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The Prism
December 1998
January 1999

Stories Columns

Letters To the editor:

Stop! Please! with the mystified nonsense on the economy. Asian flu?! Expanding and shrinking markets?! Reform?! Asia doesn't have the flu. It has capitalism, which has taken a dive every ten to fifteen years, like clockwork, since the early Nineteenth Century. Right now it is taking a deep one. And we are not asking them to reform their economies. Our giants of finance and industry are demanding that the weakened Asians let American monopoly capitalists buy up bankrupt industries at garage sale prices.

After each of these crises over the years, brought on when competition drives production clear past the capacity of buyers to consume, the richest players move in and gobble up the merely rich. This is the process by which 385 people now have as much wealth as 45 percent of the world's entire population. It's called monopoly, not "reform," and there is no reason we should support it.

These so-called "free trade" and "reform" policies are neither, and they are bad for most Americans as well as a bad for most people worldwide. On the other hand, they are very good for bankers, speculators, and Fortune 500 CEOs, who pay Republicans' and Democrats' big bucks (disguised as campaign contributions) to ensure they take the correct positions.

Daniel Curewitz
Durham

 


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