Daewoo's $73-bn debt

Dennis R Redmond dredmond at OREGON.UOREGON.EDU
Sat Nov 6 18:54:14 PST 1999


On Fri, 5 Nov 1999, Mr P.A. Van Heusden wrote:


> Any comments? What's up with the South Korean 'bounce-back'? What are the
> social implications of this massive government bail out of the bosses
> going to be?

Good ones, of course. This is standard East Asian developmental state socialism; corporations invest hell-for-leather in promising markets, make piles of money if they succeed (and then reinvest aforesaid cash in the domestic industrial case, via state-controlled banks; the Korean Government currently owns 75% of the entire banking system), and are bailed out by still larger corporations and, if necessary, the state. This is in contradistinction to the USA, where bailouts are a way of making the richer still richer, rather than investing in anything constructive.

Once Governments intervene in markets to bail out capital, they can be pressured to provide the same service for labor. This is a Good Thing (tm).

-- Dennis



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