Thanks to globalization, the collapsing U.S. financial system has sent Arab stock markets plunging in panic since the first domino fell on Sept. 15 with the bankruptcy of U.S. investment bank Lehman Brothers and the government rescue of insurance giant AIG.
Some of the oil-rich Gulf Arab central banks on Wednesday sought to calm market fears by pledging to inject cash to ease the liquidity problem in the banking sector that had spread from the Wall Street meltdown.
The assurances came after the United Arab Emirates' central bank on Monday decided to pump 50 billion dirhams ($13.6 billion) in emergency lending, in apparent reaction to a regional cash shortage.
Amid a global economic slowdown, the U.S. crisis has only exacerbated the receding economies of the Arab world, both rich and poor, analysts say, namely because these countries have linked their financial interests with those of the United States.
Head of the International Monetary Fund, Dominique Strauss-Kahn, told AFP this week that the world was "facing an unprecedented financial crisis," which he added stems "from the heart of the system" – the United States – and thus affecting the whole world simultaneously.
The ripple effects of the Wall Street meltdown reaching the region have led many Arab and analysts to demand detaching their countries' economic (and political) policies from the United States.
"We in Egypt are paying an exorbitant price today," said an editorial in the Egyptian Al-Ahram weekly. "It is time to free ourselves from the shackles of American economic imperialism. Small wonder states in Latin America, America's own backyard, are throwing off this yoke. The economic stranglehold of the U.S. has become an unbearable burden."
Critics of the widespread privatization that mushroomed across the Arab world in the past 10 years say that betting on the U.S.-led capitalist system is now proving to be a mistake, citing that President George W. Bush himself was now effectively nationalizing the financial sector by seeking to subsidize the collapsing American financial institutions.
Bush, in an address to the United States on Wednesday, appealed for congressional support for his administration's $700 billion proposal to buy up troubled mortgage assets. He said the entire American economy was "in danger" and warned that "America could slip into financial panic."
For many critics in this part of the world, those words sounded awfully close to an admission to the failure of free-market capitalism, which the United States had easily exported to the majority of Arab countries.
Bloggers are gloating on Internet forums that the financial crunch in the United States was the "beginning of the fall of the U.S. Empire," saying that America was now paying dearly for its foreign policies in the Arab and Muslim countries.
They say this is the punishment for the trillions of dollars spent on the "war on terror," particularly the wars on Iraq and Afghanistan.
They also criticized Arab regimes for jumping on the American political and economic bandwagon; for putting all their eggs in the American basket and risking their countries' economic interests.
No comments:
Post a Comment