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Excellent text!

I think we should make versions in several languages, like we are doing for the petition, and send them to prominent newspapers like "Le Monde".

Here are a few remarks:

First, I think that, for a wider audience and to avoid knee-jerk nationalist rejection, we should avoid to use the term "Anglo Disease". I propose to use "Financial disease" and "Financial feudalism" instead.

Some suggestions (in bold):

The dominance of the financial world can be readily seen in the growth of the share of financial firms in total corporate profits (from below 20% in the 70s to above 40% today), in the capture of a large chunk of the net growth in total incomes by the richest few - most of them directly working in the financial industry, or benefitting from financial investments - and by the concentration of foreign investment in the UK in mono-activity London.

We are not against profit and return on equity, but against excessive profit and unrealistic ROE, so:

Thus the financial world imposes its unrelenting focus on short-term profits and shareholder value on all economic activities; the domination of unrealistic (or unsustainable) "return on capital" criteria ensures that many activities outside finance are in decline, as they struggle to reach the required returns on potential investments.

Financial analysis sees any regulation as bad, not only government ones.

Financial analysis sees labor as a cost, reducing profits, and pushes for its reduction, either via outsourcing, offsorisation offshoring or wage stagnation. Similarly, government regulations are seen as restrictions on profit to be fought and eliminated, as, naturally, taxes.

Here, I think we should mention the decrease in labour income share of the GDP, too.

To boost domestic demand in the face of flat stagnant incomes, debt has been pushed on households as the way to keep on increasing their spending, leading to negative saving rates to the further benefit of the industry that provides the loans.

Just like the Dutch disease was caused by a new sector providing temporary windfalls, the Anglo disease was made possible by the combination of technological progress in the financial world, the loosening of regulations in the financial sector, the long bond bull market created by Volcker's successful fight against inflation and the successful promotion of the ideology of greed by the right (with the timely fall of the Berlin Wall providing an additional boost by discrediting the other extreme of the ideological spectrum).



"Dieu se rit des hommes qui se plaignent des conséquences alors qu'ils en chérissent les causes" Jacques-Bénigne Bossuet
by Melanchthon on Sun Feb 3rd, 2008 at 11:53:18 AM EST
Thanks for the detailed feedback, which will be incorporated.

As to the name of the disease, I've alredy had the occasional reaction to it (Armando found it racist, for instance), and I think it should stay:

  • the ideology underpinning it does undoubtedly come from the US and the UK, and they still are its main proponents, even when they have supposedly leftwing governments; the pushback should include any ideas coming from the elites in power over there, which need to be thoroughly discredited;
  • the explicit reference to the similar Dutch disease makes it recognisable as a label, and easier to understand;
  • I do hope that a side result of this will be to give more credibility to the alternative that will be left standing: Europe.


In the long run, we're all dead. John Maynard Keynes
by Jerome a Paris (etg@eurotrib.com) on Sun Feb 3rd, 2008 at 12:11:43 PM EST
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