United Arab Emirates bail out Citigroup with $7.5 billion

One can of course look at this bailout by the United Arab Emirates in xenophobic terms. We can moan about the way American financial institutions are being bought over by foreigners. But having so whole heartedly embraced the capitalist system, Americans cannot have the cake and eat it too. Financial clout knows no artificial boundaries. It will flow over national boundaries and geographical obstacles and take control over assets if the custodians of the banks or ports or whatever don’t do their job well.That is what capitalism is all about. Americans chose the system and all the ills that go with it because the going was good till the hens came home to roost.

Americans had to have two cars in a family and even with all the brouhaha about fuel consumption,SUVs are the most advertised and wanted vehicles on the road. Like drug addicts,we had to get the fuel at any cost and so we boosted the income of the oil producing nations, just like the drug barons have been drowning in an avalanche of dollars provided by the drug addicts of our country. So who is to blame? We provided the buying power to the Arabs in the first place and then to cry about their financial clout is ludicrous.

We made our economy into a service economy – providing pizzas became more important than running efficient industries. Oh let the Chinese and the Indians do the hard work – we need our pizza parlors became the watch word. And as to industries, the only thing we thought important was to invest in arms development and for that even we put up pavilions in the Dubai Air show to make the Arabs buy our killing machines. A country which so single mindedly took the wrong turns in its financial and economic planning cannot now cry over what is happening. And right around the corner is the specter we should all be fearful about – the day the oil producers start selling their oil in Euros or a basket of currencies. Then these bail outs happening now would look like kindergarten stuff.