NEVER SURE You never know who owns what today, in seems.
It could work to our advantage in some ways, such as giving us ready and economical access to certain products or services which we might find prohibitive if we depended solely on our own ability to acquire them.
We are puzzled - even amazed at times when we read of various business transaction in which companies we have know all our lives are being “sold”, “enlarged”, “downsized” or “saved” by another firm. Very often one or both of the better known firms is suddenly supplanted by a foreign company which is the first we knew either one of them was not a local business.
Many people are surprised, even shocked, when they find that the diamond business in world-wide sense - is pretty much under the control one European family. They rule from the moment of mining – the very first awareness that such stones exist and that control by the de Beers family ruled that facet of the world's business to be its own.
Many Americans are rather shocked to find their American firms by foreign interests. Many American firms which have been said to have “merged with”,”added to,”“enlarge or “enhanced by” “absorbed into” are not what they used to be at all. Far too often it has meant the American firm has been swallowed up by the foreign firm. The first proof will be seen when operating officers lists non-Americans running the business and selling under the European product names rather than the American one. The names on the Board of Directors page complete the story.
We have, in recent years become accustomed to finding that our clothing is made all over the world. To find an item that is Made in U.S.A. is a rarity. I checked my shorts recently and found them to be made in at least eight different nations, of course, with two from Nepal, one Bangladesh, Honduras, Taiwan and one pair from India, a set from Mexico, some from China and Vet Nam. Shirts are a rainbow of nations. Footwear: India and China
This quality of closer interdependence on other nations has seeped over into other aspects of our living. I find it to be the supreme irony of our generation that the main holding in estate left by Asher Arafat was that of large amounts of holdings in the stock in the world's largest and most profitable bowling alley operation. Their stellar New York location is largely dependent the regular attendance at play by citizens of the preponderantly Jewish communities around it. Yasher Arafat, always the Clown Prince of the Arabic world, must have grinned happily as he fondled or simply thought of those certificates in his personal folio.
A.L.M. August 12 , 2005 [c468wds]
