Once upon a time – heck, I feel as if I’m reading bedtime stories to my grandchildren, but never mind, let’s go on because this story happens to sound like a fairytale anyway.

Once upon a time, as I was saying moments ago, the interests of elites in America were happily linked to the interests of ordinary Americans, even if such elitist awareness of, and interest in, non-elites stemmed from an instinctive appreciation of what, in geopolitical parlance, is known as ‘enlightened self-interest’.

A classic example: Henry Ford said he paid his workers good wages so they could afford to buy his cars!

But that was so long ago, Ford’s large-heartedness today seems very much like the stuff of fables.

Globalization, the world’s new economic order ushered in at the express diktat of the US at the end of the Cold War, and subsequently vigorously promoted between 1992 and 1997 by the International Monetary Fund, that institutional surrogate of the US government, was intended to use American capital and markets to force global economic integration on America’s terms regardless of its terribly destructive cost to other participants.

Globalization’s socially corrosive effects are manifold. Initially, as American and Western corporations discovered that a massive supply of foreign labour was theirs for the asking at unbelievably low wage levels, the wave of offshoring began, and products for the American and European markets were promptly being churned out in China, thus boosting [in quite unequal measure] both shareholder returns and executive bonuses back in the US and Europe.

With the advent shortly after of high-speed internet, the very same corporations spotted another equally lucrative window of opportunity – the offshoring of a wide range of professional services as well, leading to a proliferation of the ubiquitous ‘Call Centres’ throughout the Third World, particularly India.

Like the fat cats of Wall Street, the CEOs of American corporations are nothing if not entrepreneurially innovative to the point of being Machiavellian. Having enjoyed unprecedented profitability from offshoring industrial production first, and professional services next, they soon spotted another promising possibility to increase profit margins further and raise their executive bonuses to Himalayan heights. The ploy was to complain of "shortages" in skilled Americans and nudge a largely complicit Congress to give the nod for more H-1B work visas to bring in much-lower-paid foreigners as ‘professionals’ needed to fill the critical gap.

Paul Craig Roberts writing in CounterPunch magazine noted: "Congress has had a parade of CEOs, ranging from Bill Gates of Microsoft and IBM brass on down the line, to testify that they desperately need more H-1B work visas for foreign employees as they cannot find enough American software engineers and IT workers to grow their businesses." But just the other day Microsoft, IBM, Texas Instruments, Sprint Nextel, Intel, Motorola, and scores of other corporations announced thousands of layoffs of the qualified American engineers who, allegedly, are in short supply.

In fact, all the company CEOs who for quite some time have been happily singing this ‘shortage’ dirge in perfect harmony [and with appropriately sullen countenances] also happen to have been noted for replacing their American employees with H-1B workers who are paid far less. IBM has even offered the hard-to-find American engineers already on its payroll ‘relocation’ in the company’s operations in India, China, Brazil, Mexico, the Czech Republic, Russia, South Africa, Nigeria, and the United Arab Emirates, says Roberts – but, of course, at the salary levels prevailing in those countries!

On January 28, USA Today reported: "In 2007, the last full year for which detailed employment numbers are available, 121,000 of IBM’s 387,000 workers [31%] were in the US. Meanwhile, staffing in India has jumped from just 9,000 workers in 2003 to 74,000 workers in 2007."

The outraged response from the US Chamber of Commerce to the proposed amendment, Roberts opined, was because that body was "an organization concerned solely with the multi-million dollar bonuses paid to American CEOs for reducing labour costs by offshoring American jobs or by replacing American employees with foreign guest workers."

In fact, on January 23 this year Senator Grassley wrote to Microsoft CEO Steve Ballmer. After recalling that Microsoft had been to Capitol Hill last year advocating for more H-1B visas, he reminded Ballmer that "these work visa programs were never intended to allow a company to retain foreign guest workers rather than similarly qualified American workers, when that company cuts jobs during an economic downturn. It is imperative that in implementing its layoff plan, Microsoft ensures that American workers have priority in keeping their jobs over foreign workers on visa programs."

Economist and historian Michael Hudson wrote: "When it comes to cleaning up the Greenspan Bubble legacy by writing down homeowner mortgage debt, the Treasury proposal offers homeowners $50 billion – just half of one percent of the $10 trillion Wall Street bailout to date, and less than half the amount given to AIG to pay its hedge fund speculators on their derivative gambles. The Treasury has handed out $25 billion to each and every big bank, so just two of these banks alone got as much as the reported one-quarter of all homeowners in America suffering from Negative Equity on their homes and in need of mortgage renegotiation."

Arianna Huffington said as much while also providing frightening numbers in this comment on her blog: "If you were to make a pie chart showing the amount of attention given to the banking part of the financial crisis - both by the government and by the media - and the amount of attention given to the foreclosure part, the catastrophe being faced by millions of American homeowners would barely rate a sliver. But we are facing nothing less than a national emergency, with 10,000 Americans going into foreclosure every day, and 2.3 million homeowners having faced foreclosure proceedings in 2008."

Very valid criticisms, most readers may conclude, but all of them to be directed, surely, at the Clown who performed in the Oval Office for eight long years. Does Barak have to carry the can for George’s madness?

Good question. The answer is buried in this cryptic report in Business Week: "Outsourcing’s inner circle has deep roots in GE (General Electric) and McKinsey."

Craig Roberts helps explain the ‘McKinsey’ reference for readers: "A consulting firm, one of its main apologists for offshoring of US jobs, Diana Farrell, is now a member of Obama’s White House National Economic Council (NEC)."

Diana is in good company, of course. Obama’s own ‘inner circle’ already consists of such prominent proponents of Globalization and ‘Free Trade’ as Larry Summers [Chairman of the NEC], Treasury Secretary Timothy Geithner, and ‘Presidential Economic Adviser’Robert Rubin.

Comments Roberts: "Possibly Obama loves the country that elevated him to its highest office. But his Administration is populated with people whose loyalty does not extend beyond elites to the American people."

Little wonder that worthies like Bill Gates feel emboldened enough to go before Congress with tall tales.

And barefaced lies.