Chapter 26 The fire burns and the building collapses, and it's time to imagine the future again

The English prefixes of finance, insurance, and real estate are F, I, and RE in turn, which happened to coincide with the word "fire", so the nickname "fire economy" came into being. "Fire economy" with its empty-handed white wolf's bubble temperament, these years have been in a hurry, and the global capitalist economy has been booming.But it had an accident recently, and the accident occurred on Dr. Fan Gang's so-called "the other shore" (see "How many years will it take to reach the other shore?" on August 28 in Southern Weekly), which means countless ships all over the world. , from small dream paper boats to bark boats to dragon boats, a destination for rafting day and night.The smoke and dust from the collapse of the five major investment banks on the other side rose like a huge black flag.The incineration industry turned into a cremation industry in a blink of an eye, and the fire was raging, rushing towards the real economy-car companies in the United States and the United Kingdom reduced or stopped production one after another.Numbers loomed on the walls of Wall Street, and the onlookers said it looked like "1-9-2-9."

How big and how long this fire will burn, of course, can only be vividly remembered when he looks back.Will this capitalist economic crisis be like the Asian financial crisis in 1997 or the dot-com bubble economy in the early millennium, when the clouds suddenly appeared and then disappeared, and the sun shines brightly?Perhaps it marks or foretells fundamental changes in the world's political and economic structure?Is it true that world history has taken a turn for the worse—is capitalism ended as soon as it said it was going to end it?This is the suspense brought to us by this crisis plus other aspects such as the energy situation and the geopolitical changes brought about by the rise of emerging economies in recent years.I happened to be editing a magazine recently, so I browsed through many articles and posts with this suspense.As for the post-reading impression, it can be summed up as "the situation that seems to have happened before, the sky that is not yet determined", that is to say, it is still unclear who will end who.But since the future is uncertain again, we can start imagining the future again.

The direct cause of the incident lies in the United States, which lies in the burning economy of the United States. To be precise, it lies in the abnormal relationship between this economy and the real economy.The well-known international financial and investment expert Marc Faber ridiculed this relationship a few months ago: The federal government gives a tax rebate of $600 per person.If you use the money to spend at Walmart, the money goes to China; if you use it to buy gasoline, the money goes to Arabia; if you buy computers, the money goes to India; if you buy fruits and vegetables, the money goes to Honduras, Guatemala, Mexico; If you buy a car, the money goes to Germany; if you buy some inexplicable junk, the money goes to Taiwan.No matter how the money is spent, it does not belong to the US economy.The only way to spend your money on American soil is to drink beer and whores.Only these two products are made in the USA.I start with me.

It is an exaggeration to say that Americans are not involved in production.Americans also produce, but what they produce is out of proportion to what they harvest.Thousands of people don't earn that much money, yet they want to live in such big houses.To resolve this contradiction and realize the ideal of "homeownership", there is a legitimate way of redistribution of wealth—the government and the rich will pay for it, as long as they have a house and sell it.But they chose crooked ways, by packing and repacking, guaranteeing and guaranteeing, with dazzling combinations, such as ABCP, ABX, CBO, CDO, CDS, CLO, CMBS, CPDO, MBS, SIV (in order of strokes of the surnames), put the IOUs Fry them into gold bars and sell them to the dazzling world - because the profits are too high, the companies that issue these things are also busy buying them.This is the original meaning of "financial tools" and "financial innovation", which is not much different from the text messages I often receive on my mobile phone about "invoice transfer business" from "Mr. Li".Marx said earlier that capitalism will suffer from financial paranoia every once in a while, that is, not working to make money and making a lot of money.

Regarding the financial crisis itself, Lu Yi, a researcher at Shanghai Securities Company, explained the concept, described the process, and analyzed the nature of "The American Government: "Rewriting Capitalism" to Rebuild Institutional Credit" by Lu Yi, a researcher at Shanghai Securities Company. .I read Mr. Lu's resume and he was born in a Chinese department. The dramatic changes in Chinese society in the past few decades have sent many people to places that no one could have imagined.New Leftist scholar Han Deqiang’s speech “Current Domestic and International Economic Situation, Causes, and Trends” a few months ago gave a vivid and interesting account of the organic evolution of the post-war capitalist economy to the financial crisis from a more macro perspective.The author predicted the worldwide financial and economic crisis around 2010 in his research on Samuelson's economics ten years ago.Deqiang used to cry wolf in the high-pitched range, but this time the wolf has finally come, he is quite restrained in volume and pitch, adding an interesting material for knowing people and reading the world.

