Global Goals: Bailouts, Bosnia, Lies, and Hot Air
Congress Should Just Say No to IMF Funding
While most Americans were celebrating Christmas
and exchanging gifts with family members, Secretary
of the Treasury Robert Rubin spent Christmas Eve at
the Federal Reserve Bank of New York conniving to
force the American taxpayers to give gifts of unprecedented magnitude to the big U.S. banks that made
foolish loans to corrupt Asian regimes. It is now
obvious that those who mouth the mantra "free trade"
expect the rest of us to save them from the free market.
Closeted with Rubin at this emergency holiday
gathering were the heads of Citicorp, Chase Manhattan,
J.P. Morgan, BankAmerica, Bankers Trust, and Bank of
New York. These big banks would take a bath if Korea
defaulted, and they expect Rubin to devise a plan to
save them from the consequences of their bad investments and loans.
Only a few weeks ago, Bill Clinton was reassuring
us that the Asian financial flu was causing just a "few
little glitches on the road," and Rubin was saying it
would be a "moral hazard" to ride to the rescue of
South Korea. At most, he said, Korea would need
"only" $5 billion from us as a "second line of defense."
Rubin now admits that his strategy for containing
the Asian flu has failed. The South Korean won has
continued to devalue (plunging 40% in one week) and
money continues to flow out of the country.
The Clinton Administration has agreed to lend $1.7
billion to South Korea by the second week of January
from the Emergency Stabilization Fund. That's a little-known currency reserve fund created in the 1930s to
support the American dollar.
Rubin claims that the Administration does not need
to get Congressional approval to raid this fund. But
since this fund was created to support the American
dollar, Congress should immediately act to prevent its
misuse to prop up the Korean won.
This imminent transfer of $1.7 billion is only the tip
of the iceberg. After all, his friends at Citicorp are on
the hook for $60 billion in Asian loans, Chase
Manhattan for $32 billion, J.P. Morgan for $23 billion,
and BankAmerica for $16 billion. Something has to be
done, and fast!
In the 1990s, U.S. investors poured hundreds of
billions of dollars into Asia in the form of direct investments, building factories to hire cheap local labor, bank
loans, bonds, and investments in local stock markets.
U.S. money managers were so heady with faith in the
"Asian miracle" that they closed their eyes to risk and
bought Asian bonds paying interest rates only about
one percentage point higher than U.S. Treasuries!
The middleman that conceals the scope of U.S.
foreign aid is the International Monetary Fund (IMF),
a bank account into which Congress puts U.S. money
that is given away by a European bureaucrat named
Michel Camdessus. He has already doled out $100
billion for the Asian crisis, and now is asking Congress
for $28.8 billion to "replenish" the IMF.
If bailouts solved anything, the IMF bailout of
Thailand would have stopped the Asian flu months ago.
IMF rescue attempts have even become part of the
problem because they reward stupidity, socialism, and
cronyism.
Rubin claims that the 1994 Mexican bailout, which
aroused stormy public criticism, was successful because
Mexico paid back the loan. But Mexico put up its oil
production as collateral for the U.S. loan, while South
Korea is putting up no collateral whatsoever.
Secondly, the bailout was disastrous to Mexico.
The peso devaluation forced a 50% pay cut on Mexican
workers, the rising middle class was virtually wiped
out, and the country is plagued with new political
instability.
Administration officials said they are "not concerned about repayment" because the South Koreans
like us and are dependent on our keeping our 35,000
troops there. But they may not be so friendly after they
realize that the IMF handouts come with regulations
that will impose real economic hardship on average
Koreans while protecting the rich U.S. and Korean
bankers and investors.
Rubin obviously planned his announcement while
all Congressmen were away from Washington and their
offices closed for the holidays. When Republicans
return in January, they should explode in outrage and
"just say no" to all bailouts, both direct and through the
IMF.
When Administration spokesmen recite the mantra
"free trade," our response should be: We're for the free
market. Events have now proved that "free trade" is a
racket that forces the taxpayers to protect the big boys
from the risks of the free market.
Asian economies are ruled by anti-free-market
cliques that give the commercial goodies, such as loans,
investments, contracts and favorable terms, to their
political pals. "Free trade" means subsidizing the trade
of wealthy U.S. banks and corporations with regimes
that are built on Communism, slavery, despotism,
religious persecution, theft, bribery and corruption, and
have no intention of permitting commercial, political or
religious freedom.
