nimh wrote:
'S just cause the stories I read from Dutch correspondents in Brazil (there's one who does a regular feature from Rio) had quite a different perspective ... of course, they'd be looking at it with "Dutch" (ie, West-European) eyes, tho. So, anyway, I was simply trying to indicate that I appreciated the info you provided, about the valid concerns you had raised that are echoed in the quotes you pasted in here - I can certainly see them; will just consider the characterisations of the "insane" and "stupid" kind, which I don't see echoed in those news snippets at all, more of a matter of opinion instead. No less valid as a personal opinion, but not necessarily more true because of the sheer fact of the opiner living there.
"Stupid" etc are certainly subjective opinions on my part. That Lula is uneducated and that FHC was a very well educated person is fact.
nimh wrote:
But nebbermind. I really am not pro-Lula or even knowledgeable enough about the issue to go onto the barricades about it, and I certainly never meant to offend you. I thought we were having a valuable enough discussion, but apparently its just about me "just not wanting to see it", or something. <shrugs>
Absolutely no offense taken on my part.
nimh wrote:Wholly apart from the Lula issue, though still not quite on-topic, is another question you raise, though, which I think is crucial and rather disturbing in its implications for us all. It's like you write:
Craven de Kere wrote:It's a no-brainer to say that businesses can be wrong. [..] But whether they are right or wrong is absolutely pointless. It simply does not matter.
It's like saying a judge can be wrong when he sentences you to death. True but the relevant factor is that you are scheduled to die. Once you are executed the relevant factor to you is that you are dead. Whether it was just or not means nothing to you at the time. [..]
I'm not here to argue whether they were right or wrong, the fact that Lula's candidacy and election devastated Brazil is fact. Right or wrong is a nice notion that has nothing to do with facts on the ground in this case.
I mean, that's absolutely true. But frightening in its consequences. Back in the days of national economies, if some radical became PM, a few millionaires would cross the border into a tax haven - and that was it. I mean - he might still, err, "adversely influence" the economy with his actual policies, but not because capital could be boomed in or zipped out at the moment's political shock of his mere
appearance (just to give it some rhetoric flourish).
Now, should you be the kind of voter - and again I'm not talking Brazil anymore here (but overall it does probably hold true in particular for developing countries) - who wouldnt mind a bit of a drastic shift from the neo-liberal standard, you're faced with two choices: go with your convictions and vote in the man who propagates that shift, but know that the investors will react by letting the guillotine blade of the market fall down on your country and make him unable to do anything anymore; or "adapt to reality" and vote in the man who doesnt even
want to effect that shift. You can't win. At the bottom line, it's the principle of democracy subverted: you've just been robbed of the possibility to freely choose what course you would like the country to take. Anything the majority might like to happen will already in advance have to be adapted to what a certain minority considers right.
Very valid points, but I posit that investors are interested in money and that they would only abandon their investments if they thought them in danger.
BTW, do you want me to split this thread, I'd like your input as the creator of it.
Deb, me is gonna rant a bit. Quite a bit.
dlowan wrote:NIMH - I share your concerns about the enormous globalization and swift-movingness of capital.
It is fashionable in some parts of the left to see the results of this as a vast conspiracy - but I think, as Craven says, that they just respond to reality as they see it - which is, as you say, a very non-impartial and actually, I think, very emotional view - I see the movements of the market and, often, of international capital, as mimicking the motion of herds of skittish antelope or darting schools of fish - often starting at shadows.
I could not disagree more. Moving capital at the amounts I'm talking about (I am not talking Joe Blow moving his life savings to the Caymans, I'm talking Ford moving their factory to another country) is nt a whimsical decision.
It took years of one administration's policies to coax the investments in, when a man who has
a) advocated that the Brazilian government take ownership of a private business
b) complained about the open market and made suggestions to the effect that Brazil should do an about face with their markets
c) railed against the US and the economic bloc that Brazil is already signatory to
d) threateed to default on debts
.. is elected the concerns are hardly frivolous. An about face in the Brazilian economic policy would remove the very motivations the investors had in placing their money there in the first place.
Not paying back loans is not something that inspires people to loan more.
Threatening to take your business when it is sucessful makes success lose appeal.
These are not frivolous fears. And even if one were to disregard all of them the bottom line is that the capital fled because it was bleeding. Not because of the treat of danger. It was there already. To keep money in Brazil at the time was to devalue it several times over.
Railing against globalization is a nice notion, millions of dollars in losses is a reality.
dlowan wrote:
Craven says it IS reality - and so it is - but a lot of this "reality" is created in the context of a herd mentality - or so I think - though I do not deny that there are conditions that go well generally for capitalists, and that some of their reaction is perfectly rational if they consider their own financial interests as paramount. Which they do.
