Coorporate Greed

I’m a student of economics, so naturally I believe in things like a free market, big business and less government regulation, but I also have a heart and today I was very disheartened by what I heard in the news. I listened to two podcasts while I toiled away at my desk this afternoon, the first was by Amy Goodman at Democracy Now and the second by APM’s Marketplace.

Amy Goodman whom I greatly trust and respect as a reporter and long time host of Democracy Now, (a liberal radio news, tv and more recently podcast program if) was going through her daily spiel and I was listening in with one year and piddling in Photoshop with the other when a headline grabbed my attention. Goodman read a news brief about how Ethiopia was trying to go through the legal hoops to trademark certain kinds of coffee that they grow and export to countries including the US. Starbucks, a huge purchaser of Ethiopian coffee beans has been trying to stop them from doing such a thing. And I thought to myself, man way to kick the little guy when he’s down. A PR guy for Starbucks was quoted in the report as saying that the company didn’t think Ethiopia’s plan was the best for helping the country, but offered no other comments on the matter. Was I surprised by this whole ordeal? No, this is just the news like any other day, filled in with a slew of familiar topics; someone died in Iraq, road side bomb, and someone else died too, shooting or bombing or kidnapping or something, you can choose. There were a few the Republicans did this, the Democrats did that stories, a, the world is warming story, something about the housing market, exc., so you see news par usual.

So why am I commenting on such things? Because it’s this next story that really did it for me today: “Vulture Funds,” are companies like Nautical who bought the debt from other companies who loaned money to poor African companies. In Nautical’s case its Zambia where they bought millions of dollars in loans Zambia owed to financial services but were close to default because the country is nearly broke. The original financers like the country of Romania in once case, were willing to make Zambia pay back only a fraction of the loan as an act of international aid, but before the deal was finalized Nautical swept in and bought out the loan, then turned around and sewed Zambia for the entire loan amount plus interest. And what’s worse, and what the reporter for Democracy Now (not Goodman, she’s the host) kept pointing out is that these are legal issues that get decided in court. US court to be more precise, and apparently the President can simply block the suit and ensure that these poor countries get the aid intended for them. But he hasn’t. Funny given his recent (like in this very week recent) “commitment” to fight international poverty and give debt relief to the poor countries of the world. Here is the clincher: Paul Singer is George Bush’s biggest single campaign contributor, he is in charge of a Vulture Fund and works very hard to take this money from African countries.

Disgusted I was. Want to head the whole story? Download the Democracy Now podcast from itunes.

As a side note, I try to get my news from a variety of sources and yes I certainly believe that the media is slanted in all directions. I watch The O’Rilley factor on Fox News a few times a week, I also listen to the Democracy Now pod cast a few times per week. The main stays of my news information come from The New York Times (free website), MSNBC.com and also The Financial Times newspaper. I can see some bias in some of these sources and I try to bounce sources off of each other. I admit Democracy Now is left wing, and I don’t especially like that, I don’t like any agenda, but they do have damn fine reporting.