[quote=eavesdropper]
Bingo, Allan! There is no statement more true than your last. And when that is the case, economic systems, well laid out as they are on paper, sometimes stumble over human foibles.[/quote]
Eavesdropper: Given your intellect, I thought you’d appreciate this little exegesis about business and political interests getting closely entwined. Back in the 1980s, I did military advisory work in Central America. The “bible”, if you will, for counterinsurgency work was the USMC Small Wars Manual, written circa 1940, and largely based on the Marine campaigns during the so-called “Banana Wars”. The main architect of these campaigns was a Marine named Smedley Butler, who was something of a Zelig-like character for the US during the 1920s and 1930s.
I bring Butler up, largely because of comments he made later in his life, wherein he recounted that his time with the Marines in places like Central America, China and elsewhere was largely in support of American business interests in those parts of the world, and I think we’d all agree that little has changed since then.
