Egypt Protest
From: Chung Nguyen
Date: Fri, Feb 4, 2011 at 11:33 PM
To: Vietnam Studies Group <vsg@u.washington.edu>
The obvious and easiest-to-draw lesson is that any government which does not have the genuine support of its people, which does not have their interests at heart, which does not implement policies for their benefits, but for the benefits of foreign corporations and a corrupt native clique instead, will eventual fall, even if it takes 30 years of autocratic and brutal rule. Once a regime loses the trust of its people, it cannot hope to survive long.
In reaction to the people's universal condemnation of China's attempt to take over almost the whole of the Eastern Sea (South China Sea), the Communist party has successfuly co-ordinated with the U.S. to internationalize the issue, showing that it has worked diligently behind the scene to find a more equitable solution. It especially demonstrates that it isn't a client state of China, something that would rob the party of any legitimacy.
The second lesson is to beware of the neoliberal policies of a laissez-faire privatization that allows the country's major financial institutions to be freely taken over by foreign entities and the whims of global capital, whose only interest is short-term profits, not long-term commitment for development. This aspect of the crisis in Egypt and Tunisia is ignored in the U.S .mainstream press. The role of the IMF and other international institutions in creating the crisis is glossed over. It's a crisis that appears as if without history and without context.
Mark Twain dictum - "If you don't read the newspaper, you are uninformed; if you do read the newspaper, you are misinformed" - is more prescient than ever.
In this regard, the proposal for the 60-billion-dollar high-speed rail in Vietnam is a warning signal. Although it's to be funded by Japan and not the IMF, the debt would be a crushing burden on the economy. How many Vietnamese can afford to ride it? The interests alone would leave little left for any substantial social programs. Without economic sovereignty, there will be no political sovereignty, which is what happens to Egypt and Tunisia.
A Revolutionary Movement and the Future of Egyptian (In)dependence
Challenging America's Pharaoh
By DAVID H. PRICE
http://www.counterpunch.com/price02032011.html < http://www.counterpunch.com/price02032011.html >
The Egyptian Uprising Is a Direct Response to Ruthless Global Capitalism
AlterNet < http://www.alternet.org/ > / By Nomi Prins < http://www.alternet.org/authors/7820/ >
http://www.alternet.org/world/149793/the_egyptian_uprising_is_a_direct_response_to_ruthless_global_capitalism/ < http://www.alternet.org/world/149793/the_egyptian_uprising_is_a_direct_response_to_ruthless_global_capitalism/ >
U.S. Chickens Come Home to Roost in Egypt
by Marjorie Cohn
http://www.commondreams.org/view/2011/02/02-1 < http://www.commondreams.org/view/2011/02/02-1 >
How Goldman Sachs gambled on starving the world's poor - and won
Posted by Johann Hari on Friday, July 02, 2010
http://johannhari.com/2010/07/02/how-goldman-sachs-gambling-on-starving-the-worlds-poor-and-won < http://johannhari.com/2010/07/02/how-goldman-sachs-gambling-on-starving-the-worlds-poor-and-won >
How should we interpret the re-actions in the West, from Europe and the White House? How do we distinguish real policy from the noblesse oblige of perception management? If you read the MSM, you won't have a clue! Without history and context, it's mostly noise. Here's an alternative analysis to consider:
The Fox Guarding the Henhouse
By Chris Toensing
http://ipsnews.net/news.asp?idnews=54349 < http://ipsnews.net/news.asp?idnews=54349 >
CN
UMASS Boston
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From: Thomas Jandl
Date: Sat, Feb 5, 2011 at 10:00 AM
To: Vietnam Studies Group <vsg@u.washington.edu>
I think the critique of the World Bank, IMF and global capitalism/Washington Consensus misses the mark by a mile or two. None of the countries relevant to this posting was a neoliberal poster boy. Au contraire, Tunisia and Egypt are crony regimes where you get somewhere because you are connected. The big guys create rules and regulations to help their cronies -- the antithesis of laissez faire.
Vietnam has opened up significantly (and with great success). But Vietnam isn't exactly neoliberal either. Vinashin as a Washington Consensus product? Probably not!
One could well argue that in Vietnam (and in Tunisia and Egypt) more laissez faire is what the people actually want. The young Tunisian whose self-immolation started it all wanted to be free to sell his vegetables without a dozen of officials to see, documents to fill out, bribes and fees to pay. I would think he was protesting too much (and of course too bad) government, not too much free market.
