Catastrophic though the Gulf of Mexico oil disaster is, President Obama's
anger at BP is so much over the top -- and, hitherto, so uncharacteristic
-- that there has to be another explanation. His comparison of the disaster
with the Al Queda attack on the Twin Towers at 9/11 is just plain silly --
both as a matter of scale or category.
What has come over very significantly is Obama's anti-Britishness, never
mind that BP is as much owned by US shareholders as by those of the UK.
According to what I read, Obama started out by being unfriendly to the
British (apparently because of our imperialistic cruelties in Kenya -- the
birthplace of Obama's father), and only offered one brief dinner-only visit
to Gordon Brown, desperate though the latter was to address Congress and be
seen to be close to the American President as Tony Blair was to Bush.
Never mind that Gordon Brown made a huge political mistake when he assumed
a leadership pose in "saving the world" with his super-Keynesian
quantitative easing solution to the credit-crunch, Obama slapped him down
(by ignoring him) even though he applied the same solution within America.
While Obama appears to be moderately friendly to David Cameron in a
diplomatic way, the UK's austerity plan has not appealed to him one little bit.
No, what's worrying Obama more than anything else is that America is losing
its powerful role within the world far faster than the UK did when losing
its British Empire -- though perhaps not so rapidly as the USSR did when
breaking up in 1991. What's making it worse is that China might now be on
the verge of a large enough consumer goods market (in South America,
Africa, the Middle East, south-east Asia) that will make up for a declining
American market. Even if -- as the dollar become increasingly insignificant
-- China has to write-off its massive loans to the US government.
BP will probably survive, once two more drillings have reached the oilfield
and relieved the pressure from the present leak. By the autumn, the
disaster will probably be history. (Incidentally, we have to thank oceanic
bacteria for getting rid of 95% of the oil before it reaches America's
holiday beaches.) But, meantime, a very great deal else will probably have
changed, too. Maybe by then Obama will be more amenable to the Chinese,
Russian, Brazilian, Indian and Middle East proposals for a new world
currency that will be more stable than the dollar.
Keith
Keith Hudson, Saltford, England
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