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An ignorant bully
« on: 2006-02-27 18:39:12 » |
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Setting sail away from America: The world finds it's too hard to do business with the US
Source: Independent
Authors: Stephen Foley (New York)
Dated: 2006-02-26
Lucrative opportunities taken away on a political whim; the danger of being locked up by an over-mighty government agency; the brick wall of protectionism - the business community expects to do battle with all these things in an emerging market.
Yet this suddenly seems to be a description of doing business in that most developed of all markets, the United States of America.
In the UK, in the cash-rich Gulf states and in fast-growing India, different incidents in the past week have made people ask the same question: is it worth doing business with the US?
Critics say the outcry over the £3.9bn acquisition of P&O by Dubai Ports World, which will transfer the running of five US ports to a state-controlled Middle Eastern company, has exposed the US Congress at its xenophobic worst. But it has also revealed more starkly than ever the protectionist tide that is waxing in America under the guise of national security.
The acquisition was due to close this Thursday, but DP World has had to delay completing the deal as it faces a protracted Congressional and legal fight to keep hold of the US contracts, which account for 6 per cent of the business it is buying.
The refrain is, why can't an American company run our ports? Democratic presidential frontrunner Hillary Clinton is among the senators proposing legislation to guarantee precisely that.
Bill Reinsch, president of the National Foreign Trade Council, says it has been a profoundly depressing episode, and one that could have lasting repercussions if it derails a planned free-trade deal between the United Arab Emirates and the US. "These are not societies given to a lot of rhetoric - they are not going to hold a press conference and call off negotiations," he explains. "But what would happen is that things would slow down - forms of co-operation would not happen any more."
When a firestorm of protest threatens to drive a Middle Eastern company out of the US, it is only business sense to look for opportunities elsewhere. The Dubai government has begun to build up a modest aerospace industry, launching a components business that might, one day, mean it is less reliant on the US for aircraft. Its new airport management business is targeting contracts in India.
Arab businessmen have expressed their concern. The Egyptian billionaire investor Naguib Sawiris says Arabs would be tempted to look away from the US for asset acquisitions, for investment opportunities and for business contracts.
And a country that had a trade deficit of $726bn (£415bn) last year can ill afford the "paranoia" about inward investment and foreign trade exposed by the DP World furore, adds Mr Reinsch.
But even supposedly enlightened business media such as The Wall Street Journal and CNBC television are setting up the debate as "globalisation versus security" - eliminating the possibility that these might be compatible, perhaps even mutually reinforcing.
Protectionism has already won some significant victories. Last year, the Hong Kong-based oil company Cnooc blamed "unprecedented political opposition" in the US for its decision to abandon a $18.5bn bid for the Californian oil firm Unocal - what would have been the biggest Chinese takeover of a US company.
Law makers are now pushing a number of Bills that would impose economic sanctions unless greater efforts are made to narrow a trade deficit with China that hit $202bn last year, the largest bilateral imbalance ever. The US government has promised tougher enforcement of trade laws and created a China enforcement taskforce to try to placate Congress.
Stephen King, managing director of economics at HSBC, says no one should be surprised that US politicians are reacting to the emergence of China and the threat it poses to US manufacturing jobs. "The employment risk is immediate and it is the workers that vote." There have been periods in the past, he adds, where the US has become more protectionist in order to get through a period of economic upheaval - notably against Japan in the late 1980s.
And it is not just Far East and Middle East companies that might be tempted to disengage with the US.
"Any businessman with any connection with the US, however tenuous, should think very carefully about the potential peril they face. Right here, right now, I would not advise even to engage in a business relationship with the US."
These were the warning words of a British man, David Bermingham - one of the "NatWest Three" bankers who lost their appeal last week against extradition to the US to face trial for Enron-related fraud.
