Date: Sun, 22 Dec 1996 17:08:24 +1000
From: rws-AT-comserver.canberra.edu.au (Rob Schaap)
Subject: M-I: Anticipating '97


G'day all,
Thought you might enjoy an indignant bellow at this lot [I did, hence the
parenthetical ejaculations], from *The Economist* editor Dudley Fishburn:

'1997 will be ... an exceptionally good year ... The world economy will
grow at a rapid 4% ... since the rate of population growth is coming down,
the new wealth will go further [ie. further from those who produce it, as
the tax base diminishes and governments are forced to focus on hitherto
sacred social welfare budgets].  

This happy state of affairs is due, in part, to the business cycle which
will be nearing its height in the United States in 1997 [ie. Wall St will
reach its peak in 1997 and then CRASH, because Greenspan is thinking about
interest rate rises before mid-year, Asian 'boom-economies' are now keeping
their investments at home and stock prices have already lost all relevance
to asset bases] but mostly due to the near-universal acceptance of
IMF-guided capitalism and its resultant democracy [all I ask is JUST ONE
example of the democracy-inducing effects of IMF-guided capitalism}

Almost every serious government is following the same agenda: a rigorous
cutting of expenditure, especially of borrowing, and constraints on any
growth to the welfare state ... It is the mood of the world, driven by
greater education [economics faculties teaching models without teaching the
premises on which those models depend?], by startling technological
advances [eg. digitised tax-dodging, finance speculation and
labour-replacement - and world-wide access to the silicon valleys of
Baywatch?  The likes of Gates swopping infinitely reproducible Windows
packages for real labour product/commodities from already poor countries?]
and by the abysmal performance of all governments at running things [what,
like the time so many of them ran infrastructure we can invoke now only
with a wistful tear in our eye?  When welfare states were assured with
minimal national debts?  When the information technology upon which all
this bourgeois optimism is based was invented, developed and applied by the
US public sector?].'

Anyway, now you have Fishburn's 1997 and you have mine.  Anybody fancy a go
at predictions for the new year?  The 'smug bastard of the month' award is
there for the taking ...

A Merry Xmas to you all, comrades.

Rob.




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