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The Port Deal
When a British shipping and transport service company, like P&O, manages U.S. ports, nobody cares. But when Dubai World Ports buys P&O and now continues to manage those ports, all hell opens up.
The funny thing is to watch Democrats and Republicans united in fighting the deal against a Bush who, embedded in Middle East corporate interests, threatens to veto any attempt to stop it.
The mask of "terror protecting" comes off and his real face of "corporate money" is there to see for all.
I for one would argue against this deal. But like Soj, not on the grounds of any assumed terror danger.
I do believe that any monopoly-like infrastructure, roads, harbors, water and electricity networks etc., should always be owned and controlled by the state. To have these, even partially, controlled or managed by some private entity is renting out the right to collect taxes. We did away with that a long time ago for very sound reasons.
On the other side, Bush is right here in one serious point.
The U.S. has a trade deficit of some $700-800 billion per year. Americans give money to foreigners to buy their goods. But when those foreigners want to reinvest their earned US$ and get blocked, why would you expect them to continue to take Dollars?
If isolationism is seriously reviving, which I do expect, the US$ is overvalued by some 50%. How would doubling the price of raw materials and consumer products fare with the electorate?
There are three alternatives.
To continue a significant trade imbalances which will lead to the sharecropper society Buffet fears. Here the U.S. people will have to work indefinitely to pay the rent to foreign owners of U.S. productive means. The Dubai World Ports deal is part of this.
Second, isolationism with a high inflationary, Dollar dump period, leading over years to some more sustainable trade (im)balance. This will be payed for by the middle class or whatever is left of it and by foreign US$ holders.
Third, and very unlikely. A high tax environment that curbs U.S. consumption back to grade that nearly equals production within the U.S.
History tells us that the electorate and politicians will choose the short term benefit of alternative two without caring for the longer term consequences. The fight against the port deal is just a part of that game. Foreign investors will note this and act accordingly.
What’s the point in winning the battle and losing the war JDP? The dems get in power and are confronted with an economy in tatters. They have two choices. Own up, make the country bite the bullet or go to war on the slim chance they can keep the dice rolling one more time.
You know which one they’ll pick, don’t you JDP? It’s the option the dems always pick. Despite their claims to ‘liberal’ ideals, all they really want is a chance to get their snouts in the trough.
So Hi Ho, Hi Ho, it’s off to war we go, but this time the army bozos say “listen prez Gore, we ain’t gonna win no conventional war agin them Ay-rabs, lets nuke the greasy little boogers”. They do and that is the moment the other nuclear powers (eg China and Russia) have been waiting for. The US is now offside with everyone. Bliar can maybe sell a bit of neo-colonialism, because that can be spun to the more optimistic sheeple as doing the victims a ‘favour’.
But nuking people and trying sell it as ‘bringing them freedom’ is a long stretch far too long for any western govt outside amerika. You know I’ve got an idea that even the amerikan sheeple may choke on that one.
Regardless of the result the dems have made a huge move full of pitfalls, and for what?
It doesn’t make the slightest difference to anyone whether the corporation that owns your docks is in Washington, Tehran, or Timbuctoo. They will all hire the same mealy mouthed slime bags to maximise their profits.
There maybe a slight advantage to them being controlled by some other cultures. The Chinese one comes to mind; managers are encouraged to think in decades not 90 day chunks. That and the bit above about foreign ownership may make whatever foreign nation the corporation comes from care about the long term success of the US economy.
That sure aint the case at the moment. The US won’t/can’t pay up and is now trying to take the dice home. We all know what happens after that, everyone decides to cut their losses and grab what they can outta the US while the going’s good.
Get real the dems can’t do what their supporters want. If they had shown any balls even up to 20 years ago they may have been able to, but not now.
If people want affordable healthcare, decent education and a retirement before 80, the only way that can be paid for with the huge deficit the US is running is to shift the money outta ships, bombs, guns n planes. Not just a bit, really big time.
Now nothing I have heard from any dem close to the national legislature would lead me to the conclusion they could /would even contemplate that so their ‘win’ would spell more of the same until the implosion.
But lets suspend disbelief and imagine that the dems do shift the money from dying to living.
There’s 2 points of view to be considered; external and domestic.
Lets look at this from an external P.O.V. first. For the US to unilaterally disarm would require a brilliant statesman. I don’t know how much time you’ve spent in foreign countries actually talking with the population, not the sleasebags who chat up tourists by telling them what they want to hear; but the asian, african, arabic, central american, south american and european versions of Joe Lunchbox. I have and while a lot of it is bluster from ordinary people who really don’t want to hurt anyone, if the US just pulled back into it’s own borders, without trying to make a square up with the rest of the world they have shat upon, there is a very good chance that some would come in search of their pound of flesh. I think that may put rather a quick end to that experiment nearly as quick as the end of that administration.
But let’s imagine that somehow somewhere from amongst a mob of people who have devoted their lives to exploiting the amerikan culture; they do find someone who can get their head around the cultures of all the people from the societies I listed above.
How long before the putsch? There is no way that the greedheads are gonna sit around twiddling their thumbs while some commie liberal wet dream ruins their next quarter’s projections.
What I am saying is that if amerikans have become so dependant on others ‘doing for them’, that not only can they not prepare and cook food from scratch, sew a button back on, or balance their chequebooks, they can no longer express themselves politically unless someone else does it for them, then the best way through this is to let the rethugs win.
Firstly because the dems will realise that if they can’t win an election when the opposition is this dire they need to take a long hard look at themselves and secondly, that when the shit really hits the fan, $cams Ratchet effect could be thrown into reverse.
That is just as it takes a so-called lefty or liberal political force to bring a welfare state undone without a coup, it also takes a rightist, or conservative force to undo facism. If the rethugs were forced to undo the military industrial complex, not only would the greedheads who need it to be kept going have no-one to run to, the rethugs would have their finger on the pulse and be able to put out brushfires.
So everyone is pissed off with the rethugs and the dems know they have no support for moving right they move further left to outflank the rethugs.
This hasn’t happened in the US since the late ’20s but it has happened elsewhere. Voters blame the party that is in power when the shit hits the fan, not the party that the one in power tries to scapegoat by saying “They did it, we just got stuck with cleaning up the mess”.
A fuck-up like the one about to happen to the US, won’t be forgiven by the electorate for at least 2 election cycles.
If you really want your team to win the cup, rather than just score the next goal, they must play a much craftier game than the guilt-ridden greedheads who run the dems seem able to conceive.
I still maintain the best solution is to get a ‘third force’ up and running but maybe it is just ‘too hard’.
If that is the case, allowing the dems to play a smart game would take a lot longer than setting up a third force to do the job, but eventually it may work…..helluva gamble though.
Posted by: Debs is dead | Feb 23 2006 1:56 utc | 31
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