globalization & Pynchon?

[Jane Sweet]

calbert at tiac.net wrote:
> 
> Kurt-Werner Pörtner:
> 
> > "Globalization" is not a question of import and export, but of the
> > growing interdependence of the worldwide acting stock markets.
> >
> > Saskia Sassen: "Technimetrics reports that at the end of  1997 25
> > cities ruled  83 % of the worldwide value of capital. These 25 cities
> > fixed 48 % of the global capitalization of the stock markets... But
> > the >global< market is concentrated at 6 or 7 big cities. London, New
> > York and Tokyo are managing one third of the stocks of the investment
> > fonds worldwide. London and New York are controlling more than a half
> > of the worldwide foreign exchange trading." My re-translation from
> > German, cited of: Saskia Sassen, Machtbeben. Wohin führt die
> > Globalisierung?, Stuttgart/München 2000, S. 117.
> 
> The principal reason for this concentration is that these are the
> exchanges with the most transparent regulations. People in 2nd
> world countries seek safe havens for their capital - such is not
> usually found in the local bourses which tend to suffer from high
> levels of regulation, political and currency risk, as well as restricted
> liquidity.......

Quite right. If you want to risk your IPO on
Singapore/Malaysia be my guest. And again, the
capitalization of the stock market is but a pimple on the
elephant that is the financial assets of the world. Debt,
btw, is the elephant's fat ass and head. Big, very big.