Argentine cacerolazos* join Quebec cacerolazos**

since i gave up my place in buenos aires, i've been grossly negligent in posting on argentina... that doesn't mean, however, that i haven't been keeping up on argentina news... 

the on-going telenovela that is argentina is endlessly fascinating, particularly the exploits of its fashionista president, cristina fernandez de kirchner... cristina is a hoot and would be vastly amusing if she weren't leading a country of nearly 40 million people... she is in her second term following the two terms of her husband, nestor kirchner, who died unexpectedly midway through her first term... she won the last election with 54% of the vote and recently moved to shore up her populist credentials by nationalizing the ypf oil company and kicking out the principal shareholder, spain's repsol... but i've been wondering how long it would take argentines to grow tired of the inflation, corruption and general economic mismanagement that continues to be a hallmark not only of her presidency but of argentina governance in general, stretching back for generations... the straw that broke the camel's back was no doubt cristina's decree limiting u.s. dollar transactions, a decision that led to an enormous increase in capital flight... now, it looks like the good citizens of argentina have had it and have joined their quebecois brethren in making a joyful noise and returned to the street protests that characterized their response to the 2001 economic collapse ...


Pots and pans to protest corruption in Buenos Aires

Middle class Argentines protest with pots and pans against corruption, crime, inflation and the dollar clamp

For the third night in ten days angry Argentines took to the streets of Buenos Aires and other major cities banging pots and pans to protest corruption, rampant crime and insecurity, inflation and the dollar clamp in the midst of an economy that is showing clear signals of exhaustion and growing questions on the current course of affairs.

when i left buenos aires a year ago december, annual inflation was running over 28% and, from everything i've been reading, it hasn't slowed down a bit... i honestly don't know how ordinary argentines make it day-to-day in that economy... i first went there in 2004 and paid 5 pesos for a haircut and the peso-dollar exchange rate was 3-to-1... when i left in 2010, i was paying 25 pesos for a haircut and the exchange rate was 3.8-to-1... i have no idea what i would pay for a haircut today but i do know the exchange rate is now 4.4-to-1... one other thing i do know is that, in an attempt to "make it" financially, argentines cheat, lie, steal and stick it to each other as much as possible and when they're not sticking it to each other, they're REALLY sticking it to the tourists, which usually results in this...

Argentina rapidly becoming too expensive for foreign tourists

Argentina is rapidly becoming an expensive country for tourists and evidence of this is the declining number of tourists arriving in the country in the first months of the year while the number of Argentine travelling overseas is soaring, according to Mario Lielman, chair of the Buenos Aires Tourism and Travel Agencies Association.

i have a very warm spot in my heart for argentina and argentines but, as i've come to learn, argentina is, in many ways, its own worst enemy...

* A cacerolazo or cacerolada is a form of popular protest practised in certain Spanish-speaking countries – in particular Argentina, Chile and Uruguay – which consists in a group of people creating noise by banging pots, pans, and other utensils in order to call for attention. What is peculiar about this type of demonstration is that the people protest from their own homes, thus achieving a high level of support and participation.

** In 2012 in Québec, a province of Canada, citizens are currently using cacerolazo after the adoption on 18 May of Bill 78, an act which severely restricts rights to peacefully assemble. Bill 78 has raised the ire of the Quebec Bar Association, the Quebec Human Rights Commission, Amnesty International, and others. While court challenges are underway, the "Casseroles" or "Pots and Pans Demonstrations" continue nightly in towns and cities across the province, concentrated in Montreal's various neighbourhoods. This joyful Montreal video of Cacerolazo in action has gone viral: http://www.huffingtonpost.ca/2012/05/25/montreal-pots-and-pans-video-bill-78_n_1546694.html

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Paul Craig Roberts: Financial deregulation is likely to prove to be the mistake that destroys Western civilization

whether or not roberts is right, i just wish the house of cards would go ahead and collapse...

from counterpunch...

The enormous cost of the financial crisis has one single source–financial deregulation. Financial deregulation is likely to prove to be the mistake that destroys Western civilization. While we quake in our boots from fear of “Muslim terrorists,” it is financial deregulation that is destroying us, with help from jobs offshoring.

[...]

Financial deregulation has had dangerous and adverse consequences. Deregulation permitted financial concentration that produced “banks too big to fail,” thus requiring the general public to absorb the costs of the banks’ mistakes and reckless gambling.

