Comments on: No, the Iran Oil Bourse is not a casus belliâ€¦

By: mark harms

mark harms — Thu, 25 May 2006 12:00:49 +0000

The Oil Bourse is not a casus belli but it is certainly not a red herring either. It’s impact may not be immediate but if it sparks a trend then the US economy could be in big trouble. Russia is already moving in the same direction as Iran and if other nations start backing similar initiatives in oil and other other commodities than the US is in trouble. however the larger seismic affects will not be felt until there are alternatives to wall st and lombard st for investing petro currency. It was the recycling of dollars that boosted the uS economy in the 70s not just the initial payment for oil.
In the short term the dollar could be actually strengthened by political unrest, as its still seen as the safest haven. This leads to a worrying scenario where it is actually in Americas interests to destable the rest of the world, especially if means it can effectively fight wars and get other people to pay for them as Hudson pointed out with reference to vietnam. however you cannot back a currency with nothing but military might in th elong term, instability causes a reduced trade which lessens demands for dollars.

By: Charles Brown

Charles Brown — Thu, 11 May 2006 18:52:21 +0000

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[PDF] Super Imperialism The Economic Strategy of American Empire Michael …File Format: PDF/Adobe Acrobat
Michael Hudsonâ€™s Super Imperialism: The Origins and Fundamentals of US … Michael Hudson, â€œA Financial Payments-Flow Analysis of US International …
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[PDF] Super ImperialismFile Format: PDF/Adobe Acrobat – View as HTML
The right of Michael Hudson to be identified as the author of this work has been … the years in which I wrote SuperImperialism. …
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Feral ScholarItâ€™sa difficult read, but I still suggest people pick up Michael Hudsonâ€™s â€œSuperimperialism,â€ actually study it, and learn how finance capital works now, …
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WNYC – The Brian Lehrer Show: Property Values (April 27, 2006)Michael Hudson, professor of economics at University of Missouri – Kansas City and author, Superimperialism: The Origin and Fundamentals of US World …
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Safe Haven | Preservation of Capital |I suppose you are familiar with Henry CK Liu’s articles at Asia Times, as well as Michael Hudson’s book, “Superimperialism.” One question: under the …
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Brad DeLong’s Semi-Daily Journal: Public Capital Flows into the USSuperimperialism (Michael Hudson)- also Global Fracture, Weight of the Yen (R Taggart Murphy) – also Japan’s Policy Trap, and Gold Warriors (Seagraeves)? …
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de.lirio.us :: : entries filed under { markets }Michael Hudson Superimperialism PDF of book | T | G | Y! capitalism hudson markets money by anarchivist (created: 2006-02-28 17:36) …
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A-list message, Re: [A-List] Michael Hudson: Super imperialismOn Tue, 3 Jun 2003, Michael Keaney wrote: > > Hudson himself notes that the … Michael, As I said before, I feel that Michael H. in Superimperialism gave …
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Michael Hudson – financial consultantSubject: Re: [A-List] Michael Hudson: Super imperialism. Michael, As I said before, I feel that Michael H. in Superimperialism gave too much …
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By: James M

James M — Mon, 08 May 2006 22:39:59 +0000

Arcane, according to Webster’s: “Known or knowable only to the initiate.”

It is arcane in the sense that what separates someone like me from an “initiate” is a grasp of the necessary fundamentals for understanding the system. What people like Soros or Bernanke do might as well be alchemy to me, and to most people. And I’m sure they like it that way.

Still, the comments above are helping make sense of it. I get the big picture to a certain extent. What I need a better sense of, though, is the more precise mechanics of, say, the U.S.-China trade-imbalance relationship that enables the artificial stability of the dollar … I’m sure what I could glean from that would be applicable to the larger world situation. I’ve read a fair amount on the subject but still don’t think I could explain it to someone if asked.

And while these topics may not be sexy, they are highly germane to social / human-rights movements. I don’t think you can argue from a fully-informed standpoint about the current immigration debate, for example, without understanding U.S. debt-leveraging against Latin America.

By: Stan

Stan — Mon, 08 May 2006 20:37:37 +0000

Bingo! There are two ways this works… One, without the US as the world’s premier consumer base (predicated on printing enough dollars), the “virtuous circuit of capital” cannot be upheld in the current world system — where the global proletariat that valorizes that capital is now spread through the global South as capital seeks to escape its own laws, ie, the tendency of the rate of profit to fall and the changing organic composition of capital. Two, the richer countries and industrial powerhouses like China, have tremendous dollar-denominated value (owning US debt) in the CB Reserves, which they would wipe out if the sell the dollar precipitously short and cause a panicked free-fall… the financial equivalent of saying that the emperor has no clothes.

I think what it has to do with class struggle is gives us an accuurate contextual understanding of actulaly-existing capital (the social relation), which is required to wage an effective fight.

You and I don’t think it is arcane. We were part of this conversation for the last — what — seven or so years (since Crashlist, wasn’t it?). I hope we can convince others likewise.

By: Charles Brown

Charles Brown — Mon, 08 May 2006 19:10:01 +0000

I got a copy of Michael Hudson’s _Superimperialism_ at the A-List. I comment to help dispel, perhaps, the notion that the topic is arcane. On the other hand, I often ask myself how understanding macro-economics, world finance translates to practice in the class struggle. But that doesn’t stop me from regularly reading Progressive Economist Network list and others.

