[OPE] New Reserve Currency?

The way I put it in my OPE-L post on 11 January 2009, referring to my OPE-L
post of 13 September 2008, is that the issue is "whether capitalist
competition should reward those market actors who are successful, or whether
it should compensate the losses of those who were unsuccessful".

Now so long as the winners are winning, they are going to argue for
rewarding success. They always hold their mouth where the money is. But when
it turns out that "market excesses" endanger the system of exploitation as a
whole, ripping up the whole social fabric of society, then they will be
looking more seriously at redistribution schemes, although redistribution
schemes of a particular kind: schemes which are compatible with their own
position of dominance. The principle remains the same, whether we are
talking about nationalizing bank losses, or defending the foreign trade of
weaker countries.

Dr Stiglitz tries to come across as a reasonable liberal who wants to try to
do what is in the best interests of all, but he runs smack bang into the
interests of social classes.

The problem with the US federal state apparatus is that it does not in
reality represent the interests of the US population, never mind the world.
It's a plutocracy, the rule of the rich, for the rich, not a popular
democracy. Even the measliest piece of legislation providing some rights to
labor unions dies in the Senate. Thus, the consequence is that the federal
agencies can only just "theorize" about what the American interests might
be, and those theories are usually pretty bad. Underlying the theoretical
somersaults which occur is not science, but competitive interests, and an
American ideology about what is good for all human beings.

Jurriaan

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Received on Sat Mar 28 06:04:22 2009