Wanna Buy a Port? Welcome to American capitalism (American Prospect)

[kpete]

Wanna Buy a Port?
Welcome to American capitalism in the age of globalization.
By Harold Meyerson
Web Exclusive: 02.23.06


We're selling our harbors to an Arab government. Our biggest Internet companies are complicit in the Chinese government's censorship of information and suppression of dissidents. Welcome to American capitalism in the age of globalization.

Here the market rules. National security and freedom of speech are all well and good, but they are distinctly secondary concerns when they bump up against our highest national purpose, which is maximizing shareholder value.

This is a uniquely American value. Other nations designate certain industries as too strategic to ship abroad or sell to foreign interests. Only in the United States is the corporation answerable only to its shareholders -- not to its employees, its host communities, its home nation.

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What's clear is that neither the task of building democratic nations around the world nor ensuring secure ports and cities here at home is our primary national purpose. Our mission is to maximize shareholder value. Which, by the measure of our strategic interests and our historical ideals, amounts to selling America short.

http://www.prospect.org/web/page.ww?section=root&name=ViewWeb&articleId=11201

[Double T]

1. America has become the whore of the world............

you can have anything you want if you're willing to pay the price.