http://www.wsws.org/articles/2007/apr2007/grow-a24.shtml

here are some quotes form the article

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The IMF’s WEO was filled with similar reports of economic success. Economic activity in Western Europe had “gathered momentum” in 2006 with GDP growth in the euro area reaching 2.6 percent, almost double the rate for 2005 and the highest figure since 2000. “Germany was the principal locomotive, fuelled by robust export growth and strong investment generated by the major improvement in competitiveness and corporate health in recent years,” it stated. Overall the unemployment rate had fallen to 7.6 percent in the euro area, its lowest level for 15 years.

There was even good news from Japan, where the economy was virtually stagnant for more than a decade following the collapse of the share market and real estate bubble in the early 1990s. Despite an unexpected decline in consumption in the middle of 2006, the “economy’s underlying momentum remains robust with private investment expanding—supported by strong profits, improved corporate balance sheets, and the resumption of bank lending—and rising export growth.” Real economic growth in Japan was expected to remain at above 2 percent.

While the growth rate in Latin America was expected to ease to 4.9 percent this year, from 5.5 percent in 2006, the years 2004-2006 were “the strongest three-year period of growth in Latin America since the late 1970s.”

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and then the kicker....

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Neither the World Bank nor the IMF draw any historical parallels, but the vast structural changes associated with the latest phase of capitalist globalisation recall the opening of the 20th century when profit rates and economic growth in the major capitalist countries received a significant impetus from the cheap raw materials, minerals and other resources that came from the colonies.

Together with the introduction of new technologies, the vast expansion in the global labour force over the past two decades has resulted in a significant boost to profits. Since the beginning of the 1980s, it is estimated that in the advanced capitalist countries the share of GDP going to labour has declined by about 8 percentage points.

Both organisations regard the latest upswing in growth as a sign of the health and stability of world capitalism ... but there are some nagging doubts. In the words of the World Bank: “While the soft landing is the most likely scenario, the global economy is at a turning point following several years of very strong growth—and such periods are fraught with risk. Indeed ... the last century began under similar auspicious circumstances characterised by an extended period of strong growth buoyed by technological change and ample liquidity. Rather than continuing forward as anticipated by leading economists at the time, the world plunged into the Great Depression. Thus, while much in the current environment is reassuring, a note of caution is merited.”

And before the Great Depression, there was the First World War, the Russian Revolution of 1917 and the revolutionary upheavals across Europe in the early 1920s. The stormy growth of the world economy at the end of the 19th and the beginning of the 20th century and the rise of new powers—Germany, Japan and the United States—disrupted the old international equilibrium of the 19th century leading to war. And the growth of the international working class occasioned by this expansion of the world capitalist economy signified the involvement of the popular masses in political struggles.

History, of course, does not repeat itself. But an examination of the historical record does indicate that vast changes in the very structure of world capitalism, such as those now taking place and which are reflected in the upturn in the economic growth figures, will have a far-reaching impact in the sphere of politics.

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the article gives a good aver view of waht the main capitalist fanancial institutions say about the world situation....

I think a repeat of 1929 would not phase some of the superrich capitalists. They would not mind at all if inflation dropped to zero, or if governments had to borrow money from them. A certain number of powerful and influential capitalists depend very little on the free market for their fortunes. And then there are environmental issues. There are additional problems that didn't exist leading up to the collapse of laissez-faire capitalism in the 30's.

When asked about Tory claims that meeting Kyoto obligations would cause a recession, David Suzuki said, "unchecked global warming will cost the economy more than the two world wars put together and bring about a global depression, "the likes of which we have never ever seen."

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The rich would love a good war, but I think they want to limit warfiteering to no more than one or two resource-rich nations at a time while keeping the lid on revolutions and maintaing chaos and division around the third world in general.

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Yes they would love for what you mentioned to happen...

But unfortunatly much like the USA capitalists thinking about Iraq and Afghanistan and all other social forms ,they can not control the Capitalist social chaos system ....

So we shall see what awaits us.... Unfortunatly I don't hold out much hope in what they will do..

My only hope is that this will bring about the mass revolution of the workers. But to do this they need to be educated properly on what needs to be done... IE getting rid of the capitalist system.

Its funny that you mentioned Keynes.... I never knew who he was untill last year....

I had a dream and it was something about the guy Keynes theories and melding it with Chaos theory so I looked the two up... But did not read or understand enough to put them together...

[ 24 April 2007: Message edited by: trippie ]

[ 24 April 2007: Message edited by: Fidel ]

And actually that report is confirmed by the World Bank and the major state and private banks that, thanks to working people’s incomes not keeping up with the cost of living, everyone’s relying too heavily on borrowed cash in order to do what they should ideally have enough equity to do with minimal borrowing.

And that condition is affecting governments and corporations alike, which are apparently doing the same.

This report hints that the unprecedented concentration of wealth into fewer and fewer elite hands is literally forcing, not only people, but corporations and governments, to borrow increasingly.

