America's Role in Exacerbating the Economic Crisis

U.S. policy would contribute to the support of the economy if it were not based on partisan interests, as has been the case with the Bush administration. This administration has participated in exacerbating the economic crisis witnessed by the world. Having come at the same time as the U.S. presidential election, the Republicans, with intentional maliciousness, staged a fraudulent attempt to save the financial institutions and industrial companies from collapse at a critical time for both parties’ candidates.

Clear and unequivocal evidence of this can be found in President Bush’s and Treasury Secretary Paulson’s abandonment of the decision to save the U.S. economy from further landslides after a Democrat was elected president. Perhaps the objective has been to place obstacles in President Obama’s path, complicating his economic duty, and thus achieving the Republicans’ goal of placing political pressure on the Democratic president and his Democratic majority party in Congress, as they have been for a long time.

The Republicans are following their usual path of political scandals, like Watergate and the Iran-Contra affair, that have shaken Republican presidents like Richard Nixon and Ronald Reagan for the past three decades. But America copes with its consequences by including its friends. No sooner had the economic disaster swept the world into a recession than another scandal had been added to the list of Republican scandals. It’s the result of an unproductive policy the world harvested from the Republicans’ poor management of the U.S. economy, to the point that they bankrupt the world economy and thrust it into a darkness whose size and scope is known only to God.

Greed, injustice, tyranny and hegemony over the wealth of nations are among the causes of the economic crisis. It derived wars that drained the U.S. economy, followed by other directly or indirectly related economies.

We have noticed the political maneuvering among the Republicans and the Democrats around the issue of saving the three sisters of the auto industry: General Motors, Ford and Chrysler. At the beginning, we saw the resolve of the U.S. government in saving the three companies. But things changed after the Democrats’ victory upon their sweeping win of the presidency and the Senate. The Democrats are also playing politics because they do not want to save the auto industry during the remainder of the Bush administration so that Obama would be responsible for the rescue and thus guaranteed credit for bringing political balance during his first quarter of his presidency. They voted to delay the rescue operation, which would distribute $25 billion among the three companies facing bankruptcy after Congress was provided a clear plan of action. Despite the demand for a quick rescue from the CEOs of the three automakers to save them, it fell on deaf ears in the White House and Congress for political reasons.

The new president will have a difficult economic task ready to test him. I anticipate that the Dow Jones and the Nasdaq will testify to a marked improvement, however slight, during the first quarter of Obama’s presidency. Obama will seek to restore confidence in the U.S. economy by focusing on the internal affairs of the U.S., unlike President Bush, who flooded the United States in problems that ignited a volcano of hatred against them in the world.

Some economic analysts close to political and economic decision-makers in Washington say that the U.S. government is trying to save the auto industry on behalf of the Gulf oil countries on the basis that this industry depends on oil and its bankruptcy would mean a significant setback and decline in the revenues of oil states. This convincing argument is exploited by politicians in the White House and the U.S. Congress in order to pressure the oil-producing countries to save the three auto companies from bankruptcy.

Perhaps they are succeeding in pressuring Gulf oil countries to obtain financial help not in the form of loans but help to prevent the bankruptcy of the auto industry, as if to say: help the auto industry, it will help you sell your oil. This American desire is not circulated publicly in the corridors of the White House, Congress, political institutions or the media in Washington so Americans acquire it quietly without fuss. However, we understand what is going on in Washington with the U.S. government’s procrastination of rescuing the three automakers that suffered significant problems.

A response to the demands of U.S. politicians will create a precedent for saving the U.S. economy at the expense of the oil countries, which have not failed to do whatever necessary to maintain stability in the oil market due to its significant role in the growth of the world economy, particularly the U.S. economy. Unbalanced U.S. policy contributed to its economy’s decline and its arrival at this troubling situation, which weakened Americans’ and others’ confidence in the U.S. economy, the financial markets on Wall Street and the Nasdaq.