As North American and international capital seek to drum into the heads
of economists the oneness of money and blood, the push is on to formally
tie the peso to the dollar, to hand over control of Mexican monetary policy
to Alan Greenspan.
Item #1: Steve Hanke, "Critics Err--Mexico Still Needs a currency Board"
Wall Street Journal, Feb. 22, 1995, ed.page. Note: Hanke, like fellow
faculty member Riordan Roett,is at Johns Hopkins.
Hanke, who has written a book on the virtues of currency boards, i.e.,
tying a weak currency to a stronger one so tightly that the supply of the
weak currency can expand only with an expansion of holdings of the
stronger currency, has attacked the current bailout deal as a return to
Teddy Roosevelt's methods of seizing customs houses. He argues instead
for seizing the Central Bank. He prefers the kind of thing Argentina has
done to limit the power of the government: "With a board, the peso's
monetary base (notes and coins) would be solely determined by the free
market demand for pesos, at a permanently fixed exchange rate. The base
would not be determined by the Bank of Mexico..." Thus no expanding the
money supply to accomodate public employment programs, no drawing down of
foreign exchange reserves to finance balance of trade deficits to keep
the ruling party in power. Hanke estimates financing for such a program
would cost about $11b --something he says the IMF is authorized to
provide. "a currency board," he writes, "would produce stability in
Mexico".
Item #2: Business Week editorial, February 27, 1995, p. 136.
Business Week, which quotes Hanke (see p. 62), says the following:
"The big victory of the conservative PAN ....and the failure to capture
the leader of teh Chiapas rebellion are raising doubts about the
political as well as economic leadership of President Zedillo. ...His
ability to enforce harsh anti-inflation poicies on a restive publc in the
face of a sharp 40% devaluation is now being sharply questioned by the
marketsl ...A dramatic new gesture is needed. Enter the currency board."
"...it would be tying its inflation rate and interest rates to the U.S.
The Mexican government and the central bank would give up all
discretionary power to pump up the money supply or to act as lender of
last resort. . . The PACTO, the annual agreement on wages and prices,
would have to be abolished. And state-owned assets would have to be sold
off to the plrivate sector to sop up excess pesos."
As usual Business Week is lucid about the political side of its
economics. Unlike Riordan Roett in his infamous Chase Report, BW doesn't
call for "eliminating" the Zapatistas (though implicitly it would help
ease doubts about Zedillo's "political leadership") but it does join him
in calling for sticking it to the Mexican working class and in calling on
on the Mexican state to sell off its assets (undoubtedly to include
PEMEX --although with all of PEMEX's oil revenues now obligated to the US
all that would do would be to return control over Mexico's oil to US
capital as it was before Cardenas nationalized it).
So far, Zedillo has merely acquiesced to the old game of the 1980s,
i.e., impose austerity, slash standards of living, some privatization,
to pay off debt. These guys want it all. Fed up with Zedillo's lack of
"leadership", they want the Mexican economy firmly in the hands of those
tough enough to handle it: Alan Greenspan and American corporations. Let
the Fed run monetary policy, the IMF run fiscal policy, and the
multinational corporations run the private sector (from oil to banks).
That would pretty much annex the whole Mexican economy to the U.S.
--which is what NAFTA was really all about anyway. And annexing the
Mexican economy means first and foremost annexing the Mexican working
class to the needs of American/multinational capital.
Next, I suppose, the Mexican army will be formally run from the Pentagon
and the national police forces from FBI headquarters. But what the hell,
the nationstate is dead, right? Why should any little people want to
hang on to its autonomy? Why should they be allowed to? You've got to
play by the rules, right? Otherwise you`re out of the game! Oh, forgot
to mention: capital generally, like its more savage wing (the mafia),
doesn't let people "quit". The Mexican army in in the Selva Lancandona
right now to prevent a bunch of Indians from "quitting". The situation
there is getting bloodier and bloodier but it's still a ways to go
before it reaches the proportions of the Mantanza --the 1932 butchering
of 30,000 peasants in El Salvador that brought the peace and quiet of the
graveyard to that country's rulling 14 capitalist families for 30 years.
Of course, if things get totally out of hand, in Mexico, if one of those
little marches of 150,000 people should decide to topple the state, you
can bet Zedillo, or one of his hinchmen, will put in a quick call to the
Pentagon and ask for help in resisting a "communist" takeover. Oh I know
the Cold War is over and communism is dead, but that hasn't stopped
either Zedillo or Washington from finding enemies where it needs them.
Anyway, once again, if you want to learn about the kind of strategies
that may be used against you, read the business press. They have to talk
frankly sometimes. They are, after all, in the deadly serious business
of trying to keep control, or reestablish control, over the rest of us.
Now, the question is: how can we prevent that and gain even more freedom
to recraft the world the way we want?
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Harry Cleaver
Department of Economics
University of Texas at Austin
Austin, Texas 78712-1173
USA
Phone Numbers: (hm) (512) 442-5036
(off) (512) 471-3211
Fax: (512) 471-3510
E-mail: [EMAIL PROTECTED]
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