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Sachs-hund

By Owen Paine on Tuesday February 3, 2009 01:55 PM

Beware this creep, Jeffrey Sachs, the Quetelet Professor of Sustainable Development at Columbia University.

He is a vicious climbing grasping sanctimonious hollow pine of a grifter, the Geraldo Rivera of development economics, a lamp unto himself alone, a scorpion fire, a sickening soul, a blemish on shame itself.

Once Doctor Shock to both Poland and Bolivia, the smiley face of raw neolib market stampedes that brought misery worthy of the four horsemen in its wake, he's now Doctor African Makeover, the white rain man that wretched sub-Saharan black folks never asked for, but got right up their ass.

In the last decade, this trans-nat limited-liability emerging-economy death-wish incarnate, despite heading for deep cover as a champion of the poorest of the global poor, remains nothing but a babyfaced corporate pimp, ready to facilitate the free range profiteers and various other serial rapists of one backward nation after another.

I'll not trouble you with the details. Just never read a word he writes or believe anything he claims. If he said horse jockeys oughta all be over 7 feet tall, he couldn't get himself one inch further from the truth than he is right now, 24/7.

This undauntable guy's ever-boring, ever-ready ambition will never give up the hustle. His foul spirit wants in on everything, and he'll get in on everything too, if he ain't sent rocketing down to the circle of Hell reserved for oily human corkscrews like him.

On the other hand, this shrewd witty chap --

... Dani Rodrik, despite -- or more likey because of -- an odd Sancho as Quixote side, must have a place waiting for him somewhere up there in God's own sugar bowl.

I quote from a recent light and popular advice piece of his, intended for the same array of emerging states the above Sachs man has tried poisoning, states now obviously confronting a fast submerging "order" here on market Earth:

"First on the agenda must be new rules that make financial crises less likely and their consequences less severe.Left to their own devices, global financial markets provide too much credit at too cheap a price in good times, while they deliver too little credit at bad times. The only effective response is counter-cyclical capital-account management. -- discouraging foreign borrowing in good times, and preventing capital flight in bad. "
This reads to me like Clausewitz on war -- splendid fast volley after volley, all forehand overhead smashes.

But soft! Here entereth the villain --

"Instead of frowning on capital controls and pushing for financial openness, the IMF should be in the business of actively helping countries implement such policies. It should also enlarge its emergency credit lines to act more as a lender of last resort to developing nations hit by financial whiplash. "
Note the pair of 'shoulds' hurled at our bogeyman, the hated IMF -- that's merely a respectable academic's way of saying "won't happen, and that's what the matter with the IMF."
"Second, the crisis is an opportunity for achieving greater transparency on all fronts, including banking practices in the advanced countries that facilitate tax evasion in the developing nations. Wealthy citizens in the developing world evade more than a hundred billion of US dollars worth of taxes in their home countries each year thanks to bank accounts they maintain in Zurich, Miami, London, and elsewhere. Governments of these nations should ask for and be given information on their nationals’ accounts."
And my dog Willy should live longer then me, God bless him, but....
"Third, developing nations should also push for a Tobin tax (**) – a tax on global foreign currency transactions. Set at a small enough level – say 0.25% – such a tax would have little adverse effect on the global economy while raising considerable amount of revenue. At worst the efficiency costs would be minor; at best the tax would discourage excessive short-term speculation. The revenues collected – which would easily amount to hundreds of billions of US dollars annually – could be spent on global public goods such as development assistance, vaccines for tropical diseases, and the greening of technologies in use in the developing world."
Give me a toke on that dream pipe, willya, brother Dan?

------------------

(**) While we dream -- a Tobin tax rate might work better if structured to move up and down dynamically, like a congestion tax.

Comments (4)

Amen, in spades, OP-san!

This whole Friedmanian wave that accompanied/paved for the Great Restoration/Reagan Revolution is proving to be about as magic-based as we though back in 1979, isn't it?

According to Sachsual Fantasy, the automobile isn't a spent epoch-maker, but the first one in capitalist history to bat twice!

http://www.consumertrap.com/?p=881

Violet:

Thanks for this. He and that rat fuck Bono have a lot to answer for. This is a good summary of the Live8 scam, with many good links:

http://www.thecatsdream.com/blog/2005/07/abominable-live-8.htm

Cynthia:

Hi Paine!***

Now that the neolibs have joined forces with their kissing cousins, the neocons, in expanding their sphere of influence to encompass the Dems, the Rethugs can no longer be solely blamed for selling America down the river to the ports of Banana-Republic-Land.

***You look to be the same Paine who crafts gut-wrenching poems over at Mark Thoma's Place

op:

dani had a fourth point
the most important one :

"Fourth, in trade, developing nations should push to enshrine the notion of “policy space” in the constitution of the WTO. "

"The goal would be to ensure that developing countries can employ the kind of trade and industrial policies needed to restructure and diversify their economies and set the stage for economic growth."

poison to trans nats eh ??

120 or so national development policy regimes

here's the money passage:


"All countries that have successfully globalised have used such policies, many of which are currently not allowed under WTO rules (e.g. subsidies, domestic-content rules, reverse engineering of patented products)."

free trade is for
national fools suckers
and of course hegemons


"Policy space is also needed to ensure that important social and political ends – such as food security – are compatible with the rules of international trade. Developing nations should argue that recognizing these economic and political realities makes the global trade regime not weaker and more susceptible to protectionism, but healthier and more sustainable. "

amen

translation into bottom line take:

"fat chance "

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