An Anglo-American treaty agreed in the wake of the 11 September terrorist attacks means prosecutors are no longer required to prove there is a case to answer in order to secure an extradition. It has been used as many times to pursue white-collar suspects as it has terrorists - and only the UK has ratified it. The treaty has been used not only against the three bankers but also the 62-year-old former chief executive of taxi maker Morgan Crucible. Ian Norris faces extradition to answer charges over alleged price fixing.
Douglas McNabb, the Texan lawyer who appeared as an expert witness for the defence at the NatWest hearing, says that law-abiding businessmen have much to lose if they are wrongly accused. "Maybe the US is wrong and you have to go through the whole process to prove it. My view is that in order to have a chance of winning an international extradition case, you have to have counsel from both countries, and you have to have a lot of money."
It is not just law enforcement agencies in the US that are reaching across the seas, but US financial regulators too. Foreign businesses with American shareholders have become subject to the provisions of the onerous Sarbanes-Oxley legislation pushed through after the collapse of Enron. This demands that executives take legal responsibility for the accuracy of their financial results, and insists on upgraded audit procedures that are estimated to cost a minimum $1m per year. Bigger companies with significant operations in the US just have to grin and bear it - BP said it was spending $100m a year on Sarbanes-Oxley compliance - but others have decided to ditch their US shareholders.
In the UK, ITV has engineered a complex financial restructuring to that effect and O2 and Rank have delisted their shares from Wall Street. French media giant Vivendi Universal is doing the same and Mexican and Israeli companies are among dozens to have retrenched to their home stock markets.
This is a trickle that is likely to turn into a deluge. Delisted companies currently remain subject to the reporting rules of Sarbanes-Oxley if they have over 300 US shareholders, so the saving might seem negligible. But US regulator the Securities and Exchange Commission is proposing to ease that rule. BT is among the UK companies to have signalled it would like to delist from the US if it can also escape the clutches of Sarbanes-Oxley.
As significant are the companies that are not now coming to Wall Street at all. Clara Furse, chief executive of the London Stock Exchange, says it has benefited as international companies choose to list in London instead - both on the main market and on AIM, which is attracting growth companies that might once have been Nasdaq bound.
In the insurance industry, the US is demanding that foreign-owned reinsurers deposit big sums in a trust fund to compensate US partners should they fail. This was slammed last week by Lloyd's of London chairman Lord Levene as discriminatory and totally unacceptable.
Perceived discrimination in other areas might also damage America's economic future. The head of chip maker Intel, Craig Barrett, has complained repeatedly that the US is losing out on international talent because of the tightening of immigration laws after 9/11, which led to lots of hi-tech engineers losing their work permits. Intel, Microsoft and others are channelling investment into India that might otherwise have stayed in the US.
The issue flared up again last week when a prominent Indian scientist was refused a visa for the US because of concern that his work had chemical weapons applications. The case of Goverdhan Mehta, who is president of the International Council for Science, a Paris-based group of national scientific academies, has caused a storm in India.
Mr Reinsch says the Mehta case is another blow to the US's attempts to attract the world's best scientists. Meanwhile, Tony Blair has been moved to warn US politicians not to use the war on terror as "a back door route to protectionism". And the NatWest Three ruling prompted Sir Digby Jones, director-general of the CBI, to call the US "an ignorant bully".
Across the world, friends and free traders are concerned about the course set by the US. They say that while its motives are diverse - national security, energy supply concerns, the protection of investors - there is a single conclusion: it has become riskier, costlier and harder to do business with the US and, unless that changes, fewer people will want to.
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With or without religion, you would have good people doing good things and evil people doing evil things. But for good people to do evil things, that takes religion. - Steven Weinberg, 1999
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JD
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Re:An ignorant bully
« Reply #1 on: 2006-02-28 18:14:49 » |
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Who is the ignorant bully?
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Hermit
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Re:An ignorant bully
« Reply #2 on: 2006-02-28 22:28:36 » |
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Perhaps you should read the article... which is where the quote came from.