I think the world may not fail to see the nature of gambling fraud contained in the fire economy, but they are not too daring to comment.Maybe they represent the most "advanced productive forces"?Not long ago, Chinese elites were chatting at various dinners, "What do foreign top talents do? Do finance!" The admiration reminds me of Ah Q, who is uneasy about agriculture, rural areas and rural areas. ".The article "It's the End of an Era, But It's Not Just Wall Street" written by nationalist economist Wang Xiaodong can be called clear and insightful, and this is also his consistent style of writing.Wang Wen has an important point of view: this kind of gambling and fraudulent economy is a sign of a country’s downward trend, not its upward trend. Therefore, the youthful modern China should seek to develop a real economy, especially the manufacturing industry, and there is no need to follow the gossip master. Tai Chi step, go to the ditch.Scholars such as Han and Wang who have been marginalized by mainstream economics, their dedication to clarifying the facts to the public is particularly valuable in China, because nowadays the high-end robbing houses are all made up by "professional" and "academic". Rob you and laugh at you for not understanding.

Compared with China's "elites", American elites are more like elites.Not only do they know what is going on with the burning of the economy, but they are also prepared for danger in times of peace.The conversation between Hudson and Jensen, "Fire Economy Goes Out" said something like this: U.S. strategists have been discussing for about 30 years whether and when other countries will rise up against the U.S. free ride [that is, to make money by doing nothing through the current financial system-Ji Su’s note].But we can't predict when they will do it, we will know when they really do it.So we can only do what we want until we meet resistance.So far we have encountered little resistance.The United States has various contingency plans, but other countries seem to have few clear plans.They are reactive rather than proactive.

Rama Basudfan's "Finance·Imperialism·Dollar Hegemony" makes a historical review of the U.S. dollar hegemony system that made ticketless rides and smooth travel all the way.As for the practical consequences of this system, the author said: Today, about 66% of foreign exchange reserves are held in dollars, and about 25% are held in euros.Holders of dollars are firmly nailed to where they are now, because the dollar sell-off will lead to a sharp decline in the value of the dollar, and the value of the dollars they hold will shrink. To put it bluntly, the world not only needs to provide food and drink for parasites, but also lives and dies with them.Although this kind of unreasonable morality can tie the hands and feet of "stakeholders", it cannot tie people's imagination of a more reasonable and fair new world political and economic pattern.Mr. Liao Ziguang, a Chinese American, has been very busy recently when he returned to China. I have heard his speeches, asked him questions at friends’ homes, and read his open letter to world leaders online. He called on everyone to imagine the US dollar together. The end of hegemony.

The imagination of the future depends on the suffering in reality, the relationship between the two is the spring and the gushing: the deeper the suffering, the higher the gushing.Socialism should be said to be the greatest imagining of the future in modern times. It was born of injustice, grew out of injustice, flourished after the two catastrophes of the 20th century, and became the universal pursuit of hundreds of millions of people.But it was overwhelmed by the external environment and its own shortcomings within a few decades. The sound of collapse came not only from the abandoned social and economic system, but also from the absent eyes, cold blood, and closed imagination of the future world.I remember that former Russian Prime Minister Cherno Merkin once said in the 1990s (roughly): We have thought enough, we have nothing to think about, let’s just follow the road ahead!The whole world has probably seen it this way for decades—even retired workers walking in the park have seen it this way, and that’s probably all they can do.But after all, practice is the only criterion for testing the truth. The world walks along the blind path of "ending history" until it reaches the place where the building collapsed, and the world can't help but open their eyes and continue to imagine the future.

It should be said that the most powerful analysis and the most profound criticism of the capitalist system in the contemporary world still come from socialist thought—this kind of thing cannot be counted on Greenspan.When there is no accident, no one likes to listen to the voice of that side. Since there is an accident, you should listen to it.Many people will firmly believe that this financial crisis belongs to capitalism’s “accidental wind chill”, but Jack Rasmus pointed out in “The Intensifying Global Financial Crisis: From Minsky to Marx” that capitalism cannot cure it Occupational diseases or genetic diseases, he said that subprime mortgages, the current general financial crisis, and other financial crises before it all reflect the same internal dynamics. Speculation and hyper-investment are inherent long-term trends in the capitalist financial system.

