US Execs vs Germany, UK, France, etc.

Dennis R Redmond dredmond at OREGON.UOREGON.EDU
Thu Jun 18 16:52:25 PDT 1998


On Thu, 18 Jun 1998, Doug Henwood wrote:


> Dennis, I thought one of the reasons that Daimler listed its stock in New
> York a year or two ago was to hop aboard the American stock
> market/governance train - i.e., find a way to cut labor costs (and deflect
> the political heat for it onto U.S. stockholders).

That's what they say. Are we supposed to believe them? Going the American route would ignite a war with IG Metall, which Daimler would lose. Badly. It wouldn't even be a contest. Central Europe is not going to decline on the American model, because it doesn't have a Wall Street to piss away its surplus on and because its economy is not rentierized. Something like this may happen in thirty years, of course, once a huge Euromarket develops and the industrial base gets moved to Warsaw and Minsk, but right now Central Europe is, much like Japan, doomed to succeed.

-- Dennis



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