Though some might not recognize it, Open Skies, the agreement hammered out a while back to allow national airlines more access to each others markets, is just another name for globalization.
So here's a question for you: What's the difference between subsidies and trade barrier? Both are exercised to benefit the homeland player.
What brings this up is a meeting in Washington this week between U.S. officials and those of Emirates and other Gulf carriers that U.S. airlines and their unions are claiming receive unfair subsidies as the fight for traffic escalates.
It's labeled unfair competition.
If this smells of protectionism, particularly in the so-called free enterprise promoting U.S., you're onto something. As the Financial Times reported, "A German politician had called for a ban on granting landing rights to Gulf carriers, 'unless they answer the subsidies question.'"
Translation: It's okay for U.S. companies and their politically-controlling unions to subsidize but don't you try it. Anyone naive enough not to realize the push toward globalization would create such problems is a prime candidate to hold public office.
Just how greedy is the U.S. government, particularly this administration?
The U.S. is fighting a judge’s decision that shaved more than $4 billion off the maximum pollution penalties BP must pay for its 2010 Gulf of Mexico disaster, the biggest offshore oil discharge in U.S. history.
The spill size was set in January by U.S. District Judge Carl Barbier in New Orleans at 3.2 million barrels. He also rejected claims London-based BP was reckless in preparing for a disaster or had acted unreasonably in responding to the spill.
The U.S. didn’t say which part of the court ruling it was appealing in a notice filed Friday. The U.S. estimated the spill at 4.2 million barrels, which could have triggered a maximum $18 billion fine.
This is a subject we've mentioned a couple of months ago http://financialspuds.blogspot.com/2015/01/greed-takes-hit.html a
Since the recession hit in 2008 there's been a rash of governments suing each other over alleged corporate and financial wrongdoing led by the current greedy U.S. administration.
There's also been an outbreak of people who now view the unintended consequences of globalization as something more sinister when it comes to individual and, yes, business and cultural, freedoms than most thought.
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