July 15, 2008
Born in the USA, Sold to Foreign Buyers (Brent Budowsky)
America is being sold at a discount to foreign buyers at bargain basement prices and it is time for a serious discussion about why.
The Chrysler Building, large pieces of America's major banks and investment houses, Anheuser-Busch. What will be next? Will we sell the Lincoln Memorial to Saudi Arabian sovereign wealth funds?
America is now dependent on Chinese capital to buy our bonds to finance our debt. We are dependent on Middle Eastern oil to fuel our economy. This massive export of capital to foreign nations is used by them to buy our assets, often at dollar-store prices.
It is a scandal. How odd that neoconservative theoreticians hunger for war with Iran, while the Bush policies keep us addicted to oil, which finances Iran. How strange that the voices on the right hunger for the overthrow of Hugo Chavez in Venezuela, while the Bush policies keep us addicted to oil, which finances Chavez.
It is pathetic to watch an American president virtually begging Saudi Arabia for more oil, and even more pathetic when the Saudi royals, whose hands he holds and whose cheeks he kisses, say no!
Meanwhile, we await the revelations of the Cheney energy task force, which will sooner or later emerge, detailing how oil companies used the White House to divvy up the oil bounty from the Iraq war, before the Iraq war.
What happens with this massive exodus of capital from America to foreign suppliers, foreign owners, foreign sources and foreign monarchs and the sovereign funds where they put their money, gotten from us, is the wholesale bargain basement sale of America.
The dollar becomes the petty-cash currency of the world, which only increases the sales to foreign owners, lowers the prices they pay and powers their increasing control over our assets, workers and sovereignty.
Let’s begin a very serious debate about this very serious subject, one of the silent scandals of the Bush years, one of the most dangerous trends in the American economy.
This is one of the great causes of outsourcing and layoffs, which inevitably result as foreign owners maximize their profits, by getting rid of American workers.
It is a shame, and it is a scandal.
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It's real simple Brent. All the big government types are spending and printing too much American currency driving the dollar into the ground. If anyone who read these posts had invested in gold as I urged earlier this year you would have made some good profits. Judging by the way Washington continues to believe that government is the solution to every problem, it still looks like a good buy.
Comment by Robert Rosencrans — July 15, 2008 @ 2:43 pm
Get the Government out of the economy and allow unrestrained economic activity and you will see the natural order of things: Americans buying foreign companies. American consumers need to learn the hard way that living on a mountain of personal debt is not a stable way to live. Any Government bailouts will only increase the size of the next crisis.
As for the irony of having dangerous dictators arisen in countries that have some resources to sell, this doesn't seem strange at all: for a dictator to be dangerous to the outside forces they have to have some money. That's why no matter how bad the dictator of Zimbabwe happens to be he is only dangerous to his own people. Of course blaming America and Bush for anything bad anywhere in the world is the liberal pass time, so why should anyone be surprised?
Comment by Igor R. — July 15, 2008 @ 2:51 pm
If Mr Benjamin Franklin was correct in his assertion that 'Wars are not paid for in wartime, the bill comes later'.
You haven't even seen a fraction of US wealth transported to the East and Middle East…
Comment by uk visa — July 15, 2008 @ 3:53 pm
I agree with you in spirit, but to the best of my knowledge, the facts contradict you.
In the IT business, it is not foreign owners that are shipping the jobs overseas - it's IBM and other All-American brands that took over the contract programming market and sub-contracted the work to overseas companies.
In some cases the overseas company was set up by the United States corporation.
You might note that it isn't companies based in foreign countries that go whining to Congress every year (whining and writing checks) to get an increase in H1-B visas.
Several years ago, Microsoft spokesmen were complaining about their problems hiring skilled programers - at the same time that a few hundred thousand programmers had been laid off due to the Dot Com bust.
Yes, we are being sold to foreign buyers - and we are being sold out by those who would like us to think they are on our side.
Comment by gmpierce — July 15, 2008 @ 5:02 pm
Death to free-market BS, say hello to fair, heavily regulated and appropriately taxed markets.
