Re: Rethinking Marxism

[Dennis R Redmond <dredmond@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx>]

On Tue, 12 Sep 2000, Xxxx Xxxxx Xxxxxx wrote:

> designed by US imperialism from the beginning. The literature of the 1970s
> suggest massive amounts of American banks loans and finance capital to East
> Asian countries in order to built their economies against communist threat in
> the region.

That was then, things are a bit different now. Here's the latest BIS data
on what Asia owes to First World banks, located in the EU, Japan and US,
as of March 2000 (note debt is in billions US$, the rest of the numbers
are percentages):

Country         Debt    Euro-zone       Japan        UK         US
---------------------------------------------------------------------
South Korea     68.3    30.3            18.7        7.9        12.4
China           62.2    35.1            17.9        7.9         2.9
Indonesia       40.5    41.9            28.5        8.0         8.0
Thailand        30.7    33.1            38.7        4.2         2.9
Taiwan          21.7    41.8            13.9       14.2         6.3
India           21.0    39.6            11.4        9.4         8.5
Malaysia        18.1    35.8            32.0       11.2         5.6
Philippines     16.0    44.6            18.4        9.2        14.5
Vietnam         1.7     55.7            18.6       13.7         3.9

> The recent Asian crisis proves that "keiretsu capitalism" is rather an
> affirmation of US hegemony.

After a tough couple of years, the keiretsu are all making unimaginable
amounts of money again. I'm working up the numbers from the Japan Company
Handbook right now and will post them on the Web later this week, but just
to give you a general idea: the Mizuho group went from a 4.8 billion EUR
loss in 1999 to a 10.9 billion EUR profit in fiscal 2001; Sumitomo-Mitsui
went from 5.8 bill EUR profit to over 13 billion, etc.

The keiretsu are back, and powering up fast.

-- Dennis