US Vulture Funds - How can we expect the US to stop them when they fund the Republican Party ?

The BBC did an excellent piece on Newsnight about Vulture funds, the system whereby some US companies but up low value foreign debt that is about to be written off then sue the governments for the full amount, plus in some cases winning punitive extra money.

Latest example HERE shows that just $4 million of debt has been turned in to $42 million of damages to be paid to a US firm. This is equal to the total debt right of that Zambia received last year and shows that for all the US talk of helping Africa, in America the interests of corporate America come first.

And will George W Bush do anything about it ? Of course not, after all the biggest Vulture fund in America gave $1.5 million to George Bush's election campaigns. That's the American way !

That's Asda Price

The War on Wany report about Asda, Tesco and Primark selling goods where the factory workers in impoverished countries are receiving as little as five pence an hour should not come as a shock.

I've bough a couple of T-shirts from Primark for as little as four pounds each. I never assumed the workers were earning the UK minimum wage because they wouldn't make a profit on just £4.

The fact is that UK shoppers want cheap clothes as an option.

What I was confused about was the War on Want wanted consumers to "write to the shops telling them how unhappy they" and want the government to "introduce leglislation". They don't actually make clear what they want the legislation to say or even tell us in their report what they would do.

I'm not advocating that paying slave wages is good, but 5p an hour relative to no income at all in a poor country where there is no welfare state is different from earning 5p an hour in the UK. We do need to look at it in relative terms. I would be happy to pay more for my T-shirts, but will all shoppers ?