Iraqi Businessmen Now Face Competition

[Tom Yossarian Joad]

http://www.abcnews.go.com/wire/World/ap20031203_299.html

BAGHDAD, Iraq Dec. 3 — Pity the Iraqi businessman. After more than 40 years languishing in a state-run command economy, Iraqi entrepreneurs who've finally won the freedom to start businesses now face a new threat: competition, especially from well-heeled foreigners given virtually unrestricted access to the Iraqi market.
"Most Iraqi investors aren't millionaires," said Ihsan al-Titenchi, membership director of the Iraqi-American Chamber of Commerce and Industry. "They want to know what's going to happen to them. Are they going to stay in business? Or is someone from the outside going to arrive and put them out of business?"

The anxiety stems from an October law that turned Iraq's socialist system into the most open economy in the Arab world, permitting 100 percent foreign ownership of Iraqi businesses.

The law, signed by the Iraqi Governing Council and U.S. administrator L. Paul Bremer, banishes most restrictions on trade, capital flows and foreign investment. It allows, for instance, foreign banks to open branches and buy Iraqi banks. It slashes import tariffs to five percent.

<snip>

Capitalism without morals. I guess they'll get their Walmart next week and America can create another nation of wage slaves.

[w13rd0]

1. Great...

...the Bush administration is doing to the Iraqi economy what they did at home, making the world safe for old wealthy white men to move hq and jobs overseas and issue fat pork graft to their cronies. Welcome to Democracy, Bush style...

[La_Serpiente]

2. These multi-national companies

are just an extension of the American empire. They are literally creating colonies for the US.

[Mika]

4. Huh?

"These multi-national companies are just an extension of the American empire. They are literally creating colonies for the US."



These multi national companies aren't creating colonies for the US.

They are creating slave colonies for themselves (beholden to no state). Multinationals are the empire.

[La_Serpiente]

5. I don't know

Nah, I get where you are coming from. Yeah, they are serving their own selfish interests, but they are also working hand in hand with BushCo

[htuttle]

6. The relationship between them, however,...

...is that Bush is their employee, not the other way around. The US government is just another tool in the toolbox for many of these multinationals.

Hell, my Poli-Sci professor predicted the eventual replacement of the Nation-State with the multinational corporation 20 years ago. He was right.

[54anickel]

3. "Law"? This is not a legitimate gov't to be creating Laws!

If they ever get their own gov't, these laws will be torn to shreds. If Bremer continues to write laws that are in the best interest of corporations instead of the Iraqis, he is practically guaranteeing a civil war down the road.
Id-gits!

[Tom Yossarian Joad]

7. Hear Limbaugh's obscene take on this story (link) Windows Media Player

http://mfile.akamai.com/5020/wma/rushlimb.download.akamai.com/5020/clips/03/12/120303_9_ap.asx

(keep a barf bag handy)