From: Rakesh Bhandari (rakeshb@STANFORD.EDU)
Date: Tue Jun 08 2004 - 18:18:47 EDT
At 10:33 PM +0100 6/8/04, Paul Cockshott wrote: >It is worse than that Gerry. If we take Clauses argument seriously >money no longer exists. Didn't Claus say he was not talking about money per se? A general equivalent does not in fact exist: there is no world money in that all countries adopt the same commodity as the general equivalent. The key international currency is the US dollar. The privileges that the US derives therefrom are not derived from taxation but largely (though not exclusively) from (as Robert Gilpin has explained) confidence building steps that the US as reserve currency country will not pursue inflationary policies leading to devaluation of other countries' reserves and that the US will pay an attractive interest rate on assets demonimated in its currency and other steps that build confidence in private and public holders of its currency that its currency will continue to be convertible into other sound assets and will not lose value because of inflation or changes in exchange rates. Confidence is and has not been built primarily through taxation as the chartalist school which you seem to be defending suggests. These confidence building measures can (and will likely) prove very costly. We'll see what happens to the US housing market as Greenspan begins rate hikes. Rakesh
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