> >> 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.
I don't dispute the point about all the capitalist elites' interest in and willingness to maintain "the last resort." What I question is their capacity. Are all crises amenable to such management? No possible crisis of capitalism that cannot be resolved by politico-economic interventions by the capitalist elites?
Yoshie