Hermit
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With or without religion, you would have good people doing good things and evil people doing evil things. But for good people to do evil things, that takes religion. - Steven Weinberg, 1999
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JD
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Re:An ignorant bully
« Reply #3 on: 2006-03-02 05:25:34 » |
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Quote from: Hermit on 2006-02-28 22:28:36
Perhaps you should read the article... which is where the quote came from.
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Yeah, I only got half way before I zoned out.
Can I ask you something?
Do you think that the ports brouhaha is yet another example of it being harder to do business with the US and that Bush is right to support the deal (as Clinton does)?
JD
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Hermit
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Re:An ignorant bully
« Reply #4 on: 2006-03-02 08:14:18 » |
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[Jonathan Davis] Do you think that the ports brouhaha is yet another example of it being harder to do business with the US
[Hermit] Yes
[Jonathan Davis] and that Bush is right to support the deal (as Clinton does)?
[Hermit] Yes
As I said:
Quote from: Hermit on 2006-03-01 03:59:58
[Jonathan Davis] Down with protectionism! Down with anti-Arab racism!
[Hermit] Indeed. The P & O has always been a neoimperial organization (with Disney calibre costumes) which should be a perfect fit with the USA of today. And Dubai is clearly the Las Vegas of the Middle East. No threat to anything but Cheney's Halliburton's wallet.
[Hermit] Realization dawns.
[Hermit] Evidently we will have to nuke the UAE as well as Iran.
[Hermit] Speaking of Iran (and Dubai):
IAEA says no evidence of Iranian n-weapons plan
Report likely to influence agency's Vienna meet
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With or without religion, you would have good people doing good things and evil people doing evil things. But for good people to do evil things, that takes religion. - Steven Weinberg, 1999
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Hermit
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Re:An ignorant bully
« Reply #5 on: 2006-03-02 11:41:04 » |
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The fact that Dubai is one of the pillars of Hormez might also explain why cozying up with them would possibly be seen as "a good thing" in the eyes of somebody considering taking action which might result in the closing of the straits...
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With or without religion, you would have good people doing good things and evil people doing evil things. But for good people to do evil things, that takes religion. - Steven Weinberg, 1999
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Blunderov
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Re:An ignorant bully
« Reply #6 on: 2006-03-02 13:25:33 » |
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Quote from: Hermit on 2006-03-02 08:14:18
[Jonathan Davis] Do you think that the ports brouhaha is yet another example of it being harder to do business with the US
[Hermit] Yes
[Jonathan Davis] and that Bush is right to support the deal (as Clinton does)?
[Hermit] Yes
As I said:
Quote from: Hermit on 2006-03-01 03:59:58
[Blunderov] This is superbly ironic. Of all the dirty, and/or incompetent, deeds that this regime has perpetrated, the thing that now seems most likely to bring them down is a mostly unexceptionable business deal.
It seems that Bush is hoist by his own petard. "Either you are with us or you are with the terrorists" seems to have translated itself into a degree of xenophobia which, in the cold light of day, is politically disasterous.
http://www.iht.com/articles/2006/02/28/news/poll.php
<snip>
"Poll gives Bush 34% approval
By Elisabeth Bumiller and Marjorie Connelly The New York Times
TUESDAY, FEBRUARY 28, 2006
WASHINGTON Americans are strongly opposed to the Bush administration's agreement to allow a Dubai company to operate terminals at six American ports and are increasingly negative about the situation in Iraq, according to the latest CBS News poll.
Seventy percent, including 58 percent of Republicans, said DP World, controlled by the emir of Dubai, should not be allowed to operate the ports, while 21 percent supported the deal." </snip>
[Bl.] If the Dems cannot exploit this then they might as well disband altogether.
http://www.smirkingchimp.com/article.php?sid=25046
Rich Procter: 'PortGate — The attack ads write themselves'
Contributed by drprocter on Tuesday, February 28 @ 09:50:25 EST
This article has been read 2345 times.
