Date: Sun, 1 Feb 98 8:58:26 EST From: boddhisatva <kbevans-AT-panix.com> Subject: Re: M-TH: Fixing Asia C.'s I think the IMF policy will *only* work in Asia, where the economies are big and sophisticated enough to rebound after the squeeze. Monetarism is no good for small economies and those with truly broken production (Russia). In Korea, I don't see anything wrong with a few banks going broke and a few other capitalists losing all their money. As long as there are enough other businesses around to keep the economy going, fuck 'em. The rest of the world needs Keynesianism (or socialism, of course) but Russia shows the pitfalls waiting for Keynesian policy all over the world. When gangsters and mandarins can use the government script for their own amusement, there is no benefit to Keynesianism because it just causes market deformities. Those deformities eventually undermine the infrastructure development. Keynesianism cannot support too many crooks. It's fun to deride and decry the blinkered, uncaring IMF, but what about the local capitalist greed-heads in the countries it lends to? Certainly Suharto deserves a great deal of the blame for Indonesia's problems, if not all. Why do we forget that the Chaebols were run by crooks, as well as the Korean government? Instead of demonizing Western capitalist tools, why not demonize all capitalists, from the great to the small? The left should be using the Asian crisis as an "I told you so" on the inevitability of capitalist excess and stupidity. Instead, the left has made this a drama between "countries" (as if the economic policies of these states were arrived at democratically instead of capitalistically) and the bad old IMF. This may come from the same place as the Japan-worship that much of the left participated in. Japan was somehow a model of compassionate, democratic planning for the future as opposed to the market melee that Western capitalists organized for their own pleasure. Of course it turns out that Japanese capitalists have been robbing the place blind all the while. Don't spare the rod you use against the IMF and spoil the capitalist child. peace --- from list marxism-thaxis-AT-lists.village.virginia.edu ---
Display software: ArchTracker © Malgosia Askanas, 2000-2005