Friday, April 15, 2011

US lends Bank of Mexico $9.6B

This'll knock your socks off: The Federal Reserve (i.e., U.S. taxpayers) loaned the Bank of Mexico $9.6 billion.

It was presumably the same kind of loan the Fed made to two Wall Street housewives, dozens of banks and multinational corporations. If the bank made successful investments, they'd get 100 percent of the profit. If the investments failed, the Fed (U.S. taxpayers) absorbed 90 percent of the losses.

It's already bad enough that the U.S. taxpayer is on the hook for putting catalytic converters on Mexican trucks. And that the Department of Transportation wants U.S. taxpayers to foot the bill for EOBRs on Mexican trucks, once it opens the border to them. But the reason we're opening the border is that Mexico slapped tariffs on $2.4 billion worth of American products until we let their trucks in.

In other words, while Mexico was holding us up by imposing excessive tariffs on our exports, we bailed out Mexico's central bank. You'd think the Fed (ostensibly a U.S. institution) would put strings on that loan -- like, "we'll give you your dough if you get rid of those tariffs"?

Or not.

The Teamsters have said all along that the U.S. should have challenged the tariffs in a Nafta tribunal before caving to Mexico and opening the border. But the U.S. Department of Transportation seems hell-bent on making it easier for violent criminals to enter our country. The reason: the multinationals want the border opened. And what the multinationals want, the multinationals get.

They'll never tell you that. But just for snicks and giggles, we'd like to hear the rationale for forking over billions of U.S. tax dollars to Mexico. It probably has something to do with encouraging "stability" in that war-torn nation.

Let's see, how's that working for us?

According to yesterday's El Paso Times, a 33-year-old policewoman was shot and killed while standing in the doorway of her own home in Juarez. Reports the Times,
A wave of Juárez police killings continued Wednesday when an off-duty policewoman was killed in her home.
Chihuahua state officials said four police officers have been slain since Friday in a series of attacks after drug-cartel death threats started appearing last week.