Manu Ruys over Europa

Ingezonden door LVB op 2004-02-29 19:25

"We hebben nood aan Europese staatsmannen met visie maar ik zie ze niet. Alleszins Prodi niet. Dehaene? Hij komt uit een klein land en kan dus niet veel invloed hebben. En Louis Michel heeft zijn karretje aan dat van de Fransen gehaakt. Volgens mij moet Europa zich via het Noord-Atlantisch bondgenootschap weer veel nauwer aansluiten bij de Verenigde Staten. En terzelfder tijd ook bij Rusland, want dat zijn evengoed Europeanen."

Manu Ruys in Het Nieuwsblad van zaterdag 28 februari 2004

Reacties

#623

jcl

donderdag, 4 maart, 2004 - 12:05

 

<Over 'visie' gesproken :>

THE LOOMING FIRST-WORLD DEBT CRISIS

by Ann Petttifor

London, UK - Jubilee Research at the New Economics Foundation (NEF), the team that spearheaded global awareness of a Third World debt crisis, released provocative new research recently about looming 'First World' debt crisis. These findings appear in the first of NET's annual reports on global economy, Real World Economic Outlook (RWEO), which shadows the IMF's annual World Economic Outlook.

The RWEO report predicts that a giant credit bubble, created by central bankers and finance ministers who engineered decades of 'easy money', has now reached a 'tipping point' at which the 'bubble' of financial assets of the G-7 countries exceed GDP by nine times. This has triggered financial crisis elsewhere. Another tipping point, suggest NEF, would be a rise in interest rates - not unlikely for economies like the US and UK which have massive foreign deficits.

RWEO reveals that wile gobally there is a total of 100 trillion US dollar of debt out-standing, there is only 33 trillion US dollar of income with which to repay those debts. Recent stock-market falls, drastic though they have been, have barely dented the credit superstructure. When this credit bubble bursts in the US and UK, argues NEF, it will be middle-class consumers who will first bear the brunt of the financial crash. That will be unjust and unfair, because these consumers have been actively encouraged in their borrowing by the financial deregulation policies of both central bankers and governments. The impact of a bursting credit bubble will reverberate around the world, and hurt the poorest most.

It will also be grossly unjust because while bankers and finance minsters have clamped down on prices and wages, they have used the credit bubble (borrowing) to inflate asset values (stocks, bonds, and property) to extraordinary heights. On the whole it is the poor and the middle class that rely on wages and salaries, while the rich derive their incomes from assets or wealth.

#624

jcl

donderdag, 4 maart, 2004 - 12:05

 

How did we get into this mess ? RWEO challenges standard explanations for the launch of the 'globalization' experiment. We (the authors) constest that view that deregulation of capital flows - the very core of the globalization project - was brought about by a form of 'spontaneous combustion' caused by new technology. Nor do we share the view of many activists that globalization is 'corporate-driven'. Instead, we argue, globalization was triggered by elected politicians, and central bankers in both the US and the UK who disbanded the existing system of paying off debts by exchanging gold, and instead sought to open up (liberalise) capital markets so that the US could borrow to pay off debts.

This new arrangement allowed them to print the money in which they paid off those debts (unlike poor countries who have to repay debts in foreign currencies like dollars or sterling). UK politicians and central bankers were only too happy to act as US intermediaries in the capital markets. Together they constructed a new financial architecture that effectively obliges central banks of both rich and poor countries to lend the US by buying US Treasury Bills (debt), now effectively the world's reserve currency, which used to be neutral - gold.

It is this financial system which makes US financiers so confident that the rest of the world continue to finance their nations's extravagant spending binge.

We contest that view. Their is now a growing concensus that the vast build-up of household, corporate, state, and foreign debts of the US are *NOT* sustainable. Some central banks are already switching out of the flows shift away from the US, and there were signs recently of this happening, US Federal Reserve chairman Alan Greenspan may have to raise interest rates to attract capital back into the US - to fund the growing federeal, state and foreign deficits. Indeed, the bond markets seem to be signalling that they expect this to happen quite soon. It is when interest rates begin to rise again, when debt costs soar both for corporates and households, and defaults and bankruptcies increase more rapidly than now, that the tipping point will be reached. (See Eric Helleiner, The Re-emergence of Global Finance: from Bretton Woods to the 1990s. Corneel University Press, Ithaca, 1994).

For some, the day of reckoning has already come. When it does for the millions more that are dutifully and heroically borowing and spending, and thereby propping up the economy, great pain and anguish will be inflicted on individuals, businesses, their workers, families and communities. The consequences for the rest of us, and particularly for those in the poorest countries, are frightening.

RWEO calls on governments and central banks to take responsibility for their reckless deregulation of finance, to re-regulate international capital by bringing back exchange controls, and to rein in 'easy money' - reckless lending and borrowing - to return the economy to scale. Finally, we call them to compensate those consumers now dutifully propping up the US and the UK economies. This should be done not by taxing the middle class but by obliging the rich to share some of the incredible gains made over the last two decades, thanks to the actions of central bankers. Our world has been turned upside down. It is time to put it right again. (Copyrights IPS)

bye,

jcl.