Roll forward 3+ decade, today in some ways the USA is literally becoming the 'Bottomless Basket', let's be politically correct and say "Basket Case". Here's an article from Houston Chronicle below......
(From US point of view, one could argue that the US's misguided foreign policy of the time was a catalyst in the violent birth of BD. Imagine if US would have supported Pakistan in restoring democracy by having Mujib's AL come to power, then would there be a "Bottomless Basket"? What a political spin on shifting the blame on BD, that had stemmed from a failed policy !!)
Happy Reading
Rana
ps: I strongly believe that the people of the US are the most resilent and resourceful in the world, and things will get better once we kick the incompetent rascals out of Washington..... And all this time I thought Hasina & Khaleda were incompetent!
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Welcome, USA, to the Third World — now enjoy!
It was a quick trip from superpower to basket case
DEAR United States, Welcome to the Third World! It's not every day that a superpower makes a bid to transform itself into a Third World nation, and we here at the World Bank and the International Monetary Fund want to be among the first to welcome
you to the community of states in desperate need of international
economic assistance. As you spiral into a catastrophic financial
meltdown, we are delighted to respond to your Treasury Department's
request that we undertake a joint stability assessment of your
financial sector. In these turbulent times, we can provide services
ranging from subsidized loans to expert advisers willing to perform an
emergency overhaul of your entire government.
As you know, some outside intervention in your economy is overdue. Last
week — even before Wall Street's latest collapse — 13 former finance
ministers convened at the University of Virginia and agreed that you
must fix your "broken financial system." Australia's Peter Costello
noted that lately you've been "exporting instability" in world
markets, and Yashwant Sinha, former finance minister of India,
concluded, "The time has come. The U.S. should accept some monitoring
by the IMF."
We hope you won't feel embarrassed as we assess the stability of your
economy and suggest needed changes. Remember, many other countries have
been in your shoes. We've bailed out the economies of Argentina,
Brazil, Indonesia and South Korea. But whether our work is in Sudan,
Bangladesh or now the United States, our experts are committed to
intervening in national economies with care and sensitivity.
We thus want to acknowledge the progress you have made in your
evolution from economic superpower to economic basket case. Normally,
such a process might take 100 years or more. With your oscillation
between free-market extremism and nationalization of private companies,
however, you have achieved, in a few short years, many of the key
hallmarks of Third World economies.
Your policies of irresponsible government deregulation in critical
sectors allowed you to develop an energy crisis, a housing crisis, a
credit crisis and a financial market crisis, all at once, and
accompanied (and partly caused) by impressive levels of corruption and
speculation. Meanwhile, those of your political leaders charged with
oversight were either napping or in bed with corporate lobbyists. Take John McCain, your Republican presidential nominee,
whose senior staff includes half a dozen prominent former lobbyists. As
he recently put it, "I was chairman of the (Senate) Commerce Committee
that oversights every part of the economy." No question about it: Your
leaders' failure to notice the damage done by irresponsible
deregulation was indeed an oversight of epic proportions.
Now you are facing the consequences. Income
inequality has increased, as the rich have gotten windfalls while the
middle class has seen incomes stagnate. Fewer and fewer of your
citizens have access to affordable housing, health care or security in
retirement. Even life expectancy has dropped. And when your economic
woes went from chronic to acute, you responded — like so many Third World
states have — with an extensive program of nationalizing private
companies and assets. Your mortgage giants Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac
are now state owned and controlled, and this week your reinsurance
giant AIG was effectively nationalized, with the Federal Reserve Board
seizing an 80 percent equity stake in the flailing company.
Some might deride this as socialism. But desperate times call for desperate measures.
Admittedly, your transition to Third World
status is far from over, and it won't be painless. At first, for
instance, you might find it hard to get used to the shantytowns that
will replace the exurban sprawl of McMansions that helped fuel the real
estate speculation bubble. But in time, such shantytowns will become
part of the landscape. Similarly, as unemployment rates continue to
rise, you initially will struggle to find a use for the expanding pool
of angry, jobless young men. But you gradually will realize that you
can recruit them to fight in a ceaseless round of armed conflicts, a
solution that has been used by many other Third World states before you. Indeed, with your wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, you are off to an excellent start.
Perhaps this letter comes as a surprise to you, and you feel you're not fully ready to join the Third World.
Don't let this feeling concern you. Although you might not have
realized it, you've been preparing for this moment for years. Brooks is
a professor at the Georgetown University Law Center. E-mail her at
rbrooks@latimescolumnists.com.
------------------------------------
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