Arjo Klamer van de Erasmus Universiteit 2

Naar aanleiding van mijn stukje over professor Arjo Klamer reageerde Paul met de volgende reactie:

'Klamer lijkt me een typisch geval van de versteende wetenschapper voor wie er niet nieuws onder de zon kan/mag zijn. Zoals de Amerikaanse econoom/geschiedkundige Michael Hudson uitlegt in bv. zijn stukken bij Counterpunch, typeert juist de verwevenheid van de financiële sector met de gewone economie het huidige systeem (niet weinig grote bedrijven zijn zelf speculanten geworden). Verwevenheid is eigenlijk niet eens het juiste woord: parasiteren is het. Hudson noemt de FIRE-sector (financiën, verzekeringen, vastgoed )een Boa constrictor die de gewone Amerikaanse economie wurgt. Hij trekt de parallel met bv. het Romeinse imperium waar een vergelijkbare ontwikkeling optrad van financiële oligarchen die erin slaagden de rest van de bevolking uit te zuigen.'

Zie: http://stanvanhoucke.blogspot.com/2008/07/arjo-klamer-van-de-erasmus-universiteit.html

'An Interview with Michael Hudson on the Economy
The Game is Over. There Won't be a Rebound
By MIKE WHITNEY

Mike Whitney: Fed chairman Bernanke has been on a spree lately, delivering three speeches in the last two weeks. Every chance he gets, he talks tough about the strong dollar and "holding the line" against inflation. Treasury Secretary Henry Paulson even said that "intervention" in the currency markets was still an option. Is all of this jawboning just saber rattling to keep the dollar from plummeting, or is there a chance that Bernanke actually will raise rates at the Fed's August meeting?
Michael Hudson: The United States always has steered its monetary policy almost exclusively with domestic objectives in mind. This means ignoring the balance of payments. Like the domestic U.S. economy itself, the global financial system also is all about getting a free lunch. When Europe and Asia receive excess dollars, these are turned over to their central banks, which have little alternative but to recycle these back to the United States by buying U.S. Treasury bonds. Foreign governments – and their taxpayers – are thus financing the domestic U.S. federal budget deficit, which itself stems largely from the war in Iraq that most foreign voters oppose.
Supporting the dollar’s exchange rate by the traditional method of raising interest rates would have a very negative effect on the stock and bond markets – and on the mortgage market. This would lead foreign investors to sell U.S. securities, and likely would end up hurting more than helping the U.S. balance of payments and hence the dollar’s exchange rate.
So Bernanke is merely being polite in not rubbing the faces of European and Asian governments in the fact that unless they are willing to make a structural break and change the world monetary system radically, they will remain powerless to avoid giving the United States a free ride – including a free ride for its military spending and war in the Near East.
Mike Whitney : How do you explain the soaring price of oil? Is it mainly a supply/demand issue or are speculators driving the prices up?
Michael Hudson: It’s true that enormous amounts of speculative credit are going into commodity index funds. But bear in mind that as the dollar depreciates, OPEC countries have been holding back supply largely to stabilize their receipts in euros and to offset their losses on the dollar securities they have bought with their past export proceeds. For over 30 years they have been pressured to recycle their oil earnings into the U.S. stock market and loans to U.S. financial institutions. They have taken large losses on these investments (such as last year’s money to bail out Citibank), and are trying to recoup them via the oil market. OPEC officials also have pointed to a political motive: They resent America’s military intrusion in the Middle East, especially in view of how much it contributes to the nation’s balance-of-payments deficit and federal budget deficit.
The U.S. press prefers to blame Chinese, Indian and other foreign growth in demand for oil and raw materials. This demand has contributed to the price rise, no doubt about it. But the U.S. oil majors are receiving a windfall “economic rent” on the price run-up, and are not at all unhappy to see it continue. By not building more refining and shipping capacity, they have created bottlenecks so that even if foreign countries did supply more crude oil, it would not be reflected in refined gasoline, kerosene or other downstream product prices.
Mike Whitney: The Fed has traded over $200 billion in US Treasuries with the big investment banks for a wide variety of dodgy collateral (mostly mortgage-backed securities). How can the banks possibly hope to repay the Fed when their main sources of revenue (structured investments) have been cut off? Are the banks secretly using the money they borrow via repos from the Fed to dabble in the carry trade or speculate in the futures markets?
Michael Hudson: The Fed’s idea was merely to buy enough time for the banks to sell their junk mortgages to the proverbial “greater fool.” But foreign investors no longer are playing this role, nor are domestic U.S. pension funds. So the most likely result will be for the Fed simply to roll over its loans – as if the problem can be cured by yet more time.
But when a bubble bursts, time makes things worse. The financial sector has been living in the short run for quite a while now, and I suspect that a lot of money managers are planning to get out or be fired now that the game is over. And it really is over. The Treasury’s attempt to reflate the real estate market has not worked, and it can’t work. Mortgage arrears, defaults and foreclosures are rising, and much property has become unsaleable except at distress prices that leave homeowners with negative equity. This state of affairs prompts them to do just what Donald Trump would do in such a situation: to walk away from their property.
The banks are trying to win back their losses by arbitrage operations, borrowing from the Fed at a low interest rate and lending at a higher one, and gambling on options. But options and derivatives are a zero-sum game: one party’s gain is another’s loss. So the banks collectively are simply painting themselves into a deeper corner. They hope they can tell the Fed and Treasury to keep bailing them out or else they’ll fail and cost the FDIC even more money to make good on insuring the “bad savings” that have been steered into these bad debts and bad gambles.
The Fed and Treasury certainly seem more willing to bail out the big financial institutions than to bail out savers, pensioners, social Security recipients and other small fry. They thus follow the traditional “Big fish eat little fish” principle of favoring the vested interests.
Mike Whitney: According to most estimates, the Fed has already gone through half or more of its $900 billion balance sheet. Also, according to the latest H.4.1 data "the current holdings of Treasury bills is $25 billion. This is down from some $250 billion a year ago, or a net reduction of 90 per cent." (figures from Market Ticker) Doesn't this suggest that the Fed is just about out of firepower when it comes to bailing out the struggling banking system? Where do we go from here? Will some of the larger banks be allowed to fail or will they be nationalized?
Michael Hudson: You need to look at what the Treasury as well as the Fed is doing. The Fed can monetize whatever it wants. And as you just pointed out in the preceding question, it has been buying junk securities in order to leave sound Treasury securities on the banking system’s balance sheets. Government bailout credit will keep the big banks alive. But many small regional banks will go under and be merged into larger money-center banks – just as many brokerage firms in recent decades have been merged into larger conglomerates.
False reporting also will help financial institutions avoid the appearance of insolvency. They will seek more and more government guarantees, ostensibly to help middle-class depositors but actually favoring the big speculators who are their major clients.
What we are seeing is the creation of a highly concentrated financial oligarchy – precisely the power that the Glass-Steagall Act was designed to prevent. A combination of deregulation and “moral hazard” bailouts – for the top of the economic pyramid, not the bottom – will polarize the economy all the more.
Cities and states will preserve their credit ratings by annulling their pension obligations to public-sector workers, and raising excise taxes – but not property taxes. These already have fallen from about two-thirds of local budgets in 1930 to only about one-sixth today – that is, a decline of 75 percent, proportionally. While the debt burden and the squeeze in disposable personal income is pressuring workers, finance and property are using the crisis to get a bonanza of tax relief. Democrats in Congress are as far to the right as George Bush on this, as their base is local politics and real estate.'

