP 600 have been upon us for a couple of months, and it seems a good time to review some of the articles in greater detail.

The signs of a recession are deepening as the new numbers for unemployment figures in the United States show.

For anyone still employed or a job-seeker this means getting prepared and I would like to encourage everyone to post their resumes in our jobs section.

Do not include too many personal details, since employers are free to register and search resumes.

We have been able to attract employers to post jobs (whereas in the past it was only me searching and posting).