>doug,
>
>continuing my project of asking naive questions:
>
>do you (anyone) think that the bail-out is a new phenomena/strategy?
I may be missing some historical precedents (like lemon socialism - the nationalization of failing industries), but I think they began in their modern form in the early 1970s, at least in the U.S., with the Penn Central and Franklin National bailouts, and with sovereign entities, the New York City fiscal crisis of 1975. Later on there was Chrysler, Mexico, Continental Illinois, etc.
>i'm thinking of how the world bank recently bailed out some national
>banks (i can't exactly remember which country), this being, heralded
>at least, as a significant shift in the world banks' approach, with
>all sorts of talk about it contravening the world banks' charter....
Yes, the Bank is supposed to lend to official entities only, which is a problem in a world where nearly everything's been privatized. The Bank is busily trying to reinvent (as they say) itself. Juliet Majot of the International Rivers Network says that their main mission now is the commodification of nature - getting the prices and property rights of air and water right.
>so, i was wondering if there is now very little possibility that any
>national economy, or national banking system, will default.
It could happen in a couple of ways - one, if the scale of the problem gets too huge, or there's political resistance to the austerity and "liberalization" that are the conditions of the bailouts. Another problem to think about is whether capitalism can live without the purgative effects of depressions - which puts us back in the territory of Robert Brenner's NLR article.
Doug