As best as I can see, the "newsrooms" and "editorial offices" part of this sentence is false. Moreover, the jubilation in financial markets was limited to Europe. The people on Wall Street I talk to were not pleased: more deflation in Europe is bad for everyone in the world economy as a whole, and Lafontaine was one of the few voices working against deflation in Europe...
>And as is well understood, the
> threat to relocate is also a powerful weapon against democracy and
>human
> rights -- specifically, against the socioeconomic rights guaranteed by
>the
> Universal Declaration of Human Rights, but derided as a "letter to
>Santa
> Claus" and "preposterous" by the leaders of the relativist challenge to
> the UD, in Washington.[5]
The implication is that these "leaders of the relativist challenge to the UD" are powerful holders of government office in Washington today. But the quotes are from Jeanne Kirkpatrick and Morris Abram--who are not.
>
> "US economic policymakers are unlikely to mourn the loss of Oskar
> Lafontaine from the international monetary landscape," the FT reports
>further, even
> though they agreed with many of his initiatives, including his efforts
>to
> induce "the European Central Bank to cut interest rates to get the
> European economy moving." But "Lafontaine's approach looked to
>Americans
>like a
> throwback to the inflexible, statist, welfare-dominated European past,"
The _Financial Times_ article cited, Gerald Baker, "US policymakers relieved at departure," _FT_, March 15, is inaccurate. Senior U.S. policymakers viewed Lafontaine as a useful counterweight to the deflationists in Europe. For six years, now, U.S. policymakers like Lawrence Summers have been lecturing European finance ministers and central bankers on the desirability of demand expansion in Europe--and Oskar Lafontaine is one of the few European politicians who openly agrees with the U.S.
> which deviates from the modern, up-to-date US approach of enriching a
>tiny
> sector of the population
<sarcasm>That is the reason, of course, that the Clinton 1993 tax law changes were the most progressive change in the U.S. tax code since before World War II</sarcasm>
But what's the point? Chomsky wants to write so that his readers get the between-the-lines message that plutocrats in Wall Street and bureaucrats in Washington applaud the decline of European social democracy and the increased likelihood of European depression.
He won't let the fact the much of what he says between the lines is false (for U.S. financiers *are* displeased at the erosion of prospects for lower European interest rates--Jeanne Kirkpatrick and her proteges are *not* employees of the U.S. government--U.S. senior government officials *have* been pushing Lafontaine's line on monetary policy onto European central banks for six years) get in his way.
Brad DeLong
And no one has yet explained to me why Lafontaine did resign...