|
Korean Job Discussion Forums
"The Internet's Meeting Place for ESL/EFL Teachers from Around the World!"
|
| View previous topic :: View next topic |
| Author |
Message |
thepeel
Joined: 08 Aug 2004
|
 Posted: Thu Jan 03, 2008 8:12 pm Post subject: An Ottoman warning for America |
 |
|
| Quote: |
Future historians will look back on the current decade as a turning point comparable with that of the Seventies. No, not the 1970s. This is not going to be another piece pointing out the coincidence of an unpopular Republican president, soaring oil prices, a sagging dollar and an unwinnable faraway war. I am talking about the 1870s.
At first sight, the resemblances across 130 years may not seem obvious. The 1870s were a time when conservative leaders such as Benjamin Disraeli, British prime minister, were powerful and popular. It was a time of falling commodity prices, after the financial crash of 1873 and the opening up of the American plains to agriculture. And it was an era of currency stability, as one country after another followed the British lead by pegging to gold.
Yet, on closer inspection, we are indeed living through a global shift in the balance of power very similar to that which occurred in the 1870s. This is the story of how an over-extended empire sought to cope with an external debt crisis by selling off revenue streams to foreign investors. The empire that suffered these setbacks in the 1870s was the Ottoman empire. Today it is the US.
In the aftermath of the Crimean war, both the sultan in Constantinople and his Egyptian vassal, the khedive, had begun to accumulate huge domestic and foreign debts. Between 1855 and 1875, the Ottoman debt increased by a factor of 28. As a percentage of expenditure, interest payments and amortisation rose from 15 per cent in 1860 to 50 per cent in 1875. The Egyptian case was similar: between 1862 and 1876, the total public debt rose from E�3.3m to E�76m. The 1876 budget showed debt charges accounting for more than half of all expenditure.
The loans had been made for both military and economic reasons: to support the Ottoman military position during and after the Crimean war and to finance railway and canal construction, including the building of the Suez canal, which had opened in 1869. But a dangerously high proportion of the proceeds had been squandered on conspicuous consumption, symbolised by Sultan Abdul Mejid's luxurious Dolmabah�e palace and the spectacular world premiere of A�da at the Cairo Opera House in 1871. In the wake of the financial crisis that struck the European and American stock markets in 1873, a Middle Eastern debt crisis was inevit-able. In October 1875 the Ottoman government declared bankruptcy.
The crisis had two distinct financial consequences: the sale of the khedive's shares in the Suez canal to the British government (for �4m, famously ad-vanced to Disraeli by the Rothschilds) and the hypothecation of certain Ottoman tax revenues for debt service under the auspices of an international Administration of the Ottoman Public Debt, on which European bondholders were represented. The critical point is that the debt crisis necessitated the sale or transfer of Middle Eastern revenue streams to Eur-opeans.
The US debt crisis has taken a different form, to be sure. External liabilities have been run up by a combination of government and household dissaving. It is not the public sector that is defaulting but subprime mortgage borrowers.
Since September, Middle Eastern and east Asian sovereign wealth funds have made a succession of investments in four US banks: Bear Stearns, Citigroup, Morgan Stanley and Merrill Lynch. Most commentators have been inclined to welcome this global bail-out: better to bring in foreign capital than to shrink balance sheets by reducing lending. Yet we need to recognise that these "capital injections" represent a transfer of the revenues from the US financial services industry into the hands of foreign governments. This is happening at a time when the gap between eastern and western incomes is narrowing at an unprecedented pace.
In other words, as in the 1870s the balance of financial power is shifting. Then, the move was from the ancient oriental empires (not only the Ottoman but also the Persian and Chinese) to western Europe. Today the shift is from the US - and other western financial centres - to the autocracies of the Middle East and east Asia.
In Disraeli's day, the debt crisis turned out to have political as well as financial implications, presaging a reduction not just in income but also in sovereignty.
