Huh?
I'm having a hard time with this one. That phrase inplies you believe I attacked you personally. I went back and looked at what I wrote, and I don't see that.
Am I misinterpreting what you said or are you misinterpreting what I said?
You said:
America, for its many sterling qualities, is a net consumer of the world's assets in every territory of the globe.
OK. I don't have a problem with that so long as you aren't saying that we're taking things without paying for them. But the last time I looked we bought stuff from around the world from people who were willing to sell stuff. We run a trade deficit. We buy more than we sell. So what we are exporting is dollars. And the people who get those dollars overseas then use them to buy stuff from other places in the world. I don't think we hold a gun to anyone's head to make them sell their stuff to us. So I'm at a loss on what you said. For some reason you made it sound sort of accusatory that we bought stuff overseas for use in the US.
You said:
For every $ spent in 'aid' many dollars are grabbed in crippling debt payments in the less developed areas of the globe.
WHOA!!! Are you saying that we forced loans on people against their will and then charged them interest on the loans against their will? I must have missed that one. In my experience what we have done is lent massive amounts of money to countries all over the world and then we wrote off most of the loans as good will. I challenge you to support your statement that we have "grabbed crippling debt payments in the lesser developed areas of the globe.
I believe you will find on closer inspection of the books that this is not the case.
And, Mav, I certainly do agree that others may legitimately differ with my views, but I also believe that those who do differ have an obligation to support statements such as those you made above.
TEd
PS
I hope you retract what you said about not posting again. I would feel very badly if I thought that what I said discouraged debate and discussion.
TR
