Re: Enter the Euro-dragon

[R. Went]

Doug Henwood wrote:

> The Euro central bank makes the Fed look like a model of accountability.
> Maastricht specifies that the president of the ECB and its governing board
> must be restricted to "persons of recognized standing and professional
> experience in monetary or banking matters," language even more restrictive
> than the U.S. law regulating appointments to the Fed's board of governors,
> where the president is required to pay "due regard to a fair representation
> of the financial, agricultural, industrial, and commercial interests" of
> the country and its regions. 

You're totally right, this ECB is unbelievable. There is even in the 
Maastricht treaty a rule which says that it is forbidden to try to 
influence the members of the board of the ECB. Also, directors of the 
bank are in for only one period, to avoid that in the last years they 
start worrying about their re-election and therefore may feel tempted 
to take popular measures or listen (they should not) to governments or 
parliaments.

> And they're so busy being deflationists, I
> don't think they have the lender of last resort thing worked out at all,
> even though the IMF predicts massive financial turmoil as capacity is
> shaken out.

Right again, this is an unsolved problem they're working on if I 
understand the press overhere well. Maintaining price stability is the 
only task formulated for the ECB, employment and things like that are 
not even in the task description.

Robert Went




=
Drs. Robert Went   
Faculty of Economics and Econometrics 
University of Amsterdam   
Roeterstraat 11, k 9.03   
1018 WB Amsterdam 
The Netherlands   
Tel: 31-20-525.4189  
E-mail: [EMAIL PROTECTED]
=

Re: Enter the Euro-dragon III

[valis]

Quoth Dennis Redmond, in part:
> The EU Ueberkapitalisten would like to sacrifice the West
> European industrial base in order to build a new, low-wage one in the
> East; 

An awfully tall order, Dennis; how would they pull it off, knowing that 
this would galvanize and swell the left like nothing else, and in a trice?
In an analogous procedure here, the workers would just myopically enjoy
the boom created by the manufacture and transporting of new physical plant,
but in Europe there is hard-won perspective as well as appetite.

 valis

Re: Enter the Euro-dragon

[PJM0930]

In a message dated 98-03-02 19:37:22 EST, you write:

<<  very central and very crucial, and indeed has been used 
 by British opponents (and others as well) is the relatively 
 undemocratic nature of the EU as a political entity. 

This is a very important issue.  For those pen-l'ers who don't particularly
care about the fate of social democracy in its classic European guise,
this won't matter to you particularly.  However, for the rest of you folks,
there is a correlation in Western Europe between how democratic the
electoral systems are and the overall success of the Left (in terms of
tenure in government).  My suspicision is that this correlation is due
to a causal relationship. If so, imposing a layer of relatively undemocratic
trans-national government over Europe will almost certainly speed the
decomposition of the social-democratic left.

Re: Enter the Euro-dragon

[Dennis R Redmond]

On Tue, 3 Mar 1998, Doug Henwood wrote:

> I've been reading the Treaties of Rome & Maastricht over the last
> couple of days - damn, those documents show how far the bourgeoisie has
> fallen since its great documents of the 18th century - and there's not much
> there for the Parliament to do. It can originate nothing; it has to ask the
> Commisson (or is it the Council? what a weird structure of governance) to
> propose something. It is consulted, but seems like a very weak body. The EU
> is a creature of central bankers and senior politicians.

Such is the EU's primeval exoskeleton. The internal protoplasm,
however, is considerably more promising: the European Parliament has been
gradually wresting more and more power to itself. Don't forget, the
Commission members are themselves appointed by the national governments,
and Europe's election system is incomparably more democratic than
America's rentierocracy, so there's more flexibility there than you might
think. Europe in general gets this bad rap for being forever behind the
Americans, but this is very superficial -- if you want to see some
visionary politics, check out the EU's Social Charter, which insists upon
everything from "fair compensation for workers" to an end to sexism and
workplace discrimination, etc. While the US has similar things, like Title
IX mandates and whatnot, the US approach is legalistic, disorganized, the
result of countless entrepreneurial micromovements and legislative deals;
the Social Charter, however, lays all the issues out in one place, and
reads like something out of a Green Party platform.