In the case of Egypt, what began with asset sales continued with the creation of a foreign commission to manage the public debt, the installation of an "international" government and finally, in 1882, to British military intervention and the country's transformation into a de facto colony. In the case of Turkey, the debt crisis was followed by the sultan's abdication and Russian military intervention, which dealt a lethal blow to the Ottoman position in the Balkans.
It remains to be seen how quickly today's financial shift will be followed by a comparable geopolitical shift in favour of the new export and energy empires of the east. Suffice to say that the historical analogy does not bode well for America's quasi-imperial network of bases and allies across the Middle East and Asia. Debtor empires sooner or later have to do more than just sell shares to satisfy their creditors.
The writer is a professor at Harvard University and Harvard Business School and a senior fellow of the Hoover Institution, Stanford |
http://www.ft.com/cms/s/0/a3679558-b8d4-11dc-893b-0000779fd2ac.html |
|
| Back to top |
|
 |
catman
Joined: 18 Jul 2004
|
| Posted: Thu Jan 03, 2008 10:48 pm Post subject: |
|
|
| Wow. Great article. |
|
| Back to top |
|
|
Ya-ta Boy
Joined: 16 Jan 2003
Location: Established in 1994
|
| Posted: Thu Jan 03, 2008 11:22 pm Post subject: |
|
|
| Now you claim your footstool is sending messages to America? Perhaps you need to see a different doctor. |
|
| Back to top |
|
|
Gopher
Joined: 04 Jun 2005
|
| Posted: Fri Jan 04, 2008 12:13 am Post subject: |
|
|
| Presupposes that the land-based, pre-modern Ottoman sultans and their empire and the globally-predominant, post-modern United States are analogous. Stupid. |
|
| Back to top |
|
|
thepeel
Joined: 08 Aug 2004
|
| Posted: Fri Jan 04, 2008 12:21 am Post subject: |
|
|
To what extent do you think your aggressive nationalism informs your position on subjects such as this? Be honest. 1-10, with 1 being totally objective and ten being this dude:
 |
|
| Back to top |
|
|
Gopher
Joined: 04 Jun 2005
|
| Posted: Fri Jan 04, 2008 12:28 am Post subject: |
|
|
Funny. Thanks for continuing to hang that nonsense around my neck, BJWD.
No matter. At least I am not the one who claims to have discovered for the first time that global economics and finance change from time to time and that, consequent to this, empires rise and fall in world affairs.
In other words, no shit, Sherlock.  |
|
| Back to top |
|
|
thepeel
Joined: 08 Aug 2004
|
| Posted: Fri Jan 04, 2008 12:35 am Post subject: |
|
|
You are a nationalistic hack. You know that, right? That "nonsense" is as naked as IGTG's conspiratorial leanings, efl's peak oil leanings or dd's douchebag leanings.
Pro-American is what you are. It is who you are. It informs all that you believe and affects every idea in your head. When it becomes impossible, with you in eye-shot, to have a discussion that might upset a hyper-nationalist, I think the conclusion is obvious. |
|
| Back to top |
|
|
Gopher
Joined: 04 Jun 2005
|
| Posted: Fri Jan 04, 2008 12:48 am Post subject: |
|
|
Wrong about my politics, BJWD. As usual.
By the way, speaking of objective discussions. Do let me know when the financial center shifts. How about when the NYSE, the World Bank, or the International Monetary Fund -- or why not the United Nations' headquarters buildings, for that matter -- cease to locate themselves in the United States or when most other nations do not look to these and other American-created institutions to orient themselves and their economies...  |
|
| Back to top |
|
|
thepeel
Joined: 08 Aug 2004
|
| Posted: Fri Jan 04, 2008 1:02 am Post subject: |
|
|
Oh you and your bjwd.
Hey, you never did answer me about what you are doing back in Asia. Did you get kicked out of your PhD? Maybe you would shout USA!USA!USA! in class whenever Chalmers Johnson's name was mentioned and finally they just sent you back to Seoul?
Anyhow, the World Bank and IMF will likely stay in DC. They will be powerless outside of America/Europe and representative of the old American dominated world. The various regions with their regional powers (Russia, India, China, Brazil and others, I assume) will set up parallel sets of institutions to more appropriately and locally deal with economic and political issues.