Nick Beams' "The Worldwide Crisis of Capitalism and the Prospect of Socialism" represents the position and thinking of the Trotsky branch of the socialist family, the so-called Fourth International. The exposure of the capitalist system can be described as well-founded and hearty.The characteristic of Trotskyism lies in its supranational vision and internationalist stance.It should be admitted that in a world that has become so globalized, the solution to many fundamental issues cannot be separated from international vision, values, vision and actions, and the situation will only become more and more like this.However, in this era of capitalist globalization, the nation-state is still the most basic unit for dividing interests in the world, and it is still the most important tool for defending the interests of weak nations and late-developing countries.I read Beams' article and played with its meaning. I feel that the interests of the "working class" they focus on are mainly the interests of the working class in Western Europe and North America.Such "internationalism" has limitations and lacks appeal to idealists in third world developing countries.To solve this shortcoming, we hope not to wait until the Fifth International. Peter Evans's "Another Kind of Globalization", the upper and lower companion volumes, not only in theory, but also at the level of various social movements and institutional innovations (such as "participatory budgeting" in Latin America) expounded the "anti-hegemony" Globalization Movement".Compared with the internationalism of the Trotskyites, the "another kind of globalization" introduced by Evans outlines a broader, more realistic picture that accommodates more interests.The authors, for example, are able to admit that "integration of local and global appeals is premature and will remain empty talk until it is put into practice".The author is also acutely aware that "a local man in a country of the southern hemisphere who dared to risk his life to stand up to a deadly adversary is likely to have betrayed his own interests in a single turn, expecting only a fortune from the Ford Foundation sponsorship funds".He also pointed out that nation-states can play an active role in the "anti-hegemonic globalization" movement. Through these words, we can see that international socialism, as an important force for reforming the current international system, is still at the stage where small groups of forces split up and rise up separately, and it is still quite far away from converging into the general trend of the world.The fundamental reason for this, as mentioned earlier, is that the crisis of the current system is not severe enough.In addition, the shortcomings exposed by various socialisms themselves need to be effectively corrected, and the lessons left behind need to be fully absorbed and digested, because after all, the chances of losing once are very different from those of not losing once. There are various potential forces shaping the new world pattern in the future, among which the energy situation and the rise of emerging economies are the most eye-catching.Capitalist production and consumption methods and the social values ​​and human premise on which they are based have brought mankind into an energy canyon that is getting narrower and narrower, and there is almost no way out. up.Of course, the first to fall will, as usual, be the weak and the poor.Biofuels and the Hunger of the Poor by Ford Rench and Benjamin Thurnauer provides an objective analysis of the ins and outs of biofuels.The authors point out that "for a long time, the biofuel industry has not been dominated by market forces, but by politics and the interests of some large companies".The essence of the biofuel problem is that the rich are extracting oil from the guts of the poor.Unless engineers turn themselves into magicians one after another, I believe that the energy problem will further intensify the contradictions of world capitalism in a more ruthless way in the near future. Let's talk about the rise of emerging economies. The term "economic body" rather than "political body," "society body," "cultural body," and "value body" is full of irony.Indeed, so far these emerging countries are all top students or skippers in the current system. The conflict between the newcomers and the boss is only in the proportion of resource allocation, and they do not seem to bring much quality to the current system. changes—it’s hard to say what caused it.The reason for this is that they do not represent alternative modes of civilization, and the reason for this is that alternative and appealing modes of civilization have not yet appeared in reality—except in the past and in books.Important members of emerging economies include India and Russia, Indian international strategist Raja Mohan's "In the Face of Challenges, India Seeks Policy Continuity".This article originally published in "Foreign Affairs" is obviously a suggestion for Washington's political elite. The author mentioned that although India has always promoted non-alignment, it is determined to join the "Democratic Alliance" of the United States; However, it is only close to Saudi Arabia, an ally of the United States; although relations with China have improved in recent years, the desire to curb China's rise is actually exactly the same as that of the United States.He hopes that the next U.S. government will continue to pay attention to and trust the rising India, so that "the prospect of New Delhi's cooperation with Washington on major global issues will be brighter." In addition, I also read an article "Russia wants the United States to be less ideological" by Russian scholar Dimitry Tlenin.Trenin's article has the frankness and boldness of drinking vodka-after all, it is a big country that defeated Napoleon and Hitler, and led half the world to deal with the other half for half a century.He said: Russia does not want the United States to retreat to its old nest at the moment. That is unrealistic. "Moscow even accepts Washington's leadership to a certain extent." But the United States should not regard itself as a hegemon. ".His article is not long, but there are a lot of warnings and witty words, for example: If the United States promotes the democracy it practices at home to the world, and if Russia implements the democracy it promotes in the world, then it will be complete.Another example: the peak of the United States has passed, and Russia has just escaped death from the top of the mountain to the bottom of the mountain. The Russians are willing to share their newly acquired wisdom with the United States. Trenin also made a thought-provoking remark that Moscow had abandoned any ideology and embraced pragmatism.This remark actually sums up a more general reality.Looking at the dissidents of the world capitalist system, those with ideology have no power, and those with power have no ideology.All the plunders launched by this system are clear-cut, and all the disasters caused are spread all over the world.As for its resistance, those who can hear it are mostly hesitant and don't know what they are talking about; those who can see it basically hide behind the border, and no one dares to join hands with each other.As mentioned earlier, in terms of the historical trend of the past few decades, this situation is not only natural, but also natural.If this trend can continue after staggering, then the anti-systemic forces will retreat and form a net.But if the system really can't survive this crisis, then we need to prepare for a different future, including establishing universal values ​​and lofty aspirations, including designing a long-term roadmap from local separatism to rebuilding world history .Whatever the situation, it's always good to imagine the future.