Sorry if this is a few days delayed. I'm running perpetually behind
these days, as I've taken to complaining to ISP's for every spam
I receive, and that's a lot; really slows down my mail reading.
"Ken Walker" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote:
>I feel obliged, after lurking here for some time, to point to the odd
>fallacy:
>Thomas Lunde offers us this:
[ An article from le Monde, miscredited by Mr. Walker to Andre Gouin]
>> What weight
>> do the cumulative currency reserves of the United States, Japan,
>> Germany, France, Italy, the United Kingdom and Canada that is, the
>> seven richest countries in the world - have when faced with the
>> financial attacking force of private investment funds, for the most
>> part British or Japanese? Not a lot. Just as an example, let us
>> consider that in the greatest financial elilort made in modern
>> economic history in favour of a country - in this case Mexico - the
>> great States of the world (including the United States), the World
>> Bank and the International Monetary Fund managed, together, to raise
>> about 50 billion dollars. A considerable sum of money. Well, the big
>> three American pension fund managers, Fidelity Investments, Vanguard
>> Group and Capital Research and Management control 500 billion
>> dollars. The managers of these funds hold in their hands a financial
>> power of indescribable proportions - one that no government minister
>> or central bank governor in the world possesses. In a market that
[...]
>The foreign currency reserves (which may only be a part of the
>"cumulative currency reserves" M. Gouin refers to) of the G7
>countries do in fact approach 500 billion dollars excluding gold
>reserves. These reserves are available for exercising the sort of
>influence that M. Gouin favours, amongst other things. I would bet
>my poke that the owners of the investment funds are not prepared to
>allow the use of the slightest portion of their funds for such
>purposes.
Where then do you think the funds come from, such as those used
by the currency speculators in their systematic attacks on the
currencies of the asian rim countries this fall? Every investor
who puts their money in a money market fund, and every investor
whose money is floating in accounts between other specific investments,
is available to the speculators working for large investment firms.
And most of these investors don't know enough about the social
ramifications of speculation attacks to give a damn whether their money
is used, as long as it makes a profit.
The currency speculators need enormous cash resources to successfully
collapse a currency. Investment funds could be the only source of
this kind of money that I can imagine. Are you saying that the
speculators are playing with their own vast private fortunes?
Seems beyond credibility to me.
-Pete Vincent
