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clarity
clarity
P  R  E  S  S,   I  N  C  .










ISBN:  0-932863-90-6
9780932863904  $24.95  2012







Ebook $22.00

    SYNOPSIS

    Why, despite the existence of raft of potential international investment outlets, is a
    major share of global wealth and savings mpelled toward a United States (US) Wall
    Street centered casino ?  Why has an increasingly gapping chasm crystallized
    between ever bloating global financial activities and the “real” world economy of
    production and trade? How is it that wealthy governments’injecting trillions of dollars
    into stumbling financial sectors across the globe is failing to create new decent jobs?

    The present volume clearly answers these questions and more as it connects the
    dots linking the 2008 meltdown and over a decade of dress rehearsals for it to a
    rigged global financial game that cemented US international dominance under
    conditions where the US simultaneously attained the status of world’s principal debtor
    economy. It traces out the complicity of Japan in the game beholden as it was to US
    anti-communist largesse for its meteoric post-war rise. It examines how China, the
    former communist Cold War nemesis, paradoxically became the next major
    underwriter of US debt and exporter of global deflation as is sets low wage rates for
    the world.

    The core message of the book is that if an Axis with a stranglehold on the global future
    exists it is not that of those pretenders the names of which are bandied about in
    mainstream media but that of the US, Japan and China. And the global financial game
    at the root of the Axis’ international power is unraveling of the very foundations of
    modernity.

    In a nutshell, the rigged global game undergirding Axis power is that of dollar
    seigniorage. The way it works is that the US furnishes international money for the cost
    of running a printing press while the rest of the world produces goods and services in
    a wage race to the bottom to access those dollars. And select states, predominately
    Japan and China (though others as well), then store the surpluses they amass in
    dollar denominated savings. US access to investment capital through little substantive
    economic effort, as it in fact incurs exponentially burgeoning debt, underpinned its
    seemingly out-of-this-world economic performance across the 1990s and early
    21st century. China’s export bonanza to the US props up its brutal authoritarian
    regime: The latter, in turn,finding further support from the powerful new coastal
    exporting elite. China’s slave-like labor conditions set wage rates for global producers
    and maintain a flow of consumer goods to the US and the world at deflated prices.
    With the rising export prowess of China Japan maintains demand for its capital goods
    beyond East and Southeast Asia which the US had supported as Japan’s
    “sphere of influence” in the post-World War II (WWII) era. Japanese corporations are
    thereby enabled to retain their core competencies bucking global trends while Japan
    further defies global tendencies toward spiraling unemployment to sustain its post-
    WWII social and political consensus.

    The book deftly explores the set of momentous though largely unrecognized
    consequences for the global future which flow from this rigged game:

    TABLE OF CONTENTS

    INTRODUCTION

    CHAPTER ONE
    THE “FREE WORLD” DESIGN FOR PROSPERITY
    Constituents of a New Real Economy
    The Golden Age Algorithm

    CHAPTER TWO
    JAPAN AND CHINA IN THE FUTURE PERFECT TENSE
    Anticommunism and the Rebirth of Japan in the “Free World”
    “Free World” Exclusion and the Rise of Mao Zedong China

    CHAPTER THREE
    FROM GOLDEN AGE TO GLOBALIZATION
    What Goes Up...
    The US at the Global Crossroads, But Hardly Sinking Down

    CHAPTER FOUR
    IDLE MONEY IS THE DEVIL’S PLAYGROUND
    “Resident Evil”
    “Fists Full of Dollars”

    CHAPTER FIVE
    ROTATING MELTDOWNS
    “Banksta’s Paradise”
    “For a Few Dollars More”

    CHAPTER SIX
    THE CHAINS OF CHINA
    The Chinese Connection
    Charles Dickens Meets Henry Ford at the Pearl River Delta
    Red Queen, White Queen

    CHAPTER SEVEN
    THE ARMAGEDDON TRIFECTA
    The Tea Party is Over
    The End of Food
    No “Day After Tomorrow”

    CONCLUSION: WHITHER THE EXITS?
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THE EVIL AXIS OF FINANCE
The US-Japan-China
Stranglehold on the Global
Future

/ Richard Westra

    AUTHOR
Richard Westra received his Ph.D. at Queen’s University, Canada. His
teaching has taken him around the world including Queen’s University
and Royal Military College, Canada, International Study Center, East
Sussex UK, College of The Bahamas, Nassau and Pukyong National
University, South Korea. He has been a Visiting Research Fellow at
Focus on the Global South/Chulalongkorn University Social Research
Institute, Bangkok, Thailand. Currently he is Designated Associate
Professor of Political Science, Graduate School of Law, Nagoya
University, Japan. His work has been published in numerous
international peer reviewed journals and he is on the editorial board of
Journal of Contemporary Asia. His recent books include: Political
Economy and Globalization, Frontiers of Political Economy Series,
Paperbacks Direct, Routledge, 2011 and Confronting Global
Neoliberalism: Third World Resistance and Development Strategies
(ed.), Clarity Press, 2010.

    REVIEWS:
"This is the best researched and hardest hitting book yet written on
what Westra so aptly refers to as "rotating meltdowns" caused by
High Finance's irresponsible expansion of and gambling with debt. A
spreading bankruptcy of states and financial corporations are being
bailed out by the 80 percent that can least afford it. As Westra points
out, the truly alarming result will be a radically increasing inequality
that is opposing a parasitical super rich everywhere to working
people--who will increasingly be unable to find work that will enable
them to support their families or themselves.

                      Robert Albritton, Professor Emeritus
                          Political Economy York University
                                                          Toronto, Canada
"This book by Professor Richard Westra is a brilliant analysis of the
political economy performance of global capitalism, and especially the
structure and dynamics of power and finance in the global and regional
economies. Westra is able to comprehend the performance of the
system while at the same time critically evaluating it on the basis of the
interests of the common man or woman. He identifies the core
commodity chains and production networks supporting the structures
of power associated with the US—China—Japan interface with Europe
and the periphery and remaining semi-periphery. He then posits some
critical measures of governance for redirecting policy in a progressive
direction into the future. This book is a must-read for those interested
in financial dominance over production and society and how to rectify
the situation.”     

                                                              Dr Phillip O’Hara,
President-Elect Association for Evolutionary Economics;
  Director, Global Political Economy Research Unit

    "TEASER" E-BOOK  
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    REVIEWS OF  WESTRA'S EARLIER BOOK
    CONFRONTING GLOBAL NEOLIBERALISM

    "a very good overview of key debates on
    contemporary development strategies and
    alternatives.  As a rule, the chapters are devoted
    to state-based strategies. However, there is also
    material on relations between states, classes
    and social movements, and several chapters
    provide excellent and intriguing critiques of
    development strategy...."
                  —THOMAS BARNES,
                  Capital & Class 2012.

    "Anyone concerned with understanding combined
    and uneven development in the global economy
    today would profit immensely from reading this
    superb collection."  
                                 — TONY SMITH
                  Against the Current, 2011