Posted on 03/10/2006 12:33:17 PM PST by groanup
REVIEW & OUTLOOK
The New Protectionists - How to create a real security crisis.
Friday, March 10, 2006 12:01 a.m. EST
Dubai Ports World finally threw in the kaffiyah on its American operations yesterday, agreeing to sell them "to a U.S. entity." We hope that entity turns out to be Halliburton, if only for the torment that would cause certain eminences on Capitol Hill.
Dubai Ports was susceptible to this political stampede because it was an Arab-owned company buying port operations, which Democrats have played up as uniquely vulnerable. But this is also the second such mugging of a foreign investor in recent months, following last year's demagoguery against a Chinese company's bid to buy Unocal, a middling American oil company. If Members of Congress want a real security crisis--a financial security crisis--they'll keep this up.
What's especially dangerous here is that we're seeing the re-emergence of the "national security" protectionists. They were last seen in the late 1980s, when Japan in particular was the target of a political foreign-investment panic. The Japanese were buying Pebble Beach and Rockefeller Center, and so America was soon going to be a colony of Tokyo. A Japanese bid for Fairchild Semiconductor of Silicon Valley was seen as a threat to American defense. Those fears seem laughable now. But here we go again, with new targets of anxiety.
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(Excerpt) Read more at opinionjournal.com ...
I see that a lot. Obviously from people who have never sat in a DFAC reading the back of their drink box.
Why? Could it possibly be they run a first class operation out of their own local port which contracts with our Navy to repair our Navy vessels? Could it be they want to operate under the same premise as say a Braum's does, where not only do they sell hamburgers and dairy products but they raise the cattle which supply their stores?
I must admit here I'm not aware of what type of engine companies they purchased or were interested in purchasing, I am simply throwing out a reason why they might have chosen a particular investment.
Actually, class warfare and other DUmmisms are much more popular on this board than I ever thought they would be. FR has been infiltrated.
Used to be. Not much different from DU anymore.
Bears repeating.
Jacksonian obstinacy. Supreme confidence that even though they live 1200 miles inland and have never been outside the US they know WTF they're talking about.
Oh boy! They get the message. It was one of the ugliest debacles I can remember in quite a long time. Even by DC standards. It was reassuring what they said about the Democrats though. LOL
At least I know that you're smart enough to be offended but that does not change the fact that central planning has its appeal to you.
Hmm, no wonder there's only crickets. It's too much to ask from some conservatives to be expected to answer direct questions, use commom sense when confronted by sentimental issues, and to, in general, support commerce.
No, what's laughable is how often you come down on the side of the very people who disdain capitalism and then claim to be a conservative...okay, yes, conservative in its traditional sense.
Um, Jay? Didn't the money just flow to a British company from an Arab one?
The corollary would be, "Obviously from people who have never sat on a Lockheed-Martin assembly line reading the shipping label on the back of their F-16 Block 60."
You got me on that one, Joe. Would they not have turned a profit in the long haul from assuming the leases, or were they just doing this pro-bono?
That is fine in and of itself. But you (and 7 or 8 other securities traders here at FR) go way beyond that, don't you?
You actually look at your vocation as somehow of supreme importance, and a superior vantage point on the state of the country, economically and otherwise.
I have to tell you this: Your vocation is a uniquely narrow one. One that has long been recognized as essentially "amoral."
Patriotic positions, which you are right to affirm...and previously did as a younger man...don't come naturally to Wall Street. The Street often finds patriotism only as something of convenience, and when patriotism gets in the way of business (or of Wall Street's latest fad, not of Main Street) ...out-right inconvenience.
There is an element of temptation, of a spiritually corrupting influence not just latent in the trade, but more or less explicit. It can be successfully fought, but it takes an effort. They have to be "recalled to their right mind."
Think about the traders (money changers) and sellers of sacrifices in the Temple. By their lights, they were within their rights and were morally justified. After all: They had been authorized to be there by the authorities of the Temple, and they were providing a service to those trying to worship God who had travelled far. They made it convenient for them to simply buy a sacrifice for presentation to God at the altar.
But they were categorically wrong with the one who counted. By being right in the Temple itself, they cheapened and debased a true reverence for God.
Jesus was justifiably incensed at the money changers, and sellers who "made His Father's house a den of thieves." Hence his overturning the tables and chasing the sellers out with a switch in righteous wrath.
So also is national security today being betrayed by those whose measure of all things is mere money. Rome also found out that mere money could not protect it against the barbarians. Todays crowd of liberal Globalists are devolving the U.S. quite deliberately so as to try and make "a community of shared interests." A multipolar world, where a World Entity can take over the policing. Of course as the UN has shown...this is a completely unrealistic and dangerous-in-the-extreme liberal idealistic vision. It is attempting to put back together what God put asunder...and for good reason. Remember Babel.
Those who push for it will visit catastrophe on us all...we'll all of us suffer in short order after their precious World Order finally is proclaimed established. It will appear to work for a time "peace, peace...but there will be no peace."
BUMP!
This dust-up over the UAE was a good thing. If we had all instead taken the anti-anxiety pill that your druggist seems to have sold you on, we'd be sleep-walking further down the path.
The ARABS in the UAE, have some things they HAVE NOT acknowldged in this dispute -- their own past cupability. Their own support of terror, of Al Quedda, of terror states, their on official hatred Israel. Yes, since date xx/xx/xxxx, (whatever date that is, who knows) they have been our jolly good allies!
But that new buddy-buddy-ism doesn't explain why they haven't spoke humbly and contritely of their past misdeeds, and acknowledged the validity of those -- such as the sleeping drug-free -- who are rightfully leery of having ARAB scabarded swords laid so close to our bare breasts.
Let's just take you at your word.
Remember what the Communists always derisively called the liberals who went along with every jot and tittle of the program intended to bring about communism...but "weren't for communism"?
Liberals never ever saw any enemies on the Left.
Ditto you.
No, they would not have! Remember, Jay, those no-good Arabs were going to allow dirty bombs into our ports to destroy us. It was going to be worth the 6+ billion dollars just to see what it would do to our economy. This is precisely why the deal had to be killed, right, Jay?
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