International Viewpoint Archive

The Fourth International’s English-language review, from 1982

Asia: Australia: Fast Track Deportation; The Greatest Land Grab since 1788; New Labour Party Holds National Conference

· International Viewpoint No. 292, September 1997 · pp 26-30 · 5,085 words

Britain and Ireland South and Southeast Asia World economy Africa

by any standard. A representative a long-time supporter of the Fourth International.

* East Timor B. Skanthakumar

In Occupied East Timor there has been an upsurge in armed activity in recent months. Shortly before the rigged Indonesian general elections on May 29th units of FALINTIL, the armed Timorese resistance, launched bold attacks on army and police units killing over fifty of them.

The timing of this campaign suggests that it was aimed at disrupting the fake electoral process and at demoralising further the Indonesian military stationed there. It appears to have succeeded in both those

Meanwhile in a number of large towns the unarmed resistance which operates as a clandestine front of all East Timorese groups organised attacks on polling booths and was involved in street fighting with police and • army personnel.

Indonesia's army of occupation responded in its customary way. It launched punitive raids on villages in areas of FALINTIL activity terrorising their inhabitants. Many have been beaten, arrested and taken to torture centres to extract information and false confessions. The whereabouts and fate of others abducted or arrested is unknown.

The absence of foreign journalists and independent human rights monitors and the censorship of local publications and broadcast media make it difficult to establish an accurate picture of the ground situation.

Fresh detachments from the feared

Kopassus (Special Forces Command) unit headed by President Suharto's son-in-law

Major-General Prabowo Subianto have been

Mandela was criticised in South Africa and in international anti-apartheid circles for soliciting money from one of the bloodiest and most corrupt of South-East-Asia's

In an effort to make amends he has recently made some high profile statements on the situation in East Timor and publicly called for the release of FALINTIL leader. Xanana Gusmao who is serving a twenty year prison sentence.

While in Jakarta, the South African President sought and obtained unprecedented private meeting with Gusmao to assure him of his personal support.

However many East Timor campaigners are sceptical of both Suharto's good faith and Mandela's good offices. They note the close business links between Indonesia and South Australia Fast track deportation

Africa which inevitably involve Suharto, his family and cronies. As well as the evident interest that the South African arms industry enthusiastically supported by the ANC-led Government has shown in the Indonesian

With the US Congress blocking arms sales and Britain's Labour Government facing pressure over its sale of Hawk aircraft, the Indonesians are looking to South Africa and Russia for their purchases.

There are rumours that the regime may agree to Gusmao's early release and exile to Europe to lessen the consistent condemnation of its occupation and brutalities in East Timor. However Gusmao himself has reportedly said that the issue at stake is not his own freedom but the freedom of his people and the independence of his country. * rushed from Indonesia.

The capture on June 25th and probable

Australia's conservative government plans to deport East Timorese death in custody of David Alex, the legenrefugees, who it now says are Portuguese citizens. John Tully* reports.

dary second-in-command of FALINTIL, is a blow to the resistance forces and the

The deportations, if successful, would survey of 147 cases carried out by the

Maubere people as a whole.

mark an all-time low in Australian grovel- Refugee Advice and Casework Service

The military claim that Alex died from ling to the Suharto dictatorship in Jakar- in Melbourne found that 46% had sufinjuries sustained in his capture but other sources claim that he was either tortured to death or murdered in some other way. He was buried under tight secrecy and his family members were not shown his body nor have military authorities acceded to requests for exhumation and an autopsy of his body.

South African involvement

The state visit of South African President

Nelson Mandela to Indonesia in mid-July focused attention on international efforts to mediate on East Timor but has also deflected attention from the gross violations of human rights and tyranny of the Indonesian regime in East Timor itself.

Mandela has visited Indonesia once before. In 1990 on a fund raising mission for the then recently unbanned African National

Congress he called on Suharto, who donated

US$10 million.

26 International Viewpoint #292 ta. Ever since the Indonesian invasion of East Timor in 1975, Australian governments have in effect been complicit in the genocide which has seen the territory's population fall by over one-third Australia is one of only a handful of countries which recognise Indonesia's de jure sovereignty over East Timor. Since 1979 Australia has claimed that the East Timorese are Indonesian citizens.