Lees verder: http://www.counterpunch.org/whitney06212008.html

Ook Herman gaf een reactie:

'Ooit heb ik nog een stukje geschreven over Arjo Klamer. http://yelamdenu.blogsome.com/2007/11/20/globalisering-laat-arjo-klamer-ons-in-de-steek/ Ik snap de man niet hoor.Dit stukje mag u ook recyclen, ik word zo heel erg moe van de salonsocialisten.Ik begrijp wel wat Klamer zegt dat de aandelenbeurs en de economie "op de grond" twee verschillende dingen zijn, maar je kunt toch niet menen dat de rekening niet uiteindelijk gewoon bij de burgers terechtkomt.Ook absolute aanrader: de film America, Freedom to Fascism, van Aaron Russo. Over de FED en de IRS.
Prof. dr. Arjo Klamer is hoogleraar in de economie van de kunst en cultuur aan de Erasmus universiteit in Rotterdam. Afgelopen dinsdag hield hij in Rotterdam een lezing die de vraag stelde of de globalisering een zegen, dan wel een vloek is.
U raadt het al, het is een zegen voor de consument met koopkracht, die voor belachelijk lage prijzen kleding, pc’s, schoenen en fruit jaarrond kan consumeren, aangevoerd van over de hele wereld. Een vloek daarentegen is het voor het milieu en, het belangrijkste, het leidt tot een toename van onrecht. Overigens plaatste dr. Klamer de kanttekening dat dit allemaal weinig uniek is: eerder in de geschiedenis hebben “globalisering”-achtige ontwikkelingen zich voorgedaan.
Een groot deel van de lezing werd gesproken over de aangeboren neiging van de mens om zich comfortabel te voelen bij een bepaalde (etnische) groep. Nu de wereld steeds kleiner word, maar het individu en zijn identiteit dreigt te verdrinken in de (al dan niet bewuste) pogingen van multinationale onderneming en internationale handel en verkeer om deze identiteit te vervangen door de enkelvoudige identiteit van globale consument, is het vreemd noch bedreigend dat mensen zich opnieuw afvragen bij welke club zij horen. Fenomenen als de opkomst van Wilders zijn begrijpelijk in het licht van de globalisering, die gepaard gaat met immigratie en de vraag wat (in dit specifieke geval) de Nederlandse identiteit nu precies inhoudt, en misschien kunnen zij wel louterend werken.
Klamer liet de toehoorder in de steek toen hij opmerkte dat "wij geen antwoord hebben op de globalisering". Hij bedoelde hiermee dat nationale staten en hun jurisdicties geen vat krijgen op mondiale kapitaalstromen en de manieren waarop transnationale ondernemingen als Philips nationale (belasting- en andere) wetten met creatief boekhouden kunnen omzeilen.'

Lees verder: http://yelamdenu.blogsome.com/2007/11/20/globalisering-laat-arjo-klamer-ons-in-de-steek/

Ik denk dat we niet moeten vergeten dat we hier met een gelovige te maken hebben. "Wij [hebben] geen antwoord op de globalisering," verklaart Klamer. Net als voor zijn vader God buiten discussie stond, die bestond namelijk, zo staat voor Arjo de Globalisering buiten discussie. De neoliberale Globalisering is voor hem een onveranderlijke feitelijkheid waaraan niet getornd kan worden, omdat deze nu eenmaal een feit is en kosmische wetmatigheden volgt. Zijn kapitalistische vooronderstellingen behoren tot het domein van de metafysica. Het is niets anders dan een rotsvast geloof. Daar is op zichzelf niets fouts aan, niemand kan zonder een bepaald geloof, het probleem is alleen dat Arjo Klamer een hoogleraar is, dus pretendeert wetenschapper te zijn. En met waardevrije wetenschappen heeft zijn geloof niets te maken. Zoals gezegd: Klamer is een praatjesmaker die wetenschappelijke geldigheid claimt.