The cold eye of the investor

[riverdeep]

While perusing through different economic sites looking for POV's on the latest economic downturn, I came across a site that made me stop in my tracks. In a very casual way, one speculator who's big on metals talks about Africa and it's mineral resources:

"I don't limit myself to the pretty spots. Wanderlust, together with my long-held belief that before you can really understand a resource investment you should put your boots on the ground, has led me to a fair percentage of the world's hell holes. Social, economic and political backwardness can actually be a plus for mineral and energy exploration companies looking for untapped resources. Rough conditions scare off most of the potential competition, which keeps prospective areas unexplored and opportunities cheap. And the more primitive a place is, the better your chance of going about your business without being swarmed by self-righteous NGOs and nutbar environmentalists at every turn." -The Casey Files

http://www.safehaven.com/article-7482.htm

There you have it. Human misery and unfettered potential for environmental recklessness as a boon to the investor class. Describes how this administration views Iraq and it's brutal conditions as nothing more than externalities to be managed, on it's way to oil acquisition and geo-strategic positioning rather than something repellent to the very core.

[hang a left]

1. I doubt that he has discovered areas that haven't already

been exploited or are about to be. Sounds like a guy looking for investors.

Disgusting it is. Innovative he is not.

[Greyhound]

2. We can look forward to the day when we read the gut wrenching tale

of his terrible ending in some "hell hole" in the All New, Super Spectacular, Full Color, Wall Street JournalDon't miss today's page 3 girl. A NewsCorp_® Publication

[fasttense]

3. Oh my, he let slip the real reason for the push for "free trade" and globalization.

"Social, economic and political backwardness can actually be a plus for mineral and energy exploration companies looking for untapped resources."

This is why globalization does not raise the standard of living in any country.

"Rough conditions scare off most of the potential competition, which keeps prospective areas unexplored and opportunities cheap."

Can you say CHEAP LABOR?

"And the more primitive a place is, the better your chance of going about your business without being swarmed by self-righteous NGOs and nutbar environmentalists at every turn."

Since the US government does not enforce any environmental, safety and labor requirements in their weakly worded trade treaties, American corporations don't have to play by the same rules in foreign countries that they would have to play by in the US.

[riverdeep]

8. I don't believe globalization HAS to be awful

Not inherently. With globalization in the most neutral sense, we can theoretically trade in ways that are most conducive to each other, and both can benefit. We can have minerals for example, needed for the very computers we are using, extracted by more enviromentally sound methods by properly compensated workers whose welfare isn't jeapordized by health risks. Through exposure to us, they can get access to medicines that might otherwise cause injury or death. But the way it's set up by corporatists, human, plant and animal life is viewed strictly in the prism of maximum profit. Corporate charters demand it.

[riverdeep]

9. Piggy-backing on this-

globalization is here, it's not going away. The problem is while money and business interests can move around the globe easily, labor and the land they live on can't. The business interests pit one group against the other, ('those damn Chinese'-as if the average Chinese has any choice in the matter) and start a war to the bottom. Globalization of the workforce is needed to counterbalance the transnational, non-local nature of modern business.

[annabanana]

4. And there it is.

Bald and unclothed. This is the true heart and soul of unregulated capitaliam and the utopia for the "free market radicals" that infest our halls of finance.

[riverdeep]

6. Yeah, that's what struck me too

It's all so nonchalant. Like, of course we look at this way, what's wrong? This helps to explain why we don't 'liberate' all regions that have horrible dictators oppressing their people (the first of twenty or so reasons for invading Iraq), just the ones that may benefit us economically by doing so.

[flashl]

5. Isn't there TOO MUCH dignity given to this predator calling it an investor? n/t

[JNelson6563]

7. The misery of others has long been profitable.

and will forever be.

Julie