The deportation plans were described by Foreign Minister Alexander Downer as absurd and hypocritical' when they were unveiled by the former Labour government in 1995. For its part, Portugal has refused to consider taking the refugees unless they want to go there -

The 1,360 East Timorese are refugees fered serious assault; 33% torture; and 19% sexual assault. Of the 66% who had been imprisoned, nearly half had been repeatedly beaten during interrogation and 39% had family members killed by the Indonesians.

There is a bright side to this grim story. Over 11,000 individuals and organisations have pledged support for the refugees. Set up by Catholic nuns, but now embracing secular organisations too, Australia's Sanctuary Network is preparing (illegal) sanctuary, to prevent the deportations from going ahead. It is unlikely that the government will dare to take on such a mass movement of civil disobedience. But if it does, its despicable actions must be fought. * * Co-editor of the Australian socialist monthly Militant, and

The greatest land grab since 1788 trade union rights. In an attempt to fore- cessful struggle to keep New Labour stall bureaucracy and careerism, the open to DSP members. [JT] *

John Tully* Australia was founded as a white settler society on the dispossession and genocide of indigenous peoples who had lived on the continent for up to 80,000 years before the 'First Fleet arrived in 1788.

The total aboriginal population at that time can only be guessed at. It might have been as high as one million. What we do know for sure is that by the 1920s the aboriginal population had fallen to below 250,000. Opinion at the time spoke of 'smoothing the pillow of a dying race.' Hundreds of thousands of black people had died over the course of a little more than a century; some from disease and starvation; others in brutal massacres; others from heartbreak at the dispossession of their traditional lands.

Much of their land became freehold, owned and occupied by whites. Central to this process was the legal doctrine of Terra Nullius, which held that Australia was an empty continent in 1788! Large sections also became leasehold land, occupied for peppercorn (symbolic) rents by wealthy cattle owners. However, the British government did rule that Native Title could co-exist with leasehold. in 1848 the Colonial Secretary, Earl Grey, said that "these leases are not intended to deprive the natives of their former right to hunt over these districts or to wander over them in search of subsistence in the manner to which they have been accusplaces. If the Wik claim were granted, the lease-holders would have to pay rent to the traditional owners, not to the Crown. Millionaire squatters

All of this has been obscured and mystified by powerful white farming, mining and grazing interests, which are interlocked with political, media and industrial interests: a large section of the ruling class, in short. The big lease-holders, who pay around 33 cents per hectare for their land, have made gigantic profits over the years. They include in their ranks 24 federal conservative MPs and Australia's media barons Kerry Packer,

Australia * Rupert Murdoch and the Fairfax family, who between them lease millions of hectares.?

The Federal government is proposing to extinguish native title, but to pay compensation. But the big mining and farming interests go further. They want the unconditional extinguishment' of native title on leasehold land, without compensation to the indigenous peoples. In other words a return to Terra Nullius in what amounts to the greatest theit of Aboriginal land since white settlement. It is even likely that Aboriginal people would either be evicted from their traditional lands, or forced to pay rent to the land barons!

The hysteria over Wik has contributed to the surge of support for Pauline Hanson's far-right One Nation Party. Large numbers of rural National Party supporters may well join her organisation government's "soft" line. * * The author is co-editor of the Australian socialist monthly Militant, and a long-time supporter of the Fourth International. 2. Liberal Party President John Elliot's IX controls almost six and a half million hectares. National Party Federal President Don MacDonald, controls over three million. And Hugh McLachlan, a cousin of the Defence Minister, controls 4,700,000 hectares. Industrial giant BHP and the insurance companies AMP and National Mutual between them account for over ten million hectares.

New Labour Party holds national conference tomed."

Despite Grey's ruling, Aboriginal rights were crushed under the weight of racism armed with the doctrine of Terra Nullius. It was not until the 1970s that Black people began to win back some of their land. The process was speeded up in the 1990s by two important High Court decisions which invalidated Terra Nullius. Racist hysteria

The Mabo and Wik decisions have sparked off a storm of racist hysteria. Although they quite clearly do not mean that freehold land can be subjected to Aboriginal land claims, many white Australians fear that they will be evicted from their suburban homes!

The Mabo decision ruled that Aboriginal peoples could make claims to land for which they could demonstrate an unbroken relationship. But only if the Crown had not granted 'exclusive tenure' to anyone else. If it had, then no claim can be made. The Wik decision merely established that the Wik people in Queensland had a legal right to make a claim for ownership of land leased by big mining and grazing interests from the Crown. It presents no threat to anyone - farmer or householder - who has freehold rights. In fact there are already agreements between traditional owners and mining companies in some

Australia's small New Labour Party was formed in November 1996 in Newcastle, New South Wales. workers, small farmers and academics, it has recruited a growing number of union officials, particularly from the maritime, electrical and construction unions. Members come from the Australian Labour Party (ALP), the dissolved Communist Party, and various left groups. Many NLP members have never belonged to any party.

