Sold Off by a Greedy Few, to Our Vast Harm

The headlines proclaim Sony’s agreement to purchase Columbia Pictures. But earlier this month a more historic moment in the continuing saga of American decline passed almost unnoticed by media and politicians alike: For the first time since the ‘50s, foreign investors earned more from their investments in the United States than our citizens derived from their enterprises abroad. And this gap will widen as the foreign takeover of American business continues on its grim, inexorable course.

Thus, the “trade deficit� will now be augmented by a “profit deficit� to swell the flow of American income and jobs to other countries. By the time we reach the 50th anniversary of Pearl Harbor in 1991, our “partners� will have achieved with money what our “enemies� could not do with weapons--substantial control over the lives and destinies of the American people.

The Japanese and Europeans are buying America. Motivated by shortsighted greed and a softening of the American spirit, we are willing sellers.

In the past week, Japanese companies bought control of one of America’s leading business lenders and Sony’s deal to purchase one of our largest media and entertainment conglomerates came to fruition. In the short run, a handful of owners and top executives make a great deal of money from their sellout of American enterprises. In the longer run, all of us will be losers, as the profits that once went to enrich the citizens of this country go instead to Tokyo or Bonn or London.

These buyouts, unlike investment in manufacturing, do nothing to create wealth for America. We simply substitute foreign capital for American. The substitution does not add to our income or production. It will do the opposite by transferring the benefits of American enterprise to others. They will get richer while we become a poorer country.

Nor can the cost be measured in dollars alone. Financial institutions control the direction of investment, are influential in deciding what we build, the direction in which business expands. The so-called entertainment industry--which includes television and even publishing--helps shape American values and influences our attitudes toward ourselves and the world. By allowing foreign control over such powerful forces, we are allowing crucial decisions about the country’s future to fall into the hands of foreign enterprises and the governments that encourage and often subsidize their depredations.

This rapidly accelerating trend must not be allowed to continue. The future of this nation cannot be determined in the boardrooms of Tokyo and Europe; their occupants have no stake in America and do not share its heritage or its aspirations. To them we must appear a succulent plate from which the choicest morsels can be plucked. The American economy--the goose that lays the golden egg--is being quietly dismembered and shipped across the ocean to enrich other lands.

I find it hard to contain my indignation that we are permitting the foundation of our prosperity to fall into the hands of those who care nothing about our difficulties or the fair expectations and dreams of our people.

And it is our own fault. The Japanese and others are simply behaving as old-fashioned predatory capitalists are supposed to behave. They are taking what they can while the pickings are good. It is we, the Americans, who are letting this happen. A handful of directors and managers--once regarded as trustees and engines of American well-being--pocket their immense profits and retire to their mansions and yachts. Our political leaders watch with silent acquiescence, betraying their obligations to the people they serve and to the generations that will follow.

There is another foreseeable, virtually inevitable consequence of this foreign buyout of America. Our political financing laws are an irresistible invitation to corruption. They have magnified the influence of the wealthy and powerful at every level of government. Now, using their ownership of American enterprise as a conduit, foreign interests will benefit from this corrupting process. By helping finance political campaigns they will gain increased power to protect themselves from adverse political action. Our representatives, even our President, will have a constituency located beyond our borders.

It is important to realize that none of this is required by some law of nature or even Adam Smith. We have the power to protect ourselves. The question is whether the spiritual fabric of America has been too weakened--by greed and corruption, by a widespread sense of helplessness--to mount a resistance.

At a minimum, all political activity by foreign-controlled companies and those who work for them should be prohibited. But we can go much further. Foreign control of American airlines is already prohibited and the amount of foreign investment seriously limited. The same kind of constraints can be applied to other sectors of the economy, especially those that constitute the framework of economic and political activity, such as financial institutions, media, transportation. The tax system could be revised to discourage sellouts to foreign interests.

If we don’t act, and soon, if we choose to stand by as if we were helpless, then we will be accomplices in our own defeat--the defeat of the powerful dream that is America.