Deregulation permitted banks to leverage a small amount of capital with enormous debt in order to maximize return on equity, thereby maximizing the instability of the financial system and the cost to society of the banks’ bad bets.

Deregulation allowed financial institutions to sweep aside the position limits on speculators and to dominate commodity markets, turning them into a gambling casino and driving up the prices of energy and food.

Deregulation permits financial institutions to sell naked shorts, which means to sell a company’s stock or gold and silver bullion that the seller does not possess into the market in order to drive down the price.

[...]

The dollar in its role as world reserve currency is the source of Washington’s power. It allows Washington to control the international payments system and to exclude from the financial system those countries that do not do Washington’s bidding. It allows Washington to print money with which to pay its bills and to purchase the cooperation of foreign governments or to fund opposition within those countries whose governments Washington is unable to purchase, such as Iran, Russia, and China. If the dollar was not the world reserve currency and actually reflected its true depreciated value from the mounting US debt and running of the printing press, Washington’s power would be dramatically curtailed.

[...]

It is ironic that the outcome of financial deregulation in the US is the opposite of what its free market advocates promised. In place of highly competitive financial firms that live or die by their wits alone without government intervention, we have unprecedented financial concentration.  Massive banks, “too big to fail,” now send their multi-trillion dollar losses to Washington to be paid by heavily indebted US taxpayers whose real incomes have not risen in 20 years.  The banksters take home fortunes in annual bonuses for their success in socializing the “free market” banks’ losses and privatizing profits to the point of not even paying income taxes.

[...]

Will Western civilization itself survive the financial tsunami that deregulated Wall Street has produced?

i think the day when the dollar is not the world's reserve currency is rapidly approaching...

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Max Keiser: Paul Craig Roberts, Goldman Sachs, austerity, fraud, punish the innocent & reward the guilty

and, here's the real irony... this is an excerpt from press tv, a news service from iran... you'd certainly never see this in u.s. media... you can call it iranian propaganda, you can call it anything you want, but do yourself a favor, at least watch and listen...

Global financial crisis-On the Edge with Max Keiser-05-20-2011-(Part1)




Global financial crisis-On the Edge with Max Keiser-05-20-2011-(Part2)

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Understanding the war on the gold dinar as a means of stepping "out of the dark void of brutal exploitation and greed"

john perkins...

According to the IMF, Libya’s Central Bank is 100% state owned. The IMF estimates that the bank has nearly 144 tons of gold in its vaults. It is significant that in the months running up to the UN resolution that allowed the US and its allies to send troops into Libya, Muammar al-Qaddafi was openly advocating the creation of a new currency that would rival the dollar and the euro. In fact, he called upon African and Muslim nations to join an alliance that would make this new currency, the gold dinar, their primary form of money and foreign exchange. They would sell oil and other resources to the US and the rest of the world only for gold dinars.

The US, the other G-8 countries, the World Bank, IMF, BIS, and multinational corporations do not look kindly on leaders who threaten their dominance over world currency markets or who appear to be moving away from the international banking system that favors the corporatocracy. Saddam Hussein had advocated policies similar to those expressed by Qaddafi shortly before the US sent troops into Iraq.

[...]

Understanding the war against Quaddafi as a war in defense of empire is another step in the direction of helping us ask ourselves whether we want to continue along this path of empire-building. Or do we instead want to honor the democratic principles we are taught to believe are the foundations of our country?

History teaches that empires do not endure; they collapse or are overthrown. Wars ensue and another empire fills the vacuum. The past sends a compelling message. We must change. We cannot afford to watch history repeat itself.

Let us not allow this empire to collapse and be replaced by another. Instead, let us all vow to create a new consciousness. Let the grass-roots movements in the Middle East – fostered by the young who must live with the future and are fueled through social networks – inspire us to demand that our country, our financial institutions and the corporations that depend on us to buy their goods and services commit themselves to fashioning a world that is sustainable, just, peaceful, and prosperous for all.

We stand at the threshold. It is time for you and me to step across that threshold, to move out of the dark void of brutal exploitation and greed into the light of compassion and cooperation.

compassion and cooperation... what a concept...!

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Roubini: no Glass-Steagall-Lite

when i hear the voice of reason, i recognize it immediately... it's simple, straightforward and completely understandable by even the most brain-cell challenged among us... it's also a pure breath of fresh air amidst all the spin and propagandized crap we're routinely fed...

