> -----Original Message----- > From: [EMAIL PROTECTED] > [mailto:owner-pen-l@;galaxy.csuchico.edu]On Behalf Of Charles Jannuzi > Sent: 04 November 2002 14:01
> In Japan it is caused, it seems to me, by a > chronically overvalued yen--against the US dollar > ( a de facto world currency for every importing > and exporting nation I know of) and by a wild > overvaluation against Canadian and Australian > dollars (two countries from whence huge amounts > of commodities consumed in Japan come from). > Cheap imports from China, often branded or even > made to spec with Japanese makers' names, > contributes a lot too. > with respect, this is like saying tides are caused by the cycles of the lunar orbit. It is a description of a phenomenon not an explanation. How comes the yen to be over-valued and the yuan to be under-valued? Like the man said, at bottom there is only one money in the world. If chronic and persistent, crisis-inducing over and under-valuations happen, it's because of the politics in political economy. What the US has managed to export to Asia is *its own* accumulation crisis; deflationary policies, which have been and are being applied by both Japan and China, in both cases have the same objective, namely to out-compete US capitalism by using the accumulation crisis as a mechanism for the enforced restructuring of their respective national capitals. Japan like Germany has not responded to competitive dollar devaluations beginning with Nixon, by devaluing themselves but instead have chosen the deflationary path of striving to increase domestic productivity and thus in the long run to out-compete and destroy US capitalism, and to a degree they succeeded. China, which is historiclaly behind the curve, took the path of embracing competitive devaluations while policing its working class by direct political means rather than by the scourge of unemployment. Now China is getting to a position where it may be bale to compete more on equal terms, in which case it will revalue, the Chinese working class will experience wage increases, and net value will begin to flow massively into China, which will use the money to invest abroad and then to militarise in order to defend its investments. These longrun historical competitions between rival national capitals/imperialisms, are forms of class struggle. Mark
