Stocks and GDP

Rob Schaap rws at comserver.canberra.edu.au
Thu Jan 28 22:18:07 PST 1999


Henry writes:


>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.

I believe Rupert Murdoch responded to a journalist's questions about NewsCorps multi-billion dollar black hole in 1990 with a gentle smile: "I'm not in trouble; my bankers are." Either they renegotiated his loans, indeed tided him over with an extra few bob, or they went down the S-bend themselves. So they did. And now 'everyone's' happy.


>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.

Long Term Capital, eh?


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

Bankruptcy has its possibilities, thus our betters are on to it - all to defend poor Jo Citizen from his/her own impetuous irresponsibility, of course.

And we're all involuntary investors, eh? I look at my gorgeous little 'uns in the morning and ask myself, do I really want this irrational and obscene social order to collapse today - what, with all the break-downs in infrastructure, famine, displacement, violence that might attend such an upheaval? And if tomorrow, won't my gorgeous little 'uns have gorgeous little 'uns then?

Yet somehow I don't find it at all consoling that the left is but a fart in this whirlwind of irrational obscenities.

After all, whether one admits to a stake in today's order or not, this order seems embarked on tumultuous, possibly revolutionary, transition. Profound transformations happen, it seems, whether the left is ready to take a hand or not.

And it seems to me we're not.

The worst of both worlds, eh?

Ooh, I've come over all queezy - mebbe a Prozac sandwich is the go ...

Yours maudlin, Rob.



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