Last week brought the confident assertion of Chinese Prime Minister Wen Jia Bao that this will be the New Asian Century.Coming as it did after Wen’s successful visit to India, it can be taken as the sign that the two Asian giants have decided to tell the hegemonists in our White House that their fifteen minutes are over.
Another sign of things to come was contained in the news that GM now wants to buy out nearly 130,000 workers’ contracts in an effort to stave off bankruptcy.That offer essentially says that GM wants to downsize in a hurry so that it will not have to shoulder the legacy costs of all its retirees.Those legacy costs ( retirement and health care benefits) will then be passed on to the Pension Benefit Guaranty Corporation, a tax payer supported institution. That would set the stage for a vulture capitalist to pick GM apart and sell it to the highest bidder.The end of an American era is getting closer.
This same story will be repeated in the political arena where the military misadventures of Bush and his satraps are adding up a huge bill that is fast becoming unsustainable just like GM’s business model.
The blindness of GM in the face of the onslaught of the foreign carmakers has found a perfect counterpart in our militaris madmen who have defrauded and denuded a perfectly good country and its economy, raising bogeymen time and time again to entrench themselves in power.Like the poor workers of GM, the entire country is now at the mercy of men who have mismanaged the country for decades.All our future is now mortgaged to the hilt and the future of our children has been exported out.
It did not have to be this way.For GM and America,Karma is turning out to be a bitch indeed.