Nazioarteko transakzioak: Mosler-en eta Hudson-en arteko eztabaida

Michael Hudson-ek in Life & Thought: An Autobiography (http://michael-hudson.com/2018/08/life-thought-an-autobiography/):

…Finally, the dollar went off gold in 1971. I took a number of articles that I’d written and wrote my first book, Super Imperialism: The Economic Strategy of American Empire. It came out in September, 1972. Well just at that time I was invited almost every year to give a lecture at the annual meeting of Drexel Burnham. (…)

Gastu militarraz:

… So I gave the speech about the oil industry and how America was exploiting the world and how going off gold meant that there was only one thing that foreign countries could do with their balance-of-payments surpluses. These dollars were being thrown off by the US balance-of-payments deficit for military spending. Foreign central banks henceforth would have to buy Treasury bonds. So the military would spend dollars abroad, pump the dollars into the European and Asian economies, which then would lend the money back to the United States government by buying bonds, to finance the war and their own military encirclement. (…)

Ordainketen balantzaz:

… we had to go to the White House for a meeting on oil and the balance of payments. And who should be the Undersecretary of the Treasury but my old mentor from Standard Oil who had explained to me how offshore banking centers worked. He explained to Herman and me that he told the Saudi Arabians, “You can charge whatever you want for oil.” This was right after America quadrupled the price of grain to finance the Vietnam War in 1972-73, and OPEC responded by quadrupling the price of oil. The Undersecretary of the Treasury explained to me that they could charge whatever they wanted for oil. He knew that the higher they charged, the more the American companies would be able to charge on domestic oil. But the Saudis had to recycle all of their dollars into the United States, into Treasury bonds or the stock market. “You can’t buy American companies, you can only buy stocks or bonds, and you have to price your oil in dollars. If you don’t, we’ll consider that an act of war.”

Inperialismoaz:

.. So here I was right in the middle of understanding how imperialism really worked. This was not what is in most textbooks. Most don’t talk about the balance of payments, but the key to financial imperialism is the balance of payments. The United States fights to prevent other countries from going back to the gold standard (sic), because at the time America went off gold in August 1971, every American dollar bill was backed 25% by gold at $35 an ounce. Well, finally there was no more surplus gold, and that’s what forced America off gold. Its price immediately went way up. (…)

So I wrote a study that Canada didn’t have to borrow money abroad for the provinces to invest domestically. They could create their own money. Basically, what I wrote was the first example of what’s now called Modern Monetary Theory, that governments can create their own money, their own credit. They don’t need a foreign-currency backing for it, and so all basically the same circular flow analysis that I’d developed from my history of thought, a Physiocratic analysis.

Txinaz:

Question: How did you take up the interest in Chinese economy?

Hudson: As Samir Amin said at the meeting yesterday, China is the economy that is trying to be the exception to the Western economic model. That model is forcing a choice between civilization and barbarism. The West is moving rapidly into economic barbarism and militarism. As you can see, the austerity program of the Euro is destroying the economy there. The United States is cutting taxes on the rich, while indebting the working class very highly. The one country that is independent and not taking the advice of the World Bank and the International Monetary Fund is China.

So we’re hoping to do what we can to make the Chinese economy successfully resistant. What that means is how is China going to handle its real estate, how is it going to handle its debt, how is it going to handle its tax system.

What I’m trying to do is what David Harvey was trying to do in the speech he gave yesterday: getting Chinese Marxists to read volume 2 and especially volume 3 of Capital, where Marx discusses the dynamics of finance.

Marxism is much more than volume 1 of Capital. You have to read volumes 2 and 3, and especially the elaboration that Marx wrote in the drafts that he left for volumes 2 and 3, his Theories of Surplus Value where he discusses the history of economic thought leading up to him. You realize how Marx was the last great economist in the classical tradition. He showed that capitalism itself is revolutionary, capitalism itself is driving forward, and of course he expected it to lead toward socialism, as indeed it seemed to be doing in the nineteenth century.

