Thursday, December 14, 2006

Insight on Israel from a Political Economy Perspective

MFL notes: An interesting perspective analysis on Israel from a political economy perspective.

This is a quote from the article:

As the roaring 1990s came by, Israel fed Wall Street a long stream of technological start-ups built at taxpayers’ expenses. US capital and Israeli capital intermingled, becoming a seamless web of personal and financial connections straddling the globe. Take for example Haim Saban, former Israeli music producer and now West Coast tycoon. He is the owner, among other things, of Israeli telecom, the Japanese Power Rangers trademark, and a German satellite broadcaster. He is also a personal friend of all former Israeli prime ministers and the largest donor to the Democratic Party, as well as the paymaster of former US ambassador to Israel Martyn Indyk’s salary at the Saban Center for Middle East Policy in Washington. Saban epitomizes the new Israeli ruling class. The prostitute who used to live next door to Saban in Tel Aviv (according to his own “rags to riches” account) is equally symbolic—Israel is today the second most economically unequal society in the industrialized world. Less than two-dozen families own more than half of the value of Israel’s stock market.

The article is called Whither Israel? by Gabriel Ash

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