21.12.2006
“America’s Suicidal Statecraft”: Short
Description
“Civilisations
die from suicide,” Toynbee warned us, “not by murder.”
The
United States, along with Australia and several other countries, have pursued
fatally flawed economic and financial policies for almost four decades,
beginning with ill-judged interest-rate hikes and stagflation in the late 1960s
and early 1970s. They then punctuated the years afterwards with policy
departures which, almost without exception, made things worse. In effect, they
embarked on serial attempts at economic, social, political and strategic
suicide through often obsessive devotion to such concepts as “free” markets,
deregulation, privatisation and globalisation.
They
neglected mounting dangers from debt, deficits and derivatives, from rampant
consumerism and speculation, chronic unemployment, low wages and mounting
inequality at home and abroad. Long years of unmitigated error have reduced a
once magnificent American economy to one that increasingly resembles a
hollowed-out shell.
Though
there continue to be great potential strengths in the American economy and
society, these strengths have already been gravely diminished and the
unremitting ebb of intrinsic power persists while other economies grow
stronger, ironically by grasping the opportunities that feckless American
policies continue to surrender to them. Perversely, predatory finance capitalism
has nourished and become a victim of the prey that, with exquisite cleverness,
it sought to capture and exploit.
This
erosion of economic and financial strength has grave social, political and
strategic consequences. Not so long ago, the United States was, despite some
inevitable imperfections, one of the world's most admired, progressive and
transparent democracies. That democracy has been increasingly corrupted over
the years and America's capacity to carry out its role as a superpower - certainly
as the world's single superpower – has been put gravely at risk.
These
are some of the major issues addressed in “America’s Suicidal Statecraft”. Basically,
they are down-to-earth economic and financial issues but they have had and
continue to have the most far-reaching social, political and strategic impacts
- for the United States, for closely allied countries such as Britain,
Australia, Canada and New Zealand and, indeed, for the whole world community.
There
are still ways in which the decline and prospective fall of the United States
can be reversed; but that will call for an enormous exercise of political will
and, above all, a comprehensive change of vision. At the moment, given the many
complexities and uncertainties in the world economic, social, political and
strategic situation, the most likely outcome is that American policies will be
reversed and a new vision adopted only as irresistible imperatives when a
devastating collapse has already occurred or is transparently under way. A
crucial question is how many months or years we have left before we reach this
point of collapse and just what we can do that will be effective in the
meantime.
“America’s Suicidal Statecraft” suggests some approaches.
Table of Contents
Preface xiii
Chapter 1
The Economic Heritage
Chapter 2
The Engine of Growth
Chapter 3
Money, Credit and Interest
Chapter 4
The Demise of Macroeconomics
Chapter 5
The Present Economic Profile: Debts, Bubbles and Busts
Chapter 6 "What's Good for General Motors..."
Chapter 7
The Invisible Hand and Free Markets
Chapter 8
Finance Capitalism
Chapter 9
Privatisation, Globalisation and Derivatives
Chapter 10 Central Banks and Supermen
Chapter 11 Leviathan or Lilliputian
Chapter 12 The Bottom Line
Annex, Notes, Selected Bibliography, Index
About the Author
Dr James Cumes is a former Australian
Ambassador whose perspectives go back to boyhood in the Great Depression and
active service in World War Two. After studying economics at Queensland and
Canberra universities, he took his doctorate at the London School of Economics
and Political Science (LSE) for his work on “Foreign Economic Policy.” He
foretold and diagnosed the “stagflation” of the 1970s in his books “The
Indigent Rich” (1971) and “Inflation” (1974); and, in his later writings, was
unique in explaining how domestic inflation shifted to external trade and
payments, especially from the 1980s onwards, a shift that created the Asian
Tigers and enabled the resurgence of the giant economies of China and India. Always
a critic of mainstream interest-rate and credit policies, he shows in
“America’s Suicidal Statecraft” how the United States fecklessly drained away
its economic strength and endangered its political and strategic position as
the world’s single superpower.
Dr Cumes has written a dozen books on economics,
history, government and human behaviour, and four novels, including
“Haverleigh” based on his experiences as a teenage soldier in World War Two and
later. Post-war, he held senior positions in Australia’s Foreign Office and
diplomatic service. After postings in Paris and London, he was Chargé
d'Affaires Bonn; Head of the Australian Military Mission, Berlin; Chargé
d’Affaires Brussels; High Commissioner to Nigeria and visiting Ambassador to
West African countries from Sierra Leone to the Congo; Ambassador to the
European Union and several individual European countries; Permanent
Representative to the United Nations Vienna and UNIDO; Governor on the Board of
IAEA; Australian representative at numerous United Nations and other major
conferences around the world.
He is married to Heide Schulte von Bäuminghaus, they have a daughter, Kim Alexandra Sarah and homes in Australia, Vienna, Monaco and Cannes.