> From: sawicky at epinet.org (Max Sawicky)
> Patrick,
> We are following the Jubilee campaign here
> with interest.
> I gather the matter of the internal debt
> the government owes 'to itself' concerns
> accrued liabilities for pension benefits
> to workers?
Right you are. But "workers" deserve a moment's reflection, as these are in fact largely white apartheid-era civil servants. All the more reason to resist fully-funding 'em.
>From this standpoint, pay-
> as-you-go seems hard to avoid, at least
> in partial form.
Right again, but progress is awfully slow. If you like I'll pop up on the list an amazing document released a couple of weeks ago by the ANC-SACP-Cosatu Alliance: a radical critique of capitalist crisis (they use these very words, and base them on overaccumulation theory) joined by a completely mealy-mouthed position on this issue. We're trying to get down from 70% funded debt now, hopefully to close to pay-as-you-go, to loosen the ridiculous fiscal constraint.
A good question is what
> the population profile looks like, whether
> there are anomalies like our 'baby boom'
> which justify some circumspection about
> adoption of a PAYGO financing system.
It's still a political-ideological matter above all though.
> Regarding treatment of the apartheid-era
> debt, I can't keep from noting one of the
> precursors of the populist movement in
> the u.s. was the "readjusters" in the
> South who campaigned against debts (at
> least some under corrupt circumstances)
> piled up by Reconstruction-era state
> governments. Obviously this gave rise
> to an ambiguous political legacy, though
> one which is usually portrayed in
> monochrome.
Yes, well we're using the "doctrine of odious debt" which in point of fact was first used internationally by the yanks on behalf of their puppet Cuba, and against debt to the Spanish, following the invasion at the turn of the century.
Was the biggest default in recent times not Nixon on the Bretton Woods gold for dollars obligation? I seem to recall someone citing US$80 bn as the nominal (unadjusted for inflation) absolute value of that action...
P.