[PEN-L:1286] Re: RE: From the rectum

[Rob Schaap <rws@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx>]

G'day Penners,

Got this off-list:

>You didn't mention the China devaluation. Looks unavoidable and when it
>comes the 'world economy'  will wish it could remember why it ever thought
>disparagingly of 'banana republics' (or is it just that I'm talking about
>1929 in my lectures at present?) G.

Well, one good thing about teaching 1929 in 1998 is that you're not asking
for too great a leap of imagination on the part of your audience, eh?

I did mention China, but they're hard to fathom, aren't they?  I mean, they
enjoy currency controls that other economies don't (and Krugman, who's a
real liberal, is suddenly all for these controls), they've a largely
uncommodified economy (meaning the reliance on wages is not as absolute as
it is in, say, S Korea), they can print money at will ('coz no-one can dump
the currency if the govt says they can't), and they don't much care if a
few thousand starve (I mean, it's not as if the news will ever get out),
and mebbe recovering from this flood, the sheer magnitude of which is
beyond imagination, might even get some Keynesian multipliers happening.

This post has come hard to me - I never convince myself when I try to be
optimistic.

Cheers,
Rob.