Originally Posted by contracycle

So to paraphrase:"unless chinese and Indian capitalist can be persuaded to stab themselves in the gut, we won't have much hope of persuading western capitalists of shooting shooting themselves in the head".

Again, where did I say we're giving anyone a choice? This is negotiation. Muscle is what matters.

At the end of the day, it is in the interest of the western liberal capitalist democracies to stop undercutting each others and act in a unified fashion. Coordination is always a bitch but, post-WWII, we had the Bretton Woods conference which did give us the Bretton Woods institutions and rules of the game which dominated the next 30-40 years.

It can be done. OTOH, WWII was a big event which helped concentrate the minds of our dear leaders. Today's crisis is major but not on the same scale. We can hope that rioting in Greece, OWS everywhere act as a focus but, as with everything human, it's not written in stone that we will manage to reform our institutions.

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