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Thursday, March 2, 2006

I Must Be Ignorant

I'm sorry. I guess don't have a clue how things work in international circles.

Take this link for instance where it states:

The sides have agreed to a fresh 45-day review but DP World has pledged to complete the deal, subject to a ruling in the High Court in London today. "It has certainly reinforced the perception here that Arab investors can be singled out," said Steve Brice, head of Middle East research at Standard Chartered bank in Dubai.

Ironically, the comments came as US commerce secretary Carlos Gutierrez traveled to Saudi Arabia to urge the country to be more welcoming to foreign investment. The High Court is expected to rule on whether to allow the scheme of arrangement that will seal the $6.8bn merger, after hearing arguments from Eller & Co, a Miami joint venture partner of P&O which claims the deal will adversely affect its business.

My utter confusion is about the "High Court" mentioned in the article. What in the world does this "High Court" have to do with the issue of a Dubai company taking control of our ports? Are we now subject to a "High Court" located in London? I sure don't know. If not, why is the "High Court" then wasting it's time hearing and ruling on the issue?

If any of our readers can enlighten me, I sure would appreciate it.

The whole issue fails to answer the question of why we need any foreign country managing anything in America. Why is it that we can't manage our ports ourselves? It seems that the concept of globalization means America gives America away to any and every other nation as though there were a force at work that is determined to reduce America to third world status. Could it be that this "force" is responsible for our manufacturing and services jobs being out-sourced which is essentially gutting America?

I believe the initial warning shot was fired over the bow of the USS America when China tried to buy one of our oil companies. That effort was thwarted by congress as a non-starter. But the rest of the world is holding hundreds of billions of our dollars and rather than hold them in reserve (while they continually lose value) they want to invest them in American assets. Now an Arab country is attempting to convert their dollar holdings into U.S. port ownership.

From the link above,

The US could lose a host of much-needed inward investment as foreign countries disturbed by the row over the control of US ports look elsewhere to invest money

Ah, it looks like the Bush administration realizes that it has to cave in to Dubai or there will be a price to be paid. After all, we can't expect foreign countries to accept our fiat dollars if they can't use them to conduct business with us now can we? Life was much better when the foreign countries simply invested their dollars in U.S. treasury bills to finance our debt but it seams that now they want hard assets for their dollars rather than U.S. debt.

There's no doubt in my mind that this deal will go through. It has to. For it to do otherwise would put into question the full faith and credit of the U.S. dollar and you can be sure Bush has been made aware of this.