New IDEAS Working Paper on the alternative views of the collapse of Bretton Woods. From the abstract:Naked Keynesianism — Hemlock for economics students
Contrary to conventional views which suggest that the collapse of Bretton Woods represented the beginning of the end of the global hegemonic position of the dollar, the collapse of the system liberated American policy from convertibility to gold, and imposed a global fiat system still dominated by the floating dollar. The end of Bretton Woods and the set of regulations that imposed capital controls were part of the agenda of many powerful groups within the US, and led to the creation of a more dollarized world. The challenge to the dollar might arise, eventually, from the decline in the United States’power to determine the pricing of key commodities in global markets; but it is premature to think about the demise of the dollar. The limitations of the dominant views about Bretton Woods are ultimately tied to mainstream economics.
The Consolidation of Dollar Hegemony after the Collapse of Bretton Woods: Bringing power back in
Matias Vernengo | Associate Professor of Economics, Bucknell University
5 comments:
Hudson and Co beat him to it
https://michael-hudson.com/2021/07/moving-beyond-dollar-hegemony/
Linked to here at MNE (7/6)
Just read the paper today Tom. Never realised you posted it up.
Just read the paper today Tom. Never realised you posted it up.
No worries.
Have to agree with Mike's comment there a bit. Interesting points, some interesting history, but theoretically, Hudson sometimes goes way off the MMT rez - and gets in trouble. And it is not just an old-fashioned manner of speaking from an old man. Some of Bill Mitchell's critique of Beardsley Ruml is just this. Mitchell tends to be over-rigid, and is at sea about US history, but doesn't realize that.
Probably due to the influence on Hudson of Marx and Marx's dumbest idea, his botch of monetary theory, his metallism. Which had enormous, tragic and wholly deleterious influence on his theory and then on socialism and world history up to this day. Money backs gold. Gold doesn't back money. Marx said things like money etc are social relations - but didn't take what he was saying there seriously enough, while he took the "commodity"/thing aspect much too seriously. Marx a la MMT is much more internally consistent than Marx warts and all. As Wray says, the mainstream gets everything backwards, and here Marx and Hudson are too conservative, too mainstream.
From quick looks Vernengo's paper is better, more reliable.
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