We must be capable of going beyond the Volcker Rule, which is essentially Glass-Steagall-Lite. We need to go all the way and implement the kind of restrictions between commercial banking and investment banking that existed under Glass-Steagall.

[...]

If you look at the cases against Goldman Sachs and Morgan Stanley, leaving aside whether there was any fraud or illegal activity—that's for a court to decide—there is still a fundamental conflict of interest. These institutions are always on every side of every deal. That's an inherent conflict of interest that cannot be addressed with Chinese walls [internal company barriers between different aspects of its business].

There are no benefits from these economies of scale and scope, as we've seen from the disasters at Citigroup, AIG and others. And there are massive conflicts of interest. So I would separate all of these financial businesses under separate institutions, and I would go back to the kind of restrictions that we had under Glass-Steagall.

yes, nouriel, but that would put restrictions on unfettered greed and that is something our super-rich elites will simply not allow...

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The new U.S. Dollar

(btw, blogger is bloggered, at least from my access point here in jordan...)

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"Every market is just out of control right now." So, how's that bailout workin' for ya, eh...?

if this obscene bailout goes through, our government is going to have a revolt on its hands... i don't see how it can be avoided... anybody who's paying the slightest bit of attention can't fail to miss that this is robbery, pure and simple... i think the fall in stocks, the rise in oil prices and the fall of the dollar is testament to the fact that there's a hell of a lot of people out there who not only think the bailout is a bad idea and may not pass but also that things stand to get considerably worse...

Stocks fell sharply and oil prices suddenly spiked on Monday as investors anxiously waited for Washington lawmakers to hash out the details of the biggest government bailout in history — a politically fraught process that will create a new slate of winners and losers on Wall Street.

That uncertainty, about a shaken financial system still in flux, appeared to spook investors away from assets tied directly to the health of the American government. The dollar dropped sharply against the euro, and oil prices jumped, closing up more than $16 a barrel.

The Dow Jones industrials closed down 372 points after spending the day deep in negative territory. The broader Standard & Poor’s 500-stock index finished down 3.8 percent.

“What can I say? Every market is just out of control right now,” said Tom Bentz, an energy analyst at BNP Paribas.

ferchrissake, let's let the house of cards fall down already...

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So much for the naive belief that increasing Saudi oil output will help reduce gas prices

many years ago, a san francisco city alderman running for re-election offered this visually arresting quote: "it's time to grab the bull by the tail and look facts in the face"...

folks, the u.s. economy - nay, the GLOBAL economy - fell off the cliff some months ago... it may be a long, lo-o-o-ong way down, and it may be happening in slo-mo, but the fact is, we be headin' do-o-o-own, and no amount of carefully staged p.r. stunts like the saudis announcing that they're increasing oil output is going to make a single goddam bit of difference...

be sure to check the last sentence...

Oil prices fluctuated Monday as traders shrugged off a pledge by Saudi Arabia to increase its production and the dollar gained strength in Europe.

Saudi Arabia said Sunday it would produce more crude oil this year if the market needs it. The kingdom announced a 300,000 barrel per day production increase in May and said before the start of the meeting in Jeddah that it would add another 200,000 barrels per day in July, raising total daily output to 9.7 million barrels.

The announcement had already been factored into oil prices, analysts said.

"The meeting was mildly positive but it wouldn't really deliver anything that would give a heavy correction in oil," said Mark Pervan, a senior commodity strategist at the ANZ Bank in Melbourne, Australia. "They pledged production increases that the market thought was base case."

the only possible thing that could change the disaster scenario that's playing out right now is some sort of deus ex machina intervention, but the magnitude of such an intervention and the unimaginable sums of money necessary to accomplish it, are now too great for even the super-rich elites to cough up... besides, why should they...? money is still overflowing their coffers like the mississippi out of its banks... (yeah, i know... that last one was a really bad and, trust me, completely unintentional pun...)

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$100B USD = £50.4480B GBP

uh... i'm confoozed... here's a story from today about a £50B BofE bail-out...

Bank details £50bn lending boost

The Bank of England has announced details of a plan to help prevent the credit crisis causing more damage to the UK banking system and economy.

Banks will be able to swap potentially risky mortgage debts for £50bn of secure government bonds to enable them to operate during the credit squeeze.

The Bank's governor, Mervyn King, said the scheme aimed to improve liquidity in the banking system.

It should also increase confidence in financial markets, he added.

Under the scheme, banks will be allowed to swap their "high quality" mortgage debts for government securities.

