>RE: Has anyone heard about a new debt ceiling yet?
>
>From: Max B. Sawicky (sawicky at bellatlantic.net)
>Date: Fri Feb 21 2003 - 23:59:21 EST
>
>
>The debt ceiling is a political fiction.
>It exists in order for assorted pols to
>strut around like chickens, each cackling
>on according to their own political
>prejudices. It always gets raised as
>needed. It's less a ceiling than a floor.
>
>mbs
>
>-----Original Message-----
>From: owner-lbo-talk at lists.panix.com
>
>Sent: Friday, February 21, 2003 11:53 PM
>
>Steven wrote:
>
> >Not sure about an end of the world scenario, but a higher debt ceiling
> >will put downward pressure USD, which needs all the help it can get
> >right now. That is, if you believe the Bush administration's public
> >statements about a strong dollar policy.
I rather agree with Max's comment here. It is important to realise how relative all this economic management is under the apparently scientific analyses. Coincidentally, or not so coincidentally, I caught a financial markets analyst on breakfast CNBC in London this morning saying this about the strong dollar policy: it is not a policy so much as a mantra. Snow has got to repeat it. Or at least not challenge assumptions too frankly by questioning it. Perhaps he will just repeat it less often.
The strong dollar suited the US when the economy was expanding and other factors were in balance. In trading terms now a weaker dollar may be useful but the USA will not want to accelerate a withdrawal of funds
Yes the strong dollar is a mantra.
A little vagueness about adjusting the debt ceiling may now be just the right way to play their cards at the moment.
Why is the core of the global capitalist economy about the management of mantras?
Because it is about ensuring the continued circulation of commodities to permit as much as possible the continued exploitation of labour power and accumulation of surplus labour/profits.
When capitalism goes into one of its inevitable periodic crises it is important to maintain public "trust" - that the system will go on - and surreptitiously try to organise things so that the main burden of the contraction falls on a competitor, another country or group of countries, or the working people (provided they do not cut back their consumption too much)
It has become a postmodernist management system of mantras.
That is not a postmodernist statement - that is a materialist statement about the degree to which the capitalist system has become so complex and abstract from the actual conditions of material social production.
It prepares the ground for socialism - on a global basis.
To go back to the original thread title - particularly if the turbulence of the Iraq war takes place it is reasonable to expect that the global financial system will be in turmoil. Dollar hegemony has never been so wobbly. But will the others realise it is the weakest link?
Chris Burford
London