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Pastimes : THE SLIGHTLY MODERATED BOXING RING -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: Lazarus_Long who wrote (14167)	6/5/2002 4:39:31 AM
From: Dayuhan	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 21057

You want references... do you seriously believe that the banks and the US Government didn't know what was going on? That they believed the money was really being spent productively? You can believe that what happened was more or less on the lines I've described, or you can believe that our banks, our governments at the time (roughly 1970-1985) and the IMF were being managed by a bunch of wilfully blind retardates. They knew. Our Governments, which we elected, chose to open the door for the extension of nearly infinite credit to a bunch of corrupt, profligate tinpot dictators. It was a dumb thing to do. When we elect governments that do dumb things, we end up picking up the tab. It sucks, but that's the way it is. In the future we should be more careful about electing people who let ideology take precedence over financial management. In this case, instead of owning up to our role in the matter and sharing in the responsibility, we have chosen to dump it on those who had the least say in the matter and those who are least capable of bearing the burden. It was probably inaccurate to say that this is "unfair". A better word might be "dishonorable". Of course in this case we can get away with being dishonorable, since we are bigger and stronger. Is that the sort of nation we want to be? If it is, can we expect others to deal honorably with us? We decided that these countries needed dictators (it was called "the Kirkpatrick Doctrine" at the time). We did a great deal to keep these dictators in power, knowing full well that they were looting their treasuries and dismantling their economies. One of the things we did was lend them far more money than they or their people could ever repay. I think that we bear some degree of responsibility for the consequences of those decisions. It seems that you don't. I know you see lots of poor people where you are. But our wealth and prosperity didn't make them poor. To say that our wealth made them poor would be an inaccurate oversimplification. But our policies, including many long-forgotten ones (would anyone here recall the Bell Trade Act of 1945?) have a great deal more to do with the way things are here than most of us would like to admit. There is a good deal of our history that we have rather deliberately forgotten.