I think the European elites are pretty scared of a people's European and
the democratic potential of a true European Parliament, so they're trying
to keep the financial and fiscal levers of power to themselves. But it's
not enough to condemn the EU as a creature of capitalism; the
Euro-comrades have got to turn this creature against its masters (what we
might call the Frankenstein strategy of resistance).

> And they're [the European Central Bank] so busy being deflationists, I
> don't think they have the lender of last resort thing worked out at all,
> even though the IMF predicts massive financial turmoil as capacity is
> shaken out.

This is true. In fact, the various national banks would have to
collectively intervene to prevent this sort of thing; the currency crises 
of 1993 are not a happy portent here. Still, the ECB may be progress over
the current system, where the Bundesbank has de facto control over the
entire show, and can single-handedly choke the airhose of the European
economy (as they almost did in 1993 with superhigh interest rates, until
protests from their neighbors plus the anguished cries of domestic German
industrialists forced them to lower rates to their current rockbottom
levels). The EU Ueberkapitalisten would like to sacrifice the West
European industrial base in order to build a new, low-wage one in the
East; so the Euroleft has got to head the bastards off at the pass, by
legislating a pro-inflationary euro and soaking the Eurorich to co-finance
domestic demand as well as an Eastern boom.

-- Dennis

Re: Enter the Euro-dragon II

[valis]

Quoth Dennis Redmond, in part, rebutting Doug:

> [..T]he resistance to Maastricht monetarism in Europe is several hundred
> million degrees hotter than the feeble, disorganized sparks of resistance
> in America to the rule of Wall Street. Practically every Germany
> university was rocked by humongous student strikes last December; the DGB,
> the German version of the AFL-CIO, has been getting uppity recently, doing
> protest demos and doing some active politicking (mostly to make the
> Conservatives look bad, but there are some interesting new initiatives in
> the field of reducing work-time and shifting to ecological production).
> The disconnect between Europe's elites and their citizens is certainly as
> great as the one between US elites and ordinary folk, it's just that those
> socialist traditions are stronger and the working class more organized.

I generally agree with Dennis's points here, but he's also skating around
a paradox.  In the struggle of America and other states against the forces
of globalization, suddenly we find that nationalism - a phenomenon with such 
a bad historical odor - can become a highly progressive stance.  Indeed,
unless we dare to acknowledge this we fail to be sufficiently dialectical.
By restricting social conflict to straightforward class dynamics, 
the ethnic uniformity of European states helps to bring forth the political
conditions that Dennis so admires; I wonder, however, whether European
integration will ultimately falter by the same token.  Perhaps it will 
require more external demons of just the sort globalization provides.
 valis

Re: Enter the Euro-dragon

[Doug Henwood]

Dennis R Redmond wrote:

>Let's not bury the European Parliament

No, but what would happen if you waved garlic at it? What a strange
creature the European Paliament is. Does it mean anything to the Europeans
here? I've been reading the Treaties of Rome & Maastricht over the last
couple of days - damn, those documents show how far the bourgeoisie has
fallen since its great documents of the 18th century - and there's not much
there for the Parliament to do. It can originate nothing; it has to ask the
Commisson (or is it the Council? what a weird structure of governance) to
propose something. It is consulted, but seems like a very weak body. The EU
is a creature of central bankers and senior politicians.

The Euro central bank makes the Fed look like a model of accountability.
Maastricht specifies that the president of the ECB and its governing board
must be restricted to "persons of recognized standing and professional
experience in monetary or banking matters," language even more restrictive
than the U.S. law regulating appointments to the Fed's board of governors,
where the president is required to pay "due regard to a fair representation
of the financial, agricultural, industrial, and commercial interests" of
the country and its regions. And they're so busy being deflationists, I
don't think they have the lender of last resort thing worked out at all,
even though the IMF predicts massive financial turmoil as capacity is
shaken out.

Doug

Re: Enter the Euro-dragon

[Dennis R Redmond]

On Mon, 2 Mar 1998, Doug Henwood wrote:

> Can countries as different
> as Spain and Germany be under the same monetary space with no possibility
> of national countercyclical fiscal or monetary policies? As a single euro
> financial market emerges, it's almost certain that U.S.-style trading and
> governance practices will come with it; see the IMF working paper at
> . That could
> produce a US-style boom, but that's not what you mean, is it Dennis? 