According to National Secretary Bob Leach, the party's main strength is its broad spread of opinion, from social democrat and left liberal to Marxist.

The party plans to stand parliamentary candidates, hopefully in alliance with the Greens and the Australian Indigenous People's Party. But it was clear from the mood of this year's conference that members want New Labour to be a grass roots activist party, participating in the social and other struggles.

The party has pledged support for the indigenous people's struggle for land rights; for the East Timor Sanctuary Network (see p.26); and for the fight for party's programme demands that all NLP parliamentary candidates pre-sign their resignations so that they can be evicted if they "rat" on party policy.

According to John Tully of Militant newspaper, "the conference, which was held in the Melbourne offices of the Electrical Trades Union, was extremely successful and bodes well for the future development of the party."

The most controversial debate was on the question of proscription of members of other political parties. In the end delegates agreed to refuse NLP membership to members of any party which stand candidates in parliamentary

This clearly proscribes ALP members and possibly bans the Democratic Socialist Party, the largest far-left organi-

National Secretary Bob Leach, from the Social Democratic wing of the party, stressed that the ban did not affect members of some Marxist groups including Militant and the Freedom Socialist Party. Nevertheless, these tendencies led a spirited, though unsuc-

27

The global financial crisis

On August 15 Wall Street suffered

its largest decline since "Black

Monday" in 1987. Michel Chossudovsky explains why global financial markets are so fragile, and the implications for the rest Black Monday October 19, 1987 will be remembered as the largest one day drop in the history of the New York Stock Exchange. The fall was greater than on October 28, 1929, the first day of the Wall Street crash and the beginning of the Great Depression. In the 1987 meltdown, 22.6 percent of the value of US stocks was wiped out, largely during the first hour of trading on Monday morning. The plunge on Wall Street sent a "cold shiver" through the entire financial system leading to the tumble of the European and

Almost ten years later on Friday August 15, 1997, Wall Street experienced its largest one day decline since 1987. The Dow Jones [index of shares in the largest and most traded companies] plummeted by 247 points. The symptoms were similar to those of Black

"Institutional speculators" sold large amounts of stock with the goal of repurchasing them later. But the immediate impact was to provoke a plunge in prices. Futures and options trading played a key role in precipitating the collapse of market values.

The tumble on August 15, 1997 immediately spilled over onto the World's stock markets triggering substantial losses on the Frankfurt, Paris, Hong Kong and Tokyo exchanges. Various "speculative instruments" in the equity and foreign exchange markets were used with a view to manipulating price

In the weeks that followed, stocks continued to trade nervously. Wide speculative movements were recorded on Wall Street; billions of dollars were transacted through the NYSE's Superdot electronic orderrouting system with the Dow Jones index swinging spuriously up and down in a matter of minutes. Asian equity and currency markets declined steeply under the brunt of speculative trading. In a three week period the Hong Kong Hang Seng Index declined by 15 percent. The Japanese bond market

Business forecasters and academic economists alike have casually disregarded the dangers, alluding to "strong economic fundamentals." G7 leaders are afraid to say anything or act in a way which might give the "wrong signals." Wall Street analysts continue to bungle on issues of "market correction" with little understanding of the broader economic picture.

Meanwhile, public opinion is bombarded

International Viewpoint #292 in the media with glowing images of growth and prosperity. The economy is said to be booming under the impetus of the free market reforms. Without debate or discussion, so-called "sound macro-economic policies" (meaning the gamut of budgetary austerity, deregulation, downsizing and privatisation) are heralded as the key to economic success.

The realities are concealed, economic statistics are manipulated, economic concepts are turned upside down. Unemployment in the US is said to be falling yet the number of people on low wage part-time jobs has spiralled. The stock market frenzy has taken place against a background of global economic decline and social A new financial environment

Since 1987, a new global financial environment has unfolded. A renewed wave of corporate mergers, buy-outs and bankruptcies has paved the way for the consolidation of a new generation of financiers clustered around the merchant banks, the institutional investors, the stock brokerage firms, and the large insurance companies. In this process, commercial banking functions have coalesced with those of the investment banks and stock brokers.

