This Time
America's Economic Woes may Be Long-Term
By Pervaiz Lodhie
Torrance, CA
In 2005 the US economy should have
been in its 3rd year of a robust growth. Instead,
most American manufacturers, especially the medium
and small companies for the last 4 years, are
struggling day to day to keep their valuable employees
on active payroll. Today, as a manufacturer if
you just survive, you are doing great.
I and my wife run one of these technology manufacturing
companies. I have no doubt that America is going
to need a lot of help in coming years. The Muslim
community and especially the Pakistani Americans
will be critical in rebuilding many broken bridges
between the US and the rest of the world. Present
two-term US administration's over-reaction and
over-correction to the tragedy of 9/11 may have
given America some temporary military triumphs
globally but major economic losses are here to
stay for a long time.
I was surprised to read a recent article in the
Newsweek by a financial expert talking about million
reasons and quoting the Fed Chairman why the $
is getting weaker, why deficit is growing, etc
and avoiding to identify the real reasons to explain
the current downslide.
Commerce between the rest of the world is beginning
to gather steam and a marked momentum. South Asian
countries like Pakistan are becoming a hotbed
of global visitors and grabbing big financial
deals. The next generation of innovators and entrepreneurs
that used to come to America daily to make America
technologically most advanced are now going elsewhere.
Just after 9/11 the US Congress
and the Senate rushed the approval of ‘The
Patriot Act’ that had massive flaws and
potential for generating problems. The Act, instead
of helping to contain and fix specific localized
cancer of global terrorism, has done just the
opposite and spread the cancer to the entire body.
It has isolated America from the world body far
more than ever before. Today additional legislation
continue to be enacted in the USA that is forcing
the entire Muslim community of 1.3billion people
thinking twice before visiting or dealing with
America. Now more than ever before some of the
most affluent Muslims and Pakistani American businessmen,
professionals, scientists, engineers and doctors
are actually leaving or thinking of packing up
and leave a place they had called home for decades.
A place where citizenship by immigration now has
no value and can be taken away. Muslims, and specially
Pakistani Americans, who represent the highest
quality of professionals that came to America
as immigrants, are being insulted daily at the
US airports. Jobs are being denied and other forms
of discrimination is taking place everywhere.
More than two years ago, just before
the US invasion of Iraq, Southern California Congresswoman
Jane Harman called a meeting of various businessmen
from her district. The meeting was held in El
Segundo and I was invited to it too. She made
a presentation about the importance of removing
Saddam now. Most of the attendees in the room
were from the oil or defense-related industry.
The Congresswoman asked for everyone’s opinion
about going after Saddam. Almost everyone replied
with a yes except myself and the editor of Southbay
Easy Reader and Peninsula People magazines. I
stated that the US has gone through 3 to 4 shocks,
one after another. And that it could not take
another shock so soon.
First, we had the Y2K scare pre-2000
that was costly for many companies. It was followed
by the 2000 stock market bubble burst. The effect
of these setbacks was a sudden awakening among
the entire manufacturing sector which suddenly
applied screeching brakes to their purchases last
week of March 2001 seeing excessive unsold inventories.
By end of July 2001 the manufacturing sector slowly
started picking up momentum but the horror of
9/11 scuttled this growth. Few months later, just
as the economy started to see some signs of life,
came the Enron and the WorldCom financial fiascos
in 2002. The rush to unilaterally invade Iraq
could not have been chosen at a worse time. Today,
the manufacturing sector is in no rush to increase
production and is holding back so that it does
not end up with excess inventories. The only sector
that continues to grow or sustain the shaky economy
is the service or the defense sector.
The United States’ use of
its military might may have succeeded in creating
fear in the minds of the Muslim world but it has
lost its popular appeal among the 1.3 billion
Muslims around the world. It is clear that while
the world becomes smaller, the economy has gone
global, and consequently the United States will
find itself slowly but surely becoming less and
less relevant to the health of the global economy.
The next generation of consumers will mostly come
from China, India, Pakistan, Bangladesh and other
countries in South Asia where most new jobs are
being created. While America preaches poverty
reduction, greater education and ushering of democracy
in the Third World, it has a dwindling middle
class, larger number of poor, worsening school
systems and quality of education, and a democracy
that seems to work increasingly only for the rich
and the connected.
China’s engine of economic
growth is in the second gear. The country now
has a long-term sustainable economic growth. It
will have a growing number of customers keen to
purchase its products all over the world. It will
also have its own consumer base for affordable
products. India is embarking on its own industrial
revolution that will create jobs and new consumers
across India instead of relying totally on the
well-known Indian IT sector. Once again, India’s
recent bold move to impose 36% export tax on IT
work will help shift many quality jobs in India
towards the manufacturing sector. There are clear
indicators that India’s self-imposed brakes
on the development of the IT industry have given
a golden opportunity for the-yet-to-start exportable
IT industry of Pakistan. Suddenly my small Call
Center/BPO in Karachi is overflowing with applications
from Indians from the IT industry looking for
jobs. We are also witnessing the interest of many
global companies in our company for IT Call Center/BPO
work.
Pakistan stands to gain from most
of the activity in South Asia due to its long
recognized strategic location. India’s industrial
revolution will need lots of fuel for a very long
time. The most economic fuel source is from Iran,
Qatar, Central Asia and the all shortest straight
lines of the fuel and gas pipes go through Pakistan.
The friendship of India and Pakistan will grow
and is irreversible. China will also be part of
this world’s next biggest economic bloc.
Many will try to derail it again and again if
allowed.
Did the US administration, the mass media or both
together create the anti-Muslim sentiment we see
today in America by constant 24 hour bombardment
and exaggeration of news against the Muslims?
Today the Muslim community’s religion is
being attacked from all directions by use of mass
media creating perceptions far from the truth.
America has no choice but to immediately realize
the most powerful resource of Muslims and Pakistani
Americans who can help reverse the current trend
of hatred and mistrust and start building new
bridges between the Muslim world and the US. Muslims
and Pakistani Americans have to equally take the
full responsibility as citizens to do everything
possible for present and future health and prosperity
of America, a land they have come to call their
own.
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