No Exit from Bosnia
President George Bush reneged on the most famous
campaign pledge of modern times ("No new taxes; read
my lips") after his adviser Richard Darman told him,
"Nobody believed that anyway." Bush discovered that,
on the contrary, people did believe him and were angry
enough about his betrayal to defeat him for reelection
in 1992.
Bill Clinton promised that he would have American
troops out of Bosnia by the end of 1996, and that the
mission would be "precisely defined with clear, realistic goals" that could be achieved within the year. He
reneged on that promise only days after he was reelected in November.
Then he made another promise that our troops
would come home by July 1998. On December 18,
1997 he reneged on that promise and called for an
open-ended commitment to keep our troops in Bosnia.
Clinton apparently figured that nobody believed
him anyway and that he could get by with a sort of an
apology during the Christmas holidays. He said he was
"wrong about the timetable." All evidence indicates
that his "timetable" statement was not an apology but
a fresh deception. He wasn't just "wrong" about his
timetable; he lied about the timetable in order to
conceal his real intention to keep American troops
indefinitely in Bosnia.
The announcement in December 1997 that State
Department experts had just discovered that, if we pull
our troops out of Bosnia, the locals will resume fighting, is black comedy. Of course, they'll resume fighting, and everyone with common sense has known this
all along.
The Serbs, the Croats, and the Muslims don't like
each other, and they are not willing to live under the
untenable Dayton accord forced on them by Clinton.
"Peace" exists in Bosnia today only because U.S.
troops are playing policemen, social workers, and (to
quote Rush Limbaugh) providing "meals on wheels."
The whole idea of using American fighting troops
to build a multiethnic Bosnian democracy sounds like
a theory hatched in academia by the high priests of
multiculturalism and diversity. History tells us that
prolonged bloody ethnic fighting ends only in dictatorship or partition.
The Bosnian situation today is fundamentally no
different from what it was before we spent $8 billion
supporting American troops there. Bosnia is not a
nation; it is an artificial "made in America" police state.
The goal of Clinton's "peacekeeping" expedition is
not peace (except as enforced by U.S. troops). The goal
is not "nation-building" because there is no nation to
build. Clinton has no exit strategy for Bosnia because
he has no plans to exit. At his 94-minute news conference on December 18, Clinton was asked a question
about his "open-ended U.S military commitment to
Bosnia." He declined to assure us that U.S. troops will
be out even by the time he leaves office three years
from now.
Clinton's goal is permanent intervention in foreign
conflicts, using NATO as the mechanism to preempt
Congress. Why? Because Clinton and his advisers all
believe in U.S. interventionism in foreign, particularly
European, conflicts as a permanent feature of U.S.
policy. They call this "showing leadership."
If the Senate is so foolhardy as to ratify the upcoming NATO Expansion Treaty, we will have one
"Bosnia" after another, and it will be an economic as
well as a military drain on U.S. resources. Clinton's
advisers are quite frank in acknowledging this.
Ever since the Berlin Wall came down, ending the
threat that the old Soviet Union would invade Western
Europe, NATO has been a bureaucracy in search of a
mission. Those who believe in U.S. interventionism as
the indicia of "leadership" have been desperate to find
a rationale to keep American troops in Europe.
In a May 20, 1997 speech to the Atlantic Council,
Clinton's personal foreign policy and Rhodes scholar
roommate Strobe Talbott said: "NATO today doesn't
need an enemy. What it needs is an enduring purpose,
and that it has; namely, to undergird trans-Atlantic
security, . . . to maintain the collective will and capacity
to meet new threats."
Describing his plan to bleed American taxpayers in
behalf of his global goals, Talbott added, "We want to
do for the Central and East Europeans what Dean
Acheson and George Marshall's generation did for
Western Europe." Echoing Talbott's enthusiasm for a
multi-billion-dollar "Marshall Plan" for Eastern Europe, Secretary of State Madeleine Albright told NBC's
Meet the Press on January 26, 1997, "We have to do for
Eastern Europe what we did for Western Europe."
Who are "we"? The American people never voted
to spend our money that way. But the democratic
process doesn't matter to Albright, who Time magazine
reported has a "passion for American activism."
On December 18, Clinton sanctimoniously declined
to set a new deadline and he laid down "benchmarks"
by which he will decide when U.S. troops can come
home. He said that U.S. troops will stay in Bosnia until
there is a "self-sustaining, secure environment" and its
media are free from "hate and venom."