From these transformations, the "institutional speculator" has emerged as a powerful actor, overshadowing and often undermining bona fide business interests. Using a variety of instruments, these institutional actors often dictate the fate of companies listed on the New York Stock Exchange. Totally removed from entrepreneurial functions in the real economy, they have the power of precipitating large industrial corporations in bankruptcy.

Their activities include speculative transactions in commodity futures, stock options and the manipulation of currency markets including the plunder of central banks' foreign exchange reserves. In the last two months they have "successfully" targeted Thailand, Indonesia, Malaysia and the Philippines

. They are also routinely involved in "hot money deposits" in the emerging markets of Latin America and Southeast Asia, not to mention money laundering in the many offshore banking havens. The daily turnover of foreign exchange transactions is of the order of one trillion dollars a day, of which only 15 percent corresponds to actual commodity trade and capital flows.

Within this global financial web, money transits at high speed from one banking haven to the next, in the intangible form of electronic transfers. "Legal" and "illegal" business activities have become increasingly intertwined. Favoured by financial deregulation, the criminal mafias have also expanded their role in the spheres of merchant banking.

The concentration of wealth

This restructuring of global financial markets and institutions has enabled the accumulation of vast amounts of private wealth, a large portion of which has been amassed as a result of strictly speculative transactions. There is almost no need to produce commodities: enrichment is increasingly taking place outside the real economy, divorced from bona fide productive and commercial activities. In turn, part of the money accumulated from speculative transactions is funnelled towards the offshore banking havens. This critical drain of billions of dollars in capital flight dramatically reduces state tax revenues, paralyses social programmes, drives up budget deficits, and spurs the accumulation of large public debts.

In contrast, the earnings of the direct producers of goods and services are compressed. The standard of living of large sectors of the World population including the middle classes has tumbled. Wage inequality has risen in the OECD countries. In both the developing and developed countries, poverty has become rampant. According to the International Labour Organisation (ILO), worldwide unemployment affects more than 800 million people. The accumulation of financial wealth feeds on poverty and low

The post-1987 period is marked by economic stagnation. In the OECD countries, GDP growth has fallen from 3.1 percent per annum in the 1980s to a meagre 1.7% in the 1990s. Many countries in Sub-Saharan Africa and Latin America have experienced negative economic growth rates. In the emerging economies of Eastern Europe and the former Soviet Union, GDP collapsed in the early 1990s by more than 30% Replicating 1920s policy failures

Wall Street was swerving dangerously in volatile trading in the months which preceded the crash of October 29, 1929. Under the Coolidge and Hoover administrations, laissez faire was the order of the day: in early 1929 the Federal Reserve Board declared that it "neither assumes the right nor has it any disposition to set itself up as an arbiter of security speculation or values."

The economics establishment largely upheld this verdict. The possibility of a financial meltdown had never been seriously contemplated. Professor Irving Fisher of Yale University stated authoritatively in 1928 that "nothing resembling a crash can occur". In 1929, a few months before the crash, he affirmed that "there may a recession in the price of stocks but nothing in the nature of a catastrophe" 1

The illusion of economic prosperity persisted: optimistic business predictions prevailed even after the collapse of the New York Stock Exchange. In 1930, Irving Fisher

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YoUR BANK AND YOUR GOLD stated confidently that "for the immediate future, at least, the perspective is brilliant" According to the prestigious Harvard Economic Society: "manufacturing activity [in 1930]... was definitely on the road to recovery" 2 Financial deregulation

The same complacency prevails today as during the frenzy of the late 1920s: "The [1987] crash had left many people wondering what happened, why it happened and what can be done to prevent it from happening again". . The broad economic causes of the crisis are not addressed. Echoing almost verbatim the economic slogans of Irving Fisher, today's economic orthodoxy not only refutes the existence of an economic recession, it also denies outright the possibility of a financial meltdown: "Happy days are here again ...a wonderful opportunity for sustained and increasingly global economic growth is waiting to be seized.." 3

According to Nobel Laureate Robert Lucas of Chicago University, the decisions of economic agents are based on so-called "rational expectations" , ruling out the possibility of systematic errors which might lead the stock market in the wrong direction.

In the aftermath of the 1987 stock market crisis, the regulatory policy issues were never resolved. According to the various commissions set up by the US Congress, the White House and the New York and Chicago exchanges, the 1987 crash had been triggered by specific events leading to "reactive responses" by major financial players including institutional traders and dealers in mutual funds. No other reason was given. "Sound macro-economic policies" combined with financial deregulation were the irrevocable answers. The term "speculation" does not even appear in Wall Street's financial glossary!