Rich Procter
News Bulletin To Democrats - "PortGate" is your ticket to take back the House and the Senate IF you've got the guts to use it. The attack ads literally write themselves (see below).
First, let's acknowledge we're playing by Republican rules - i.e. anything and everything goes. Remember 2002? The Bushies absolutely had to have their little funfest in Iraq, so Karl Rove ginned up a spectacular new "product" that just happened to align perfectly with the mid-term elections. If you were a Democrat who dared oppose the Republican plan to invade Iraq, you'd see your head morphing into Saddam Hussein, and then into Osama bin Laden. "Republicans want to defend America and keep it strong - Democrats are too weak to do what it takes." Bush and Cheney and their army of winged monkeys hammered home the same points over and over and over again:
* Saddam = Osama.
* Taking out Saddam = Taking out Osama.
* Republicans are stalwart warriors against terror, Democrats are loser/pansy/bedwetters who will let terrorists set off dangerous nuclear weapons in major American cities.
Okay, so now it's 2006, and the Republicans are absolutely scared to death of a Democratic House or Senate with subpoena power. So what does Bush do? He insists - DEMANDS that America turn our ports over to an Arab country connected to 9/11 and associated with the Taliban and other America-hating crazies.
This is Katrina times a hundred, Harriet Meirs times a thousand. This reveals the Great and Powerful Oz, Sole Defender of America to be a shabby little weasel who cares about keeping his cronies fat amd happy, the public be damned. In short - this is a dream come true for ambitious, fearless Democrats.
Let's say Democrat Michael Moonbat is running against Congressman Walter Wingnut in a swing state. Wingnut won the state with 52% in 2004 (47%, plus 5% Diebold). Here are the ads Moonbat runs this August:
SPOT #1 - "Republicans Don't Get It"
OPEN on SCARY BLACK AND WHITE PHOTO OF WINGNUT
ANNCR - Congressman Walter Wingnut "says" he wants to keep you safe.
WINGNUT AND BUSH EMBRACING (PHOTOSHOP IF NECESSARY)
ANNCR - Then why did Wingnut join President Bush in turning over our ports - possible entry point for an al-qaeda nuclear weapon - to a country that embraced the Taliban, provided money for the 9/11 terrorists, and whose own ports were used to smuggle nuclear components to Iran, Libya and North Korea?
MORPH WINGNUT INTO OSAMA BIN LADEN
ANNCR - The Republicans just don't get it - AMERICA'S SECURITY ISN'T FOR SALE. Michael Moonbat - only he demands American ports be in American hands.
SPOT #2 - "Thanks, Congressman Wingnut"
OPEN ON COMPUTER SCREEN - POP-UP WINDOW APPEARS - OBVIOUS TERRORIST, SMILING - SPEAKS ARABIC IN HOMEMADE VIDCAM FOOTAGE
TRANSLATOR - "You know, smuggling a suitcase nuclear weapon into the United States was considered just about impossible - until kind people like Congressman Walter Wingnut allowed our sponsors in the UAE to get the plans for your ports. Typical American generosity - saves us years of effort. Thanks, Senator Wingnut!
TAG - America's Security isn't for sale. Americans should own and patrol American ports. Michael Moonbat knows this - why doesn't Walter Wingnut?
SPOT #3 - He Won't - We Will
OPEN WITH WINGNUT STANDING NEXT TO PRESIDENT BUSH
ANNCR - Congressman Walter Wingnut let President Bush hand our ports over to an Arab nation that supported the Taliban, and helped finance 9/11. That's surrendering to terrorists.
PUSH IN ON MICHAEL MOONBAT, WALKING ALONG DOCK
MOONBAT - "My opponent just doesn't get it! AMERICANS should own and control AMERICAN ports. The idea that we have to sell our ports to folks involved with 9/11 is crazy - and dangerous!
CLOSE UP ON MOONBAT'S FACE
MOONBAT - If you think the United Arab Emirates will help protect you from terrorists, vote for my opponent. If you think we Americans should protect ourselves, vote for me. It's that simple."
