Abstract
The new global financial system, which provides the framework for the operations of the new, mobile, super-rich elite, is now in place and appears to be increasingly stable and sustainable. It is driven by a powerful economic logic — the imperatives of free-market capitalism; and its ideology — international freedom and pluralism — underpins its support amongst opinion formers. It also has a growing constituency amongst the more bounded, less affluent — who, although not directly involved in the global economy are, like millions of Western pensioners, increasingly dependent upon its success.
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Notes and References
Cited in Hans-Peter Martin and Harald Schumann, The Global Trap: Globalization and the Assault on Prosperity and Democracy (London and New York: 1997), p. 163.
US figures from Kennickell and Woodburn, op. cit. in note 5 previous chapter. British figures from John Hills, Income and Wealth (Joseph Rowntree Foundation, Feb. 1995), p. 94.
It is impossible to provide reasonably accurate hourly wage rates for some countries, particularly China, but a measure of the huge discrepancy between living standards can be seen in per capita GNP figures (GNP per capita in 1992 US dollars): China $470, USA $23,240, UK $17,790, Japan $28,190, Germany $23,030, France $22,260. In the US the average hourly earnings of production and non-supervisory workers on private non-farm payrolls was $11,82 per hour for 34.4 hours per week in 1996, World Bank Atlas (Washington, DC: World Bank, 1995).
James Goldsmith, The Trap (London: 1994), p. 18.
The figures for 1994 were Germany 21.6, France 28.5 (1992 figure), Portugal 20.8, Netherlands 22.01, Sweden 27.5 and Britain 12.8. Eurostat, 1994.
Quoted in Robert Taylor, ‘Global Claptrap’, Prospect, Dec. 1997.
William Greider, One World, Ready or Not: The Manic Logic of Global Capitalism (New York: 1997), p. 11.
‘One World’, The Economist, Schools Brief, 18–24 Oct. 1997.
Ibid.
See E. Swyngedouw, ‘Producing Futures: Global Finance as a geographical product’, in P.W. Daniels, The Global Economy in Transition (London: 1966), p. 135.
See J. H. Dunning, The Globalization of Business (London and New York: 1993), p. 287.
Taylor, ‘Global Claptrap’, op. cit.
See New Left Review, Dec. 1997.
See H. Brar, Imperialism (London: 1997).
W. Sengenberger and F. Wilkinson, ‘Globalization and Labour Standards’, in J. Mitchie and J. G. Smith, Managing The Global Economy (Oxford and New York: 1995).
See ‘One World’, The Economist, op. cit. On the amount of FDI, see Paul Hirst and Grahame Thompson, Globalisation in Question (London: 1996).
See Ankie Hoogvelt, Globalisation and the Post Colonial World: The New Political Economy of Development (London), p 87. The author also argues that the data used for this analysis is pre-1990.
See Brar, Imperialism, op. cit., pp. 86–9. An UNCTAD analysis of the regional distribution of world FDI inflows is instructive — after a dip in the late 1980s FDI investment in non-Western countries rose from 18.3 per cent to 35.2 per cent.
See UN, World Investment Report 1998 (New York: UN Publications Offices, 1998). Figures from this report were reported in the Financial Times, 11 Nov. 1998.
See Brar, Imperialism, op. cit.
Financial Times, 11 Nov. 1998.
See World Bank, World Atlas, op. cit., pp. 36–7.
Martin and Schumann, The Global Trap, op. cit., pp. 68–9.
See Newsweek, 3 Oct. 1994.
The Economist, 18 Oct. 1997.
Michael Lind, The Next American Nation: The New Nationalism and the Fourth American Revolution (New York: 1995), p. 203.
Yonghao Pu,’ shelter From The Storm’, Financial Times, 13 Jan, 1996.
Jeffrey Henderson, ‘Market Stalinism Going to the Wall’, Guardian, 13 Jan. 1998, extracted from Grahame Thompson (ed.), Economic Integration in the Asia-Pacific (London: 1998).
John Gray, ‘Bill Rules the World — And I Don’t Mean Clinton’, Daily Express, 11 Sep. 1998, p. 190.
Robert Z. Lawrence, Single World: Divided Nations: International Trade and OECD Labor Markets (Paris: 1996), p. 128.
See Martin and Schumann, The Global Trap, op, cit., pp, 1–5.
See Tony Crosland, The Future Of Socialism (London: 1956)
Cited in Ralph Miliband, The State in Capitalist Society: the Analysis of the Western System of Power (London: 1973), p. 132.
Joe Rogaly, ‘Forget governments — companies rule, OK’, Financial Times, 8–9 Nov, 1997.
These estimates, based upon a Conference Board of New York report, are cited in Mathew Horsman, After The Nation-State: Citizens, Tribalism and the New World Disorder (London: 1994), p. 201.
Sarah Anderson and John Kavanagh, International Herald Tribune, 23 Oct. 1996.
Robert Reich, The Work of Nations (New York: 1991), p. 110.
Ibid., p. 113.
Gray, ‘Bill Rules the World’, op. cit., p. 82.
Ibid; Martin and Schumann, The Global Trap, op. cit., p. 111.
See David Greenway (ed.), Current Issues in International Trade Theory and Policy (New York: 1985), quotation from Ravi Batra, The Myth of Free Trade (New York: 1993), p. 157.
Report in Le Monde, 29 April, 1993, cited in Goldsmith, The Trap, op. cit., p. 20.
David Hale, ‘How the Rise of Global Pension Funds will Change the Global Economy in the 21st century’, prepared for the 1997 Bank Credit Analyst Bermuda Conference, May, 1997, unpublished, p. 10.
John Scott, Corporate Business and Capitalist Classes (Oxford: 1997), p. 86.
Hale, ‘The Rise of Global Pension Funds’, op. cit.
Ibid.
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© 2000 Stephen Haseler
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Haseler, S. (2000). The Super-Rich Game. In: The Super-Rich. Palgrave Macmillan, London. https://doi.org/10.1057/9780230285965_2
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