A presidential task-force was formed under the chairmanship of Nicholas Brady (later to become Treasury Secretary in the Bush Administration). The institutional speculators overshadowing bona fide corporate interests, represented a powerful lobby capable of influencing the scope and direction of regulatory policy. The task-force took on an detached attitude pointing to the "adequacy" of existing regulations.

In the aftermath of the 1987 crisis, the policy errors of the 1920s were repeated.

economics * Government should not intervene. The New York and Chicago exchanges were invited to fine-tune their own regulatory procedures which largely consisted in "freezing" computerised programme trading once the Dow Jones falls by more than 50 points.* These so-called "circuit-breakers" have proven to be totally ineffective in averting a meltdown.

Recent experience amply demonstrates that the Dow Jones can swing back and forth by more than fifty points in a matter of minutes. The NYSE's Superdot electronic order-routing system can now handle (without queung more than 300,000 orders per day. This is an average of 375 orders per second, representing a daily capacity of more than two billion shares. When speed and volume have increased tenfold in relation to 1987, the risks of a financial instability are significantly greater. Federal Reserve Board Chairman Alan Greenspan admits that: "[while] technological advances have enhanced the potential for reducing transaction costs (...), in some respects they have increased the potential for more rapid and widespread disruption" s

Moreover, in contrast to the 1920s, today's major exchanges world-wide are IS BEYOND YOUR COMMAND-

COS WE HAVE

CREATIVE

ACCOUNTING! "

• Eeksten

* economics interconnected through instant computer link-up. Volatile trading on Wall Street, "spills over" into the European and Asian stock markets thereby rapidly permeating the entire financial system, including foreign exchange and commodity markets, not to mention the markets for public debt. The demise of national currencies under periodic attack by institutional speculators will inevitably backlash on the trillion dollars Euro and Brady bond markets. The fate of national economies

Under the brunt of an impending balance of payments crisis, several of the largest debtor countries in Latin America, Southeast Asia and Eastern Europe are facing the same predicament as Mexico. Following the Mexican 1994-95 crash, the International Monetary Fund (IMF) Managing Director Michel Camdessus intimated that ten other indebted countries could meet the same fate as Mexico requiring the application of potent doses of economic medicine: "we will therefore introduce still stronger surveillance to be sure that the convalescence goes well." 6 However, by crippling national economies and requiring governments to deregulate, the

IMF's "economic therapy" sibility of a "soft landing" "IMF surveillance" of debtor countries' policy tends to further heighten the risks of

The present economic crisis is far more complex than that of the inter-war period.

Because national economies are interlocked in a system of global trade and investment, the impact of any crisis is potentially far more devastating. The technological revolution (combined with delocalisation and corporate restructuring) has dramatically lowered the costs of production while at same time impoverishing millions of people

Macro-economic policies are internationalised: the same austerity measures are applied all over the World. In turn, large corporations have the power to move entire branches of industry from one country to another. Factories are closed down in the developed countries and production is transferred to the Third World where workers are often paid less than a dollar a day.

The social consequences and geopolitical implications of the economic crisis are far-reaching — particularly in the uncertain aftermath of the Cold War. In the developing World and in the former Soviet block, entire countries have been destabilised as a consequence of the collapse of national currencies often resulting in the outbreak of social strife, ethnic conflicts and civil war. In the former Soviet Union as a whole, industrial output has plummeted by 48.8 percent and GDP by 44.0% over the 1989-1995 period.? In some cases, wages have fallen to less than ten dollars a month; in Bulgaria, old age pensioners receive two dollars a month.

Budget austerity, plant closures, deregulation and trade liberalisation have contributed to precipitating entire national economies into poverty and stagnation. In turn, the evolution of financial markets has reached a dan30 International Viewpoint #292 gerous cross-roads. The massive trade in derivatives undermines the conduct of monetary policy in both the developing and developed countries. Dangerous cross-roads

The speculative surge of stock values is totally at variance with the movement of the real economy. Stock markets "cannot lead their own life" indefinitely. Business confidence cannot be "sustained by recession" The price to earnings ratio (P/E) on the S&P 500 has risen dangerously to 25.8, well above the P/E level of 22.4 prevailing in the months prior to the October 1987 crash.

