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August 08, 2007
The Madness of King George: or Americans Chicken Little Approach to Travel Security
This bit of news positively incensed me: The new Smoot Haley: Transatlantic travellers on 48-hours notice to US. What the bloody hell is wrong with America? Bloody cowardice, chicken littlism.
And it is no surprise:
“Obviously, it’s a big inconvenience” said Filippo Pandolfini, a London-based investment banker at JPMorgan, referring to the 48-hour measure. “You never know when you have to travel for business, plans can change”. He later added that many would support the measure if it helped shorten queues at immigration on arrival.Visits to the US from countries other than Canada and Mexico have fallen 17 per cent since 2000, in spite of a 20 per cent increase in cross-border travel elsewhere in the world.
While part of me rather does hope the EU does in fact have the balls to retaliate to this monstrous idiocy by imposing the same kinds of idiocy, the better part of me says that given comments like this:
Russ Knocke, spokesman for the Department of Homeland Security, said the US was “comfortable” with the EU having a reciprocal system. “It would lend itself to increasing baseline security for air travel throughout the west,” he saidthe wilting shrieking cowards in America will take hermetically sealed borders behind which they can cower as a good thing.
Rather the EU should profit from American idiocy and see more business shift out of the US and overseas.
I can only imagine how London would have developed if after a few IRA bombings, however bloody, the UK had shut down travel from America - on the real threat of Irish American support to the IRA murderers.
Sadly, even worse than the business travel component - which will inevitably shift business away from the US which has become a terribly unpleasant place to fly to - is the utterly irrational cringing in fear component regarding freight screening.
The law demands the screening of all air and sea freight at foreign ports before being shipped to the US.The German Industry Federation, BDI, hit out at the screening requirements enshrined in the law. “We are following with concern the tightening of security measures in the US, which impose a burden that is not justified by the benefits,” said the BDI’s Carsten Kreklau.
The federation added that the law “contradicted all existing customs security initiatives, which are based on targeted risk analysis”. According to BDI data, it takes about 10 minutes to scan each container – meaning that the screening of a large cargo ship “could easily result in an additional delay of 1,600 hours [nearly 70 days]”.
Well, Americans are putting up enormous non-tariff barriers in an irrational, overdone response to one bloody attack. Cutting themselves off.... or cutting off the nose to spite the face.
Posted by The Lounsbury at August 8, 2007 10:46 AM
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Comments
Such measures have been piling up over the last few years. I've been avoiding the US as much as I could. I'm managing resources across 90 locations in the US and I can feel the pain in the ass that this is. So you're absolutely right about shifting business away. If it was just up to me, I'd relocate most of those resources outside the US, either in Canada or in some low cost country. Beyond the business cost rationale in centralizing them, we'd get rid of this kind of US-specific hassles. I push in this direction whenever I can.
Posted by: Shaheen ![[TypeKey Profile Page]](http://lounsbury.aqoul.com/nav-commenters.gif)
at August 8, 2007 11:05 PM
These are the same bureaucratic leaders at DHS who intentionally sabotage the more effective enforcement programs by the Border Patrol or real airline security by the Air Marshals. Or refuse to share terrorism intelligence with the heads of major metropolitan police departments ( who have the security clearances to receive such information. The NYPD long ago gave up on DHS and organized its own anti-terror intel unit).
Ironically, a hypothetical al Qaida operative in a Mexican border town can now get into the U.S. much faster than could Collounsbury
Posted by: zenpundit at August 10, 2007 12:40 AM
Hey L. Any comments on the big bad liquidity whatever-it-is? Are you now doing massive damage-control work or is the Maghreb sort of out of harm's way?
Posted by: Tom Scudder at August 10, 2007 02:01 AM
Having just arrived home via JFK, I completely agree that the US has lost its mind. I found that airports with connecting flights to JFK had additional security layers that slowed things down considerably (e.g. I had to show my bloody driver's license and business card in Milan before they let me on the plane to NYC -- guess why).
And yet the NYC customs official thought it appropriate to flirt with me for 5 minutes instead of asking me any serious questions, despite the 3 hour lineup of angry Germans behind me...
Posted by: eerie at August 10, 2007 11:11 AM
You mean the credit crisis?
At the moment what I am doing is out of harms' way, but today's announcement by BNP Paribas is sobering.
By the way, I turn out to have been accidentally prescient on this in my attention to explosions and hedge funds.
Don't trust fancy models, really. We just are not clever enough or know enough to truly model out "black swans" or anticipate unknown unknowns. I prefer modest simplicity.
Posted by: The Lounsbury at August 10, 2007 02:28 PM
