RE: Re: RE: Profit Rates -- From Michael Yates

["Davies, Daniel" <daniel.davies@xxxxxxxxxxxx>]

-----Original Message-----
From: Louis Proyect [mailto:lnp3@xxxxxxxxx]
Sent: 18 April 2002 19:45
To: pen-l@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx
>Subject: [PEN-L:25116] Re: RE: Profit Rates -- From Michael Yates



>What do you meant that poor countries accrue interest liabilities that they
>don't pay? I was under the impression that the need to pay off debts to
>imperialist funding agencies is convulsing the 3rd world right now.

These statements aren't inconsistent if one takes into account the
difference between cash and accruals.  The Highly Indebted Poor Countries
have massive foreign debts that they can't pay.  Because of this, every
year, the IMF, World Bank and similar extend new loans to them which cover
the interest payments due on their old loans.  This is a cruel and stupid
game which keeps them in poverty forever, but its net effect is that, when
you factor aid and trade into the equation, the cash flow to most HIPCs from
the G7 is positive.  It's rather similar to the dot com business model where
operational losses were supported by positive cash flows from equity issues,
although the analogy is not so strong that I want to pursue it.


>Also
>(although I wouldn't dream of putting words in Michael's mouth) isn't the
>problem we are dealing with in the Argentina thread is exactly the need to
>get past surface impressions when discussing societies like Mexico? Of
>course, Mexico is not Tanzania but what sense does it make to categorize it
>(or Poland and Turkey) as a non-poor country just because it shares
>membership in the OECD? Mexico and Turkey are peripheral nations that will
>never join the front ranks of other OECD nations such as Norway or Austria.

I take your point here (that is, if I understand you correctly as saying
that we' re talking about imperialism rather than poverty per se here).  But
would you have said the same thing about Spain twenty years ago?

>One of the indicators that we need to take into account is yearly
>emigration because of unemployment. There are Turkish (and Polish)
>streetsweepers, prostitutes, newspaper vendors and non-unionized
>construction workers in Norway and Austria but few Norwegian or Austrian
>guest workers in Turkey or Poland.

But this indicator is also unreliable over time; it has certainly flipped in
Ireland which is now full of Italian fund managers.

dd


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