As the late Herb Stein, who was Richard Nixon's chief economist, once said: "If something can't continue forever … it probably won't."
Sounds to me if Nixon had a good economist. -g-
Hi Craig,
An interesting read. For some odd reason many of your views and concerns are parallel with certain thinking of the British intellectual socialist left. I am not saying that is a bad thing. My own "USA conservative" type views I have on several financial matters is often poorly understood here in the UK. Well, I'm supposed to say "third way" or "new labor" but much of that thinking is muddled imho.
For example. There is a book written by Will Hutton called "The world we are in".
<http://www.amazon.co.uk/exec/obidos/ASIN/0316858714/qid=1029235573/sr=2-1/ref=sr_2_3_1/202-2203806-7814219>
For some reason the book does not appear in the lists at Amazon.com in the USA. I would not normally buy a book like that. It's too thick (400 pages of small text). My simplistic thinking is if the Author can't express his view in a normal sized book with normal sized text, it probably ain't worth reading.
Anyway I was given the book to read, as (seemingly) I don't realize that America is the actual cause of all the problems in the world.
To be fair, Will Hutton only attacks (and he goes to great pains to point this out) a very small section of the American political conservative right.
Here is a small quote from the conclusion. (I have only read a few of the chapters so far, I hope WH sees this as a push for USA sales, not as copywrite infringement)
quote
"If the world is not careful, our future will be to accept globalisation almost entirely on American conservative terms and around American conservative preoccupations. Despite the brave talk of new multilaterism in the wake of 11 September, the hard truth is that the predisposition to unilaterism has been reinforced."
end quote
(I would not like to muddle WH's beautiful well written script with my muddled incoherent scrawl)
There is a lot of George Bush bashing in the book to say the least.
In short, when it comes to "opening" our European or Asian markets, the USA is all for free trade. When it comes to anything that might not give the USA an all out advantage, all of a sudden USA national interests have to be considered paramount. White man speaketh with forked tongue and the rest of the world are the redskins.
Well, we are in a fine mess now aren't we?
So what are the problems and potential solution??
I have my own personal views on several matters, though I can't write a big fancy book like Will Hunt, maybe some of my ideas can be expressed here in this post on SI.
So, lets first re read that article by Jeff Faux again and look at the problems
- The market is crumbling and the dollar is falling. Where do these problems originate from....
..Dot Com bubble collapse.
..Accounting scandels.
..Massive economic advantage over world wide competitors by various methods to ensure the maximum wealth effect for USA business and consumers. This also results in a trade deficit. Americans don't need to work so hard and can spend more money.
All of these problems originate in one place only. The good 'ol US of A (imho).
Some of these problems can be applied with a broader brush to "first world economies". We are practically stealing the food out of the mouths from people in third world countries. No, we don't stop some black guy in Africa from raking and planting his field by tying him up in his shack. It's done more subtly. We simply deprive him of the ability to sell it at a reasonable local price thus ensuing a spiral downward in wealth until he starves to death. We shrug our shoulders and say "look, how sad... he was poor and died."
I blame the UN and the IMF (in particular) for many of these problems. They force poor nations into situations where they do things "their way" ... as if they knew squat to start with. A good example here.
<http://www.africa2000.com/INDX/classroom.pdf>
Trouble is closing the UN and the IMF directly is not going to make things any better for anyone imho. It's a matter of seeing what the real problems are and the vast majority agreeing on a fix.
As Tony Blair would say (and I rarely agree with him)...
"There is an important role to play for responsible government"
This means world government too btw. It is not possible to shirk from that conclusion if you realistically want to fix some of these problems. USA's problems too.
By responsible government I am not suggesting a whole load of bureaucrats blabbing at conferences wasting tax payers money with a bunch of perks etc talking crapola to no avail.
Or some very rich guy in the USA laying down the law with a star on his chest and a bunch of nukes in his six shooters.
A solution to many of these trade issues, stock market bubbles, wars, starvations, corporate governance problems, and common human decent relations in business is (imho) get rid of the fiat money supply. Simple and effective. No managing of money supplies or whole loads of usless activities that makes the world a more unhappy place.
A few officials from each country around the world could meet once or twice a year to discuss unanticipated problems. Yeah they have have a perk or two to keep the positions competitive to draw the best talent.
Farm subsidies to keep the world supply of food plentiful should exist but on international agreed rates changing maybe a bit from country to country to suit local needs, not to competitively run other countries agriculture into the ground. A single 486 PC could probably run a program adjusting prices as required. Under those circumstances yes I could see trade tariff barriers helping things along where required as well. At the moment tariffs are just a USA bash the rest of world tool. I doubt it will work as such.
In other words...(imho) control and management of fiat money causes a lot of problems. E-gold is there waiting for everyone to step up to the plate, or some such hard backed currency agreed upon world wide.
Wellcome to the world village and economy! |
