Yes, how is this going to help the falling rate of profit?
Unless the calculation lies in
>the risk of slower growth abroad
which means that there is no alternative spender of last resort in the global economy - the role that the USA kindly supplied at the time of the Asian financial crisis, when it lowered interest rates.
Now it can lower interest rates again, able to calculate that other capitalist central banks will have to follow not long behind, and crucially, the USA will maintain its slight differential for its relative centripetal ability to concentrate global capital. The USA after being indulgently treated as a patient by the rest of the world, will pull ahead again, enjoying the benefits of the unequal exchange of capital in the world economy.
Note that the phrase
>the risk of slower growth abroad
might more relevantly have appeared in the form of an observation about the global economy in a press release of the International Monetary Fund, making special drawing rights more freely available to central banks of many nations.
But
a) some of the most radical thinkers on the left, like the right, just want to abolish the IMF
b) it is easier for Greenspan to coordinate a few telephone calls from different state banks of the USA to which the Federal Reserve can graciously and dramatically respond. With electronic communications they could just as easily have fixed up some phone calls between the central banks and the IMF before the IMF issued a press release. But
c) the mysteries of finance capital remain mesmerising, and it is an uphill battle for marxists to keep on saying, ultimately money is a relationship.
What relationships do we want to deal with the problems of the world today?
Clever though Greenspan is, why should we accept him as a fetish for humanity's desire to control our economic environment?
Chris Burford
London