Food prices? Again, in places where there was a free market for food prices, protests are rare (and food tends to be plentiful). It is where governments distort prices and with them the incentive to produce that the problems arise. Then the elites subsidize food to gain favors, needs to borrow the money to pay tgose subsidies, but at some point the bills come due. Then we blame the lenders rather than those who distorted prices and borrowed to pay the subsidies. And then we get a riot.
There are examples of problems with market opening, but Tunisia, Egypt and Vietnam are not particularly good ones.
_________________________________
Thomas Jandl
School of International Service
American University
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From: Jalel Sager
Date: Sat, Feb 5, 2011 at 11:21 AM
To: Vietnam Studies Group <vsg@u.washington.edu>
I think it's important to avoid conflating government, and the reach of its regulation, with corruption. Yes, in Vietnam (and perhaps Egypt), there is a regulation every step of the way--but there also seems to be a known market price for nearly every regulation; it is a sort of cryptic laissez-faire with increased transaction costs. People there realize this. The influx of hot money and FDI, the process of privatization, and their control over international loans has something to do with the high rents officials are able to extract. Crony capitalism and neoliberalism have proven comfortable bedfellows in the past.
Construing the self-immolation in Tunisia in any way as a protest against regulation itself, rather than its abuse, corruption, and the correlated lack of opportunity, to me misses the mark. Not even its greatest adherents believe that much in the so-called invisible hand.
Jalel Sager
University of California-Berkeley
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From: Thomas Jandl
Date: Sat, Feb 5, 2011 at 7:06 PM
To: Vietnam Studies Group <vsg@u.washington.edu>
Fair enough. The question remains to what degree these abuses you refer to (and I agree with) are associated with globalization, liberalization, trade and the IMF.
The poor veggie peddler's plight was not associated with trade liberalization, crony capitalism and what not? The kind of abuse that is under attack in Tunisia and Egypt has very little to do with liberalization, or do you think that these peddlers and unemployed university graduates would be living a better life and without government abuse if only there were less FDI and hot money (which, BTW, I don't believe there to be much of in these two countries).
Vietnam would be a much more likely candiate for unrest if hot money (of which Vietnam has fairly little) and FDI (of which it has a lot) or trade (trade to GDP = 140%) were the cause of disenchantment. But globalizing Vietnam is quiet and will remain so unless globalization no longer delivers, while the very little globalized Tunisia and Egypt burn.
Thomas Jandl
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From: Balazs Szalontai
Date: Sat, Feb 5, 2011 at 8:07 PM
To: Vietnam Studies Group <vsg@u.washington.edu>
This is partly true and partly isn't. On the other hand, a long-term, institutionalized price distortion is bound to have negative consequences sooner or later; I fully agree with that. I also agree with the point that the extensive corruption and ubiquitous bureaucracy has greatly fueled resentment in Tunisia and Egypt. On the other hand, agricultural producers and urban consumers may actually consider such subsidies not just useful but even essential. It was not without reason that the first mass riots in Sadat's Egypt broke out in 1977 when the government, precisely because of IMF and World Bank pressure, abruptly eliminated state subsidies on basic foodstuffs. Even in South Korea, where the agricultural sector underwent a rather impressive development, the idea of import liberalization has been traditionally resented by farmers who greatly benefited from state subsidies and import controls. One may say, of course, that the more free market, the better, but since subsidized agriculture has been a fairly extensive phenomenon in Western Europe, it might be unfair to single out Third World countries for criticism.
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From: Adam @ Nexon
Date: Sat, Feb 5, 2011 at 8:39 PM
To: Vietnam Studies Group <vsg@u.washington.edu>
The economics in all this varies over time and between schools. US import tariffs on manufactures averaged, what, 50%? through the 19 th Century. This is a long-term institutionalised price distortion. Since it was largely invisible to most Americans, perhaps the negative long-term consequences in terms of views of state power and the role of free markets in nation-building are obvious. Or the positive ones, depending on your perspective. The other latecomer was Germany, and there use of state power to support markets was far clearer. So whilst the standard and familiar rhetorics, and theories, argue for and against such effects, surely the key issue is elsewhere – how such issues become subjectively important. And in that context, just as Vietnam has at times been lauded by various economists for its apparent policy settings, so at other times other apparent policy settings have been used to attack it. But, it being Vietnam, just what sovereignty is, and what intentionality, of any, it carries, is usually contentious, to say the least. That is why we learnt so much lawyers and others about ‘law’, because the existence of Cong Bao was, very early, rather well known. It is also why we need to know far more about conservative Vietnamese economists.
