Schoder's capitulation to the bond markets

Doug Henwood dhenwood at panix.com
Mon Oct 4 08:37:41 PDT 1999


Nathan Newman quoted and commented:


>"The crunch came for Lafontaine during the Bonn government cabinet meeting
>of March 10. Schröder is said to have told ministers at the outset of the
>meeting: "It must be the first time this has ever happened in the world: the
>entire business community is refusing to invest and create jobs. It will
>come to a point where I will no longer assume responsibility for such
>policies. Some people here assume that one can govern a country against the
>wishes of the business community. That is not on."
>
>There are political differences here, but there is also an objective
>evaluation of facts here that needs to be debated. Daniel Singer argued in
>his END OF SOCIALISM that the French experience of the early 80s showed the
>limits of traditional social democratic management of the economy from the
>nation-state level. In some sense, Blair and Schroder are conservative
>responses to that reality.
>
>At the nation-state governing level, is there a credible argument for
>management of the economy against the interests of the business community,
>where any gains in social justice won't be overwhelmed by the losses due to
>capital flight?

Oskar was talking about a domestic capital strike here, right? That's a very old story, and I've got to wonder how much it has to do with all the implied New Era "globalization" claims.

Doug



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