Meanwhile, the bulk of accuulated capital is no longer even invested in actual real economic activity—as in production and trade of useful goods and services—but in completely useless activities like speculative futures, real estate and mergers and acquisitions.

It appears that we could literally be in a 1929 scenario, except on a global scale, with literally every major economic organization in debt.

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Originally posted by Steppenwolf Allende:
[QB] Actually the WSW article refers to this IMF report that states in part the obvious: the current economic spurt in most of the world’s major economies is due mainly to record-low interest rates and the resulting in huge borrowing.[/url

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Wouldn't we know it?. Just when they begin catching on that their supposed to be "shop til you drop" consumers like us, consumer capitalism becomes an environmental no-no. The Japanese still haven't caught on with average personal savings of $100K USDN. Will they ever learn to stop being piggy bank pinkos and get with the program?.

I brought a pair of leather shoes and a woolen blanket back from England in 1980. They were made in communist Poland. The shoes never wore out. I wore them for best for years, played scrub baseball and road hockey with them. I must have cut the front and back lawn while wearing them a hundred times and walked a thousand miles in them. They went out of style long before the dog chewed them up. Still have the wool blanket, too.

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I brought a pair of leather shoes and a woolen blanket back from England in 1980. They were made in communist Poland. The shoes never wore out. I wore them for best for years, played scrub baseball and road hockey with them. I must have cut the front and back lawn while wearing them a hundred times and walked a thousand miles in them. They went out of style long before the dog chewed them up. Still have the wool blanket, too.

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Can you explain this? I missed your point here.

First, you obviously couldn't have bought anything from "communist Poland," since such an economy has never existed in that country; unless, of course, you bought the shoes and blanket from a worker-run sustainable mode firm or co-op, which would make it a socialistic enterprise. But I doubt that was the case.

me personally I keep my balance own under $1000 ... anything over that And I feel that Im more of a slave then I already am...

Oh by the way thats alot of work knowing were all those reports are....

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I usually read the WSWS as they have certian poeple that do what you do and then report it...Sure its biased to their socialist ideals but then Im a socialist so I don't mind...

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Originally posted by Steppenwolf Allende:

Can you explain this? I missed your point here.

First, you obviously couldn't have bought anything from "communist Poland," since such an economy has never existed in that country; .

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The shoes were leather, and I've never had such a pair last as long since then. My leather Daks have lasted, but only because I wear them on special occasions. But I paid a lot more for the Daks than the durable shoes made in communist Poland.

They've got capitalism now in Poland, you know. That's where things are privatized and owned by real capitalists wielding actual capital to own things instead of the state, democratically elected and otherwise. Another couple of hundred Poles froze to death last spring, and I suspect we'll hear of some more dying of exposure this year.

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Second, are you referring to the all-to-common and sicken practice of built-in obsolescence, which seems to have become such a main-stay in our corporate capitalist dominated economy over the last 20 or so years--in everything from electronics to condos?

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But I paid a lot more for the Daks than the durable shoes made in communist Poland.

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Well, that's economically impossible. In order for any society to be accurately called ""Communist" it need to have a predominantly socialistic economy--as in being primarily based on democratically run community based business ventures working in locally derived cooperative plans to sustain the common interests of all involved, and improve their common lot.

That has never been the primary basic of any national economy, including Poland.

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They've got capitalism now in Poland, you know.

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So what? The fact is they always have had capitalism there.

Despite all the bombastic rhetoric from various regimes, the economy there was predominantly based on the similar fundamentals as anywhere else: exploitation of labour and separation of the bulk of the wealth working people create for them; centralizing that wealth under the elite control of profiteering agents and bureaucracies; ensure regulatory control/influence over the government to maintain that structure; expansion and growth based on monopolizing existing markets and gaining access to new ones, etc.

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That's where things are privatized and owned by real capitalists wielding actual capital to own things instead of the state, democratically elected and otherwise

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Well, I hate to disappoint you, but it's both an historic and economic fact that the corporate power structures in state-owned corporations can be, and most often are, just as capitalistic as those in the private sector.

State capitalism has been a long recognized and established form of capitalism going all the way back to the colonialist mercantilism era prior to the industrial revolution (denounced by Adam Smith in Wealth of Nations in 1775). It became more significant, as with state-owned services and businesses, in the late 1800s in Europe , denounced by Marx and Engels in Socialism: Utopian and Scientific .

It was that system, especially the German model, that provided most of the basis for the Bolshevik model set up in the early years following the 1917 revolution, supposedly to act as a transitional stage toward developing a socialist economy. But with the 1929 Stalinist coup that made that state capitalist model the permanent basis for the Soviet economy , as did the Maoist government in China after 1949.

The post-WWII Polish economic model was, until the 1990s, based on a similar state capitalist model as the former Soviet Union.

How would Marx or Lenin describe post-1929, New Deal America ?. Or the Soviet Union with its barter trade, and an inflexible work force with truck drivers and street sweepers paid nearly as much as professional workers ?.

"Soviet communism accepted its own demise. Capitalism has not accepted the same fate yet." - Stafford Beer