But it’s not working out that way. Everything changed in World War One. Afterward you had an anti-classical economics, which really was an anti-Marxist economics. The fight for marginalist theory, for Austrian theory, the fight for junk economics that we have today, is basically a fight against Marxism, because Marx showed the logical conclusion to which the Physiocrats, Adam Smith, John Stuart Mill, Ricardo and Malthus, the conclusion it was all leading was the synthesis that he made. It was later developed by people like Thorstein Veblen and Simon Patten in the United States. So I’m hoping that I can contribute what I can to help China’s economy to avoid the financialization process and dynamic that is destroying the West.”

Mosler eta Hudson-en arteko eztabaidaz:

(i) Mosler-en eta Hudson-en arteko eztabaida

(…) Atzerritar banku zentralen dolarrak ez dira birziklatzen AEBetako aurrekontu federalaren defizita finantzatzeko, Hudson-ek uste duen bezala. Kasu, AEBetako sektore militarrak gastatzen duenean, ondasun errealak eta zerbitzuak erosten dizkie saltzaileei merkatu-prezioetan. Munduko herrialde askotan gauzatzen dira eragiketa horiek eta herrialde gehienek ez dituzte dolar-balantzak metatzen dituzten Banku Zentralak. Sektore militarrak gastatzen du gainontzeko gobernu-sektoreek egiten duten antzera –Fed-i esanez, alegia, saltzailearen Fed-eko kide bankuko (edo dagokioneko) kontua kreditatuz-.(…)”

(ii) Eztabaida osoa, hemen: Nazioarteko ekonomia eta ‘Inperialismoa’

(…) Mosler-en iritziz, AEBko 4 x 1012 dolarreko kanpo zorra dolarretan da izendatua, ez atzerriko monetan. Hortaz, ez dago inolako arazorik ordaintzeko (alderantziz, atzerriko monetan izendatua izan balitz, AEBk arazoak izango zituzkeen).

Are gehiago, dolarren atzerritar birziklatzeak AEBko Altxor Publikoko bonoetan ez dauka inongo zerikusirik AEBk bere inperialismoa finantzatzeko, zeren AEBk nahi duen beste moneta kopuru jaulki baitezake. Izan ere, AEBko gobernu-gastu guztia “banku kontuetan zenbakiak markatuz” lortzen da, aspaldian ez dena Bernanke-k argitu zuen moduan.

Beraz, Hudson-ek ez dauka arrazoirik, birziklaturiko dolarrek ez baitituzte AEBko atzerriko abenturak finantzatzen.

(…) Sektore militarrak gastatzen du gainontzeko gobernu-sektoreek egiten duten antzera – FEDri esanez saltzailearen FEDko kide bankuko (edo dagokioneko) kontua kreditatzea-.(…)”

(iii) Gehigarria: Warren Mosler-ek merkataritza defizitaz. Nork nori hornitzen dizkio fondoak?

(…)

Etsenplu bat: AEBko kontsumitzaile batek kotxe alemaniar bat erosten du.

Kontsumitzaileak eskudirutan ordaintzen du: AEBko kontu korrontean zordundua eta Alemaniako kontuan kreditatua, dolarreko aktibo finantzarioko atzerritar aurrezkiak handituz. AEBko banku sistemako gordailu totalak ez dira aldatzen.

Kontsumitzaileak maileguz hartzen du. Maileguz hartzeak banku gordailu totala handitzen du eta dolarreko atzerritar aurrezkiak hornitu.

Merkataritza eta finantza: atzerritarrek dolarreko aktibo finantzarioko aurrezki netoak nahi dituzte, horretarako ondasun eta zerbitzuak saltzen dizkiote AEBri.

Beste aukera bat: Dolarreko banku gordailuko titularrak AEBko Altxor Publikoko tituluak erosi nahi ditu. Erosketa denboran, Altxor Publikoko tituluaren saltzailea banku gordailuko titularra bilakatzen da eta atzerritarra Altxor Publikoko tituluko titular berria.

