Whenever I travel outside the U.S. I am always amazed at what an education it is for me on how the rest of the world perceives the United States. Sometimes the perception is dead on, other times it is so far removed reality its frightening.  I recently came across an article that is a Pakistani Perspective of what is happening with the U.S. economy…

World Economic Crisis. A Pakistani Prespective.

Monday, October 13 2008 @ 11:18 PM GMT+6

Contributed by: karachiwala

I cannot forget the day when my cousin was leaving for United Kingdom (read England) almost 2 decades back. She was flying British Airways. I could not have been more proud as a child. Flying British Airways was the absolute experience. Impeccable British services and a symbol of Life style that only few were able to enjoy. British Airways was benchmark.

As for myself i had failed to see an aircraft up close and person for many years after that, let alone had the opportunity to be in one.

Many many years after that when air travel was comoditized and i was working in United States i got a call from a friend who was on forced leave at KPMG and was in Pakistan. He had suddenly been called to the USA and was arriving the next day. It was around same time when Enron was about to collapse. The next day was a shocker as my friend got fired from KPMG.

Mind you KPMG was the kind of the company that the public used to look up to as the keep and builder of public trust. People after all only brought Enron shares when they knew that there was on "honorable and integrable" company was going to guard against any corruption in the giant.

However we all saw how KPMG which was The audit firm had fallen from grace only because of greed and financial corruption. Same was the case for British Airways which was found guilty of Dirty Tricks Campaign against Virgin Atlantic years back only to ensure its corrupt survival. What was revealed in the court battle was that Virgin Atlantic's (a private airline) CEO Richard Brannson pursued against British Airways was plain fact that British Airways had only built its integrity by looting, poaching and threatening competition.

Had any of this been done in Nigeria, Pakistan, India, Philippines, Malaysia they would have be declared corrupt countries. Their credit ratings would have gone down and big news clippings would have crippled these nation. But in the above two case it was the United States of America and the Kingdom of Englishmen.

Coming to the present day. I was again shocked to see that today Half of UK's bank are nationalized. Fannie Mae and Freddiemae in USA are nationalized. They only have private management the companies are now effectively controlled and owned by the governments. On an interesting note financial system in Iceland has completely and fully crumbled.

In the minds of the these 3rd world nations it has been drilled that the USA, UK and other European nations are some how above the mortal realm of morality, corruption, negligence, due diligence and enforcement of the law.

We are only finding out now that these countries were doing only bigger and better corruption. Only their scale was large and that they took the third world for a ride for a very long time. Enforcing privatization, skimming their foreign currency reserves, held back support in case they failed to do so, even helping enforce dictatorship as in case of 50% of Pakistan's history. And indirectly created circumstances where billions of people suffered.

To read the entire article.... World Economic Crisis. A Pakistani Prespective

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