Nope. I'm afraid you're right -- I do have these fevered, hallucinatory
visions of a gigantic, Continental-sized Denmark, which taxes the rich and
funds the poor, but the dominant tendency is towards a United States of
Europe, ruled by an iron-fisted, intolerant, remilitarized Central
European elite of Teutonic bankers lording over their Visegrad serfs. That
said, the resistance to Maastricht monetarism in Europe is several hundred
million degrees hotter than the feeble, disorganized sparks of resistance
in America to the rule of Wall Street. Practically every Germany
university was rocked by humongous student strikes last December; the DGB,
the German version of the AFL-CIO, has been getting uppity recently, doing
protest demos and doing some active politicking (mostly to make the
Conservatives look bad, but there are some interesting new initiatives in
the field of reducing work-time and shifting to ecological production).
The disconnect between Europe's elites and their citizens is certainly as
great as the one between US elites and ordinary folk, it's just that those
socialist traditions are stronger and the workingclass more organized.

My own feeling is that the Euroelites do indeed want to become like
America, but that they'll fail miserably -- and thir failure may yet be
the Europroletariat's (potential) gain. The EU has too many powerfully
localized cultural traditions to have a US-style mobile jobs market; labor
is not mobile, not even in multi-cultural Switzerland, where each ethnic
group mostly keeps to its own domain. Nor is capital freely mobile,
either; pension funds are mostly administered nationally, banks are tied
in with industry through long-term shareholding structures, and most
European firms are neither dependent upon nor interested in playing the
stock market. This may change over time -- information technology will
probably make it possible to create a new kind of labor mobility, and
Germany may, in thirty years, develop something like a US-style credit
market to administer all the surplus-rents being extracted from Visegrad.
But it's not going to happen overnight. If the euro goes ahead, and I
think it will, an economy of 200 million people with living standards
superior to that of the average American will suddenly be confronted with
the curious paradox of being the world's first parliamentary-elected
superpower. Let's not bury the European Parliament, the Green Parties and
the other Left parties of the new multi-lingual and multi-cultural Europe
too quickly here.

-- Dennis

Re: Enter the Euro-dragon

[Rosser Jr, John Barkley]

There is a lot that can be said on this topic, a lot, 
and I won't go on now and here.  But one observation that 
is very central and very crucial, and indeed has been used 
by British opponents (and others as well) is the relatively 
undemocratic nature of the EU as a political entity.  The 
European Parliment in Strasbourg cannot initiate 
legislation.  That only comes from the unelected European 
Commission in Brussels which Thatcher used to freak out 
about because of its allegedly being controlled by French 
socialists under Delors.  Now _The Economist_ has been 
chucking and grinning that the Commission under the Single 
European Act of 1986 and the introduction of the full 
Common Market in 1992 and the common regs, free capital 
mobility, etc. implied, has become the battering ram for 
continental neoliberalism.
Barkley Rosser
On Mon, 2 Mar 1998 17:07:17 -0500 Doug Henwood 
<[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote:

> Dennis R Redmond wrote:
> 
> >the Central European core
> >will lock in the euro and then, once the thing has greater credibility
> >further down the road and weathers whatever nastiness the Pacific meltdown
> >has in store for the world economy, the semi-peripheries will be slowly
> >locked into orbit around Starship Europa
> 
> Is it going to be this easy to create the euro? Can countries as different
> as Spain and Germany be under the same monetary space with no possibility
> of national countercyclical fiscal or monetary policies? As a single euro
> financial market emerges, it's almost certain that U.S.-style trading and
> governance practices will come with it; see the IMF working paper at
> . That could
> produce a US-style boom, but that's not what you mean, is it Dennis? With
> low wage service labor and the freedom to fire? Lower tax rates and people
> will purchase more services outside the household instead of providing them
> within. EPI economist Eileen Applebaum, who's worked with a German whose
> name escapes me, says that the major difference in the US and German
> national income accounts is purchased household services. Not that
> socializing household labor is necessarily a bad thing - it's just that it
> means lots of crappy jobs, if the US script is followed.
> 
> Barkley Rosser wrote:
> 
> >Everybody in Europe knows it is a big deal
> >and if you are there reading the local media at all for any
> >extended period of time it is very clear that it is a big
> >deal and that everybody knows it.
> 
> Here's Timothy Garton Ash, from the very useful Verso collection The
> Question of Europe (Peter Gowan & Perry Anderson, eds.): "Whereas British
> politicans make an artificial separation of the national and the European,
> ignoring the degree to which the two are already intertwined, French and
> German politicans utterly conflate the national and the European, so it is
> almost impossible to distinguish when they are talking about Europe and
> when about their own nations." And a bit later: "In the Continental elites'
> building plans for EU-rope, from Messina to Maastricht, the telos was a
> substitute for an absent demos - with the hope of eventally contributing to
> the creation of a new European demos"
> 
> Doug
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 

