At 08:42 16/06/02 -0700, you wrote: (TW) <<<< Anspach is a contributor to the book, "La monnaie souveraine", edited by Michel Aglietta and Andre Orlean. I don't read French so I have to rely on John Grahl's review of the book. According to Grahl:
"La monnaie souveraine, published in 1998, can properly be regarded as a collective and not merely a collected work. It is the fruit of a long interdisciplinary inquiry, bringing together economists, anthropologists, historians and psychologists over several years. It rests on the elaboration of a common set of concepts and their deployment in order to account for the monetary phenomenon. (An earlier group of studies from the same project appeared as Aglietta and Orléan, 1995). "Such an interdisciplinary approach is necessitated by the basic logic of a monetary theory of markets and by the rejection of the standard attempt to derive money from the exchange process. If money lies at the origin of the commodity-producing economy as a distinct sphere, then, from the point of view of economic theory itself, money must be presupposed and only a widening of the inquiry to other social sciences can account for its emergence. As Aglietta and Cartelier put it (MS, p 131), 'money is logically prior to market relations'; and, 'money is a social tie more fundamental than the market.' " >>>> Wow! If I knew what all that meant then I might be tempted to read the book. I used to read French when I was young (though, I must confess, only Simenon's Inspector Maigret novels and the occasional spicey Maupassant). But I'd be wary anyway. French intellectuals are notoriously able to deify even quite sordid things like the cash in your pocket into the highest empyreal spheres. But let me dart down to your last paragraph because, to my surprise, I find that there's something on which we seem to agree: <<<< I've got nothing against iron nails, seashells or sheepskin squares, but I would submit that such phenomena are silent about the role of the 'independent' central bank. Last time I checked, the U.S. dollar was not backed by a huge mass of nails, shells, skins, salt and bullion (whether gold or chicken). It is backed by something called "confidence" that the dollar is "strong". Go figure. >>>> Yes -- well, there was a time when money meant something tangible. Now, as you say, it all depends on that volatile thing called confidence. And that's something that speculators in US$s haven't a great deal of recently. The US$ is beginning to slide vis-à-vis the Yen and the Euro by the look of it. American manufacturers are praying for this devaluation to continue so they can export more. Bush and his money-man, O'Neill, don't seem to care. At least, they're taking care not to talk the dollar up nor talk it down. (Like Bush's towards Palestine, I don't think he knows what to do.) If the US$ slides further, then Japan's attempts at export-led recovery will be nipped in the bud and Europe's exporting industries will be on hold for a few years, to our great distress over here. If it slides steeply, then it might possibly possibly produce such a serious situation that our politicians might be prompted to restore money to its rightful place as something that's redeeemable against real value when we present our paper tokens to the bank. Either that, or they might as well make the US$ into a world currency sooner rather than later. Then, however it goes up or down in value against goods according to the activities of the printing presses or the counterfeiters, the whole world will ride up and down together as a gentle ocean swell rather than be battered by the exchange rate storms which occur all too frequently in this age of artificial currency. Keith Hudson ---------------------------------------------------------------------------- ------------ Keith Hudson, General Editor, Handlo Music, http://www.handlo.com 6 Upper Camden Place, Bath BA1 5HX, England Tel: +44 1225 312622; Fax: +44 1225 447727; mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED] ________________________________________________________________________
