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Global Firms Profit From Child Exploitation

  • The so-called "maestro" behind the booming U.S. economy has never been called to task for burying one of the uglier reasons behind the international plutocrats' stunning profits and the ruin of American labor.
By Martin Mann

Alan Greenspan got away with manipulating and corrupting the U.S. economy for more that a decade by his actions behind a facade of lies and misstatements. but now influential critics are beginning to chip away at the deceptive claims and reassurances this financial guru has boldly fed over the years to Congress and the Establishment media.

"The optimistic 'new economy' theories, long propounded by Greenspan, have lost their last shreds of credibility," said the sobersided Economist, the worlds' leading business weekly.

According to this Greenspanite theory, "wondrous new technological progress has abolished the traditional business cycle of boom and bust." added this prestigious publication. "In this rosy view, productivity would grow forever at a Miraculous rate, producing more and more profits over the years."

Hogwash, concluded the Economist. by last year, "U.S. labor productivity growth fostered by technology has slipped to an annual rate of 2.1 percent, sharply down from the 4.3 percent productivity rise claimed by Greenspan for 1999," it reported.

But there is no doubt that in recent years, some U.S. corporate profits -- unlike wages -- have gone up substantially. Where did the extra gravy come from? Not from contributions made by information technology -- though that, too, had an effect -- but from the sweat of child labor around the world.

At least 120 million children between the ages of 5 and 12 are made to work a full day in the poor countries of the world to produce goods for rich nations, often at wages amounting to a dollar a day or even less, Professor Benno Morici of the University of Maryland revealed in a recent study.

The report, sponsored by the prestigious Economic Strategy Institute, found that some 12,5 million children labor in export industries whose goods are destined for pricey American fashion, toy and home electronic retailers.

Apart from this shattering discovery, the report suggests that unpaid prison labor, bonded labor and semi-slave labor exploited in huge prison-like camps under club-wielding armed guards have become "prevalent" from china to Brazil.

Wherever large international corporations operating under the new covenants of "free trade" such as the WTO and NAFTA have managed to destroy labor standard and workers' rights, they have made an average yearly extra profit of at least $6,000 per exploited laborer, the study found.

You can comb through all of Greenspan's speeches and congressional testimony,' noted business reporter Jane Gorman, "You will never find a word about this immense slave labor empire, created largely by the corrupting influence of greedy international mega-conglomerates."

The very existence of this enormous new economic anomaly, which casually violates the hard-won labor laws everywhere, has been covered up by the Federal Reserve chairman and even America's labor bosses.

"They may have gotten away with this mass crime against humanity for the time being, but history will judge them harshly," concluded Gorman.