and what else is common besides that all are crises?
neither the circumstances, nor the money, nor the liquidity, nor the available information to public, nor the literacy of the public, nor the complexity of the problem, nor the populace impacted could be compared without much if-if.

While I have read briefly of Harvey’s work, I won’t lie and say I’m either current on it, or that I can put it in context; I can’t. I’m actually grappling with multiple book length monographs at present most of which have zero to do with the context of economics, so I’m out of date. I’ll dig up his stuff come Summer—a little beach-side reading *heh*—and re-form, or more accurately form an opinion. Thanks for the reminder.

Re: Wallerstein, I actually formed some major disagreements with his cycle model in the process of making a cycle model of my own of quite different function. I have great respect for his depth and integrity as an economic historian, however. He’s no slouch as a thinker, in any field. I wish that my own work on cycle models was done, and perhaps I will return to it later this year, as it has much value for our present circumstances. But . . . it isn’t done. Life got in the way.

I agree that Wallerstein has done excellect work and wonder what opinion you may have about David Harvey who, as you likely know, also approaches uneven and combined development from a somewhat different, more radical, angle than Arrighi or Wallerstein?

Harvey’s understanding of present day ‘primitive accumulation’ lends itself, I believe, to a further grasp of what has helped underpin the expansion of fictitious capital and, as ‘accumulation through dispossesion’, may assist is ’seeing’ the limits to financialization.

The comment regarding lending to developing countries was in the context of domestic public debt floatation, not in the context of capital inflows per se. The issue with domestic debt, which I take the excerpt from this paper to support, is that functioning public debt is the fulcrum by which countries ‘develop’: absent this fulcrum, no amount of leverage suffices to develop an economy successfully. To my non-comprehensive recollection, it has in fact been historically the case that the _successful_ capitalist countries became successful by firming up THEIR OWN PUBLIC DEBT. This accumulated capital in local hands much more so than commercial processes alone (where those occurred), and put a floor under economic activity. Competence in handling money for the long-term was acquired locally, together with the legal/regulatory structure to make the process cohere. Successful capitalist countries all ‘bootstraped’ themselves up by their own debt market; only after that did they attract significant foreign ‘investment’ and have the capacity to deploy the money productively rather than simply speculatively. Reinhart’s study here seems to extend the sample beyond the notable successes to even the shaky sisters.

The point, then, is that you can’t borrow your way to success as an emergent economy _in the absence of a well-founded public debt market_. The issue of capital inflows will, I take it here, only exacerbate the failure of a borrow-to-grow approach. Can you think of even a single case of an economy in the 20th century which _lacked_ sound domestic public debt processes but became successful from ‘foreign investment?’ I find it hard to do so, though there must be come counter-example, here. But just try comparing the early 20th century experiences of Japan and Argentina, and you’ll see what I mean.

On Giovanni Arrighi: I have been somewhat less convinced by Arrighi’s overall model than by Fischer’s study, or Immanuel Wallerstein’s historical synthesis. His view is very global and integrated, though, and he is very definitely worth reading closely in my view.

Russel, thanks for the link. I’m going to track down that full paper.

Thanks. I hate commenting on summaries, and Martin Wolf had put a link to the paper a week or so ago, but at NBER, where you have to pay to get a copy, and the mechanics of all the registering bug me, so I never did it. So this is very much appreciated.

Sorry- Broken up to fit the reduced screen.

The direct link to the larger paper.

The attached paper by Giovanni Arrighi is, from a world systems perspective, related:
http://matisse.univ-paris1.fr/fr/IMG/pdf/Arrighi2-2.pdf