Patrick Bond wrote: > Look, I appreciate the partial attack on TPP, especially its > codification of corporate power, but surely you'd agree the limits of > Stiglitz are on stark display here, Bob.
I think the points you make about Stiglitz's views are quite important. They are particularly important because you deal with crucial facts about the present world economy, and not mere criticisms of detail about Stiglitz. > > 1) In July when he was at the Bellagio estate, he called the forthcoming > *Paris climate deal a "charade"*... but now he revises with a partial > endorsement: "the world is moving, inexorably, toward a green economy." > That's simply not true, the Paris Conference of Polluters is still a > charade, Indeed! COP21 was a major disaster for the environment. There was nothing in Paris about the failure of the past market measures; there was only the determination to proceed faster and faster on the same path. When Stiglitz and various establishment environmentalists find something good in the Paris climate summit, they are showing that class solidarity with the bourgeoisie is more important to them than telling the truth about the dangers facing us. What the bourgeois world is moving towards is not a green economy, but green spin control, where every small measure by a corporation is paraded as a great step forward, while the environment worsens and worsens. What is being promoted now is called a "green economy", but it is the charade of a green neo-liberal economy. > > 2) On the *BRICS New Development Bank*, first, it will amplify all the > worst tendencies of Bretton Woods banking ( > http://www.counterpunch.org/2015/07/10/brics-bankers-confirm-they-will-undergird-not-undermine-western-financial-decadence/ > > and my slides are here, > http://www.open.ac.uk/ikd/podcasts/brics-banking-and-debate-over-sub-imperialism > > ) and second, it's no secret anymore - because his colleague Nick Stern > let the cat out of the bag in a talk he didn't know was taped - that in > proposing the NDB take the form it has, Stiglitz, Stern and the late > Ethiopian tyrant Meles Zenawi were really aiming to facilitate > multinational corporate exploitation of poor countries. Your repeated exposure of the BRICS development bank is also important. And in general, the material you have been producing on the actual role of the BRICS in the world economy and about their imperialism is of tremendous value. > > 4) On his TPP sensibility, "*The problem is not so much with the > agreement´s trade provisions*." Yes it is: all these trade > liberalisations have had disastrous consequences. But ultimately > Stiglitz the economist most values "basic principles of efficiency and > the free flow of goods." I ndeed. Stiglitz is enmeshed in market ideology. He would prefer some reforms. But faced with the fact that the neo-liberal atrocities are accelerating as things get worse, he still tries to find something good in the current drive to environmental and economic disaster. > The problem here > is the danger that again, in terms of legitimation, Stiglitz runs the > risk of ceding this "collective" power to /both /the 1%ers of the US and > China. (If not, he should say so explicitly.) The neoliberal faction of > the Chinese Communist Party - the guys that promote greater trade and > investment, especially that they face such a severe internal > overaccumulation crisis - cannot be trusted to represent the genuine > interests of 1.4 billion people, just as Obama's lads cannot be trusted, > as we saw last month in Nairobi at the WTO summit. Indeed! > But correct me if I'm too ultra on this, as ever... I would rather say, keep up the good work! -- Joseph Green _______________________________________________ pen-l mailing list [email protected] https://lists.csuchico.edu/mailman/listinfo/pen-l
