[PEN-L:4674] Re: Trond's Debt/Asset polarization model
Trond, your recent post that the debt cycle `caused' stagnation from the late 1970s appeared to me as a cart before the horse. The argument I've been more closely drawn to is that the emerging problem of overaccumulated capital in the advanced industrial countries found a temporary means of displacement into financial circuits. Theoretically, this is consistent - from the starting gate - with the divergent expositions of Marx, Hilferding and Grossmann. Discussing it in posivitist terms would entail tracing the rise of excess productive circuit capacity in the late 1960s and early 1970s, assessing the mechanisms by which flows of funds switched around institutionally and geographically (such as into petrodollars), and in turn relating these gyrations to the financial innovations, deregulation and liberalization that seem to have pushed the debt cycle into a qualitatively different stage since the late 1970s. I've done this exercise for the Zimbabwean and South African economies (which follow this line of argument), and I've seen works by Mandel, Clarke, Harvey and Armstrong et al that are consistent at the global scale. Haven't Pollin, Burkett, Dymski or other lefty financial economists explored these relationships in the US? But if you do have cause and effect backwards, Trond, does that matter for your broader argument about polarization? Probably not... Patrick Bond Johns Hopkins
[PEN-L:4675] Re: Trond's Debt/Asset polarization model
Oh, also, on the debt forgiveness/default issue, I've just returned from a two day Friends of the Earth seminar on the IMF, which included a long discussion of how NGOs could engage in high-level debates over managing the debt crisis in this mutual fund era. There were some interesting papers (by Hazel Henderson and Kunibert Raffer) on Chapter 9 insolvencies, but they had none of the moral vigor that Trond contributes, nor the creativity and political implications of the Probe International (Toronto) notion of `The doctrine of odious debts.' Not even the ANC in South Africa has the self-confidence to demand even a rescheduling of $20 bn in apartheid era debt (though there is a growing movement within the Communist Party, trade unions and minor revolutionary groups, following a `Unity of the Left' conference last November, to begin a campaign on this front). But like so many portentous ideas, my guess is that the Inside the Beltway NGO leadership may take debt forgiveness (or sovereign bankruptcy) over to the lawyers, denude it of politics or popular input, and watch it wither on the vine... Can you give us any more positive practical applications from Norway, comrade?
[PEN-L:4680] Re: Trond's Debt/Asset polarization model
On Tue, 11 Apr 1995 [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: With respect to the views of traditional religions toward interest, let me note that: 1) Judaism only forbade it within the community; it was OK to collect from gentiles. * * * 5) All of the above accepted profit based on risk- sharing, the view of interest being that it involved no risk, "sterile" money creating more money. I'm not sure any of the above is fully correct. Deuteronomy XXIII does distinguish between "brother" and "foreignor" but a foreignor (nacri) is not the same as a non-Jew or stranger (ger). There are many parts of the bible that make it very clear you cannot oppress the ger or stranger. The nacri, as I understand it, was the transient, not a foreignor living in the community. Apparently the Talmudists made these disctinctions even clearer. Second, interest or usury apparently also meant profit. Trades had to be reasonably even. The Talmudists spent a great deal of effort going into the impact of futures trading on harvests, profits of storeowners, and the like. I actually think that Trond's suggestion of looking at this different way to organize society is interesting in the way that anthropology or science fiction are. They give us a way of stepping back and looking at the possibility of different means of organization. When faced with so many who say that money is and must be the measure of all things I find that these comparisons give me the ability to ask, "Really?" In a sense, they are the study that is so difficult to run in social sciences. ellen dannin [EMAIL PROTECTED]
[PEN-L:4681] Re: Trond's Debt/Asset polarization model
Yeah, those are other reasons why interest might be outlawed.* But it doesn't contradict what I said. Consumer loans go to pay for consumption (obviously), which doesn't lead to the production of a surplus-product which helps pay the interest charges. Though obviously, there are complications such as those Barkley points to, the production of a surplus-product and (under capitalism) a high rate of profit are the prerequisite for non-disfunctional debt accumulation. As one of the other participants in this discussion pointed out, the problem of the "debt crisis" isn't debt _per se_. The US did very well before 1914 by financing growth via foreign debt, for example. *If interest is outlawed, only outlaws will get interest? (to paraphrase our friends at the NRA) in pen-l solidarity, Jim Devine [EMAIL PROTECTED] or [EMAIL PROTECTED] Econ. Dept., Loyola Marymount Univ., Los Angeles, CA 90045-2699 USA 310/338-2948 (daytime, during workweek); FAX: 310/338-1950 "Segui il tuo corso, e lascia dir le genti." (Go your own way and let people talk.) -- K. Marx, paraphrasing Dante A.
[PEN-L:4683] Re: Trond's Debt/Asset polarization model
To Ellen Dannin: I could be wrong, but I have never seen anybody discussing these matters suggest that the Talmudic view was that profit is usury. Interest is not profit and the Talmudists and even the authors of the Torah were smart enough to know the difference. Do the Talmudists in discussing the "storeowner's profit" state that it should equal zero? I think not. "Even trades" do not rule out profits. None of this is to say that we should now applaud profits. Barkley Rosser James Madison University