SPOT #4 - Wiretap Yes, Protect America No!
OPEN ON SCARY BLACK AND WHITE PHOTOS OF PRESIDENT BUSH
ANNCR - President Bush has said over and over he wants to keep America safe. Congressman Walter Wingnut says the same thing.
MONTAGE OF SCARY IMAGES (Abu Gharib, etc.)
ANNCR - Bush and Wingnut are both willing to torture, spy and wiretap your phones without a warrant.
PUSH IN 9/11 SUSPECTS FROM UAE, OVER TWIN TOWERS FOOTAGE
ANNCR - But putting American ports in American hands? Where WE'RE in charge of our own security? They wouldn't do that. They demanded our ports be owned by the United Arab Emirates, a country that provided funds for the 9/11 attacks.
PUSH IN ON MICHAEL MOONBAT
ANNCR - American ports in American hands. Michael Moonbat demands it. You won't get it, until the Democrats are back in charge.
SPOT #5 - "The Memo"
OPEN WITH PICTURE OF MICHAEL CHERTOFF WITH BUSH
ANNCR - Bush appointee Michael Chertoff, head of Homeland Security, had this to say about handing over our ports to the Taliban-supporting United Arab Emirates...
FILE FOOTAGE OF CHERTOFF - "We have to balance the paramount urgency of security against the fact that we still want to have a robust global trading system."
SMASH CUT TO MICHAEL MOONBAT, WALKING THE DOCKS, COAT SLUNG OVER SHOULDER
MOONBAT - GARBAGE! The Bush-Wingnut team doesn't get it. We don't "balance" security against ANYTHING! SECURITY COMES FIRST - and that means AMERICAN ports in AMERICAN hands, not in the hands of the folks who gave us to of the 9/11 terrorists!
ANNCR - Michael Moonbat - because Security comes first, last and always.
NOTE - I tossed off these five spots in half an hour - they literally write themselves.
Please, please, please President Bush - demand your flunkies in Congress and the Senate press ahead with this madness. Please hand this truncheon to the Democrats so they can beat you over the head with it. You are our secret weapon - the feckless bozo that gives, and keeps on giving.
NOTICE - None of this material is copy protected. Please forward this to every Democratic House and Senate candidate, with my blessings.
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JD
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Re:An ignorant bully
« Reply #7 on: 2006-03-03 05:24:30 » |
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Quote from: Blunderov on 2006-03-02 13:25:33
Quote from: Hermit on 2006-03-02 08:14:18
[Jonathan Davis] Do you think that the ports brouhaha is yet another example of it being harder to do business with the US
[Hermit] Yes
[Jonathan Davis] and that Bush is right to support the deal (as Clinton does)?
[Hermit] Yes
As I said:
Quote from: Hermit on 2006-03-01 03:59:58
[Blunderov] This is superbly ironic. Of all the dirty, and/or incompetent, deeds that this regime has perpetrated, the thing that now seems most likely to bring them down is a mostly unexceptionable business deal.
It seems that Bush is hoist by his own petard. "Either you are with us or you are with the terrorists" seems to have translated itself into a degree of xenophobia which, in the cold light of day, is politically disasterous.
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I think the Democrats are being deeply hypocritical (Bill Clinton advising the UAE on how to succeed with the deal whilst his wife attacks it back home) and the Republicans are being reflexively idiotic and banging the National Security drum in a case where it is utterly irrelevant.
I don't think this will "bring them down" though. Bush is right on this one and I hope that his enemies have the courage and decency to do the right thing rather than oppose this deal out of anti-Bush spite.
is there any non-partisan political currency left the USA?
JD
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Hermit
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Re:An ignorant bully
« Reply #8 on: 2006-03-05 15:13:05 » |
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[Jonathan Davis] is there any non-partisan political currency left the USA?
[Hermit] No.
