The complacent optimism of capitalist consensus is fast disappearing. At the beginning of this year, the general view about the world economy was that US growth would slow gradually to about 3% from 5%, Japan would pick up a little to about 2% and Europe would trundle along at about 2.5%. The US central bank, the Federal Reserve, would cut interest rates to ensure that any slowdown would not mean a loss of investor confidence or consumer demand. Well, January seems like eons ago in global economics. After a non-stop spate of warnings about lower profits from the main US corporations and the release of economic data each day that showed a weakening economy, US stock prices have plummeted. Michale Roberts analyses how all this is affected by the growing problem of deflation in Japan.
The coup in Pakistan on November 1996 underlines the nature of the Pakistan regime as a regime of crisis. It is a graphic expression of the impasse of all the regimes of the ex colonial countries. Economic crisis, mass unemployment and underemployment, inflation, financial bankruptcy, and complete subjugation to world imperialism--these are the hallmarks of the situation.
This is a translation of a column by Munno Bhai published in the daily Pakistani paper Jang on May 25th, 1999, with a circulation of 750,000. Munno Bhai writes regularly for the Marxist fortnightly paper Jeddo Judh (Class Struggle)