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Politics : GOPwinger Lies/Distortions/Omissions/Perversions of Truth -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: Karen Lawrence who wrote (1371)	2/10/2004 11:25:06 AM
From: Karen Lawrence	Read Replies (2) \| Respond to of 173976

The tattered economy: Bush's Achilles heel Bush will have to tell how he plans to stop this drain. Simply posing as the commander-in-chief in the "war against terror" is not relevant to people terrorised by the prospect of losing their jobs, and those unable to find jobs. \| By Youssef M. Ibrahim, Special to Gulf News \| 10/02/2004 gulf-news.com The issue of whether the occupation of Iraq was justified continues to occupy centre stage in domestic American politics. But the presidential elections of November are a long way away and Iraq may fade from memory. What is already replacing it as an American obsession may be President George Bush's Achilles heel: the tattered state of the American economy and Wall Street ethics. It's a long indictment sheet. It includes unprecedented and shocking revelations of corporate scandals; serious frauds committed by financial institutions; irregularities in investment firms; mutual funds abuse and misusing the savings of Americans who entrusted them with egg-nests. Then there is the apparent collusion of a wide variety of "Big Business" managing boards with stock brokerage firms, large investment firms and banks to cover up corrupt companies that abolished jobs, pensions and savings of Americans. The infamous Enron and WorldCom scandals are only two of many. All of which is persuading more Americans that, over the past two decades, a small fraternity of very rich business folks has joined hands with senior officials in the government to rip them off. A perfect example is Richard Perle, a top official in the Defence department, who has used, and still uses, his government connections for his private business profits, selling defence equipment and advice to clients at home and overseas. But above all, there is the ongoing mass export of American jobs overseas. This sinister process is evident in all layers of the manufacturing industry, from finished products to spare parts to software. It is all being farmed out - migrating - to China, other Asian countries and Latin America. It is coupled with a relentless cutting back on health subsidies, pay and retirement benefits for those still employed by American companies. From all of this emerges a palpable anxiety, as Americans see the entire edifice of the social safety-net built since World War II dissolve beneath their feet. Is it then a surprise that many around the world are losing faith in the capitalist system America was built upon? Does this not explain why the US dollar has lost considerable value against the Euro in the past two years? For Bush, the problem is that he and the Republican Party are seen as being, if not complicit, at least lax in pursuing the bad guys in business and restoring integrity to the American system, as they were anxious to pursue Saddam Hussain and his non-existent weapons of mass destruction. The point here is that historically Americans picked their presidents based on their economic well-being. Some pundits already say like his father, George Bush senior, who won the 1990-91 Gulf War only to lose the election over the economy, Bush Jr. too may end up being a one-term president. President Bush correctly claims the American economy has grown robustly in the past two quarters and various money and stock markets have recovered their losses that began in his term. But unemployment stands stubbornly at 5.6 per cent compared to nearly full employment during the eight years Bill Clinton was president. Far more importantly, new jobs that are being created are minimum wage jobs that offer neither benefits nor security. You can work for Starbucks as a waiter with no benefits but not at General Electric as an engineer. That is because GE, GM, IBM, Microsoft, and all the Big Business are "outsourcing" - that is to say making elsewhere - many of their components that go into your computer and your car. The upshot has been the impoverishment of the great majority of American blue collar workers – a threatened species at this point, as America manufactures fewer and fewer of the goods it uses. The influential CNN anchorman, Lou Dobbs, has been hitting the job-export theme tenaciously for weeks now, and has in fact started a movement within the media and think-tanks. "Big Business" is using visa loopholes created by the Bush administration to import highly skilled Asian and other foreign technicians here on a two-year contract, paying them one third of what they paid their American counterparts to do the same job. The upshot is that a staggering number of highly skilled Americans over 50 are being fired every year with nowhere to go. An astonishing statistic emerged the other day. While wages crept up 10 per cent for those who still have a job, pay for the executives running "Big Business" has crept up 3,000 per cent in the same period! Sooner or later, Bush will have to tell how he plans to stop this drain. Simply posing as the commander-in-chief in the "war against terror" is not relevant to people terrorised by the prospect of losing their jobs, and those unable to find jobs. Youssef M. Ibrahim , a former Middle East correspondent for the New York Times and Energy Editor of the Wall Street Journal, is Managing Director of the Dubai-based Strategic Energy Investment Group, a consulting firm specialising in assessing political risks in the Gulf, Middle and Near East region. He can be contacted at ymibrahim@gulfnews.com