The "herd mentality" you speak of can also be called human nature. As I argued in one of our chats human fallacies are stupid yet real in a world dominated by humans.
dlowan wrote:Part of the problem, as I see it (with NO pretensions to understanding economics, I assure you!) is that, prior to the rise of the seriously supra-national financial system, many countries had developed a series of checks and balances on the power of capital - so that there was some balancing in the equation. With money being moved in and out of economies at the rate it is today, and with money having no loyalty to any country, I see no real force to balance the power of capital - especially for poor countries or countries with small economies - who must dance to the tune of foreign investors, or be punished in the form of high interest rates for the money they have borrowed, or the flight of momey from their economies - thus fulfilling the very prophecies that made the skittish herd run in the first place., and causing them to run harder and faster next time.
Sigh. Lemme try:
a) For the money to leave it first had to enter. The entry is vital to a developing country's success. Complaining about it leaving without consideration to the benefit of its entry is like complaining that food is evacuated without mentioning the nice part about it being ingested.
b) In the past developing countries did not float. The globalization boogymonsteres lefties rail against long cautioned those who pegged that it was a bankrupt policy. Floating has its drawbacks (instability) but floating follows natural laws. Not floating means stagnation ina predominantly capitalist world.
If your complaint is that this is a capitalist world then this is pointless. Humans are a capitalist race.
dlowan wrote:
Craven - even you acknowledge that Lula is not so "insane" as the big money paints him - and while I get your point about this being "reality" whatever one likes to say about it - I think it is important to actually maintain a POV separate from that of global capital by which one can judge it, critique its effects and begin to think of ways to ameliorate some of the most negative ones.
I never said that. The investors did not paint him as anything. They just took a look at polls and pulled the money. The recipients of the investments and the middle and upper class vilified him.
They needed little help, he is less educated than you are and he was prone to extremities. Picture someone with less than half the education that you have running a country in a delicate moment. Isthat not a risk?
And no, Brazil, did not go into chaos, Brazil did not pull an Argentina. But that is not the only negative possibility. Brazil had been progressing, the progress made the market a more attractive investment. When the progress ceased, which it did, the allure of investment waned. Regardless of the fact that the worst case scenario not happening (not once in history has the worst case scenario happen) there were very real and very valid reasons for the investments to be withdrawn.
If you started paying a drunk money to help him get sober and then if he decides to shun sobriety would it be reasonable for you to stop paying him? Even if the worst case scenario in his life is not realized?
dlowan wrote:
My country has faithfully followed all the holy writ of economic rationalism - what has happened? Huge rise in people living below the poverty line - no observable trickle down - hollowing out of middle class - much longer hours and poorer working conditions for those in work - larger pool of unemployed - slightly bigger, much richer rich - lousy services - loss of educational, scientific, health and infrastructure excellence - oh - but the ECONOMY is very well, thank you - doing better than most countries including the USA - it is just the country that is stuffed! I also SEE the results of the erosion in supports for families and parenting - and it is very scary - I have never seen such a lot of seriously stuffed kids as I am seeing these last few years. I think the economics are insane.
Deb, I've long told you how distasteful I find it for someone in a first world country to whine about their national economic problems. The economic policies you criticize make your nation a firts world country, should you prefer a more socialist variety there are plenty of poor countries you can live in. You can even pretend like the economic laws are different there.
In coutries whose economic policies differ from Oz the poor are poorer and the rich richer. A downturn in your economy is exactly that, a downturn. To whine about a downturn and fault economic policy while living in AMAZING (in comparison with nations with differing economic policy) conditions that are a direct result of the economic policies is, frankly, ridiculous.
Do you want a "trickle down"? How about accepting a reduction in the quality of yours and your compatriot's lives to ameliorate the lives of others?
It never ceases to amaze me that people can both complain that other nations are poor and that their affluent country suffered a downturn.
You can't have both, you can't be a rich country then cry about others being poor while at the same time decrying any change in the quality of life you enjoy.
Your economic difficulty is another person's economic relief. It's confounding logic to ask for all. Resources are finite.
dlowan wrote:
I recognize, as you do, that governments must operate within the real world - and not destroy their countries - but I would also hope that governments will slowly be challenging the current status quo in pursuit of better conditions for their people - and hence gradually making it harder for international money to play one economy off against another - or that SOME structures will be created to balance competing powers and interests.......and I would see maintaining an awareness separate from that of the market as being an important thing to do - particularly in what I see as the quasi-religious international money theocracy operating today!
I find it had to believe that we share the same reality. Better conditions for one people means worse conditions for others. Competition is life. It's the height of naivete to want better conditions for others and still cry about a slight change in the conditions of the nation that you live in, a nation with a quality of life that others can only dream about. I posit that the problem is not the economic realities you find so untoward but rather the naive notion that everyone can be rich. Idealists often want the poor to become wealthy without the wealthy becoming poor.
