Re: Koehler smarms

[Chris Burford <cburford@xxxxxxxxxx>]

At 19/04/02 18:40 -0700, you wrote:
> Doesn't Koehler have this backwards?  If Europe's production  is growing
> faster, Europe needs more opportunities to sell its goods in
> Argentina.  That means more loans from the IMF, doesn't it?
>
> Gene

No. This is the argument that to those that have, more shall be given.

When there is a recession the wise servants and theoreticians of capitalism
look around for an engine of growth. This is usually assumed to be the USA.
The Argentinan market has become peripheral. Economic activity within the
big advanced capitalist areas is much more important than exchange between
these areas and less developed areas.

There have been other parts of the world during the recent recession where
economic activity has been sustained and who could have been engines of
growth to build on, such as China, Russia and India, but that possibility
is censored out of the thinking of the dominant ideologues of western
led-finance capital. They get sacked if they think too differently.

Koehler is using a wordly wise opportunist argument usually applied to USA,
to come close to intervening in European politics. As a former German
politician his words were crafted to give support to right wing forces
trying to break down restrictive conventions protecting employment
conditions, and impeding takeovers. What I was highlighting was the
tempting argument he gave to justify it - look it you swallow this change,
it won't be bitter medicine for you, it will lead you to be an area of
economic strength which will, very magnanimously, also kindly provide jobs
for the less favourably advantaged areas of the world, like Argentina, for
whom bitter medicine is the only solution.

There is a subtext of carefully concealed rivalry with the USA. It is a
controversial question how the USA and Europe carve up the top jjobs at the
IMF and the World Bank. Koehler is obviously thinking that if Europe,
including Germany embraces vigorous market liberalisation it can become
much more competitive, like the USA, and grow rather than stagnate relative
to the USA. Under cover of a patronising formula about kindly providing
markets for lesser struggling areas of the world, he is signalling that if
Europe does what he thinks, it can rival the USA and become and engine of
growth. The art of international financial politics is to say subtle things
that advance your interests without giving a target to your enemies. It
would be hard for the USA to object to the idea of Europe making economic
"progress" and thereby giving jobs to the deserving poor of the world,
provided they are really deserving. And Koehler has sounded tough on
Argentina, which makes him a sound head of the club. But Koehler had better
not give any evidence of consistent bias towards Europe rather than the
USA, otherwise he will have to enjoy a generous early retirement.

And as if to illustrate the point about why Europe does not need Argentina
but Argentina nees Europe, I see this morning that Argentina has just
frozen all bank and foreign exchange transactions. There is absolutely no
anxiety that this is going to trigger a collapse of the world financial
system. And if there is more rioting and more windows get broken, who
cares? Argentina can have ten presidents a year, until they learn the
lesson, like the people of the West Bank, that their role is to submit
peacefully to the cruel inequalities in the world.

Chris Burford