-- 
Rosser Jr, John Barkley
[EMAIL PROTECTED]

Re: Enter the Euro-dragon

[Doug Henwood]

Dennis R Redmond wrote:

>the Central European core
>will lock in the euro and then, once the thing has greater credibility
>further down the road and weathers whatever nastiness the Pacific meltdown
>has in store for the world economy, the semi-peripheries will be slowly
>locked into orbit around Starship Europa

Is it going to be this easy to create the euro? Can countries as different
as Spain and Germany be under the same monetary space with no possibility
of national countercyclical fiscal or monetary policies? As a single euro
financial market emerges, it's almost certain that U.S.-style trading and
governance practices will come with it; see the IMF working paper at
. That could
produce a US-style boom, but that's not what you mean, is it Dennis? With
low wage service labor and the freedom to fire? Lower tax rates and people
will purchase more services outside the household instead of providing them
within. EPI economist Eileen Applebaum, who's worked with a German whose
name escapes me, says that the major difference in the US and German
national income accounts is purchased household services. Not that
socializing household labor is necessarily a bad thing - it's just that it
means lots of crappy jobs, if the US script is followed.

Barkley Rosser wrote:

>Everybody in Europe knows it is a big deal
>and if you are there reading the local media at all for any
>extended period of time it is very clear that it is a big
>deal and that everybody knows it.

Here's Timothy Garton Ash, from the very useful Verso collection The
Question of Europe (Peter Gowan & Perry Anderson, eds.): "Whereas British
politicans make an artificial separation of the national and the European,
ignoring the degree to which the two are already intertwined, French and
German politicans utterly conflate the national and the European, so it is
almost impossible to distinguish when they are talking about Europe and
when about their own nations." And a bit later: "In the Continental elites'
building plans for EU-rope, from Messina to Maastricht, the telos was a
substitute for an absent demos - with the hope of eventally contributing to
the creation of a new European demos"

Doug

Re: Enter the Euro-dragon

[valis]

Quoth Dennis Redmond, in part:
> .. Barring a
> generalized worldwide credit meltdown, which I think no First World
> government in its right (or Left) mind would permit nowadays, it could be
> that we're seeing a two-stage process, where the Central European core
> will lock in the euro and then, once the thing has greater credibility
> further down the road and weathers whatever nastiness the Pacific meltdown
> has in store for the world economy, the semi-peripheries will be slowly
> locked into orbit around Starship Europa (we'll know it's a done deal
> when Soros starts frantically buying up Czech koruna/Hungarian forint).

In 1977, through a chance role of the social dice I ended up spending
a few days with a family that had been, one way or another, part of the
American occupation forces Imperium almost without interruption since
V-E Day.  Its adult members spent most of their time drinking or shopping. 
During a spell of the former activity I mentioned that in nearly 2 months
in Germany I had been unable to find anyone under ~60 who expected to 
awaken in a tidal wave of Soviet tanks a few weeks after the US Army's
departure.  Further, I argued that NATO should be turned into - if anything
at all - an exclusively political alliance, and at once.

These Virginia Junkers stared at me in utter amazement, as though I were
some barnyard animal that had somehow acquired the power of human speech.
Today, Germany having conquered Europe without firing a shot, Neanderthals
of this ilk face the dual purgatory of irrelevance both there and here,
since they forged their links - early and well - with what is now the
wrong class of Germans.  I think of them whenever I hear that a few more 
boys and their toys have been sent to Kuwait, that pearl of democracy.

valis