Adam
Prof. Adam Fforde
PO 2096 Ivanhoe E
Vic 3079 AUSTRALIA
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From: Hunter Marston
Date: Sun, Feb 6, 2011 at 12:02 PM
To: Vietnam Studies Group <vsg@u.washington.edu>
Point well made, Adam. In this case, conservative economics in Vietnam is drastically different from that in the US (deregulation, the rule of the free market, as opposed to liberal programs of social welfare, tighter government regulation on market mechanisms, etc.). I'm interested to know what you mean by conservative Vietnamese economists. No doubt they have a voice in or outside the VCP, but I'm unclear what their stated policies might be.
Cheers,
Hunter
--
Hunter S. Marston
MA Candidate Southeast Asian Studies '12
Jackson School of International Studies
University of Washington-Seattle
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From: Adam @ Nexon
Date: Sun, Feb 6, 2011 at 12:16 PM
To: Vietnam Studies Group <vsg@u.washington.edu>
I am not too precise as I do not know too much detail. I would use the term to refer to those who resist in some way or another what is seen by others as progress – those against the commercialisation processes of the 1980s, those against the economic processes that many see as accompanying the rise of civil society an civil society action in the 1990s and first decade of the 2000s … Conservative in the traditional sense of seeing more good in the imagined past … as it is seen in the present … rather than the obvious alternatives.
Your use of the term in the US – I assume you are American - is of course very particular, and I see it as referring to yet another an imagined past, the ‘free market that built the United States’, which is course is highly questionable. One could refer to the high levels of import tariffs in the 19 th century, the massive links between cartels and corrupt politics before the first WW, and after, etc. British conservatisms are rather different, of course, and continental liberals sit on the right in the European Parliament (the Lib Dems do not, I think). So for me the value of the terms in Vietnam refers to the imagined historical processes.
And of course ‘policy’ in Vietnam, qua chinh sach, is not central to Party ideas of what should be; rather, terms such as ‘cuong linh’, ‘duong loi’, refer to, ideally, far broader statement of what should be, and is …
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From: Hunter Marston
Date: Sun, Feb 6, 2011 at 12:39 PM
To: Vietnam Studies Group <vsg@u.washington.edu>
I agree with you there that what we're calling conservative economists in Vietnam would be in the camp resisting market-oriented socialism or whatever hat economic progress goes under these days in Vietnam. My use of the term "conservative economics" in America - yes, I'm guilty as charged: American - referred more to contemporary domestic economics (specifically concerning the debate in the wake of the 2008 recession) than to historical conditions, the obvious contradictions of which (tariffs, et al.) you are right to point to.
And I also like your point on civil society, and associational life more generally, accompanying commercialization (forgive my 'z'). I think private businesses interact with the state in similar binding relationships. The give and take that characterizes associational life in Vietnam, whether in the private sector or civil society networks, continues to negotiate the current reforms in Vietnamese society. Do you have any points of reference in Vietnam studies scholarship that I could use to pursue this topic further? I'm aware of Bill Hayton and Martin Gainsborough's recent books, but I haven't scraped up too many more resources yet.
Thanks,
Hunter
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From: Adam @ Nexon <adam@aduki.com.au>
Date: Sun, Feb 6, 2011 at 1:26 PM
To: Vietnam Studies Group <vsg@u.washington.edu>
Hi
Joerg Wischermann has recently published some results of his research on civil society action, and he has some earlier papers too. I have a paper forthcoming in Asian Politics and Policy. Joerg’s paper is I think in the GIGA journal out of Hamburg. I am sure he has a good lit review.
Vietnamese is fun here – one can, if one pushes it, use the ‘dan su’ – civil as in civil society – to refer to the ‘give and take’ in associational life, as you put it. In other words, one should be ‘civil’ – dan su – in the same way as com is ‘com binh dan’. There is another thesis to be written here on the dualistic origins of words used to refer to such norms – most of course refer to literacy – vanminh – as our refer to urbanity ( J ) – civilisation – but this second strand refers to ‘popular’ … which I personally like a lot.
