Which single country of those you name, is part of the international division of labour? And which war was about the Washington consensus? For sure none of the Iraq or Afghanistan wars, for sure not the Iran-Irak war, not the war in Sudan,... And rare is of course relative. We live for sure in peaceful times by historical standards. The overwhelming majority of people live in absence of war in their country.
But as far as I can tell, you don't actually disagree with Bruce that prudent US policy could have averted the crisis? Of course I don't disagree. But that doesn't mean, that the savings glut didn't exist. It is important to mention this, as there are many Chinese officials, who blame the US for their most likely currency losses on their reserves. I don't see how any country in the context of the current financial crisis can blame any other country for its own problems. All problems are made by the countries themselves. Does Wolf anywhere say explicitly, that the US couldn't do anything against that? As I see it, not in the exerpts presented by Migeru. The point that comes closest: the current banking and economic traumas should not be seen as just the product of risky monetary policy, lax regulation and irresponsible finance, important though these were. You see, 'just'. Not 'not'. And I guess there are other things. E.g. the 'culture of debt', the unwillingness to react on the action of other people,... and the actions of other people. Der Amerikaner ist die Orchidee unter den MenschenVolker Pispers
Also, GDP, as quoted in that Rosling presentation, is a self-serving measure which doesn't define well-being in any useful sense.
As an anecdotal data point I've known people who visit supposedly wretched and deprived third world locations and find that personally the people don't feel deprived at all - they have a strong culture and are more included and less alienated, not to mention happier, than Westerners are.
Imposing economic imperialism on the supposedly 'undeveloped' world doesn't necessarily count as a win just because the supposedly developed world can't imagine an alternative view.
Imposing economic imperialism on the supposedly 'undeveloped' world doesn't necessarily count as a win just because the supposedly developed world can't imagine an alternative view. Who is doing that in which way? Der Amerikaner ist die Orchidee unter den MenschenVolker Pispers
Economic imperialism is something the IMF has been doing for pretty much all of its existence, almost by definition.
Also, Rosling, by assuming that everyone wants to be like us - and if they don't, they should, because obviously we're better than they are.
All the rest of Rosling's figures are aggregates or averages, which can easily mask worsening conditions for the majority of the population.
Which single country of those you name, is part of the international division of labour?
Which international division of labour? Niceragua and Serbia were certainly parts of an international division of labour.
And which war was about the Washington consensus?
Nicaragua, Iran, Grenada, El Salvador, arguably Palestine, East Timor and Lebanon (if propping up WC supporting states count - Israel, Indonesia and Israel, respectively), arguably Serbia (depending on which historians you ask).
- Jake If you only spend 20 minutes of the rest of your life on economics, go spend them here.
Two years after the invasion, there was no majority view of what the US action has been ... a Rescue Mission Ordained by God (the Gairy-ite position), a legal Intervention Sanctioned by the OECS (the position of anti-Gairy-ites who had fallen away from New Jewel), an Illegal Invasion overthrowing an Illegal coup d'état (the main New Jewel position) ... but an overwhelming majority of support for the action, whatever the action may have been. I've been accused of being a Marxist, yet while Harpo's my favourite, it's Groucho I'm always quoting. Odd, that.
Mike Bygrave: Where did all the protesters go? | World news | The Observer
Small armies of economists study these questions. In pursuit of the answers, I attended a lecture by Professor Robert Wade at the London School of Economics. He began with the usual depressing figures: 80 per cent of world income goes to the top 20 per cent of people while 60 per cent of the world's population have to make do with 6 per cent of the income. Then he moved on to 'the thunder and lightning of current debate': whether the situation has been getting better or worse over the past 20 years. His answer was twofold: we don't know for sure; but the balance of the evidence is, it's getting worse and inequality is increasing. It turns out the statistics relied on by the pro-globalisers, led by the World Bank, are suspect. There are different methods for determining global poverty and inequality and the answers you get depend on the techniques you use. The World Bank, Wade implied, may have chosen the one that supports its own neo-liberal agenda. 'The Bank is a very political institution,' he said.
Small armies of economists study these questions. In pursuit of the answers, I attended a lecture by Professor Robert Wade at the London School of Economics. He began with the usual depressing figures: 80 per cent of world income goes to the top 20 per cent of people while 60 per cent of the world's population have to make do with 6 per cent of the income. Then he moved on to 'the thunder and lightning of current debate': whether the situation has been getting better or worse over the past 20 years. His answer was twofold: we don't know for sure; but the balance of the evidence is, it's getting worse and inequality is increasing.
