From: "Harald Beyer-Arnesen" <haraldba-AT-online.no>
Subject: AUT: Re: Re: Re: Kevin on Iraq
Date: Wed, 2 Apr 2003 09:19:18 +0200



----- Original Message -----
From: "chris wright" <cwright-AT-21stcentury.net>
To: <aut-op-sy-AT-lists.village.virginia.edu>
Sent: 2. april 2003 05.24
Subject: AUT: Re: Re: Kevin on Iraq


> Some thoughts on Harald's points...
>
> >
> > Now, if what Daniel T. Griswold writes below as regards
> > Australia is true, this begs some questions.
> >
> >
> >     << Australia, a country similar to the United
> >     States in its level of economic development, has
> >     run current account deficits every year since 1973.
> >     Those deficits have been larger  than America's
> >     as a percentage of GDP, averaging 4.6 percent
> >     since 1983 and reaching 5.7 percent in 1999.  (31)
> >     By the end of 1999 Australia's negative net
> >     international investment position (that is, its
> >     "foreign debt") reached 57 percent of GDP, (32) more
> >     than three times the ratio in the United States. And
> >     like the United States, Australia is enjoying a long
> >     expansion fueled and prolonged in significant
> >     measure by a large annual net inflow of foreign
> >     investment.
> >         [...]
>
> The main thing I would note in this above quote is that to say that
> Australia has the same level of development of the United States is simply
> fictitious or being dazzled by purely quantitative correlations of
> percentages, rather than reality.  If we stop and think about the levels
of
> production, investment, international engagement and the relative sizes of
> the domestic markets, Australia and the US look nothing alike.  Australia
> has not the been the dumping ground for the world's commodities for the
last
> 10 years, thereby in part keeping the world afloat.  That means that he is
> comparing apples and oranges to some degree.

You do not seem to have gotten my point here, Chris. Nor
Griswold's for that, as far I can see. But I let the  later be here.

One of  the claims in Angyal Istvan article, expressed through
citing from a piece written by George Monbiot in the
Guardian, was:  "The dollars' dominance of world trade,
particularly the oil market, is all that permits the US Treasury
to sustain the nation's massive deficit, as it can print
inflation-free money for global circulation. "

Now if it is so, and that is what official sources say, that Australia's
deficit has been even larger -- and in this context it is of course
percentages that matters -- then it would be very hard to see how
the just mentioned claim in the Istvan article could be true. For the
Australian dollar certainly does not uphold the same "dominance
of world trade, particularly the oil market".
        To put it in even clearer: The truth of of Austrlian deficit
points to the falisity of the claim that: "The dollars' dominance
of world trade, particularly the oil market, is all that permits
the US Treasury to sustain the nation's massive deficit,
as it can print inflation-free money for global circulation "

I will not get into your other comments right now. I might get
back to it when I get the time.

I hope the above made the point I was making clearer.

Harald











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