On Jan 22, 2008, at 4:49 PM, Patrick Bond wrote:
>> The Chinese, Europeans and others don't appear to share his
>> sanguine view
>> that their economies have decoupled from the US,
>
> But that's precisely the point! You've read me ass-backwards, Marvin.
> The fact that all these comprador regimes are in Washington's sewage
> backwash means we need a major shake-up of world power to cut out that
> hydraulic effect. It's only with a US crash that decoupling is
> feasible,
> as we learnt in the 1930s.
>
> The reason for this, of course, is that you comrades have been so
> terribly weak at limiting US power from below. So a crash from
> above is
> the only thing we have left to give us some hope, if we're offshore.
Huh? You make the EU and China sound like little pissant regimes. The whole structure is a coherent system of world power, with the U.S. at the pinnacle, but with a lot of second-tier powers who play along because the system has treated them well. It's delivered them a reasonable degree of prosperity and political stability and they have absolutely no interest in changing it too much.
The 1930s are not a very inspiring example. Depression, fascism, and world war - is that what you're looking for? Angus Maddison's stats don't show much of a benefit for Latin America during the 1930s; the region had a per capita GDP about 31% of the U.S. in 1930, and about the same in 1940. Bourgeois stats, I know.
Doug