It turns out the statistics relied on by the pro-globalisers, led by the World Bank, are suspect. There are different methods for determining global poverty and inequality and the answers you get depend on the techniques you use. The World Bank, Wade implied, may have chosen the one that supports its own neo-liberal agenda. 'The Bank is a very political institution,' he said.
And Professor Rosling uses World Bank data for his neat graphical presentations. Of course you can argue that Professor Wade is political too (he very much appears to be).
I think poverty is hard to get good statistics on. Nobody measures it without having an agenda, and the poorest are the least likely to show up on routine measurements, the kind that Rosling loves. I would like to note that wealth has also turned out to be measured in fraudulent ways to serve political agendas.
I use my own poverty index, which is the number of apparently homeless I see in the streets. For example, by that measurement poverty has increased in Sweden the last twenty years. That average income and wealth also has increased (as Rosling would point out) only means that inequality has increased even more.
To be fair, if you should use Rosling to argue that there is less inequality between persons - not countries - you are better of picking when he looks at mortality rates for newly-borns. That is a measurement that is often connected to structural poverty. A vote for PES is a vote for EPP! A vote for EPP is a vote for PES! Support the coalition, vote EPP-PES in 2009!
Well, it is implicit in
In this world of massive savings surpluses in a range of important countries and weak demand for capital from non-financial corporations, central banks ran easy monetary policies. They did so because they feared the possibility of a shift into deflation. The Fed, in particular, found itself having to offset the contractionary effects of the vast flow of private and, above all, public capital into the US.
The Wolf/Bernanke argument is basically that China put the US in a no-win situation through its neomercantilist policies. A vivid image of what should exist acts as a surrogate for reality. Pursuit of the image then prevents pursuit of the reality -- John K. Galbraith
The Wolf/Bernanke argument is basically that China put the US in a no-win situation through its neomercantilist policies. Well, given his believe, that the only institution with a mandate to act is the Fed, he may be right. With the single policy tool of short term interest rates, there are not too much things the US could do. Of course the Fed has some regulative power, but given, that it was the goal to create a housing bubble, regulation would have been counterproductive. Der Amerikaner ist die Orchidee unter den MenschenVolker Pispers
And, are you sure Wolf is wrong on that point?
Wolf isn't wrong to point out that there would have been a nasty recession. They had a very nasty bubble that burst around spring 2001. That bubble could have been deflated harmlessly, but a lot of people (Greenspan very prominently among them) decided that they'd rather make it bigger before it crashed. So if they hadn't inflated a new bubble, they'd have had to deal with the wreckage from the last one.
So he says the Fed initiated the bubble consciously to do the job of a dysfunctional regular gov't. Essentially Wolf says, the real gov't isn't the official administration, but the Fed.
That doesn't sound like an unreasonable political analysis. But the point is that whether or not the real government is powerless to fight a recession, inflating a bubble to obfuscate the wreckage from the popping of the last bubble is grossly irresponsible. Because it won't make the wreckage go away, it'll just hide it. So now they have to deal with both the wreckage from the tech stock bubble, and the wreckage from the Mother Of All Bubbles. Yeah, it bought them three to seven years - depending a bit on how you count. But at the cost of amplifying the problem greatly.
When a fuse blows in your house, you do not replace it with a string of copper wire - you find the faulty equipment and repair it. Unless, of course, you're Alan Greenspan.
And if you look at the timing it is clear that Bush wouldn't have been reelected if a nasty recession had hit in 2003. Real interest rates were negative in 2003-5, which resulted in a wave of remortgagings and home equity withdrawals. And then in 2004 you have USA Today: Greenspan says ARMs might be better deal (2/23/2004)
Federal Reserve Chairman Alan Greenspan said Monday that Americans' preference for long-term, fixed-rate mortgages means many are paying more than necessary for their homes and suggested consumers would benefit if lenders offered more alternatives.
The Wolf/Bernanke argument is basically that China put the US in a no-win situation through its neomercantilist policies. Well, given his believe, that the only institution with a mandate to act is the Fed, he may be right.
Well, given his believe, that the only institution with a mandate to act is the Fed, he may be right.