AEBko gobernuak atzerritar hartzekodunak dituela esaten da eta AEB nazio zorduna dela.

Definizioz horrela da, baina… AEBko gobernuak Altxor Publikoko tituluko titularrari benetan zor dionari begirada bat ematea erakusgarria da…

AEBko gobernuak hauxe agintzen du: muga egunetan Fed-eko atzerritarraren titulu kontua zordundua izango da eta Fed-eko haren bankuko erreserba kontua kreditatua saldoarengatik.

Beste era batera esanda, AEBko gobernuaren promesa hauxe da: interes gabeko erreserba saldo bat interesduneko Altxor Publikoko tituluak ordezkatuko du.”

Iruzkinak (1)

  • joseba

    http://michael-hudson.com/2018/08/life-thought-an-autobiography/

    “(…)
    So we did the history of money. Then, the one thing we hadn’t done finally was the origins of labor and what it was paid. That took ten years to complete, and we found that the origins of labor was organized basically in the palace economy, the palaces and temples. The main use of such organized labor from the Neolithic and Bronze Age to classical antiquity was to fight in the army and to work as corvée labor to build public infrastructure.
    So how do you get a supply of labor? You assign it land tenure. Land rights were created to assign families enough to support themselves so that they could perform corvée labor and fight in the army. So taxes came first, then came land tenure, based on what labor you had to supply. Attempts to substitute someone to work on the corvée became the basis for paying labor.
    So all of the payments came from what today would be called the public sector. That’s not really a very good term. It was really the palatial sector, the palace and the temples, as opposed to the community-based family on the land.
    So we had a new analysis of the origins of property, not just individuals grabbing,
    as Engels had thought. Property was created by the public sector, by the palaces, as assignment of land as needed. How much land area is needed in order to supply the labor for the public infrastructure, corvée work and service in the army? This was the reverse of what’s taught in economic textbooks today, which is, as I said, how Margaret Thatcher and right-wingers and Donald Trump would have designed an economy if they went back in a time machine.
    So after organizing and editing these five volumes, I’m now writing my own popular version, starting with a history of debt. Then will come Temples of Enterprise, a series of books on classical antiquity. I’m now following up with Greece and Rome. Throughout early Greece and Rome, the main fight was between creditors and debtors. Creditors ended up grabbing the land. The same fight occurred all the way down through the Byzantine Empire. The most divisive tension throughout history, from 3rd-millennium Sumer to 2nd-millennium Babylonia to the 9th and 10th century in the Byzantine Empire is between the palace wanting to collect taxes and have labor for the army, and creditors wanting this land and labor for themselves.
    This way of getting the economic surplus is not the way that Marx described it as being obtained under capitalism, by employing labor to produce goods to sell at a profit. It was by debt and taking interest in ultimately foreclosing in land, which was the real objective.
    In the 9th century there was a big fight against strong royal power. It was sort of like Donald Trump and the Tea Party Republicans are fighting against the state, like the privatization in the Soviet Union fighting against the state. The Byzantine emperor invited general Bardas to a big meal. The general said, “There’s only one thing that you should do if you want to end the warfare. You have to tax the wealthy families so that they don’t have any surplus at all. You have to give them so much burden that they can’t fight against you. You have to prevent the polarization of wealth, because if you let the private sector make an enormous amount of wealth, they’re going to try to fight against you and keep all the wealth for themselves that you and the palace are now getting.”
    This idea was expressed all the way back in the 7th century 6th century BC with Thrasybulus and Periander of Corinth. When Thrasybulus took Periander’s herald to a field of grain and said, “Here’s what you should do.” The land was a field of grain and he took a scythe and he cut off the tops, to make all the grain of equal height. So Periander went back and exiled the wealthy families, seized their property.
    There was probably a bit of fighting there, and that is basically the fight throughout history.
    So that’s what I’ve been working on for the last 20 years.”

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