Those are code words for never! Clinton doesn't
even think the U.S. media are free from hate; his
spokesmen are constantly whining on television that the
United States is plagued by "hate radio."
Freedom to Lie on Labels?
We're learning more every month about what "free
trade" really means. Not only does it mean NAFTA,
stunning defeats in disputes before the World Trade
Organization (too bad for Eastman Kodak, which lost
its effort to open up the Japanese market and has
announced layoffs of 16,000 employees), and billion-dollar bailouts of corrupt Asian regimes, but now we
find that free-trade proponents want freedom to lie to
American consumers.
The advocates of now-we-all-live-in-a-global-economy cooked up a sneaky plan for the Federal Trade
Commission (FTC) to change its rules so that products
could display the label "Made in U.S.A." even when
that label is a lie because up to 25% of the product is
not made in the U.S.A.
The standard for the last half century has required
a product to be "all or virtually all" made in the U.S.,
with only "negligible" foreign content, in order to carry
the coveted "Made in U.S.A." label. This standard has
been interpreted to mean 98% of the merchandise's
value.
The regulatory legerdemain was to be accomplished
by a change published in the May 5, 1997 Federal
Register. However, some people actually read the 16
pages of fine print and, after the firestorm subsided, the
FTC backed down and abandoned its proposal.
Nobody was threatening any business's right to sell
products that are 25%, or even 100%, foreign made or
containing foreign content, or to charge any price the
seller wishes. The issue was over allowing businesses
to lie about their products, label them falsely, and
deceive their customers about where the merchandise
comes from. This was wholly a truth-in-labeling issue.
As Sen. Fritz Hollings (D-SC) said: "Polluting the
'Made in U.S.A.' label with non-American products
makes about as much sense as calling polyester a
natural fiber."
The FTC, which was "surprised" at the fierce
opposition to the change, didn't understand that this
was an honesty issue. Jodie Bernstein, director of the
FTC Bureau of Consumer Protection who wrote the
proposed change, described it as "a complicated issue"
and whined that "I thought we came up with something
very reasonable." Wouldn't you think that protecting
consumers against false labeling would be a priority for
the Bureau of Consumer Protection? But no apologies
were forthcoming; like many current politicians, Ms.
Bernstein pleaded the excuse of style rather than
substance: "We just didn't communicate the proposal
well enough."
What's so fascinating is not only that the grassroots
won an upset victory over the bureaucrats, but the way
this regulatory war was reported by the newspapers that
always line up on the side of free trade and the interests
of global economy. The news stories were exemplars
of obfuscation.
Those who opposed the change were branded as
"emotional" and put down for supporting a "half-century-old standard," a "World War II-era standard."
In touchy-feely words, we were admonished that it's
"time to update the standard," to "relax the standard,"
to give the economy "more flexible standards" and
"more leniency."
The New York Times admitted that "The idea of
changing it grew out of a recognition of America's
place in an increasingly global marketplace, and a
growing sophistication among consumers, who realize
that fewer and fewer goods are made within a single
country." That non sequitur is no justification for lying
to the American consumers. Our "sophisticated"
American consumers should be allowed to decide for
themselves if they prefer to buy products made in the
U.S.A., and if they care whether or not a product has
foreign content. It is possible that the "Made in
U.S.A." label is even more valuable today than it was
50 years ago.
The proposed FTC change was defended as an
"effort to recognize the reality of American commerce
in the global bazaar." Contrariwise, it was an effort to
conceal the reality that multinationals want to sell low-priced foreign goods marketed under a false U.S. label.
The FTC was unable or unwilling to estimate how
much of our economy would be affected by its proposed ruling, but it seems clear that this was another
issue that divides the multinationals, who make extensive use of cheap foreign labor, against smaller,
American-owned businesses. The successful Made in
U.S.A. Coalition included agriculture associations,
small businesses, consumer advocates, and grassroots
Americans.
Rep. Bob Franks (R-NJ), who lined up 150 Republicans and Democrats to sign a House resolution
opposing the change, said, "The agency charged with
upholding truth in advertising is attempting to pull a
fast one on America's consumers." But truth won out,
and the FTC had to bugle retreat.
