On 2/6/07, Jim Devine <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote:
The fact is that China, Japan, and the Gulf States are acting out of some sort of self-interest. If it's the central banks there, that self-interest isn't simple profit-grubbing since it is tempered or exaggerated by political goals of various sorts.
I think (1) that the Chinese, Japanese, and Gulf state power elites' self interest have been served by subsidizing US consumption but the self interest of their populaces could be better served if they didn't have to subsidize it (to say nothing of the populaces of poorer countries as Julio reminds us) and (2) that, even from the POV that only considers the power elites' self interest, it looks to me that accumulating more and more dollar reserves was a policy that once made economic sense but whose economic benefit is becoming increasingly less clear -- it's just that there is no painless way to get out of path dependency. -- Yoshie <http://montages.blogspot.com/> <http://mrzine.org> <http://monthlyreview.org/>