I know your reasoning: because America dominates today she must therefore dominate tomorrow. Back to philosophy 101 eh? But the United States is essentially broke. The people are broke, the state is broke and the world has been propping both up with debt in a self-interested relationship of using the American consumer to build a viable manufacturing base.
The question of "when does the shift happen" is answered by the question "when will the world stop propping up the United States?" And that question is answered by yet another question of "when will the world no longer see this relationship as mutually beneficial".
By the by, this relationship is called a Nash equilibrium. It is quite unstable as either players situation can quickly change.
Now, before you go off on some rant about how I'm "anti-this and anti-that" you should know that I actually want the USA!USA!USA! to continue to dominate the world for the time being. Being honest about changes doesn't necessarily mean that one supports the changes. Does it? |
|
| Back to top |
|
|
Gopher
Joined: 04 Jun 2005
|
| Posted: Fri Jan 04, 2008 1:56 am Post subject: |
|
|
Oh BJWD, grow up. You know little about America; they would not even let you in, remember? And no, you do not know my reasoning anymore than you know my positions on a variety of issues -- or even my physical location, apparently. But I know yours. It is quite simplistic: anyone who refuses to cast aspersions on the Great Satan must be nationalistic, proAmerican hacks. Common position with those simplistic purists such as yourself who seem to populate this message board.
I release you to get back to this very useful discussion -- I believe you and the author you cited were deeply immersed in this exercise of using and abusing Ottoman history as pretext to criticize the United States. Go get 'em, tiger.
But first, please do come back for your spiteful last word. I wonder what your tone might be. Dazzle us with your dexterous wit. I will no longer reply to you. About as exciting (and predictable) as talking with the sandwich man... |
|
| Back to top |
|
|
thepeel
Joined: 08 Aug 2004
|
| Posted: Fri Jan 04, 2008 2:09 am Post subject: |
|
|
Hey, G. I guess I hit a nerve? Bumped from whatever Third Tier Toilet "school" you attend(ed) eh?
But, much to your chagrin, the Land of the Free has given my a visa. Motherfuc.ker, it is my birthright as the child of an American citizen. And I intend to use it as soon as the recession is over. I'll be sure to let you know the exact day that my critical arse walks across the sacred border into perfect-ville from terrible-city.
You are the nationalistic, pro-American hack. And you especially. I'm actually one of the most pro-American people I know. But I do hate Bush. It is true. And I think the xtian fundies are crap. It is true. And I think Iraq/torture/Guant a big mistake. It is true. I'm a terrible person!! |
|
| Back to top |
|
|
thepeel
Joined: 08 Aug 2004
|
| Posted: Fri Jan 04, 2008 2:14 am Post subject: |
|
|
| Gopher wrote: |
| I believe you and the author you cited were deeply immersed in this exercise of using and abusing Ottoman history as pretext to criticize the United States. |
Here we have exibit "A" of Gopher being a hack. The author isn't "abusing Ottoman history" to "criticize" the United States. The author is a wildly pro-American conservative who wants to help the US maintain her power. A simple google search would have provided that lil'bit of truth. But, to the ears of a nationalistic fool, any criticism is "anti-dutdutdut".
So,
1) I post an article
2) You skim it an assume it anti-American due to the conclusion that you don't like.
3) You assume the author and I anti-American and begin nutty rants
4) I actually provide a long answer where I say I want the US to dominate
5) You repeat that I'm anti-American. Haha. Dumbass.
This is the mindset of someone who grew up in a profoundly ignorant culture. I do hope the United States isn't full of intellectual rejects like you. |
|
| Back to top |
|
|
|
|
You cannot post new topics in this forum
You cannot reply to topics in this forum
You cannot edit your posts in this forum
You cannot delete your posts in this forum
You cannot vote in polls in this forum
|
|
FAQ
Search
Memberlist
Usergroups
Register
Profile
Log in to check your private messages
Log in