We need to end NAFTA now and re-write our trade agreements that protect workers rights and human rights.. We need to HEAVILY REGULATE all corporations who operate internationally. We need to tax appropriately all goods coming into the U.S. from countries where workers are paid pennies. We need to stop subsidzing Big Oil and start subsidizing RENEWABLE ENERGY. We need to get the dollar back on the Gold standard. We need a pay-as-you-go budget. We need to let criminal investment banks COLLAPSE and bail-out the customers who were illegally "steered" into sub-prime loans, which is a crime. We need to put bankers in jail who had any part in the sub-prime crime. We need to balance the trade budget, but in order to do that we must rebuild our manufacturing base.
In short, we must regulate as heavily as possible all banking, trading, stock market and energy industries. The government needs to immediately put constraints on the criminals on Wall Street and in D.C.
Comment by wewillnotbeneoconned — July 15, 2008 @ 7:43 pm
What Americans do not yet comprehend is the enormous scope of the sacrifices they are going to have to make in the next years to attempt to correct the catastrophe that Bush and the Neocons have caused. The main goals will have to be to pay down the national debt and to reduce dependency on oil.
How to do these things?
a) Cut back on military expenditures - including occupations of foreign countries. Get out of Iraq and Afghanistan.
b) Move to eco-friendly sources of energy - solar power, wind, tide but not nuclear which is dangerous because of permanent waste-disposal problems and risk of terror attacks.
c) restore the balance of the middle class as against the filthy rich upper percentile so that more people have money to spend on their needs - tax the rich and beef up the estate tax. Apply the money to paying down the debt. - Even out disparities in the population; introduce single-payer health care as in other industrial nations, such as Canada.
d) invest in research and education - subsidize university education, especially for the poor and what is left of the middle class. This is the best investment in the future of the USA
It is not clear whether the population of the USA, so dumbed-down by the corporate media, and opportunistic and demagogic leaders, will have the vision and fortitude to fight this gargantuan and long-lasting battle.
Brent Budowsky is on the right side in all this. The ditto heads will continue to blather on about reducing the size of government and continuing torture and the necessity of occupying foreign lands. Let them blather - as they do so volubly in this comment section. They, too, will have to make sacrifices over the next years. One way or another, they too will have to participate in eliminating the effects of the Bush catastrophe - the DEBT, oil dependancy, ignorance of the needs of the planet.
Comment by B. Blogman — July 15, 2008 @ 8:10 pm
Try to stay focused people. Brent is stating the issue of foreign infrastructure purchases (though he briefly mentioned outsourcing). These are outright sales to foreign investors. It's a factor of who is offering to buy and who the owner is choosing to sell to. With the Euro almost 2 to 1 on the dollar, it's too affordable for foreign investors to pass up. What is funny is, I never see a blog criticizing US purchases of foreign infrastructure. Guess it's okay for us to do it, just not the other way around. Many things are foreign owned.
For example, the Dulles toll road for all those familiar with the DC area. Actually two roads (The Greenway and the Dulles Toll Road). The Greenway portion is operated by Autostrade International of Virginia O&M, Inc. It is a subsidiary of Italian-based Autostrade S.p.A. The Greenway is a private state highway and owned by the Australian firm the Macquarie Infrastructure Group (MIG).
Comment by Wayne Kulick — July 16, 2008 @ 1:42 pm
wewillnotbeneoconned-
Greater regulation? Oh yeah that is the answer. If you tax oil companies more, like Obama wants to, you will just increase the price at the pump. Exxon paid $30 billion in taxes for fiscal 2007. They pay more taxes annually than the bottom 50% of individual tax payers. That is a lot of money. Where is all the money being used? To fund more social programs such as welfare that most liberals want to grow. Please learn something "wewillnotbeneoconned" before you rant and rave!
http://seekingalpha.com/article/63131-exxon-s-2007-tax-bill-30-billion
Comment by carbuff915 — August 22, 2008 @ 11:53 pm