Decline of American Power?

Doug Henwood dhenwood at panix.com
Wed Oct 9 15:29:50 PDT 2002


John Mage wrote:


>The outs have been pretty pragmatic when wagging the dog is useful.
>Like, Croat nationalism was totally a right - in fact nutty right -
>obsession until its beauties were discovered by Clinton & co. But while
>looking at the lovely Lieberman isn't too reassuring, it's totally
>arguable the outs wouldn't be quite as godawful.

I feel like a vulgar Marxist when I say this, but Iraq has lots of oil and so does its neighbors. For an administration that literally comes out of the oil industry, this is no small consideration. By contrast, the convenience of Croat nationalism looks much more like a concern of the moment.


>BTW, Rakesh points out on page C1 of todays WSJ the current account #s
>show that Asian net dollar purchases have more than offset European net
>sales. What with Yoshies point, Doug. Can the Japanese internal state
>yen denominated debt be seen as growing in step with net Japanese
>holdings of US dollar debt? Monetarization of the dollar denominated
>reserves? Is it reasonable to argue that the ballooning of yen
>denominated internal debt is in fact a source of strength vis-a-vis the
>US, like the ballooning of English pound denominated internal state debt
>was in fact a source of strength vis-a-vis the Dutch&French from the
>late seventeenth century? too much Wallerstein on the mind, i guess...

So you endorsing the Japan-as-inheritor scenario here?

Doug



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