[lbo-talk] Goldman on Greenspan & the US c/a deficit

boddi satva lbo.boddi at gmail.com
Wed Dec 7 10:16:49 PST 2005


Okay Doug, tell me how US military superiority makes the American mortgage-backed securities market the biggest securities market in the world.

Loan syndication, securitization, combined exchanges accepting any shares that meet certain accounting tests, secondary and tertiary markets, derivatives markets, private swaps and derivatives desks - these are the things that keep America on top. America is full of goods from China, Korea and Japan, but internationally nobody saves their money in yuan, won and yen. Instead, they save their money in dollars. Why is that? Because of our military? Are they saving money in dollars to pay off US soldiers or because people worldwide know they can always do business in dollars?

The US is not the most industrially productive nation and we think nothing of accepting foreign firms into our economy in leadership positions. Yet nobody challenges us in the realm of finance. We have won and lost contests in one major industry after another and yet nobody doubts that the NYSE will be the biggest stock exchange for the foreseeable future.

Your thesis is just the neo-con thesis restated: military might preserves our way of life. I disagree. Other than appalling reactionaries, is there a single nation in the world which would overturn the capitalist system or do they really just want more access to it? Who would lead the world revolution your neo-neo-con thesis anticipates?

boddi

On 12/6/05, Doug Henwood <dhenwood at panix.com> wrote:
> boddi satva wrote:
>
> >Sorry about the over-post but Niall Ferguson and others make an
> >extremely persuasive case that military dominance has, througout
> >history, been a product of superior financial structures and not the
> >other way around.
>
> Oh please. What's a "superior financial structure" but a complex and
> successful system of bourgeois rule with labor effectively dominated
> by capital through the beauties of market competition? That whole
> system worldwide is ultimately enforced by the US military. No US
> military and what do you think would happen to all those pretty
> financial structures?
>
> Doug
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> http://mailman.lbo-talk.org/mailman/listinfo/lbo-talk
>



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