The swap will be for a period of one year and may be renewed for a total of three years.

and here's a story i posted on saturday about a $100B BofE bank bailout...

The Bank of England is planning to provide around $100 billion of support to British banks and lending institutions.

The cash package is designed to help banks cope with the after effects of the subprime mortgage crisis in the United States.

Britain's banks have for years raised vital finance by selling tens of billions of pounds of mortgages to international investors.

But last August the market closed down which is why mortgages and other loans have become harder and more expensive to obtain.

The Bank of England plans to fill the breach, and next week it will announce a proposal to pump new money into the banking system for up to three years.

It will offcer to swap government bonds with a maturity of up to a year for the bank's unsellable mortgage assets.

i'm assuming it's the same story, only one is expressed in u.s. dollars and the other in british pounds... here's the conversion based on today's dollar/pound exchange rate...

from xe.com...

$100B USD = £50.4480B GBP

United States Dollars United Kingdom Pounds
$1 USD = £0.504480 GBP £1 GBP = $1.98224 USD

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Euro hits $1.59, Merril Lynch continues its free fall, oil climbs past $115 a barrel, and rice is now 3x higher than 2007

please note... ALL of these stories are interconnected in very fundamental ways, all of which point to the continuing collapse of the global financial markets... hitting bottom, imho, is a long way off...

is it even possible to comprehend $30B worth of losses in one company in only three quarters...?

Merrill Lynch announces job cuts after $2 billion loss

Merrill Lynch, the investment bank, posted a loss Thursday and announced that it would lay off about 2,900 additional workers. Including about 1,000 jobs already eliminated this year, the company's work force is to shrink by 10 percent, or about 4,000 jobs, over the course of 2008.

The bank reported worst-than-expected earnings for the first quarter, including $6.5 billion in write-downs and adjustments to assets in its mortgage, leveraged finance and other divisions. The write-downs bring the total taken by Merrill Lynch in the last three quarters to more than $30 billion.

i'm working with a gentleman here who lives in france but is an employee of the u.s. company that runs the project... he is paid in dollars which he converts to euros... he has lost nearly HALF the value of his salary over the past year...

The euro retreated from a record high against the dollar in choppy trade Thursday after a top euro zone official called recent euro appreciation "undesirable."

[...]

That sparked concern that G7 officials may be considering coordinated currency intervention to stem the dollar's decline.

it wasn't very long ago, only a matter of six months, that oil over $100 a barrel seemed unimaginable...

Oil prices hit all-time highs above $115 a barrel Thursday as the dollar continued to weaken and on reports that oil and gasoline stocks in the United States were lower than expected.

and look at rice, a food staple for more than 2/3 of the world's population...

The sense of crisis in the rice market showed no signs of easing as prices continued their record climb and a tender from the Philippines, the world's top importer, attracted offers to sell only about two-thirds of the half-a-million tons it had sought, Reuters reported from Bangkok.

In Bangkok, Thai 100 percent B-grade white rice, considered the world's benchmark, hit $950 per ton, three times its price at the start of 2007.

i don't know how anyone can look at the above four items and not sense impending doom...

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Spiegel: The Madness of Ben Bernanke

as usual, you have to read the foreign press to get any semblance of truth about what's happening in our own country... (and ya gotta love spiegel's headline...)

The dollar is in a tailspin, the trade deficit is growing and a recession is on the horizon. The American way of life is in serious danger. But the head of the Federal Reserve keeps on pumping easy credit into the system -- a crazy policy that will worsen the crisis.


Ben Bernanke at the G7 meeting
of central bank governors over
the weekend.

Alan Greenspan and Ben Bernanke have more in common with the big cat entertainers Siegfried & Roy than any of us can be comfortable with.

The Las Vegas magicians call themselves "Masters of the Impossible" and have been fascinating audiences for decades by getting snow-white tigers to leap through burning rings.

The legendary Federal Reserve Chairman and his successor were equally adept at fascinating their audiences -- with a policy of miraculous monetary growth that gave America one of the longest periods of economic expansion in modern times. Many saw them as "Masters of the Universe." It seemed as if the central bankers had tamed predatory capitalism with their constant interest rate cuts.

[...]

The credit-financed consumer boom of recent years is coming to a painful end. Today's American Way of Life has no chance of surviving the coming years undamaged. The virus will continue to ravage its way through the financial system.

