Tuesday, July 1, 2014

How American bullying alienates allies and invites blowback

The Paul Singer v Argentina case is much in the news these days.

Singer runs Elliot Capital, the hedge fund spear-heading the drive to to get Argentina to pay out face value plus interest on the government bonds they bought for pennies on the dollar after the Argentina default of 2001.

Singer's strategy has been to use the US legal system to violate Argentine sovereignty, and thus far the US legal system has been all too happy to play along.

"This is how a hedge funder brings an entire country to its knees" gloats the headline at Business Insider. 

What's wrong with that picture?

How is it acceptable for an American vulture fund to bring an entire economy to its knees? Singer brings nothing to the economy aside from opportunistic exploitation of the misfortune of others. His vulture fund doesn't further the common good, doesn't create jobs, does nothing aside from enrich a few already-rich people by punishing an entire society.

Is this what America is about on the world stage today?

Here's another gloating headline about the American judicial system screwing over BNP Paribas to the tune of nine billions. The French bank is guilty of violating US sanctions against Iran, Sudan, and Cuba.

What up here? It's a FRENCH bank. What should be on trial is the legality and morality of US sanctions on Iran, Sudan, and Cuba, not a foreign bank that helps those countries get around the illegal American sanctions.

But, America gets away with this bullying because it can!

These are manifestations of an American superiority/American exceptionalism complex that will eventually come back to bite America hard.

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