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Most corporations chafe under the Government's voluntary program, especially since private investment is one area in which the balance of payments is in fairly good shape. Last year, while business sent $3.14 billion out in investments, it returned $4 billion in profits, for a net gain of $600 million. Corporations are doing more and more borrowing overseas. Jersey's long-term debt includes $65 million repayable in German marks, $16 million in Belgian francs and $11 million in Norwegian kroner. Ironically, although Europeans predictably complained that borrowing abroad would wipe out their meager capital markets, the reverse has proved true. Making Eurodollar loans in Europe on U.S. money that never comes home, or floating Eurobonds pegged to such dollars, global Americans have developed a new $2 billion capital market in Europe. Of that amount, U.S. companies have so far utilized only about 40%, leaving more than $1 billion for Europeans to borrow.
Discord and disenchantment have caused a handful of U.S. companies to pull out and come home, and diminishing profits are causing others to rest and regroup. But in the long-term view that Mike Haider takes from his 29th-floor windows, the future is crystal-clear. "I see no limit to the globalization of American business," he says. With the experience of his oil-field days, he sees American companies as doing the exploration work. After that, countries around the world will reap the benefits. And the U.S. balance of payments will some time feel a favorable weight as profits come rolling home.
*Standard Oil Co. (New Jersey) is one of 33 oil companies that the U.S. Government, in a 1911 antitrust suit, spun out of John D. Rockefeller's original Standard Oil trust. Among others are Standard companies of Ohio, Indiana, California, New York and Kentucky. Apart from the valuable name, they have no connection with each other, with one exception: the California company in 1961 bought a controlling interest in Standard Oil (Kentucky).