The property crisis is likely to spread to credit card providers soon and will then probably infect car manufacturers, furniture makers and all the other firms that owe their sales increases to the growth in credit finance. "The virus will keep on infecting the system," one management board member from a large bank said, requesting anonymity in return for the candour of his analysis.

His argument is that banks that grant mortgages to home buyers virtually unable to pay their bills are unlikely to be especially scrutinizing when it comes to lending cash to the buyers of fridges, cars and furniture. Indeed, a furniture store in Miami recently tried to lure consumers with the following offer: buy now, pay your first credit installment in three years, and no need for a down-payment.

The credit-financed way of life is typical of the US these days. Many people resort to credit to plug the gap between the lifestyle they have become accustomed to and their declining wages.

The borrowed cash is like an anaesthetic against the painful impact of globalisation. Private household debt has been growing by $4 billion each business day for years.

yeah, well, ok, but what spiegel fails to point out is that the financial and credit markets ain't going to hell just in the u.s... it's all well and good to point a finger at the unbelievable mess that the so-called "leaders" of the u.s. corporatocracy have created, but that conveniently ignores the complicity of europe, japan, australia, and the rest of the industrialized world... today's globally-interconnected financial markets have all been operating on an ethos of unrestrained greed and the collapse is happening world-wide, not just in the u.s., even though the u.s. has certainly been a leading role model...

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World's 5th biggest pension fund stops buying U.S. Treasury bonds

the global economic collapse continues, led by the rapid disappearance of confidence in the dollar...

South Korea's National Pension Service (NPS), the world's fifth-biggest pension fund, said on Thursday it was shying away from U.S. Treasuries because of falling yields and the weakening dollar.

The move by the NPS could signal a big shift by financial institutions away from U.S. government debt into higher-yielding assets, the Financial Times said.

The fund, which expects its assets to rise to 250 trillion won ($253 billion) by the end of 2008, holds about 17.4 trillion won worth of foreign bonds of which U.S. Treasuries account for 94 percent.

Those figures would suggest NPS holds about 16.4 trillion ($16.6 billion) won in U.S. Treasuries.

"We sees the attractiveness of U.S. Treasuries falling," NPS spokeswoman, Chi Younghye, said.

it may not be front-page news, but unlike other stories that don't get the coverage they deserve, this one is creating a hole of such staggering proportions that, when we finally fall in, the world as we know it will cease to exist...

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Sitting on our fat American asses

don harrold on the fed and bear stearns... the really good stuff starts at 3:50...



this guy's still got his adrenaline pumpin'... after seven-plus years, i think my adrenaline finally ran out about mid-january...

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Argentina and Brazil agree to stop doing business in dollars

this is interesting... just as a point of information for those who might not know, all real estate transactions here in argentina are done in u.s. dollars... up until the economic collapse in 2001, the peso was valued 1:1 to the dollar and dollars and pesos were equally acceptable as payment... even today, atm's still give you a choice of currency - pesos or dollars... i see this as one more step for argentina in abandoning the dollar completely...

Argentina and Brazil are to scrap bilateral commercial transactions in U.S. dollars and start using their own currencies from August, an official in charge of currency settlement at the Argentine Central Bank said here Saturday.

The new payment system is aimed at reducing costs in commercial transactions and would benefit small and medium-sized enterprises, the official said.

Under the new system, there will be a unified exchange rate between the real and peso, the so-called reference rate, which will be applied by Brazilian and Argentine central banks at the end of each day.

Brazilian President Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva reached an agreement to establish a new payment system with his Argentine counterpart Cristina Fernandez de Kirchner during his visit to Argentina in February.

Technical preparations are underway for the new system, which the two countries will adopt in several steps due to the large amount of bilateral trade.

Brazil is Argentina's largest trading partner, while Argentina is Brazil's second-biggest trading partner after the United States.

Bilateral trade stood at around 23.6 billion U.S. dollars last year.

yet another chapter in the global economic soap opera and the continuing collapse of the u.s. dollar...

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$109 a barrel oil and a weaker dollar

holy crap...

Oil prices soared past $109 a barrel after rising to a record in the previous session as the U.S. dollar weakened further.

Speculation that rising prices for oil and other commodities will offset the falling dollar has driven oil's rally from $87 a barrel in January.

The dollar has fallen to three-year lows against the yen and the head of the European Central Bank expressed concern Monday about the "disorderly movements" of exchange rates.

c'mon, house of cards... c'mon... c'mon... collapse already...

