globalization & Pynchon?

[calbert at tiac.net]

Kurt-Werner Pörtner:

> THEY cried for "transparent regulations" AFTER the Asian crisis of
> 97/98 - before that they lived with intransparent non-regulations very
> well... 

If it resulted in a "crisis" I would be hard pressed to suggest that 
"they were living very well" with "intrasparent" regs (see tokyo 
market meltdown)....Bourses offer realitve degrees of 
"transparency" - I'll bet that you will find a correlation between 
size/volume and "degree of transparency"......

>You are speaking about consequences not about the reason why.

No.....I am very much concentrating on the why......

> You can only develop  a country with long-term investments, but not
> with short-term ones.

I don't know that this, though reasonable, is necessarily true.....but 
let's go along with it for the purpose of discussion......

 The reason why the not-so-red-any-longer-China
> was not so much concerned with Asian crisis as Malaysia or Indonesia
> was that it had and still has capital flow controls...

Malaysia, as a matter of fact, had VERY STRICT controlls over 
capital flows....it has been an enduring mystery that they succeeded 
in their efforts - it runs counter to fundamental economic 
principles.....

PRC is a net importer of capital, I'll venture that very little PRC 
capital finds its way out of the country (and I recognize that there 
has been such activity by PRC parties with access to large amounts 
such as the Army...) To the extent that it does invest outside the 
PRC, my guess is that those responsible also seek the SAFEST 
haven - the US, so that there was little expsoure to the "tigers"......

PRC's largest export exposure is to consumer markets in  N. 
America and N. Europe, which were largely un-affected........

THe biggest effect the PRC would have seen from the crisis would 
be a slowing of capital inflows from Indonesian, Taiwanese, 
Japanese and Korean investors.....

 The difference
> between fordism and post-fordism is not only the role of the state but
> also the difference between long- and short-term investments.
> Post-fordism/neoliberalism has only an interest in short-term ones. 

I'm lost in your "isms"...please direct to definitions.....

> By the way, concerning debts: the German way is: give credits to let's
> say Russia. The German state guarantees for it (Hermes-Bürgschaften).
> The German export industry sells goods to Russia. Russia pays with
> German credits. One day there's no money available any longer Germany
> gives a new credit for the old credits. And the German state
> guarantees (Hermes Bürgschaften). And so on and so on...

The same thing happens here.....but I think you may have lost sight 
of the purpose of such credits.....they function like "seed-money" 
and are leveraged at successive levels of transactions by 
marcoeconomic multipliers.......The cost of any losses is generally 
considered a social cost as the employment resulting diminishes the 
need for the state to subsidize those workers....
 
> About the role of metropolis, semi-periphery and periphery, read
> Immanuel Wallerstein. It depends on the level of productivity, and
> what kind of goods you are selling.Remember: "terms of trade" - was
> there anything like this I heard of several years ago...????? 

You've lost me again.....is Wallerstein challenging the notion of 
"competitive advantage"?

love,
cfa