Ken Walker attributes a whole mouthful to me (Mr. Gouin). This was based on
a quote by Thomas Lunde from Le Monde Diplomatique, without giving the
author or the title of the article it came from. Therefore, without getting
into an argument of how I view apples or oranges I'll leave it to Thomas
Lunde to straighten out Ken Walker. Back to lurking, for yet a little
while, in the hope of noticing a retraction.
At 20:55 97-11-28 +0000, Ken Walker wrote:
>I feel obliged, after lurking here for some time, to point to the odd
>fallacy:
>
>Thomas Lunde offers us this:
>
>>Andre Gouin has kindly presented us all with a new source of
>>information - take a read of the following paragraph if you want to
>>evaluate the quality of writing and depth of thought - I like it -
>>thanks.
>
>M. Gouin, it seems to me, does not understand the difference between
>apples and oranges.
>
>He says:
>
>> Faced with the power of these giants of the financial world, States
>> can do very little. The recent financial crisis in Mexico, which
>> began in late December 1994, demonstrated this clearly. What weight
>> do the cumulative currency reserves of the United States, Japan,
>> Germany, France, Italy, the United Kingdom and Canada that is, the
>> seven richest countries in the world - have when faced with the
>> financial attacking force of private investment funds, for the most
>> part British or Japanese? Not a lot. Just as an example, let us
>> consider that in the greatest financial elilort made in modern
>> economic history in favour of a country - in this case Mexico - the
>> great States of the world (including the United States), the World
>> Bank and the International Monetary Fund managed, together, to raise
>> about 50 billion dollars. A considerable sum of money. Well, the big
>> three American pension fund managers, Fidelity Investments, Vanguard
>> Group and Capital Research and Management control 500 billion
>> dollars. The managers of these funds hold in their hands a financial
>> power of indescribable proportions - one that no government minister
>> or central bank governor in the world possesses. In a market that
>
>The flaw is this: if you measure the power of the mentioned
>pension funds by the total of the assets they administer, and the
>power of the G7 countries by how much they can raise to support
>Mexico, the comparison lacks relevance. Either compare how much the
>pension funds can raise to support Mexico (as opposed to their total
>assets under administration) or compare their total assets to the
>total assets that these countries control, in which case 500 billion
>dollars is peanuts, relatively speaking.
>
>The foreign currency reserves (which may only be a part of the
>"cumulative currency reserves" M. Gouin refers to) of the G7
>countries do in fact approach 500 billion dollars excluding gold
>reserves. These reserves are available for exercising the sort of
>influence that M. Gouin favours, amongst other things. I would bet
>my poke that the owners of the investment funds are not prepared to
>allow the use of the slightest portion of their funds for such
>purposes.
>
>Rhetoric such as this denigrates the conclusions it is intended
>to support.
>
>> The
>>managers of these funds hold in their hands a financial power of
>>indescribable proportions - one that no government minister or
>>central bank governor in the world possesses. In a market that has
>
>This plainly wrong conclusion is the result of such analysis. It
>leads to such nonsense as this:
>
>>Political leaders of the major world
>>powers meeting with the 850 most important economic decision-makers
>>in the world at the Davos International Forum in Switzerland last
>>January, clearly stated the degree to which they feared the
>>superhuman power of these fund managers whose fabulous wealth has
>>freed itself from government control and who act as they wish on the
>>cyberspace of world finance.
>
>Perhaps M. Gouin would be willing to provide a copy of what was
>actually said where these fears are so "clearly stated." Given his
>emphatic expression of what was said I would expect to see the words
>such as "fear", "superhuman power" attibuted to these leaders or
>some support for the notion that these fund managers are free "from
>government control".
>
>---------------------
>Ken Walker mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED] http://www.island.net/~kwalker/
>
>
>
"The end of labor is to gain leisure." Aristotle.
-- ARG d'Ottawa ON Canada. Futuriste-au-loisir maintenant. --