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Oil - record high... Dollar - record low...

the perfect storm...

both...

Oil prices strike record high 102.08 dollars

Crude oil prices surged to a record above 102 dollars per barrel on Wednesday, energised by the weak US dollar and concerns that OPEC could cut output next week, analysts said.

and...

Dollar plunges to fresh record euro low

The dollar plunged to another record low against the European single currency on Wednesday as a stream of negative US data undermined the greenback, analysts said.

In morning deals, the euro surged as high as 1.5088 dollars, after smashing through the 1.50 barrier for the first ever time in US trade on Tuesday.

so stop stalling... let's have the collapse already...

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A global currency? Just check the horse this guy rides out on...

(this is an important article, and i'm going to devote some extra space to it here...)

the thought of a global currency presided over by our current crop of global monied elites chills me to my very core, to say nothing of the fact that this article was penned by a senior staffer of the council on foreign relations, one of the principal organizations serving those who already hold most of the world in thrall...

Over the past 25 years, devastating currency crises have hit countries across Latin America and Asia, as well as countries just beyond the borders of western Europe -- most notably Russia and Turkey.

it's interesting that he only refers to latin america in general rather than specifically pointing to argentina, the victim of the worst economic and currency implosion ever, a disaster certainly due in part to argentina's own imprudent policies, but even more so to its attempts to abide by the neoliberal dictates of the u.s., the imf, the world bank, and the global capitalist banking system... but, rather than acknowledging that fact, the author excoriates joseph stiglitz, a nobel prize winning economist, a member of former president clinton's economic advisory panel, and former chief economist for the world bank, who made a clear case for the trainwreck that neoliberal economic policies have wreaked on the developing world (see Joseph Stiglitz, Globalization and Its Discontents)...

Antiglobalization economists have turned the problem on its head by absolving governments (except the one in Washington) and instead blaming crises on markets and their institutional supporters, such as the IMF -- "dictatorships of international finance," in the words of the Nobel laureate Joseph Stiglitz. "Countries are effectively told that if they don't follow certain conditions, the capital markets or the IMF will refuse to lend them money," writes Stiglitz. "They are basically forced to give up part of their sovereignty."

Is this right? Are markets failing, and will restoring lost sovereignty to governments put an end to financial instability? This is a dangerous misdiagnosis.

i can't speak to monetary sovereignty, but i can speak first-hand to the damage that neoliberal, "market-driven" policies, as pushed by the money and power-brokers of the first world, have caused, particularly in latin america and southeast europe...

so, what does this highly-credentialed pooh-bah think we should do...? why, leave it up to "those who know best" to continue holding on to the purse strings, of course...

The right course is not to return to a mythical past of monetary sovereignty, with governments controlling local interest and exchange rates in blissful ignorance of the rest of the world. Governments must let go of the fatal notion that nationhood requires them to make and control the money used in their territory. National currencies and global markets simply do not mix; together they make a deadly brew of currency crises and geopolitical tension and create ready pretexts for damaging protectionism. In order to globalize safely, countries should abandon monetary nationalism and abolish unwanted currencies, the source of much of today's instability.

and what do you suppose is driving this noble idea of reducing world currencies to dollars, euros, or some other, as yet unborn, currency...? could it be this...?

Just a few decades ago, vital foreign investment in developing countries was driven by two main motivations: to extract raw materials for export and to gain access to local markets heavily protected against competition from imports.

[...]

This cozy scenario was undermined by the advent of globalization. Trade liberalization has opened up most developing countries to imports (in return for export access to developed countries), and huge declines in the costs of communication and transport have revolutionized the economics of global production and distribution. Accordingly, the reasons for foreign companies to invest in developing countries have changed. The desire to extract commodities remains, but companies generally no longer need to invest for the sake of gaining access to domestic markets. It is generally not necessary today to produce in a country in order to sell in it (except in large economies such as Brazil and China).

At the same time, globalization has produced a compelling new reason to invest in developing countries: to take advantage of lower production costs by integrating local facilities into global chains of production and distribution.

[...]

In a globalizing economy, monetary stability and access to sophisticated financial services are essential components of an attractive local investment climate. And in this regard, developing countries are especially poorly positioned.

[...]