In many regards, the stock market frenzy is analogous to the Albanian "ponzi" pyramid schemes. People who have invested their private savings will "get rich" while the market rises and as long as they leave their money in the stock market. As soon as financial markets crumble, life-long savings in stocks, mutual funds, pension and insurance funds are wiped out. The fund managers will not lose out because they are "looking after other people's money" Neither will the speculators: their purchases are financed ("on margin") using their broker's credit as well as other loans from the banking system

More than forty percent of the American adult population has investments. in the stock market. A financial meltdown would lead to massive loan default sending a cold shiver through the entire banking system; it would also result in bank failures as well as a tumble of pension and retirement savings Financial disarmament

It is essential that G-7 leaders acknowledge an increasingly dangerous situation and adopt without delay a coherent structure of financial regulation (and intergovernmental co-operation). Market forces left to their own devices lead to financial upheaval. Close scrutiny of the role of major speculative instruments (including option trading, short sales, non-trading derivatives, hedge funds, non deliverable currency transactions, programme trading, index futures, etc.) should be undertaken.

A report published by the Bundesbank in 1993 warned that trade in derivatives could potentially "trigger chain reactions and endanger the financial system as a whole". Regulation cannot be limited to the disclosure and reporting of trade in derivatives as recommended by the Bank for International Settlements (BIS). Concrete measures are required to prohibit the use of specific speculative instruments.

The risks associated with the electronic order routing systems should also be the subject of careful examination. Alan Greenspan, Chairman of the Federal Reserve Board admits that "the efficiency of global financial markets, has the capability of transmitting mistakes at a far faster pace throughout the financial system in ways Which were unknown a generation ago...

A form of "financial disarmament" is required directed towards curbing the tide of speculative activity. (The term "financial disarmament" was coined by the Ecumenical Coalition for Social Justice'°). In turn, the whole syster of offshore banking including the movement of dirty and black money be the object of tight intershould governmental regulation.

At the June 1997 Denver Summit, G7 leaders in a muddled and confusing statement called for "stronger risk management", "improved transparency" and "strong pru-

". The de-stabilising role of speculative activity on major bourses was never mentioned. In contrast, the G7 statements by political leaders profusely heralding the benefits of the free market have generated an atmosphere of deceit and economic falsehood. "Business confidence" has been artificially boosted by G7 rhetoric largely to the advantage of the institutional speculator. An alternative economic agenda

There are no easy policy solutions. The global economic system is affected not only by the forces of recession and financial restructuring but also by complex social, political and strategic factors. The evolution of international institutions (including the World Trade Organisation and the Bretton Woods twins) is also crucial inasmuch as these international bodies play an important role in overseeing and regulating macro-economic and trade policies, often to the detriment of national societies.

The World community should recognise the failure of the dominant neo-liberal system inherited from the Reagan-Thatcher era.

Slashing budgets combined with lay-offs, corporate downsizing and deregulation cannot constitute "the key to economic success".

These measures demobilise human resources and physical capital. They trigger bankruptcies and create mass unemployment. Ultimately, they stifle the growth of consumer spending. After all, "recession can not be a solution to recession".

Regulating the stock market is a necessary but not a sufficient condition. Financial markets will not survive unless there is an expanding "real economy". Though this will not occur unless there is a major revamping of economic institutions and a rethinking of macro-economic reform. * The writer is Professor of Economics at the University of Ottawa. He can be contacted at chosso@travel-net.com, fax: (+1 613) 7892051. Copyright Michel Chossudovsky. Notes 1. Quoted in Michel Beaud, A History of Capitalism, Monthly Review Press, New York, 1983, p. 158. 2. Quoted in John Kenneth Galbraith, The Great Crash. 1929, Penguin, London. 3. Let Good Times Roll, The Financial Times, editorial commenting OECD economic forecasts, Jan. Ist, 1995 4. "Five Years On, the Crash Still Echoes, The Financial Times, October 19, 1992. 5. BIS Review, No. 46, 1997 6. Quoted in David Duchan and Peter Norman, "IMF Urges Close Watch on Weaker Economies". The Financial Times, London, 8 February 1995, p. 1. 7. Official data compiled by the United Nations Economic Commission for Europe 8. Martin Khor. " Baring and the Search for a Rogue Culprit, Third World Economics, No. 108, 1-15 March 1995, p. 10. 9. BIS Review, No. 46, 1997 10. "The Power of Global Finance", Third World Resurgence, No. 56, March 1995, p.21.

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