Now it's everywhere you don't want to be, too:
Visa International transacted the first international credit card payments in Iraq in Baghdad on 1 June, "Gulf News" reported on 2 June. An Iraqi expatriate who paid for a two-night stay in Baghdad's Ard Sumar Hotel made the first transaction.
"We have started the acceptance of international Visa cards in a certain number of outlets, including hotels and restaurants," Visa's Middle East General Manager Peter Scriven told the daily. "As foreign visitors enter the country to help with the reconstruction of postwar Iraq, we hope to provide a modern payment method that will facilitate the work of international and humanitarian organizations as well as the development of new business," he said.
This actually is becoming something of a media theme: The lights may flicker, crime may be out of control and the guerrillas may be picking off the grunts, but gosh darn it, Iraqi consumers never had it so good.
Attention Shoppers
This from today's Wall Street Journal:
But stores are reopening, and sales of imported TVs and refrigerators have soared. The Iraqi diner, with its beaming portrait of Saddam, has held firm and even strengthened. And Baghdad's bustling farmers' markets -- a staple of life here -- continue to teem with people buying and selling fruits and vegetables.
News flash: Iraqis still have to eat!
The color of money (or plastic) is as pleasing in Baghdad as anywhere else I suppose, but I have to wonder what the destitute inhabitants of the Baghdad slums think of all those imported color TVs and refrigerators which they can't afford to buy and don't have the electrical current to run.
A farmers' market is also a good thing to have, even if the major crops to be found in Iraqi fields these days appear to be cluster bombs and depleted uranium.
But I wouldn't mistake these tentative signs of the good life for more than what they are: evidence that Baghdad, like Kabul before it -- and Saigon before that -- is about to be hived away from its own country and converted into a Westernized oasis in a desert (a literal one in this case) of war and poverty. An oasis, moreover, largely inhabited by U.S. military officers, civilian bureaucrats, international aid workers and their assorted camp followers -- beggers, waiters, prostitutes, drug dealers, etc.
In other words, a place where the American can learn to hate and despise the Iraqis, and the Iraqis can learn to hate and despise the Americans. A classic case of toxic codependency.
Our imperial proconsul, Paul Bremer, wants to accelerate the process by tearing away all the protective tarriffs and other trade barriers that Saddam used to enrich his own toxic army of camp followers. This, combined with the lifting of UN sactions, should give the consumption binge another turn of the crank, making the Baghdad oasis a pretty fun, or least profitable, place for a salesman to be for awhile (if they can avoid getting shot.)
But the Iraqis might want to ask their comrades (or rather, former comrades) in Eastern Europe about some of the medium-term consequences of Western-style economic "shock therapy." Against the pleasure of being able to find a nice Thai restaurant (one that accepts VISA, even) has to be balanced the pain of mass unemployment, raging inflation and the replacement of a public criminal class by a private one.
Bremer is already getting a head start on the mass unemployment. The looters who stripped Baghdad of everything that wasn't nailed down (and much that was) in the early days of the occupation should be able to provide the new criminal class.
If the Russian experience is any guide, within a few months well-connected Iraqi hoods will have offices in London and villas in the south of France.
Meanwhile, back inside the oasis, U.S. military and civilian payroll checks will cover at least part of the tab for an Iraqi consumption boom. But that money will only go so far. Ditto for whatever financial contributions the Bushies can extort, cough, coax out of our allies.
Getting Iraqi oil flowing will be the key to avoiding the kind of runaway inflation that did in the South Vietnamese economy -- or the kind of financial collapse that eventually did in the Russian post-shock therapy boom. But keeping Iraqi oil money from fleeing for Swiss bank accounts unknown could be an even tougher challenge -- especially if our supply-side imperialists get carried away and do a rush privatization of the industry.
There's more than one way to loot an oil ministry.
So while a VISA card may come in handy for the businessman on the go in the New Iraq®, I think one of these might just come in handier:
Don't leave home without it.
Financial times - Early push for sell-off of Iraqi companies
Privatisation of dozens of Iraqi state-owned companies is likely to begin within the next year, Tim Carney, senior coalition adviser to the Iraqi ministry of industry and minerals, said on Sunday.
Previously the US-led coalition had said it would wait until the creation of an elected government, in a year or two, before beginning privatisation. Now both Iraqi ministry technocrats and coalition officials think the need for foreign investment in the economy is too great to delay, Mr Carney told the FT.
Let's make sure we throw a little more gasoline on the Fire. Not that I would be particularly eager to invest in Iraq.
Thanks for the tip, Don.
(And better luck with the windmills, next time)
Thanks for the tip, Don.
(And better luck with the windmills, next time)
Always check the The Agonist, the man really knows how to aggregate the news.
Them windmills can be a bitch, but Dulcinea is so sweet..
The Agonist
Privatize Iraqi services, truly dumb indeed.
Hmmm, privatize all services in country full of angry, tired and armed to the teeth citizens. Who are used to socialized services, is indeed throwing gas on a fire.
Can we spell dead quislings and American carpet baggers?
This is too stupid to be real. I'm dreaming and this is a kafkaesqe version of Oz. Yeah thats it.
A bad dream.
Food, water, power, medical services, sanitation, security for starters. These are basic requirements for the people of Iraq. Until those are up and on line, everything else that Bush, Cheney and crowd attempt is a pathetic farce. I doubt they will ever get a chance to privatize anything. We'll probably be scrambling just to save the asses of our 19 year old kids as we try to evacuate them from a three way civil war by summer's end. Halliburton contracts won't mean much at the business end of an Iraqi RPG.
Sigh...Time to send my god damned camel to bed...
Ok, just to please Billmon and Gary, I recognize the Maria Muldaur reference.
Is Sandy Weill still running AMEX? I would imagine it's griping about its competitor getting in first.
I can see that ads now - "When you visit Baghdad, bring your Visa card, because they won't take American Express!"
Ok, just to please Billmon and Gary, I recognize the Maria Muldaur reference.
In the reflective, sober hours of an early dawn, I realize the dangers of posting late at night. My intent WAS to say, "Send YOUR camel to bed". However, I was deeply afraid that this throwaway remark would reopen the whole "buggering the camel" thread of a few days ago. Apologies to the Host, Maria, and the camel.
On a more serious note, are all these carpet baggers expecting military protection as they set up their Iraq operations. Won't they have to have some "people on the ground", at least initially? Or are they really betting that the situation will be stable enough, with a US friendly puppet installed, that the term "incoming" will refer only to fat Yankee greenbacks? Or perhaps they really do see it as another Gold Rush, and trivial concerns such as "injuns" in the desert will not be allowed to tarnish their visions? Or perhaps they have been dealing secretly with Iraqi expatriates?
Anyone in the bar thinking of cashing in on the next new thing?
Gee, Billmon, that's awfully negative...
I don't think they'll rush the privatization effort; they're having enough trouble with domestic resistance as it is. So where will the money disappear in the interval before the oil board--run by the retired guy from Shell--convinces the sock puppet government to let his oil industry pals buy up all the oil rights they want?
Will the money be pocketed directly by Uncle Sam, to defray occupation costs? By corrupt employees of Uncle Sam's? Corrupt Iraqi stooges of Uncle Sam's?
The possibilities are virtually endless.