Trump and his cronies are out for themselves
RECENT publicity surrounding Wilbur Ross, Donald Trump’s nominee as commerce secretary, reminded me I’d met him several years ago. He’s been reported as suggesting that Brexit was a “God-given” opportunity for financial rivals of the City of London to steal its trade.
That may have come as a shock to deluded Leavers convinced that a world of free trade and prosperity awaited. However, it simply follows the pattern of a man who has profited from distress and failure not just in the United States but also around the globe.
Introduced to him by a mutual friend, we dined in an upper East Side Restaurant in New York. He had an interest in the Lockerbie bombing and I was willing to try and answer concerns he had.
For my part, I had never met a billionaire and was slightly intrigued to do so. A cursory search indicated he was the 198th richest man in the US, according to Forbes List, with a wealth of $2.9 billion.
I also noted that he and his oft-times business partner Steve Forbes had acquired a 10 per cent share in the Bank of Ireland, following its financial difficulties. How an individual could acquire such a share of what had been a national institution perplexed me.
He has since divested himself of that bundle. He started out in bankruptcy affairs, including handling the casinos owned by Mr Trump that floundered, apparently dealing sensitively with his future commander-inchief’s businesses as opposed to the more normal ruthless slashing.
He subsequently moved from bankruptcy affairs to investing in businesses in financial distress, where not just financial services in Ireland but also coal and steel assets in America were snapped up cheaply.
In many ways, I’m more surprised at his appointment than his comments. He came across as dour, more interested in finance and making money than trade and politics.
Though he’d bankrolled a former wife in her electoral efforts, he’d never been tempted himself to seek political office.
The political debate seemed restricted to the ritual condemnation that rich Americans have for Obamacare. His art collection, apparently valued at $150 million, could have sustained the health and welfare of entire US communities for a lifetime.
Apoplexy existed that the poor should
‘‘ The political debate seemed restricted to the ritual condemnation that rich Americans have for Obamacare
have access to health while surgery, and especially cosmetic surgery, had often been visibly available, for his third wife and him.
Making conversation, I asked if he was intent on investing in other European countries such as Spain and Portugal, where banks were in distress. No, was his retort, it was France he wanted access to.
His stark view was that this was where the rich pickings awaited; not just nationalised industries but sectors fat, as he would style it, in workers’ rights and benefits.
By some accounts that is what has happened in the American mining industry, where union recognition, health care and pensions have been stripped out to increase profitability, regardless of the cost to workers and their families.
It is little wonder he lauded the Irish government for the austerity it had imposed. That included the slashing of salaries in a country where weekly wages would have struggled to pay the bill for the meal we had. He condemned the French government for the protections it afforded its people.
Hearing that he and his wife were due to fly to Europe the following day, my partner commiserated with Mrs Burr on the hassle that often ensues at airports.
Not at all, she replied, stating she and her husband didn’t “live in the real world”. A limousine to a private jet on the tarmac awaited, not the queues and security checks that apply to the rest of us.
Yet, at the age of 79 Mr Burr finds himself in the cabinet of oligarchs that Mr Trump is surrounding himself with.
The tragedy for America and the world is that, as his wife let slip, “they don’t live in the real world”.
Mr Trump and his cronies neither understand nor cared about ordinary people, let alone the poor and destitute.
Hence their desire to end a modicum of health care for so many Americans who are now signing up to receive it.
They have little loyalty to anywhere and certainly no special relationship with us across the Atlantic, as Brexiters have discovered.
As poor Americans well know, their loyalty isn’t to the country they share, but to the wealth they can acquire in it.
They live in America and seek to profit by it but that’s about all. It’s a government of the super-rich for the super-rich and hell mend the poor, whether in Detroit or Dublin.