> From: "Gorojovsky" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
> Date: Mon, 29 Jan 2001 20:14:04 -0300
> ... the debt had been taken because there
> was a surplus of money in the global financial system and Argentina had been
> chosen as a recipient of that money. That surplus was, of course, the mass of
> petrodollars that were burning in the hands of the great bankers.
Comrade Nestor, was that "mass" not merely the symptom; surely
the cause was the growing crisis of overaccumulation of capital in
general, which translated into liquidity not merely in terms of
petrodollars, but soon enough -- combined with financial
deregulation (reflecting rising power of financiers) -- into massive
debt loads in virtually all sectors of economy and society. I always
fear "roots of crisis" argumentation that STOPS at petrodollars,
rather than continuing through to the other structural problems
in the world economy that were becoming evident even before 1973.
Why, after all, did Nixon kill the Bretton Woods fixed exchange rate
system and delink gold? Why did corporate manufacturing profits fall
so dramatically across the G-7 countries during the late 1960s? Why
did the rise of raw materials prices (other than oil) suddenly
reverse, dramatically, after 1973? Why did financial volatility
become such a common problem? Why did speculative asset bubbles
(shares, real estate, etc) get substantially worse than over the
previous three decades?
The answer is the more generalised capitalist crisis (and its
displacement, in which Third World debt played a crucial role), not
merely the redistribution of income from petroleum consumers to
producers, surely?
I know you agree. Just thought I'd refresh my line. Am preparing a
course on globaloney, and quickly reviewing all the lefty
(english-language) world-crisis literature at the moment. What are
your favourite books, suitable for masters/doctoral "public policy"
students attending a semi-peripheral bourgeois university? (I will
also be teaching this course at a marxist haven -- political
science at York U in Toronto -- in July, so am anxious to get the
very best material...)
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