For years Thailand has been the subject of international admiration. "Sensational growth rates," a building boom sending Bangkok into the ranks of the great metropolises in the shortest period of time, a never-ending rise on the stock-market, the baht as one of the most stable currencies in Southeast Asia, and annual capital inflows of billions of dollars were taken as a proof of trust in the country. It was unanimously held that the success of this "emerging market" was owed to a government that had carried out all the correct policies demanded by the G7 countries and the IMF, namely, "liberalization," "free capital movements" and a market economy. Thailand was considered a "model" that not only other "developing countries" but even Germany could learn from, especially when it came to cheap labor ; so said German president Herzog during an Asian trip. During the spring of 1997, though, "worries in the kingdom of growth" suddenly grew. Foreign investors withdrew money, the stock market slid, and speculators bet on the depreciation of the national currency. The government tried to stop the trend by wasting some billions of dollars defending the baht's peg to the American currency. After surrendering to the money market, the Thai currency lost more than 35 percent of its value within three months. Internal demand collapsed, business and banks went bankrupt, foreign producers closed plants. Moreover, the worst was still to come, as the government had to face losses of 14 billion dollars from foreign currency exchange contracts expiring at the end of the year.

After almost two years of peace in Northern Ireland, during which there was already talk of an upswing in investment and the population's growing support for the "peace process," everything has gone back to the way it was. In February 1996, the IRA resumed their war of liberation with bombings in England. In June, the Protestants again announced their "marching season," the traditional victory marches through Catholic districts. The — Protestant — police at first prohibited the marches or suggested less provocative alternative routes to the marchers and blocked the street through the Catholic district in Portadown. After three days of uninterrupted demonstrations at the roadblock they gave up their resistance against the Orange Order, clearing the way for the men with bowlers and orange sashes by beating the Catholics back, for a change. The chief constable justified giving in to pressure from the street on the grounds that the explosive atmosphere made him fear for human lives. When the Catholics rioted in answer to the Orangemen's permission to march, the law-and-order standpoint triumphed once again over the saving of lives. A Catholic was run over and killed by an armored police vehicle during the dispersal of the rioters. Public opinion in Britain and Europe now views the "peace process" to be breaking down.

The current flurry about the increasingly miserable food situation is kind of odd. After all, hunger has its permanent place in the modern world, is regularly brought into the headlines by humanitarian organizations on public holidays, is entrusted to private charity, and just as regularly taken off the agenda in favor of other topics. Nor has this particular conflict, which is centered on the price of food and arouses the current indignation, come into the world in the year 2008. Millions of people — redundant figures of the global market economy — have long since had trouble paying for their food. Statistical data exist aplenty, and are pulled out again in view of current events, as to how many millions of “households” in how many countries spend their “income” for the most part on food. Even the insight that “anyone who survives on less than a dollar can hardly feed himself, even in the face of smaller price increases” could have been had earlier.

Political powers and the business people empowered by them “grab land” — this is hardly news. Tapping natural resources in any part of the world is a matter of fact. Developing and exploiting mineral resources requires land rights, on which claims are laid. The cultivation of crops in regions privileged by nature characterizes the modern form of agriculture practiced and propagated by North American and European multinationals. Running plantations requires a sufficient supply of water and extensive land, roads, and ports at one’s disposal. The transportation of liquid and gaseous energy resources to the centers of capitalism, which uses and markets them, requires a global system of pipelines, for which entire states are defined and treated as transit territories. “Land grabbing” takes place all the time for all these cross-border politico-economic needs. And as a further rule, money is paid whenever land under foreign dominion is acquired — proof of a ‘fair deal.’ The current “battle over the Arctic” and over sea beds that have a rich potential in natural resources but no owners also shows that intentions to annex territory politically are not dying out at all — they still belong to the national rights that states both claim and deny each other.

The citizens of “God’s own country” have elected the president. Once again the election campaign was, as befits the largest and most powerful of the free democracies, exemplary. This is not so much because of the perfect manner in which the candidates demonstrated how much this highlight of the people’s democratic sovereignty is a matter of the financial power the respective parties are able to muster for their propaganda productions.

Pope Benedict XVI has resigned — a surprising step. This announcement seems to have completely clogged up the daily newspapers and talk shows. The retired pontiff has caused reports of bombs and civil wars to be sent to the back burners — and certainly not only in Catholic media or countries.

Having fought two unproductive wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, and being in a disastrous economic condition amid the financial and the sovereign debt crises, America seeks to restore and re-assert its global leadership role. For this purpose and in this sense, the Obama administration has proclaimed the 21st century as “America’s Pacific century.”

Five years after the crash of the housing market in the United States, the crisis has become somewhat permanent. Experts see in the conditions of this sector of the national economy either the worst crisis since the Great Depression or, when prices and sales figures temporarily rise again a bit, the famous light at the end of the tunnel. All the same, Fed chairman Bernanke’s summary of the devastation that the mortgage crisis has caused homeowners, the financial world, and the U.S. economy in general is sustained by his concern for how long the downturn will continue or whether land is at last again in sight. He is also quite clear about the social and human costs of the crisis, namely, the growing number of those who are homeless or about to join them.

What is a people? According to what modern legislators have laid down as binding in practice, a people is nothing more than the totality of a country’s inhabitants whom a state power defines as its members. Regardless of the natural and social differences and antagonisms between them, these members form a political collective by virtue of being subordinate to one and the same state authority. Being obligated to the same rule and its agenda is the common cause they stand up for as a people.

In our articles on the financial crisis and the concept of finance capital, we have written down a few basic determinations of the extensive business that finance capital undertakes beyond providing agriculture and industry with loan capital. We ourselves sorted out in our own minds, and challenged our readers with insights like the following: that the securities trade brings about a unique sort and magnitude of growth (that always but only gets called a “bubble” when something goes wrong); that, in the process, finance capital gains manifold responsibilities in the “real economy,” but its profits are not paid out of surplus value; that its economic position is the basis for its extraordinary power to decide with its own successes and failures the weal and woe of all the interests and efforts that make up the charm of the market economy, etc. The fact of the matter is that the finance trade accumulates securitized, tradable legal claims to proceeds that could never possibly be paid out of the production of surplus value — from which it obviously follows that this is not what securities are all about. It is also a fact that the widespread devaluation of such claims places the entire money economy in danger, which is therefore averted with massive guarantees of value by the political authorities on their own account, which even calls their own guarantee power into question — an all-too-obvious indication that these peculiar objects of value are not actually uncovered and “ultimately” no more than empty claims, but rather the “core” of wealth in a market economy, which cannot be allowed to suffer a “meltdown” (as experts like to express it using terms from an ultimate ‘maximal credible accident’ in the nuclear industry). Finally, it is also a fact that, since the beginning of the crisis, economic experts have been bombarding the public with information about the design of securities, and assessments of the significance and dangers of repeatedly repackaging them, which doesn’t explain anything . So we have concluded that we should counter all this useless information with an explanation of the political economy of the financial sector.