Re: [Marxism] ALBA attempts to create Latin Am. currency for regionaltransactions

["S. Artesian" <sartesian@xxxxxxxxxxxxx>]

Well, Fred must be living in a different world where China and Brazil are 
actually, as opposed to pretending/posing, independent of the dollar. 
Brazil, let me point out yet again, required a practically open-ended 
currency swap line with the FRB so that the Brazilian central bank could 
lend directly exporters, assume letter-of-credit obligations after Brazilian 
commercial banks withdrew from such activities in the attempt to preserve 
their dollar holdings-- or rather claims on dollar holdings.

China?  This belief in China's independence from the US centered nature of 
global capitalism must be the biggest myth perpetrated since some political 
economist proclaimed the end to capitalism's business cycle, or that 
deregulated markets would maximize efficiency and distribute risk 
rationally.

China can talk all its wants about an SDR reserve currency; can worry about 
the standing of the US Treasury securities it holds, but the fact of the 
matter, for China to move away from the dollar it must, simply must make its 
own currency fully convertible with dollars, euros, pounds, or the SDRs. 
And once that happens, China's capital controls will disintegrate and the 
attack on China's fixed assets will race through that economy like the 
influenza outbreak of 1918-- with equivalent rates of morbidity and 
mortality.

As for ALBA and Ecuador and the new Sucre-- if the US doesn't accept it then 
it won't happen and you will know it was the US that said no when Brazil 
doesn't shift its trading to utilize the virtual currency.


----- Original Message ----- 
From: "Fred Feldman" <ffeldman@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx>
To: <sartesian@xxxxxxxxxxxxx>
Sent: Sunday, April 19, 2009 11:56 AM
Subject: [Marxism] ALBA attempts to create Latin Am. currency for 
regionaltransactions


Although I am not a dollar catastrophist, I think the dollar's hold has been
weakening on a world scale. This includes the increased independence of a
broad layer of semicolonial countries, from China to Iran to Brazil (and
including Cuba -- the only Latin American country to dollarize that has so
far reversed the process -- Ecuador and El Salvador have not seen their way
clear to doing so.



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