Re: [Marxism] ADB initiative "neuters IMF in Asia"

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

Marvin,

What you reproduce, uncritically, is bullshit and snakeoil in that:

1. The article claims that this fund constitutes an AMF, which supposedly 
will act more benevolently than the IMF when in fact the fund is a 
liquidation fund, not a "stabilization" fund, or economic "restructuring 
fund."  There is no evidence that the fund will even operate, much less how 
it will operate.

2.  That this fund represents a decoupling of Asia from the US/EU/UK 
dominated stage of world capitalism.  How anyone can look at what has gone 
on in the last 1.5 years and talk about decoupling is beyond comprehension. 
To talk about such nonsense is cognitive dissonance to the max.


3.  Like the good generals of capitalism, the journalists of capital are 
always ready to fight, and critique the last war, or in this case the next 
to last war-- the Asian crisis of 1997-- as if that's what's going on today; 
as if the Washington Consensus represents an eternal strategy of the 
bourgeoisie, a holy writ, the maintenance of which is the most important 
thing for capital.  Clearly that is not the case, and the bourgeoisie are 
quite capable of jettisoning yesterday's ideology when conditions so 
warrant.  Doesn't make them any less bourgeois, any less powerful,  just 
means they don't and won't necessarily use the IMF everywhere, although 
where they have used it, in Europe, they use it just like the IMF of old.

4. The snake oil is that somehow this AMF will mitigate the impacts of 
capitalist overproduction-- yet another example of cognitive dissonance. 
Look at the Korean shipyards, the container ports all across Asia, India's 
growth rates and capital investment, profits in China,  semiconductor 
production, etc. etc. and tell how exactly how this AMF is going to cushion 
that burden.

5.  The snake oil is in the bullshit that somehow the IMF destabilized, 
exacerbated the distress of the Asian countries in 1997, and so proper IMF 
or AMF policies can stabilize and resolve the problems of capitalist 
overproduction.

6.  "Western investors continue to withdraw huge risk premiums from emerging 
markets"??  Really?  Look at the yield curve for emerging market yields from 
2004-2007.    But the article doesn't examine those yields, doesn't even 
compare them to yields of counterparts in Europe or North America, but 
compares them to yields on US Treasury instruments-- stating that the 
emerging market instruments paid interest rates several hundred basis points 
above the Treasury instruments.  Guess what?  North American, European 
corporate debt instruments also pay interest rates several percentage points 
[100 basis points = 1 percentage point] above  US Treasury debt.


7.  The bullshit is in the snake oil that "the Tokyo embrace of Washington 
only goes so far."  As if Japan is going to ally with China in a new 
co-prosperity sphere.  Come on.  Remember the 70s and the 80s  when Europe 
and then Japan was going to replace the US?  When the US was supposedly 
ceding its hegemony to the rising sun in the east?  What happened then? 
Well, you had the Plaza Accords, you had Japan export capital by the 
shipload for investment outside the home market-- into China, Thailand, etc, 
and you had the sustained attack on the working class in Japan, creation of 
a sub-proletariat.


8.  Which gets us to the bottom line:   That's it bullshit to think that any 
decoupling or coupling makes any difference to the workers of the ASEAN 
countries.

----- Original Message ----- 
From: "Marv Gandall" <marvgandall@xxxxxxxxxxxx>
To: <sartesian@xxxxxxxxxxxxx>
Sent: Friday, May 08, 2009 6:40 PM
Subject: Re: [Marxism] ADB initiative "neuters IMF in Asia" 


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