Hedge fund fallout & Other Merry Weather

[Michael Hoover]

> James Farmelant wrote:
> >Greenspan was arguing that hedge funds should be regulated by
> >the free market rather than by the government but as Barney Frank
> >pointed out this argument was inconsistent with his defense of
> >the government's facilitation of the bailout of LCTM.  Apparently,
> >for this one-time disciple of Ayn Rand government intervention
> >is fine when it benefits wealthy investors.
> 
> Oh, but there was systemic risk! If you're really rich & you fuck up, you
> can take out enough innocent bystanders that the government just *has* to
> step in, you see. With the less fortunate recipients of public welfare, the
> morally debilitating effects of dependency are foregrounded.
> Doug

in the 1980s, the colonial government in Hong Kong called above, in
the words of then-Finance Secretary Philip Haddon-Cave, 'positive
non-interventionism'...today, in addition to its stock and futures 
markets activity, the Special Administration Region (SAR) government 
has been bailing out large HK securities firms, in effect, socializing
private debt...the SAR regime has simultaneously frozen migrant workers' 
wages...imported Filipina domestics (and Indonesian women) in HK are 
subjected to a gendered racism that indicates the way that capitalism 
and patriarchy work together in the 'global economy' to limit large 
populations of women to marginal, poorly paid jobs with no political 
and few legal and social rights...Michael Hoover