[G]rowth today depends more and more on investment decisions funded and funneled through the global financial system. (Borrowing in low-cost yen to finance investments in Europe while hedging against the yen's rise on a U.S. futures exchange is no longer exotic.) Thus, unrestricted and efficient access to this global system -- rather than the ability of governments to manipulate parochial monetary policies -- has become essential for future economic development.

i hope you're following very carefully what this character is outlining here... i don't think it's stretching a point at all to say that he would like to see the very system that has given us the sub-prime mortgage meltdown and funneled massive amounts of cash to the already super-rich, extended across the globe without any inconvenient national governments standing in the way...

check out how he wraps everything up in a nice, neat package...

Since economic development outside the process of globalization is no longer possible, countries should abandon monetary nationalism. Governments should replace national currencies with the dollar or the euro or, in the case of Asia, collaborate to produce a new multinational currency over a comparably large and economically diversified area.

"...economic development outside the process of globalization is no longer possible..." mull that one over for a while, if you will...

Most of the world's smaller and poorer countries would clearly be best off unilaterally adopting the dollar or the euro, which would enable their safe and rapid integration into global financial markets. Latin American countries should dollarize; eastern European countries and Turkey, euroize.

ok, now for the truly hilarious conclusion... keep in mind that this article was written for the may/june 2007 edition of foreign affairs...

As for the United States, it needs to perpetuate the sound money policies of former Federal Reserve Chairs Paul Volcker and Alan Greenspan and return to long-term fiscal discipline. This is the only sure way to keep the United States' foreign tailors, with their massive and growing holdings of dollar debt, feeling wealthy and secure. It is the market that made the dollar into global money -- and what the market giveth, the market can taketh away. If the tailors balk and the dollar fails, the market may privatize money on its own.

HAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHA... < snort, sniff, choke > HAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHA... < wipes tears from eyes > HAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHA...

so much for all your erudition, you pompous asshole...

(thanks to casey at open your mind's eye...)

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$100 a barrel oil

WOW...! only 1 1/2 days into the new year... THAT sure didn't take long...

Oil prices soared to $100 a barrel Wednesday for the first time ever, reaching that milestone amid an unshakeable view that global demand for oil and petroleum products will continue to outstrip supplies.

on another, not-unrelated subject, i wonder when we're going to see bank defaults...?

Superpower America is a ship of fools in denial of their plight. While offshoring kills American economic prospects, “free market economists” sing its praises. While war imposes enormous costs on a bankrupt country, neoconservatives call for more war, and Republicans and Democrats appropriate war funds which can only be obtained by borrowing abroad.

By focusing America on war in the Middle East, the purpose of which is to guarantee Israel’s territorial expansion, the executive and legislative branches, along with the media, have let slip the last opportunities the US had to put its financial house in order. We have arrived at the point where it is no longer bold to say that nothing now can be done. Unless the rest of the world decides to underwrite our economic rescue, the chips will fall where they may.

it's always darkest before the dawn...

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OPEC doesn't want to talk about the falling U.S. dollar because the talk might make it worse

Nobody wants to have less money than more money. I am sure that we all agree on that.

looks like opec made a big boo-boo...

The accidental airing of a closed OPEC session Friday provided a surprise glimpse into a sensitive debate over the weakening U.S. dollar, with Saudi Arabia's foreign minister warning that even talking publicly about the currency's decline could further hurt its value.

The high-profile blunder ahead of a rare OPEC summit revealed the debate as Iran attempted to convince other member countries to express concern over dollar depreciation in the meeting's final declaration.

Oil is priced in dollars on the world market, and its depreciation has concerned oil producers because it has contributed to rising crude prices and has eroded the value of their dollar reserves. Cartel officials have resisted pressure to increase oil production to ease prices.

"The reality is that we have this problem. I think we should draft the declaration to reflect our concerns," Iranian Foreign Minister Manouchehr Mottaki said during a pre-summit meeting here with fellow ministers from the Organization of Petroleum Exporting Countries.

But Saud al-Faisal, foreign minister of U.S. ally Saudi Arabia, came out against the proposal with unusually frank comments.

"In my feeling, the mere mention that the OPEC countries are studying the issue of the dollar is itself going to have an impact that endangers the interests of the countries," he said.

"We all should be worried if any action that we take will lead us to do some injury to our returns on our product," al-Faisal said. "Nobody wants to have less money than more money. I am sure that we all agree on that."

The closed meeting was accidentally broadcast to journalists and after about 40 minutes, an official rushed into the press room and yanked the television cable out of the wall.

can't you just SEE that tv cable come flying out of that wall...?

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