globalization & Pynchon?

[calbert at tiac.net]

Kurt-Werner
> Pörtner:

> The Japanese success story after the war (not before it, Pearl Harbour
> wouldn't have happened if they had "success" before) depended on the
> very very narrow connection between the government and the big trust
> corporations. It was a kind of "super keynesianism". Until the
> eighties when the "bubblegum economy" began... 

It also depended on 

a) the exclusion of competing foreign capital interests

b) severe restrictions on domestic capital flows (the greater publlic 
was for the most part FORCED into low yield savings accounts by 
restrictive legislation)

c) an untenable land policy which, in the short term provided rapidly 
appreciating collateral for investements foreign and domestic, but in 
the long term hampered development and made agricualtural 
commodities prohibitively expensive....

>America's long
> boom in the nineties had its reason in the booming stock markets, and
> the fact that the dollar is still the world currency. And plenty of 
> Japanese money is still flowing through your veins... 

 Now I think it is you who are mixing consequences and reasons.....

the extraordinary expansion in the US stockmarket is fuelled by a 
stunning increase in world wide liquidity occasioned by the 
increasing rate of asset capitalization, particularly underdeveloped 
natural resources and markets. No longer artificially depressed by 
local restrictions and inefficiencies, assets and resources are 
finding the highest bidders and more productive allocations. A 
prohibitive level of this liquidity is directed at the US becasue it 
offers the greatest security to investors.....this is NOT a bad thing, 
the obverse would lead to greater inequities....


love,
cfa