[Marxism] the ficticious credit crunch and dollar hegemony

[Dbachmozart@xxxxxxx]

By William Bowles  --  
clip --  
For the past five  centuries Western capitalism has sought to extend its 
control over the entire  planet, a process delayed for around seventy-five 
years 
by the Russian and  associated revolutions. Denied access to markets and 
resources that capitalism,  in order to survive, has to have, in 1991 the world 
became capitalismâs oyster,  the âmarketâ reigned supreme, we were 
promised a 
future of unfettered expansion  and wealth (remember the âtrickle-down 
theoryâ
?). But it took was less than  twenty years for the entire edifice to come 
crashing down as the inherent  contradictions of a now-globalized capitalism 
floated to the surface like so  much scum. The over-accumulation of capital 
produced 
by the âfree marketâ  desperately needs new markets but likewise, 
globalizing production produced a  vast over-production of goods and 
commensurately 
nobody to buy them. These twin  elements, over-accumulation and over-production 
are the direct result of moving  production to the worldâs cheap labour 
markets, 
which in the short-term produced  vast profits for a handful of giant 
transnational corporations (and âcheapâ  goods for the minority of the 
worldâs 
population who live in the so-called  developed countries. âCheapâ because 
theyâve 
been purchased using borrowed  money).  
âWorld trade is now a game in which the US produces dollars and  the rest of 
the world produces things that dollars can buy. The world's  interlinked 
economies no longer trade to capture a comparative advantage; they  compete in 
exports to capture needed dollars to service dollar-denominated  foreign debts 
and 
to accumulate dollar reserves to sustain the exchange value  of their 
domestic currencies. To prevent speculative and manipulative attacks  on their 
currencies, the world's central banks must acquire and hold dollar  reserves in 
corresponding amounts to their currencies in circulation. The  higher the 
market 
pressure to devalue a particular currency, the more dollar  reserves its 
central bank must hold. This creates a built-in support for a  strong dollar 
that in 
turn forces the world's central banks to acquire and  hold more dollar 
reserves, making it stronger. This phenomenon is known as  dollar hegemony, 
which is 
created by the geopolitically constructed  peculiarity that critical 
commodities, most notably oil, are denominated in  dollars.â â _âUS 
dollar hegemony 
has got to goâ_ (http://www.atimes.com/global-Econ/DD11Dj01.html)  By Henry  
C 
K Liu.
The media go to  great lengths to push the totally ficticious idea as to the 
cause of the current  crisis of capital by labelling it as the âcredit 
crunchâ
, that is to say, a  shortage of cash in circulation, or more precisely, 
access to cash via credit  with which to purchase things.
 
full -  _http://www.creative-i.info/?p=415_ 
(http://www.creative-i.info/?p=415) 





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