>> are you imagining that this will mean that, say, oil won't soon be
>> invoiced in dollars? (Imagined that way, we're already _at_ a
>> militarily managed crisis of the dollar--ie Iraq.) Or that soon
>> the euro will be the world's reserve currency? But who is willing
>> to let their manufacturing sector wither so that they can be
>> consumer of last resort?
> There can be twin collapses of Japan and USA, given their politico-economic
> interdependency, no? To what extent is the European economy
> dependent on the US being the consumer of last resort? Peter
> Gowan says that "The final implementation of the Euro in July 2002
> will supply a very substantial shield for Western Europe,
> particularly when it is combined with an integrated deep and liquid
> EU financial system. The strength of this shield will be all the
> greater in that, despite all the talk of economic globalisation, the
> European economy is becoming an increasingly closed one, less and less
> reliant upon transatlantic trade" (@ <http://www.unl.ac.uk/ukrainecentre/WSS/ws-9.html>).
> Is the European economy really becoming "less and less reliant
> upon transatlantic trade"? If so, the euro can get stronger, but
> European economic growth is anemic, too.
In Christian's phrase "consumer of last resort" it's the "last resort" that counts.
Can this global capitalist (US empire) system have more than one "last resort." Being the unique "last resort" has advantages. No responsible person of property anywhere, wishing to avoid a panic or crash or generally keep a bad situation from getting worse, will do anything to weaken the "last resort." It wins all arguments if it's willing to stake its strength.
The US Treasury complex (i.e., plus the Bretton Woods institutions) has had (undisguisedly) the last word in the global credit/currency system since at least 1971. Secondary centers have in the past worked together under the direction of the "last resort" through series of panics. Paris with London in the century after Napoleon. The interest of all other (by definition less secure) capitalist elites in maintaining the "last resort" should be self evident.
This arrangement broke apart once with the challenge of the German (and Japanese) elites in the first half of the 20th century (understood in the context of the history of labor/capital conflict - a deeper level of analysis throughout). Their unwillingness to accept the limitations imposed by the Anglo-US (later of course just US) "last resort" helped radically to destabilize _all_ capitalist ruling elites. Surely a lesson was learned by some; though it's certainly arguable that with the end of the cold war some are forgetting.
There are tensions from the bubblebursting, and they will expose the extent the US dominated system can operate efficiently under its current leadership. Just in the last few days: the Commerzbank derivative disaster rumor of last Friday was, sez Commerzbank, a deliberate attack by Merrill Lynch that they are threatening to litigate, and the ongoing story of Japanese resistance to US "reform" pressure ( can Japan succeed in being the "last resort" for its own - and therefore the East Asian - economy when the US seems determined not to permit this to happen?).
john mage