Editorial: The Freep And Their Fingleton are Deaf and Blind

Eamonn Fingleton is the author of insightful books titled "Blindside: Why Japan is still on track to overtake the US by the year 2000," or "In Praise of Hard Industries - Why manufacturing, not the new economy is the key to future prosperity." Whoever followed his advice either has committed suicide by now, or is in a place where sharp objects are banned. Except for Bill Clinton and Ralph Nader, who think Fingleton is a swell guy, the Irish author, who now lives in Tokyo, has few friends left. He just found a bunch of new ones: The editors of the Freep. The Freep needed someone new to blame for Detroit's failures. So desperate were they that they scoured the Internet and found a piece on Fingleton's whacko blog "Unsustainable." The beginning of the article caught their eye: "Detroit's problems are partly - but only partly - its own fault." Ah! Somebody else to blame! No wonder the Freep immediately fell in love with that piece. The trouble of Detroit, says Fingleton, is not managerial incompetence; it's not greedy unions, nor wrong cars. The reason for Detroit's disaster sits in DC, says Fingleton: Those numbnuts in Washington simply failed to lock the foreigners out of the U.S. market, thinks Fingleton. No competition, and Detroit would be just fine. We kid you not. Read on, if you dare ...