I think that Hudson can claim to have been something of a prophet. I say that because the prominence of the U.S. trade debt has risen especially in the last twenty years. I don’t think it was so large at the time Hudson wrote his book, and it is central to his thesis, if I understand it. In other words, developments since he wrote the book have confirmed his prediction.

I call his thesis, “the-U.S.-has-the-world-on-a-string-sittin’-on-a-rainbow-got-the-string-tied-around-its-finger. I believe a basic idea is that the U.S. can borrow money from other countries by paying them in bonds ( debt notes); and then the creditors cannot collect their debts from the U.S. without undermining their own current economic benefits, because their position depends on U.S. economic strength. So, the U.S. can “borrow” and not pay back the debt.

Or do I misrepresent ?

By: Stan

Stan — Mon, 08 May 2006 13:00:13 +0000

Very good points. Hudson originally released this book in 1973 (?), and only updated the preface, the conclusions, and edited in a few new facts that supported his general theses… that being that (1) the POLITICAL aspect of maintiaining the international power of the US state is a primary driving force (a departure from the Lenin, Hobson, Hilferding notion of Imperialism) and (2) that US strength is now predicated on a monetary-military system based NOT on the US’s creditor status, but on its debtor status.

There is little doubt that the most brutal aspects of “structural adjustment” related to the debt-leverage system employed against poorer countries is also creepingin on the US working class, starting with the most vulnerable — especially the privatization aspect of it, but more and more the imposition of more deeply regressive tax systems.

Hudson has the tendency to refer to the whole body politic without much reference to class polarities because he looks at this in its interstate form.

While it’s true that these measures are being taken, the qualitative difference he points to is that the money-form continues to circulate within the US with no debt-based constraints on its supply, unlike other naitons, where appropriated funds that are servicing external debt (and transforming entire national economies into export platforms to sell in the US to get more dollars) in a kind of zero sum game that blocks domestic investment/development.

My recommendation of Gowan’s book as a kind of companion piece is precisely because Gowan focuses on the 90s, the Asian meltdown, and prefigures the increasingly precarious household debt overhang in the US that is essentially financing the consumer bacchanalia in the US which is simultaneously essential for the entire global financial architecture and moving inexorably toward its break-point.

In one sneak peek, the Saudi recently experienced a tramatic dip in their stock market, after making huge investments (with the vigorous encouragement of their own government) , in US real estate — a bubble of fictional value inflated ultimately by US currency printing pressed running on autopilot-overdrive.

There’s a lot made of the dollar falling, as if that is going to freak out Buffett and Gates and Soros, who can shift investiments by the billions with a phone call. In reality, these devaluaiton can be quite strategic — liquidating fictional value and wiping out the pruchasing power sitting in foreign central bank reserves as US debt.

I very much appreciate Paul weighing in on this. Many regard this as an arcane conversation, which is exactly why many on the left are totally not paying attention. It’s not sexy enough. Imperial debt never is. But — as Hudson shows in his financial history — it led to the conflagration of World War II… and in time it will lead to another Century of unimaginable misery if the bull (no financial pun intended) is not taken by the horns by social movements.

By: Paul Waite

Paul Waite — Mon, 08 May 2006 05:13:29 +0000

I have begun reading Super Imperialism by Michael Hudson and find it interesting. I only have a small comment with regard to a statement made in the preface to the second edition. It certainly doesn’t affect the premise of his thesis or the outcome of his research, but I thought it worth mentioning. In the preface, Michael states “Since 1971(the removal of the u.s. dollar from the gold standard in August of that year)it has freed the u.s. economy from having to do what American diplomats insist that other debtor countries do when they run payments deficits: impose austerity to restore balance in its international payments. The United States alone has been free to pursue domestic expansion and foreign diplomacy with hardly a worry about the balance-of-payments consequences. Imposing austerity on debtor countries, America as the world’s largest debtor economy acts uniquely without financial constraint.” Although this is true, the idea that the u.s. is not imposing austerity measures domestically I don’t believe is totally true. It may have been true in the 70′s, but for the last 25+ years there have been numerous austerity measures directly and indirectly imposed on the american people(the workers and middle class, who make up the majority). The holding back of wages, increases in the costs of higher education, the cuts in spending for public education and various other programs, the increased cost of health care, the elimination of welfare as we know it, the attempt by the bush administration to privatize social security(and I am sure we have not heard the last of that yet, although it may be a while before some politician proposes a similar bill with a new twist), the breaking of unions, the increase in utility bills and the increase in fuel, etc. I know these austerity measures aren’t significantly reducing the domestic budget deficit and certainly is not reducing the foreign budget deficit, nor perhaps are they really intended to do so and are aimed at reducing taxes on the corporations and the rich to improve profits of the corporations and incomes of the rich by siphoning off money from the bottom 80% of the population. Nevertheless, austerity measures are being imposed domestically.

By: El Cid

El Cid — Sun, 07 May 2006 17:25:01 +0000

I agree entirely with Goff’s comments and I too have grown tired of the tendency of many leftists to find one big thing that when “it” happens suddenly everything will change. If it’s a bad thing then when “it” happens supposedly things will suddenly get so bad that the long awaited revolution will happen (or at least “it” is so scary that presumably the listener / reader will jump right into your line). If it’s a good thing, then when “it” happens everyone will finally see that we are right and then together we new revolutionaries will pop out on to the streets, right all the wrongs quickly, and boom, our work is done. Unfortunately I think that a tremendous amount of work and organizing will be required, a lot of confusing advances as well as retrogrades will be faced, and if there is a sudden breakthrough it will be something which will be surprising but not entirely unanticipated.