At 04:24 PM 3/22/2002 -0500, jerry wrote:
> >From the speech by Fidel Castro in [6804]:
>
> > The rich world should condone their foreign debt and grant them fresh soft
>credits to finance their development. The traditional offers of
>assistance, always scant and often ridiculous, are either inadequate or
>unfulfilled.
>For a true and sustainable economic and social development to take place
>much more is required than is usually admitted. Measures as those suggested
>by the late James Tobin to curtail the irrepressible flow of currency
>speculation --albeit it was not his idea to foster development-- would
>perhaps be the only ones capable of generating enough funds, which in the
>hands of the UN agencies and not of awful institutions like the IMF, could
>supply direct development assistance with a democratic participation of all
>countries and without the need to sacrifice the independence and
>sovereignty of the peoples. <
>
>Castro gives pretty sweeping support above for the Tobin Tax. Should
>we?
At the Globalisation Conference last month, Fidel commented along
these lines from the floor, suggesting that what was really needed was an
International Monetary Revolutionary Fund.
As for Jerry's question, anything that curbs capital is a Good
Thing--- but those who push the Tobin Tax idea (in my experience) end up
making a distinction between good (productive) capital and bad
(speculative) capital... even when they know better.
in solidarity,
mike
Michael A. Lebowitz
Economics Department
Simon Fraser University
Burnaby, B.C., Canada V5A 1S6
Office: Phone (604) 291-4669
Fax (604) 291-5944
Home: Phone (604) 872-0494
Fax (604) 872-0485
Lasqueti Island: (250) 333-8810
This archive was generated by hypermail 2b30 : Tue Apr 02 2002 - 00:00:06 EST