Rosenberg, Bill wrote:
>An interesting example from New Zealand: a U.S. Bankers
>Trust dealer, Andrew Krieger, claimed that in late 1987
>he "played" several hundred million - possibly as much as
>a billion - New Zealand dollars against New Zealand's
>currency, leading to a fall by 10% of the value of the
>New Zealand dollar ("The Money Bazaar - inside the
>Trillion-dollar world of Currency Trading", Andrew J.
>Krieger with Edward Claflin, Times Books N.Y., 1992,
>p.93ff).
>
>New Zealand politics is very conscious (perhaps hyper-
>conscious) of the ability of financial dealers to
>manipulate the economy, and it has been used as a scare
>tactic frequently during recent elections.
And since it's used as a scare tactic, that makes it especially important
to understand the mechanisms of damage.
Maybe Krieger did NZ a favor: growth was 0.6% in 1986, 0.7% in 1987, and
2.3% in 1988.
As for the globalization issue. A small country like NZ, or even Canada,
has no choice but to trade extensively with the outside world. NZ couldn't
maintain a First World standard of living on the basis of internal demand
alone. So the question isn't really "globalization" vs. its
still-unspecified opposite, but the terms on which the country engages with
the outside world. Which is yet another reason I'd like to see a moratorium
on the term globalization: it's a mystifying term best left to publicists,
whose business is mystification.
Doug
--
Doug Henwood
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