here is a note from a colleague who has been working on Egypt: Egypt suffers from real appreciation. The currency in real term appreciated against other major currencies due to the stable nominal exchange rate and rapid inflation of Egypt - this means the export competitiveness was severely weakened.
What does this mean? Price competitiveness is weakened but Egyptian firms export anyway, probably, at the cost of weak wage prospects. The workers suffered - but the extent can be terrifying. If the wage level correlates to the real effective exchange rate - the purchasing power of income measured by Egyptian Pounds has been reduced to a half the level of 2004. ________________________________ From: Jim Devine <[email protected]> To: Progressive Economics <[email protected]> Sent: Sat, February 19, 2011 2:37:56 PM Subject: Re: [Pen-l] Egypt: privatization versus state ownership Jean-Christophe Helary wrote: > ... I wonder if what we saw in Egypt was not just a part of the army agreeing >with the workers because they were not benefitting anymore from their special >status. Didn't we just see a bourgeois revolution where the bourgeoisie was >naturally in possession of the weapons and got its legitimation from the >street?< if so, it's an intra-bourgeois revolution, since Mubarak and his ultra-rich cronies are also bourgeois. -- Jim Devine / "Living a life of quiet desperation -- but always with style!" _______________________________________________ pen-l mailing list [email protected] https://lists.csuchico.edu/mailman/listinfo/pen-l
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