Truthout - Thursday, 22 May 2014
By Yves Smith
From the 1980s onward, one of the major aims of American foreign
policy has been to make the world safer for US investment bankers. That
might seem like an exaggeration until you look at the priorities of
American economic policy as well as the actions of US-dominated
international institutions like the World Bank and the IMF. The World
Bank, though its International Finance Corporations, pushed emerging
economies to set up capital markets. The posture was that more open
markets were always better.
Now that we’ve had repeated tsunamis of hot money flows in and out of
small economies wreak havoc with them, conventional wisdom among
development economists is more along the lines of “protectionism in
emerging economies is desirable so they can develop companies and/or
export sectors that are capable of competing internationally, and also
serve domestic markets, so that the economy isn’t too export dependent.
Open capital markets produce too much volatility in interest and foreign
exchange rates and thus undermine internal development.”
READ MORE.....
No comments:
Post a Comment