I would welcome gheckoesque ( L ) advice on how ‘associational’ has been translated. Rights of Association? Quyen lien ket’ Sounds to my ear rather horrid. OK for economics, though, surely.
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From: Jalel Sager
Date: Sun, Feb 6, 2011 at 7:55 PM
To: Vietnam Studies Group <vsg@u.washington.edu>
Right, I would not push that association (without a book's worth of evidence behind it). Egypt's governance problems seem to me more closely related to geostrategic dynamics, and the country's location and function, than to its macroeconomic policy and place in the international market system; better to consider those two systems separately here.
I agree with you in the case of Vietnam's quietude, though I fear the gold rush does not make it easy for the government to sort itself out and begin building the kind of institutions that will allow a smooth post-boom transition. What's the solution? I wish I knew.
Jalel Sager
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From: Michael Karadjis
Date: Mon, Feb 7, 2011 at 4:46 AM
To: Vietnam Studies Group <vsg@u.washington.edu>
Thomas with due respect I believe you are quite mistaken about this, not only your initial assumption (which you seem to have withdrawn) that there is any conflict between neo-liberalism and corrupt, crony capitalism (just think of the Philippines, or for that matter, the US), but also on the particulars. Tunisia and Egypt are/were I believe very much poster children of neo-liberalism, and both have loads of FDI, especially Egypt. Neither have anything at all to do with Nasser's Egypt, which you seem to allude to, which was buried decades ago.
Here are some details:
" Mohamed Bouazizi, the 26-year-old Tunisian who catalyzed this
revolution, didn’t set himself on fire in protest of his inability
to vote, but because of anguish over his job status in a country
with 15.7 percent unemployment. The six other men in Algeria,
Egypt and Mauritania who followed suit were also unemployed.
"Tunisia’s dismal economic environment was a direct result of its
increasingly “liberal” policy toward foreign speculators. Of the
five countries covered by the World Bank’s, Investment Across
Sectors Indicator, Tunisia had the fewest limits on foreign
investment. It had opened all areas of its economy to foreign
equity ownership, except the electricity sector.
"Egypt adopted a similar come-and-get-it policy, on steroids. From
2004 to 2008, as the world economic crisis was being stoked by the
U.S. banking system and its rapacious toxic asset machine,
Mubarak’s regime was participating in a different way. Mubarak
wasn’t pushing subprime loans onto Egyptians; instead, he was
embarking on an economic strategy that entailed selling large
pieces of Egypt’s banks to the highest international bidder.
"The result was a veritable grab-fest of foreign bank takeovers in
the heart of Cairo. The raid began with Greek bank, Piraeus,
taking a 70 percent stake in the Egyptian Commercial Bank in 2005,
and included the sale of Bank of Alexandria, one of the four
largest state-run banks, to the Italian bank, Gruppo Sanpaolo IMI
in 2006. For the next two years, "hot" money poured into Egypt, as
international banks muscled into Egypt and its financial system,
before the intensity leveled off in 2008.
"While foreign banks were setting up shop, Egypt also eliminated
the red tape that came with foreign property investment, through
decree number 583. This transformed the country, already a tourist
hotspot, into a magnet for global real estate speculation.
(Something that worked out really well for Ireland.) Even one of
Goldman Sachs’ funds got in on the game, buying a $70 million
chunk of Palm Hills Development SAE, a luxury real estate developer.
"Other countries in the region, such as Jordan, where the
unemployment rate is 13.4 percent, and the poverty rate 14.2
percent (as in the U.S.), tried to mimic Egypt’s “open” policies,
in varying degrees. That’s why eight of the 21 banks operating in
Jordan are now foreign-owned, and its insurance market is
dominated by U.S.-based, MetLife American Life Insurance Company.
But it was Egypt that did it best.
"From 2004 to 2009, Egypt attracted $42 billion worth of foreign
capital into its borders, as one of the top investment
“destinations” in the Middle East and Africa. “Hot” money entry
was made easy, with no restrictions on foreign investment or
repatriation of profits, and no taxes on dividends, capital gains
or corporate bond interest. As a result, volume on the Egyptian
stock market swelled more than twelve-fold between 2004 and the
first half of 2009.
