Stocks and GDP

Henry C.K. Liu hliu at mindspring.com
Thu Jan 28 12:40:54 PST 1999


Doug Henwood wrote:


>
> On the other hand, liberals and populists are often way too sanguine about
> government debt finance. The more you borrow, the more vulnerable you are
> to your creditors' whims, and the more exposed you are to a structural
> adjustment program.
>
> Doug

That true only up to a point. The more you borrow, the more power you have over the creditors. The saying: it's not how much you own; it is how much you owe that give you power over the bank is very operative.

Under financial capitalism, unlike during industrial capitalism, capitalists don't even own the capital they control. The line between debt and equity has become very blurred economically. It is now only a legal/accounting distinction.

Finance capitalism assigns disproportionate and illegitimate power to the intermediaries of capital, just as representative democracy transfer power from the electorate to the representatives whose loyalty to the voters are institutionally obscured..

What is needed is an institution to represent the collective power of small borrowers and involuntary investors against these usurping intermediary institutions.

That is what the left ought to be actively working on creating: a People's Central Bank and a People's Treasury and take back the rightful power that belongs to our money from the financial intermediaries, the illegitimate compradores of financial capitalism.

Henry C.K. Liu



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