>Really now I just
>think American imperial power/economic hegemony should not be
>underestimated at this point; the major feature of the global economy is
>the power of American capital to relieve its own supply side constraints
>on profitability and export global depression through unequal terms of
>trade on the basis of a strong dollar as reserve currency.
I've been with you on that, Rakesh. All the wind-up Trot-bots have been denouncing me for years for claiming the U.S. imperium was mighty. But nothing lasts forever. Just as people made the mistake in the 1970s of assuming the end of U.S. power, we may be making the opposite mistake in the late 1990s of assuming its immortality. No guarantees, of course, but it can't hurt to be open to possiblity of a dollar crisis - there are the economic indicators, which Krugman and some lbo-talkers have reviewed. There are political hints too, ranging from apparently growing hostility towards the U.S. in China (and elsewhere in Asia, post-crisis) and tentative - very tentative - signs from the EU about chafing under U.S. command. And there's the psychocultural aspect - and maybe I'm extrapolating too wildly from stock market analysis, where extremes of complacency and/or exuberance accompany major tops. The whole Thomas Friedman argument - become American or die! - in fact the canonization of Friedman as a megapundit in itself - has a very toppy feel to it. Very subjective, very soft, I know. But compare this to the 1980s, when Paul Kennedy had a bestseller and the papers were full of worry about imperial overstretch and the Japanese threat. The Japanese threat proved to be a mirage. But ten years later, all the terms are reversed, with Japan seen as old & washed up and the U.S. as perpetually, youthfully vigorous. Maybe it's all as wrong now as 1989's ConWis was wrong.
Doug