> Date: Sat, 23 Jun 2001 17:52:05 +0100
> From: Chris Burford <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
> But fundamentally the enemy is not a policy: it is the blind workings of
> global finance capital. That is why we need regulation not de-regulation.
> This may not come through the reform of Bretton Woods organisations, but it
> needs to come from somewhere, of a global economy that is a highly complex
> social structure, but is privately owned by finance capital.
Chris, the only vague sense I have that "regulation" may be on
the agenda of international elites is the UN Financing for
Development conference which Ernesto Zedillo is chairing early next
year in Mexico, and whose main economic advisor is John Williamson,
who came up with the term Washington Consensus. So there's absolutely
no hope there at all.
Or am I missing something? Even the new Giddens/Hutton book with
chapters by Soros and Volcker can't come up with anything really
convincing, that is going to be on the real world agenda.
We've got quite good progressive momentum, by the way, behind the
argument -- made by Keynes forcefully in that 1933 Yale Review
article -- that aside from trade finance, we must stick as much as
possible to local sources of development finance. No need, we want to
posit very strongly, for a WB or IMF given the havoc that they've
caused, the need for Third World debt repudiation (paid for in part
by drawing down BWI capital), their refusal to truly reform, and the
hard/soft currency translation problem. (If you want I'll send you
the paper offlist.)
