Well, the credit crunch in US soon became a world wide issue, it left it’s mark on the world with – in some cases – record loss of value in the stock market, to the point that share trade was halted indefinitely on some countries like Russia. And as far as I know one of the most significant events in the more recent economical history.
But what really made me want to post about this event, was this piece of news : http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/middle_east/7663487.stm
Not only it was written with a rather scathing tone, it was also marked as one of the featured news items, and seeing how Iran was being isolated by the day, and how this will impact plenty of those who do read it, I decided to make a post here, hopefully, it will be, even if it is a small effort, in the right direction.
Let’s start off by saying that I am an Iranian university student, kind of religious, living at Tehran and thanks to the internet, have read a whole lot of stuff about all over the world on the internet, I also have some good internet friends from all over the world, including Americans.
Some people have already jumped on the gun and started to call this “the demise of capitalism”, and some even going as far as Ahmadinejad in calling it “the beginning of the end for USA”.
The put it simply, a whole lot of Iranians disagree with this behavior, and it happens to be the majority of people IMO, though US pressuring Iran less will certainly be an improvement in more than one way, I can’t see them partying about a world-wide recession that is sure to impact Iran eventually.
To trace the problem to the very root of it, it all goes back to the bad blood between West and Iran. From the the USA sponsored and supported coup back at 1950, to the Western countries selling chemical weapons and technology to Iraq and many other issues that have strengthened an “Us against the World” attitude.
This however, has been taken to the extreme of late, with Ahmadinejad being always ready to bash the West, having talked about the Capitalism and the West nearing demise over and over again, while caring little about what is happening to his own country.
While I certainly think the problem of the current credit crunch has roots going deeper than the subprime mortgage issue, basically I feel there are many things that are wrong with the USA government, I think that it has gone too far in supporting their businesses, US has one of the lowest health regulations for products as a developed country, the government has gone out of it’s way more than once to help out businesses, the latter wents as far as EU getting angry enough to place bans and restrictions on US products, the consumerism in USA is also something I really dislike, with the majority of people buying things just because they like to, rather than caring even a bit about things like the environment, the rate at which they are going through earth’s resources and the carbon footprint, I don’t like the way global warming has totally become a political issue, with so many people just being against it because they are told to, and so many scientists being insulted and called “nutjobs” because a handful of scientists are against it.
However, I barely see what is the point in celebrating Americans going poor like this, true, some might be paying the price for low awareness and getting the wrong priorities like not saving, but the blast of a financial crisis is very blind, it doesn’t go and get the greedy billionares that are the first to blame for this problem, they probably knew well about when to pull their funds from the stocks, and they will be far better off than the employee’s that lost their jobs because of this big problem, a lot of the poor people that will be pressured so much because of this fall in the stock market all over the world, are very nice and hardworking, seeing these people losing even more of their happiness to financial problems is NOT fun.
And the saddest part of the story is looking at how things are in the country which these comments are originating from : Ever since Ahmadinejad’s election – with him lying to people through his teeth about bringing professionals to the jobs and having top academics setting his programs – the inflation rose from about %11 to %25 percent – and that’s the admittedly tweaked numbers that do not include house prices and with the estimates going as high as %40. He was also claiming his programs are not as bad as they are told, with the GDP per capita being cushioned with the rising oil prices. He should also win awards for going through ministers at this rate, his administration’s impulsive behavior has impacted the stock market and the industries more than once. And the worst part is yet to come : I don’t really see a good way of going out of this mess, the foreign relations do not show any Good signs, as do the foreign relations, the brain-drain hitting record values and him insisting on an “economic reform” program that was never discussed appropriately and his calling it the supposed savior for this economy over and over again…
/rant