Global Warming = Hot Air
It's becoming more obvious every day that the
Climate Change/Global Warming Treaty produced in
Kyoto, Japan in December 1997 should be called the
Hot Air Treaty. The only warming we are experiencing is the hot air manufactured by politicians who seek
higher taxes and more regulations, wacko environmentalists who want to make humans serve the Earth
instead of vice versa, and envious Third World regimes
that seek to transfer U.S. wealth to themselves.
This Hot Air Treaty would legally bind us to reduce
our energy emissions to 7% below our 1990 levels with
a deadline of 2008 to 2012. This would reduce our
gross domestic product by $200 billion annually, cost
us more than a million jobs, and cause massive disruption in the American economy.
These drastic cutbacks would be enforced by the
typical liberal "solutions": taxes and regulations. The
Federal Government would impose a massive energy
tax that would drive up the cost of home heating and
electricity by 30 to 40 percent, put an additional tax of
at least 60 cents on every gallon of gasoline, and
drastically reduce our standard of living. Every product
produced with the use of energy, including food, would
increase in price, and major industries (such as paper,
steel, petroleum refining, chemicals, aluminum, and
cement) would be crippled. The average family would
pay $1600 to $4000 per year in increased energy costs.
The rationale behind this treaty is the claim that
America's high standard of living, based on our large
consumption of energy produced by burning oil, gas
and coal, causes carbon dioxide emissions, which in
turn produce a worrisome warming of the global
atmosphere called the greenhouse effect. The evidence
to support this theory is so inconclusive and contradictory that it cannot be dignified by the term science.
Clinton's predictions of global warming rely on a
1996 United Nations report. But before releasing it, the
UN bureaucrats deleted two key paragraphs written by
the scientists who made the analysis. The omitted
passages, which refute the global warming thesis, state:
(1) "None of the studies cited above has shown clear
evidence that we can attribute the observed climate
changes to increases in greenhouse gases," and (2) "No
study to date has positively attributed all or part of the
climate change to man-made causes."
The only thing that we know for sure is that temperature fluctuations occur. Many observers think that
global warming, if indeed it is taking place, would be a
good thing and would generate net benefits and savings
to the United States.
Science Times suggests that, if our planet is heating
up, the cause may be the sun, over which we have no
control. Almost all the demonstrable global warming
occurred before 1940, and so it can't be blamed on the
widespread use of the automobile.
The Illinois State Climatologist Office released a
report on October 22, 1997 stating that projections from
several new international climate models indicate that
parts of the United States will "cool by several degrees
Fahrenheit through the year 2050." This report states
that current climate models are now "more realistic"
and predict "cooler, wetter weather for the central
United States rather than the warmer and drier predictions of earlier models."
The Hot Air Treaty is manifestly unfair to the
United States because Third World nations, including
Mexico, China, Indonesia, India, Brazil, and 120 other
countries absolutely refused to accept any emissions
restrictions whatsoever. That would accelerate the
flight of U.S. industries and jobs to those countries.
Like all Clinton's other treaties, the Hot Air Treaty
would create a new global agency to deal with "non-compliance," and the upcoming conference in Buenos
Aires, Argentina in November 1998 will work out the
details. This means rationing our energy through
global governance.
The Clinton Administration is attempting to wiggle
out the "box" it has put itself into by floating two
"options." One option is "emissions trading," i.e., a
plan to allow industries that find the emissions limits
prohibitively expensive to buy emission permits from
the Third World. That's just a devious type of foreign
giveaway and would redistribute U.S. wealth to other
countries. Another option is to force U.S. taxpayers to
finance exotic alternative energy sources such as solar
and wind energy, and automobiles that run 70 miles to
the gallon. Those are just more expensive government
boondoggles.
Clinton can't control global climate any more than
King Canute could hold back the tides. But the Hot Air
Treaty can change the temperature in your home if you
can't afford the high energy taxes to keep it warm in the
winter and cool in the summer.
The Kyoto Conference was partially planned to
enhance Al Gore's candidacy for President, since the
wacko environmentalists are one of his major constituencies. Now that Americans are beginning to see the
fakery of the alleged "science" about global warming
and the total unfairness of the treaty, Clinton says he
won't submit the treaty to the Senate this year.
But look out! Clinton will probably follow the
pattern of his other global initiatives by attempting to
implement the unratified treaty anyway through his
Council on Sustainable Development.
Tell your U.S. Senators: Stop Global Whining and
Vote No on the Hot Air Treaty. Kyoto is a No-No.
A "must see": Eagle Forum's video Global Governance.
$19.95 + $3 shipping from Eagle Forum.
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