Is there some way to compare the crimes of China's producers of

tainted milk with those responsible for the meltdown on Wall St.?

 

 

Global Geographic Times, People's Republic of China

What's Worse … China's Toxic Milk or Wall Street's Toxic Debt?

 

Is there some kind of moral equivalency between Wall Street's 'toxic debt' disaster - which has terminated some of the world's largest investment banks - and China's now notorious scandal involving poisoned milk powder - which has killed an unknown number of innocent toddlers and sickened tens of thousands of others? According to this op-ed from China's government-controlled Global Geographic Times, the culprits at the San Lu Milk company - just one of a number of Chinese firms that added the industrial chemical melamine to their milk powder - fell victim to that which is far more endemic to Wall Street - Greed.

 

By Ding Gang (丁刚）

 

Translated By Mark Klingman

 

September 27, 2008

 

Global Geographic Times - People's Republic of China - Original Article (Chinese)

Yesterday I received an e-mail from a friend in the United States saying that there is a joke circulating in the U.S. It goes like this:

 

"Yes, its true, China sells us toxic toothpaste, toxic pet food and toxic toys, but we sell them toxic bonds."

 

Upon my first reading of the e-mail, I became a little indignant. The United States has created a financial crisis, but wants to make Chinese products the scapegoat? After giving this some thought, I realized that it was more of an "in joke," referencing the so-called "toxic" Wall Street bonds. A few defective products hardly compare to these “securities” which have shaken the confidence of the world's investors and would be more aptly called "poison wrapped in sugar!"

 

[The China Daily, People's Republic of China]

 

This reminds me of another joke that I read a few days ago which was carried in the Wall Street Journal. It was an editorial entitled Did Wall Street Drink 'San Lu' Milk? It now appears that they had it backwards, confusing cause and effect: San Lu got sick on Wall Street's poison. San Lu's milk powder and Wall Street both ran into trouble and both became "adulterated." Their problems have a common cause: greed. No matter how clever Wall Street is at its methods of "adulteration," its founder still makes his presence felt - and his name is Greed.

 

[Editor's Note: A number of Chinese firms have been accused of adding the nitrogen-rich chemical melamine to watered-down milk to fool quality checks, which often use nitrogen levels to measure the amount of protein in milk. Melamine is used to make plastics, fertilizer, paint and adhesives. It is said to be safe to consume in small amounts].

 

There is one thing I don't quite understand. After the San Lu milk powder incident, many Chinese Internet users accused San Lu of being without a conscience - and many Western media have accused the Chinese milk powder business of lost ethics. But when Wall Street runs into trouble, where are its critics? Who impugns its conscience?

 

What the media have said is that lax supervision, poor management, a disregard for personal reputation and so on - are the causes of the Wall Street crisis. As if the consciences of Wall Street's brilliant managers could still be clear after having stirred up such a cesspool of "toxic" securities, into which they threw the money of the Chinese people and people around the world. As if they were just well-intentioned people who committed an honest mistake. 

 

Recently, American newspapers published pictures of people walking out of bankrupt Wall Street companies carrying large cardboard boxes, their faces looking pitiful. Who knows how much dirty money they earned during previous years? They racked their brains inventing those junk bonds, which were chock-full of poison but were packaged magnificently - full of temptation as if it could make you a millionaire overnight. They used all kinds of financial products to attract you and get you to hand over your hard-earned money. Now that you're left with the short end of the stick, feel cheated and taken advantage of, you have no choice but to help them mend the holes in their pockets.

 

French President Nicolas Sarkozy said angrily that we should find out the truth behind the financial crisis, and that it's important to severely punish those responsible. So let him go check it out. I forecast that even if he searches his entire life he'll never get to the bottom of it, certainly not the way they did when San Lu Milk powder was investigated - they caught a few people, fired some, and indicted others. But because the global financial crisis is a collective greed - a greed inherent in the system - it's next to impossible to find the guilty parties. Because the entire crazy machinery of Wall Street is designed to minimize cost and maximize profit, while loading the risk onto the entire world to bear. 

 

Before all of this happened, there were those who tried to teach Chinese companies the American way of doing business. They said that because things had gone wrong in the past - similar to the San Lu Milk incident - rules were put in place that must be strictly followed. To say that American companies haven't evolved, of course, would be wrong - but to say how far Wall Street has progressed morally, I'm afraid, would require some analysis. Look at Enron, WorldCom, and Lehman closing down one after another - how is this not a moral issue? Which one of them shows a morality more evolved than the basic accumulation of capital? Wall Street-style capitalism may not be based on bloody exploitation or the oppression of the natives, but who knows how far the crisis will go in engulfing the hard-earned savings of those in developing countries?   

Posted by WORLDMEETS.US

 

As the saying goes, all Wall Street scandals are about greed. Greed created Wall Street and greed continues to fill it with scandal. Capitalism has been developing for hundreds of years and has created tremendous wealth, but humanity's inborn greed hasn't changed at all - not one bit. The reason is simple: Without greed, there's no capitalism; and without capitalism, there's no Wall Street. 

 

"Greed is good." This line from the movie Wall Street has become a classic, but Chinese entrepreneurs shouldn't forget a critic's corollary to this: greed may be a good thing, but if you're not careful, it may also be fatal.

 

*The writer is a senior editor with The People's Daily.

 

[Editor's Note: According to The Washington Post, the name Ding Gang is frequently assigned to important analyses in the People's Daily … Chinese journalists say they believe it to be a pen name used by senior editors or other party propaganda officials conveying an official point of view . Reporters Without Borders rates China's media as "Situation Very Serious "].

 

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[Posted by WORLDMEETS.US October 20, 5:30pm]