Re: Burkett and Hart-Landsberg on Japan and East Asia

[Paul Davidson <pdavidson@xxxxxxx>]

At 06:00 PM 3/21/01 -0500, you wrote:
>      [long]
>      I have finished reading a very stimulating and
> provocative book on the East Asian situation in
> general and would like to throw its observation
> into the discussions occurring on both these lists.
> The book is _Development, Crisis, and Class
> Struggle: Learning from Japan and East Asia_,
> by Paul Burkett and Martin Hart-Landsberg, 2000,
> St. Martin's Press.
>      They argue in contrast to most of the press at
> l.
>       In particular they critique five perspectives that
> they identify: neoliberal, structuralist-institutionalist,
> "flying geese," "Greater China," and dependency theory.
> Of course I am short shrifting here, but a quick critique of
> the neoliberal position can be seen in how its advocacy
> of free capital movements blew up in the East Asian crisis.
> They also argue that export-led growth faces inevitable
> limits.


See my chapter in Post Keynesian Macroeoconomic Theory (1994) to the
dangers with relying on export led growth!!

>  OTOH, they see the  neoliberals as dominating the
> policy discussion.


So what else is new?


What brought the east Asian tigers down was interbanking borrowing from
Japan at near zero interest rates to relend at high rates in their own
nations , while their currency was pegged to the dollar but their
annual  debt  service was in yen.  When the yen went from 110 to the dollar
to 77 rto the dollar, the local banks could not service their debt. and the
coun try quickly ran out of reserves.
>       They declare that a more clearly class-based approach
> is needed.


That is just nonsense, there is nothing wrong with the entrepreneurial
system once we get the international payments system fixed!. It berats any
class based ==them vs us system!!