I was reading that article on Yugoslavia post-war on the LBO web site and after this:
> Conventional thinking might suggest gradualism in the dismantlement
> of tariff protection. There are good reasons to do otherwise in this
> case. The EU on its side has nothing significant to lose and all to
> gain by bringing the "5" into a free trade relationship as soon as
> possible. The "5" for their part need to exploit the shock of the
> present conflict in positive ways, thus to make a clean break from
> the present use of customs posts as instruments of state corruption
> and the protection of crony capitalism, which today means disastrous
> disincentives for the expansion of trade and investment [see survey
> of Federation of Industries of Northern Greece, 1998]. Wage costs are
> sufficiently low in the "5" to afford adequate opportunities for cost
> competitiveness. Moreover the destruction through war of the Bosnian
> and Serbian economies means that industry has to start again. This
> should be done under conditions requiring international competitivity
> from the outset, rather than recreate again an inefficient, protected
> and corrupted economy.
I was wondering why is anybody so worried about "crony capitalism" anyway since NATO's blown up so many of Serbia's factories. But what percentage, does anyone have any idea, how much of Yugoslavia's manufacturing base did NATO manage to blow up, anyway? Tariffs from here to the moon won't protect an industry if one hundred percent of the factories have been flattened by bombs.
Where they speak of a "free trade relationship," are they not talking about a state of affairs where Yugoslavia just boards up their bombed car factory (which they bought off of Italy, by the way, an American "Yugo" is an old model Fiat) forever and resigns itself to importing cars and exporting, I don't know what, something cheap, simple and low, like the pork they used to export a century back... Because that's one Hell of a stretch calling it a "free" market when Volkswagenwerke's and Daimler-C's profits have to be defended by dropping cluster bombs on Kosovo elementary schools.
Yours WDK - WKiernan at concentric.net