"Egypt and the United Arab Emirates even eliminated minimum capital
requirements for investment, meaning that speculators could buy
whatever they wanted, with no money down, a practice that didn’t
exactly impel them to stick around for long.
These are just several paragraphs from a considerably longer article well worth reading as a whole:
By Nomi Prins, AlterNet
http://www.alternet.org/story/149793/
You also write that " in places where there was a free market for food prices, protests are rare". I would suggest the real record has been that nearly every revolt in the Middle east, including but not only nearly all the current revolts, and many elsewhere in the developing world, have been precipitated by rising food prices as the "free market" was unleashed (and I deliberately use that term) on the population with the abolition of subsidies and other supports.
Whether the small trader needed more laissez faire capitalism or not depends on your definitions of that term, and on what one believes to be the motivations of the state authorities who shut him down. Free market may well mean freedom for small traders to trade, but it also means freedom for larger traders and giant capitalist companies to compete "equally" with them and drive them out of business, and when "the rule of law" is added, this usually means that the slightly bigger traders who pay rents and taxes complain of "unfair competition" from the poorer lot, and state authorities thus shut down the latter on behalf of "free competition," the "rule of law" and other such buzzwords, and also often because bigger folk may be able to give them better bribes. You can call that too much state and not enough free market if you like, but it seems to me that assumes three things unlikely to be true: that a state in a totally free market either barely exists or does not enforce laws about rents, taxes etc (I think of setting up an informal street stall in Sydney to see how quickly the police would be there), that a state in a totally free market is never corrupt, and that there is such a thing as a totally free market. I doubt you believe any of that, but it seems to me that then calls into question that assumption about the trader benefiting from more laissez faire.
Finally, the news that Mubarak may be worth $70 billion ( http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2011/feb/04/hosni-mubarak-family-fortune ) sounds to me a huge free market, neo-liberal success story, as does the fact that some 90 percent of the population live on a dollar a day (and social indicators are all well below those of Vietnam, despite Egypt's higher per capita GDP). That is the way neo-liberalism normally distributes income.
Michael
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From: Thomas Jandl
Date: Mon, Feb 7, 2011 at 8:24 AM
To: Vietnam Studies Group <vsg@u.washington.edu>
Actually, I did not withdraw my claim, I only squared it with Jalel Sager's response.
Interestingly, a front-page article in the NY Times refers to this today. A protester identified by name and as a student is quoted as saying that the corruption is the main issue. He says: "Ahmed Eez [a crony of Mubarak's regime] sucks the blood of the people. He is the only man who can sell steel in all of Egypt, and he sells it for much more than if we could by steel from someone else like China." ( http://www.nytimes.com/2011/02/07/world/middleeast/07corruption.html?_r=1&ref=todayspaper )
Does that sound like a condemnation of the market or of too little market to you? I think the criticism conflates free market on one hand and what corrupt rent seekers make of it on the other. But that's like saying adoption of orphans is bad because some adoptive parents are mistreating these kids. Mubarak's regime is not what the Washington Consensus proposes, or the World Bank suggests. Michael Karadjis's quotes, I'd say, make my case. How can the president of a country make $70 billion in a free market? He can only do so in a market that is skewed -- no, controlled -- by political power - the antithesis of free market, laissez faire ideology.
But the critics of my post are putting words into my mouth. I am aware that liberalization, the Washington Consensus and all cause their own problems. But I disagree that any of that is the issue in Tunisia and Egypt. In those countries, a little less government (translate: cronyism and corruption) would be better.
The second issue is -- see subject line -- what lessons can Vietnam draw from Tunisia and Egypt? My answer is: rather few. Vietnam has its own problems with corruption and cronyism,of course, like so many developing countries do. But in Vietnam, there is a pervasive sense among the population that life is getting better. (This may now be getting eroded, but not because of the regime per se, but because of inflation.)
In Egypt and Tunisia, as well as many other North African countries and many others around the world, the sense is that life is getting worse because of the government's shenanigans. That is not the sense I get in Vietnam at all -- not from the business folks I normally deal with, but also not from the regular Vietnamese. My parter is an anthropologist who studied rural development and got the same impression after half a year in rural Thanh Hoa -- people feel life is getting better and give the market reforms substantial credit for that. No comparison to the rhetoric coming out of Tunisia and Egypt.
_________________________________
Thomas Jandl