[lbo-talk] South Asia and East Asia

Dennis Redmond dredmond at efn.org
Mon May 3 18:06:25 PDT 2004



> Asian economies have huge trade surpluses with the US, not with Japan
> or European economies. Their FX reserves are mainly held in $.

This isn't a sign of US leverage. This is a sign that East Asia is more competitive than the US and is piling up its loot, waiting for fresh investment opportunities. East Asia could turn its forex into euro; it could invent a regional currency of its own. We'll see.


>> Eurobanks are the creditors of the world.
>May be, what is their share of global credit flows to Asia?

I put up the BIS numbers here:

http://members.efn.org/~dredmond/bankwtch.html


> All these are consumed by a tiny layer of Indian society, unlike
> consumption of soft drinks (coke and pepsi with their advertising
> budgets, sponsorship of events), fast food joints (Mcdonalds and
> Pizzahut), films, soaps, music, cartoons, sports channels, news (Murdoch
> empire). 150-200 million people have cable connections. I get about 100
> channels on my for $5 per month.

That isn't Americanization. That's the same multinational consumerism which is everywhere these days. At the very least, the Left should be creating documentaries and programming for those 100 channels.

-- DRR



More information about the lbo-talk mailing list