Next week US president Joe Biden finishes his term of office, to be replaced by the Donald. Biden would have been extremely popular with the American public and probably would have run and got a se…
it is funny to read all of that in summation, knowing that the author is talking about China, and think about every single youtube thumbnail that floated across my screen(s) the last 4 years claiming that China’s collapse is imminent.
I do want to say that that whole slew of things (particularly the balancing budget and zero inflation stuff) was never going to happen in the US at its current stage, no matter who was president.
It’s the same reasons (hopefully I can keep this short)(oh lord forgive me I’m just describin the mechanisms of US imperialism feat. neoliberalism) that underlie pandemic handling wrt ‘go back to work you’re essential’; to the pervasiveness of insurance industries; to the neoliberal policies of privatization of public goods and services and deregulation. Yes, capitalism love max profit, but more importantly, the US is a DotB that has honed methodologies of extraction using financialization/counting gains of capital via moving capital around rather than making things. Its GDP heavily relies on financial and tech services rather than production of real goods.
Other structures such as dollar hegemony and military presence aid in keeping that machine greased and rolling in the cash. Er, goods. Ok, so, the fed reserve “setting” inflation has to consider how it affects dollar hegemony. Long story short it needs to be inflationary for goods and services from countries more or less entrapped in dollar debt to roll into the US (trade back the dollar debt with goods). And most of the world had to be in dollar debt, ie buy dollars to pay for oil in dollars, for a long time because dollars (“petrodollars”) were directly tied to control of global Oil supplies thanks oil cartels and however many military interventions in not just MENA but also in other oil producing countries that don’t have nuclear deterrence like Venezuela.
sorry im not exactly the best communicator, but this stuff doesn’t get brought up as much as ye olde theory in western ML/ML-adjacent spaces as I think it should. I feel like a lot of ‘pro’-china westerners talk about multipolarity and dollar hegemony until it becomes buzzwords but don’t really mention Why it (well, specifically dollar hegemony) is actually important (i’m on the fence regarding if multipolarity is over-hyped nonaligned v.2 or not). i think ben norton at the geopolitical economy report does a pretty good job explaining the relationship and intricacies tho
it is funny to read all of that in summation, knowing that the author is talking about China, and think about every single youtube thumbnail that floated across my screen(s) the last 4 years claiming that China’s collapse is imminent.
I do want to say that that whole slew of things (particularly the balancing budget and zero inflation stuff) was never going to happen in the US at its current stage, no matter who was president.
It’s the same reasons (hopefully I can keep this short)(oh lord forgive me I’m just describin the mechanisms of US imperialism feat. neoliberalism) that underlie pandemic handling wrt ‘go back to work you’re essential’; to the pervasiveness of insurance industries; to the neoliberal policies of privatization of public goods and services and deregulation. Yes, capitalism love max profit, but more importantly, the US is a DotB that has honed methodologies of extraction using financialization/counting gains of capital via moving capital around rather than making things. Its GDP heavily relies on financial and tech services rather than production of real goods.
Other structures such as dollar hegemony and military presence aid in keeping that machine greased and rolling in the cash. Er, goods. Ok, so, the fed reserve “setting” inflation has to consider how it affects dollar hegemony. Long story short it needs to be inflationary for goods and services from countries more or less entrapped in dollar debt to roll into the US (trade back the dollar debt with goods). And most of the world had to be in dollar debt, ie buy dollars to pay for oil in dollars, for a long time because dollars (“petrodollars”) were directly tied to control of global Oil supplies thanks oil cartels and however many military interventions in not just MENA but also in other oil producing countries that don’t have nuclear deterrence like Venezuela.
sorry im not exactly the best communicator, but this stuff doesn’t get brought up as much as ye olde theory in western ML/ML-adjacent spaces as I think it should. I feel like a lot of ‘pro’-china westerners talk about multipolarity and dollar hegemony until it becomes buzzwords but don’t really mention Why it (well, specifically dollar hegemony) is actually important (i’m on the fence regarding if multipolarity is over-hyped nonaligned v.2 or not). i think ben norton at the geopolitical economy report does a pretty good job explaining the relationship and intricacies tho