Hva G8 diskuterer bak fasaden og tåkesløret av medieløgn og
politiprovokatørers gatekrigsspill er dette:
"The next 12 months will provide the greatest test the world economy has had
since the 1974 oil crisis, as both the Bank of England and IMF have warned
as seriously as they can, given the opaque economic jargon in which both
feel compelled to speak. (...)
The US is about to plunge into recession, necessarily taking the rest of the
world with it, and with no internationally agreed mechanisms to manage the
consequences or get us out of the mess. The Bush administration has said it
is against bail-outs and economic co-operation as a matter of philosophic
principle. The world stands on the abyss."
Observerskribenten her er av det jublende EU-frelste slaget og tror fullt og
fast at den kommende krisa skyldes EUs mangel på styring med verden. Han
tror mennesker spiser penger og at oppbremsning i økonomien er den verste
trussel mot verden i dag. Det er nok dessverre ikke tilfellet. Men truende
depresjon kan sikkert være en blant flere grunner til at krig og preventiv
avdemokratisering på flere fronter rykkes nærmere av de politiske ledelsene
med Bush-II-idiotiet i spissen, og at forståelsen for klimaproblemet er
mindre
enn noengang siden det ble bevisstgjort.
Krisen i Argentina er en viktig faktor som kan utløse et skred i bankverdenen.
Karsten Johansen
http://www.guardian.co.uk/recession/story/0,7369,522128,00.html
We're hurtling into recession
While delegates and protesters face up to each other at the G8 summit in
Genoa, the world stands on the brink of economic meltdown
Will Hutton Sunday July 15, 2001 The Observer
The world economy is on a knife-edge. The anti-capitalist protesters
gathering to protest at the world economic summit in Genoa are both right
and wrong. Right in their anger but wrong in what they are protesting against.
For while capitalism during a boom certainly has its faults, a full-blown
world recession would mean that most of the protesters would not be able to
afford the fares to the summit. So as world leaders will tell us that all is
for the best in this best of all possible worlds and the anti-capitalists
will protest at unaccountable private corporate power, an avalanche is
gathering pace that threatens to make both arguments redundant.
We have had a lucky 10 years, but our luck is running out. The mid
Seventies, early Eighties and early Nineties were disfigured by nasty
recessions. At various times in between, since we began the era of floating
exchange rates and exponential growth of capital flows, there have been
terrifying moments when it seemed that the world economic system was built
on sand. But it has proved much more resilient than we had any reason to
expect. There was a regional recession in Latin America for most of the
1980s and Asia did not look too bright after the financial crisis in 1997,
but despite some bank collapses the industrialised West has carried on
regardless. There may be interruptions but the basic movement is always
upwards.
Except this time. Events that, until now, have occurred in a manageable
sequence are happening simultaneously, when world institutions are at their
feeblest and American economic leadership at its most empty-headed and
self-seeking. Latin America and Asia, which have had their financial crises
and economic slumps separately, are now having them together, just as Japan
stagnates and the US has hit the buffers.
Throw in an oil shock (the price of oil has trebled over the last two years)
and the global telecoms disaster and the picture is complete. The next 12
months will provide the greatest test the world economy has had since the
1974 oil crisis, as both the Bank of England and IMF have warned as
seriously as they can, given the opaque economic jargon in which both feel
compelled to speak.
The trouble is that for 30 years the US has worked tirelessly to create a
world system that suits its interests but without simultaneously creating
robust international institutions for its management. That would have
demanded a surrender of sovereignty that the US simply could not and would
not contemplate. The Clinton administration had the wit not just to carry on
opening up the globe to US financial capital and corporate interests but to
organise massive bail-outs when an individual country's difficulties menaced
the functioning of the system. Mexico in 1994, Asia in 1997, Russia and
Brazil in 1998 and, latterly, Argentina and Turkey have all been the
recipients of large IMF and US Treasury support measures, with the IMF
working to US instructions.
In essence, stricken governments have had to accept the necessary dollars to
stave off speculative pressure, but at the price of massive austerity and
promising to keep their economic and financial systems open to US
multinationals and investment banks.
In 1972, Richard Nixon signalled American intent when he declared that the
US needed 80 per cent of the industrialised West's trade surplus as a matter
of right in order to finance its military ambitions and a trade deficit it
was unwilling or unable to correct. The object of US financial diplomacy, he
openly acknowledged, was to ensure that the dollar remained the
overwhelmingly important unit of account for international business, even
though the US only comprised one-fifth of world GDP. Hence a system of
floating exchange rates based on the dollar. Thus the US could pay for its
massive network of overseas base complexes and its phenomenal trade deficit
in its own currency without any check; it could regard the rest of the
world, as long as it opened up its trade and financial systems to US
business, as the new American frontier.
For the last 30 years, the world has lived with this Faustian pact. The
profits of US multinationals have risen at 10 per cent per annum, twice the
rate of domestic profits growth, for most of this time. Massive inflows of
European and Japanese savings have supported American living standards
despite a trade deficit that is now 4 per cent of GDP. In return, the world
has had the right freely to export to an American economy growing without
constraint because that is how the system has been set up.
The system was already creaking in the last years of the Clinton presidency;
Americans had ceased to save and the US economy's ability to meet its side
of the bargain - underwriting the rest of the world's prosperity - was
reaching its limits. Now the limit is reached. Worse, 30 years of
deregulation and rolling back the welfare state have left the US with feeble
automatic stabilisers. The US is about to plunge into recession, necessarily
taking the rest of the world with it, and with no internationally agreed
mechanisms to manage the consequences or get us out of the mess. The Bush
administration has said it is against bail-outs and economic co-operation as
a matter of philosophic principle. The world stands on the abyss.
This should be the real object of the protesters' ire in Genoa. What should
be happening is that a united Europe should be challenging the US and
offering a new framework for the conduct of trade, finance and investment.
We cannot allow the economic and social fate of continents to rest on the
whims of the foreign exchange markets and what deal the US Treasury and IMF
are prepared to countenance. The US economy is no longer big enough to
justify our acceptance of American rule on US terms.
But Europe is not united and Bush has no intention or interest in engaging
with the issue. As a result, the world's leaders will issue a final
communiqué saying everything is all right because they cannot say anything
else - and the anti-capitalist protesters will damn them all while having
nothing to suggest as an alternative. Those who the gods wish to destroy
they first make mad.
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