The last five years and the Iraq war have gouged a basic rightwing assumption about the Bush regime: that they would be good for corporate business. Its becoming clearer that corporations signed a Faustian pact with BushCo and that Bush and Cheney indeed may not have been such a corporate godsend.
Will corporations turn on Bush? Not likely, in the short term. But what is good for Halliburton and Bechtel turns out to be not so good for Starbucks, MacDonalds, Mickey Mouse, and KFC, especially overseas.
In 2000 we on the left argued that trickle-down was old news and that Bush would be bad for business. Its becoming clearer that Bush is not only bad for business, he is bad for Brand America. I increasingly have to convince colleagues and business partners overseas, even in Toronto, that Bush does NOT represent the will of all Americans, and that they can still feel welcome to do business with me as an American.
Any comments? And stories of your own?
Please visit the excellent analysis by Mark Engler.
http://www.tomdispatch.com/...
I've included a few quotes from the body of the article in the follwing:
Bush's Bad Business Empire
Making the World Unsafe for Microsoft and Mickey Mouse
By Mark Engler
The Bush administration has a reputation for creating an unusually business-friendly White House. Put Dick Cheney's secretive Energy Task Force and massive tax cuts together with corporate lobbyists writing regulations for their own industries, and you've made an argument that seems pretty persuasive.
There are reasons, however, to consider a contrary notion: Maybe George Bush and Dick Cheney aren't very good capitalists at all.
George W. Bush's history as a failed businessman is well known. Dick Cheney, portrayed by conservatives as a brilliant ex-CEO and by progressives as a Halliburton shill, also has a suspect past. While he certainly increased Halliburton's profile in four-and-a-half years as its chief, his foremost accomplishment was the $7.7 billion acquisition in 1998 of Dresser Industries, a rival that turned out to be plagued with staggering asbestos-related liabilities. In the wake of Cheney's reign, multiple Halliburton divisions sought bankruptcy protection and the company's stock price plunged. Rolling Stone magazine reported in August 2004, "Even with the bounce Halliburton stock has received from the war, an investor who put $100,000 into the company just before Cheney became vice president would have less than $60,000 today."
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When it comes to the interventions of Bush, Cheney, Condi, and the neocons in the global economy, "at best an average job" might be a charitable judgment, and "messed up big-time" could be closer to reality. Those business people who have yet to join the majority that opposes the president's handling of his war in Iraq -- or the increasing chorus of conservative critics who have begun questioning the administration's foreign policy -- may soon have a long list of reasons to get on the bandwagon, starting with the bottom line.
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Whether the administration's bold gamble for U.S. global dominance will prove profitable either in the near future or in the long run, the business costs of this approach are already becoming evident. For starters, the new wave of anti-Americanism sweeping the planet goes far beyond KFC bombings in South Asia or widespread hostility in the Middle East. In Asia, the South China Morning Post has noted that a "strong, growing hostility" toward the United States has complicated Disney's expansion plans in the area. The Bush imperial foreign policy, moreover, is inspiring consumer backlash even among traditional allies.
In December 2004, Jim Lobe of Inter Press Service reported on a survey of 8,000 international consumers released by the Seattle-based Global Market Insite (GMI) Inc. The survey noted that
"one-third of all consumers in Canada, China, France, Germany, Japan, Russia, and the United Kingdom said that U.S. foreign policy, particularly the `war on terror' and the occupation of Iraq, constituted their strongest impression of the United States... 'Unfortunately, current American foreign policy is viewed by international consumers as a significant negative, when it used to be a positive,' comments Dr. Mitchell Eggers, GMI's chief operating officer and chief pollster."
Brands the survey identified as particularly at risk at the time included Marlboro cigarettes, America Online (AOL), McDonald's, American Airlines, Exxon-Mobil, Chevron Texaco, United Airlines, Budweiser, Chrysler, Barbie Doll, Starbucks, and General Motors.
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It's not just snooty foreigners who are negative, either. American business leaders themselves have been starting to link economic woes to imperial policy. The previously mentioned U.S. Banker article warned, "[T]he majority of American CEOs, whose firms employ eight million overseas, are now acknowledging that anti-American sentiment is a problem." And a 2004 Boston Herald story, headlined Mass. Execs: Iraqi War Hurting; U.S. competitiveness becoming a casualty, pointed to the "sixty-two percent of executives surveyed by Opinion Dynamics Corp. [who] said the war is hurting America's global competitiveness."