By Paul Kelly
October 20, 2008
“When greed and profit mix, who are the biggest pricks? Buyers or sellers?” exclaims the graffiti close to Old Trafford, Manchester, England, home of the famous Manchester United Football Club.
In May 2005, the unimaginable happened. To the horror of millions of fans worldwide, Florida tycoon and Tampa Bay Buccaneers owner Malcolm Glazer, president and CEO of First Allied Corp, paid $1.47 billion for the controlling interest of the most popular soccer club in the world.
The following year, in April 2006, insurance behemoth American International Group (AIG) announced a sponsorship deal with United (currently English and European champions). The four year deal is said to be worth $100 million. As a reward, AIG now get to defecate on United’s venerated red-shirt with their logo.
But soccer fans can be fickle. As United consolidate their grip on the European game, the bulging trophy cabinet seems to have quelled the discontent on the terraces. The money keeps coming; no-one questions from where, and the word ‘Glazer’ doesn’t induce as much nausea as before in unemployment-stricken Manchester, the birthplace of the Industrial Revolution.
However, facing bankruptcy as a result of it’s liquidity crisis in September 2008, AIG was handed an unprecedented $85 billion rescue loan by the US Federal Reserve in a bid to avoid a new global economic shock. Three quarters of the way through their contract, AIG owe United a serious chunk of change. In effect, the American taxpayers have been left to pick up the tab.
In the current climate of financial uncertainty, the above seems to have gone unnoticed by the majority of American taxpayers. Whereas the government seems to have to stick their hands down the side of the couch to find loose change for health care and education, it has no problem writing checks to prop up the world’s wealthiest sporting franchise ‘Across the Pond.’
This is yet another shining example of the profligacy with which the US government spends their people’s money.
Tacitly supporting despots and genocide all over Latin America and South-East Asia have been sound investments. Quashing the threat posed to national security by nutmeg-growing Grenada in 1983 was money well spent and deals with Middle Eastern arms suppliers would pay for themselves in no time. But throwing a life-line to a neighborhood Mom n’ Pop store, who sponsor a local little-league team, trying to compete with Wal-Mart, involves too high a risk.
The American people have never been found wanting when it comes to donating to worthwhile charities, both at home and abroad. Yet we live in a nation where those in positions of influence program us to feel guilty from Thanksgiving to Christmas. We live in a nation where dishonesty is rewarded and silence is regarded as “honorable”. We live in a nation where 35.9 million people live below the poverty line, including 12.9 million children. 3.5% of US households experience hunger at some point. In 2006 , the US census reported that 46 million Americans have no health care insurance. A third of families living below the poverty line have no health care. It appears we have matters to attend to at home. If hard earned tax dollars are to leave these shores, maybe Darfur should have been considered before Manchester.
One could speculate that President Bush would struggle to find either Darfur or Manchester on the map. This doesn’t seem so alarming when you consider it took him four days to locate Louisiana after the wrath of Katrina.
It would be interesting to hear what the recently self-appointed spokesman for the entire nation, Joe the Plumber, has to say about the latest foreign investment made on his behalf.
The Hunger Site
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