[Hermit] The Republican and Democrats have so stacked the system that all other political currencies appear trapped in frozen accounts. But remember that the Republicans and Democrats are greatly outnumbered by the Apathetes - so if there is ever a defrosting the results could be quite unpredictable.
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With or without religion, you would have good people doing good things and evil people doing evil things. But for good people to do evil things, that takes religion. - Steven Weinberg, 1999
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MoEnzyme
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Re:An ignorant bully
« Reply #9 on: 2006-03-19 12:41:26 » |
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Quote: I think the Democrats are being deeply hypocritical (Bill Clinton advising the UAE on how to succeed with the deal whilst his wife attacks it back home) and the Republicans are being reflexively idiotic and banging the National Security drum in a case where it is utterly irrelevant.
I don't think this will "bring them down" though. Bush is right on this one and I hope that his enemies have the courage and decency to do the right thing rather than oppose this deal out of anti-Bush spite.
is there any non-partisan political currency left the USA?
JD
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No. Bush & Co. has made it this way by consistently refusing to reach out to Democrats throughout his administration's tenure, not to mention his willingness to endorse unethical power grabs through untimely redistricting, to steal elections, and to lie about government intelligence and even about matters of public record. We don't have a working political system in the US anymore. For all practical purposes we operate as a dictatorship now. Bush's failure to win the Dubai Ports deal was a failure within his own party to keep them apprised of his plans. Democrats be damned he could have pulled it off if he had a little more competance in dealing with his own people.
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I will fight your gods for food,
Mo Enzyme
(consolidation of handles: Jake Sapiens; memelab; logicnazi; Loki; Every1Hz; and Shadow)
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MoEnzyme
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Re:An ignorant bully
« Reply #10 on: 2006-03-20 10:49:17 » |
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Quote from: Jake Sapiens on 2006-03-19 12:41:26
Quote: I think the Democrats are being deeply hypocritical (Bill Clinton advising the UAE on how to succeed with the deal whilst his wife attacks it back home) and the Republicans are being reflexively idiotic and banging the National Security drum in a case where it is utterly irrelevant.
I don't think this will "bring them down" though. Bush is right on this one and I hope that his enemies have the courage and decency to do the right thing rather than oppose this deal out of anti-Bush spite.
is there any non-partisan political currency left the USA?
JD
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No. Bush & Co. has made it this way by consistently refusing to reach out to Democrats throughout his administration's tenure, not to mention his willingness to endorse unethical power grabs through untimely redistricting, to steal elections, and to lie about government intelligence and even about matters of public record. We don't have a working political system in the US anymore. For all practical purposes we operate as a dictatorship now. Bush's failure to win the Dubai Ports deal was a failure within his own party to keep them apprised of his plans. Democrats be damned he could have pulled it off if he had a little more competance in dealing with his own people.
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Just to be clear, I agree that the Dems have gotten hypocritical on this . . . I think it IS just an attempt to plaster egg on the incompetant ass. He could have done this the right way had he any competance, but now that he's fucked it all up yet again, the Dems aren't going to bail him out. Sadly decency has no place in American politics any more ever since the Clinton blow-job impeachment, which GWB wholeheartedly endorsed when he was Governor of Texas. Basically everything he has done since, from stealing two elections, to lying to gain support for his war, lying about our deteriorating foreign policy, supporting and giving the green light to unethical power grabs by his cronies (DeLay et. al) and the GOP lobby, and . . . well this could go on for a loooong list so I will stop there for now . . . has devalued any political currency for decency in this country. There is nothing deep at all about Democratic hypocrisy on the ports deal. Bush has trained them well for this reflex.
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I will fight your gods for food,
Mo Enzyme
(consolidation of handles: Jake Sapiens; memelab; logicnazi; Loki; Every1Hz; and Shadow)
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MoEnzyme
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Re:An ignorant bully
« Reply #11 on: 2006-03-20 12:58:55 » |
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Did I mention torture? 
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I will fight your gods for food,
Mo Enzyme
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