An Interview with Barbara Garson. Greek transhlation here.
I decided to explore the global economy by the simple device of following my own money. I began by putting half my book advance in a one-branch bank and a second sum in an aggressive mutual fund. The result is part detective story part global justice manifesto as I follow my money around the world.
The first thing I found was that the small town bank had nothing to do with my money so they loaned it to Chase. Sitting in at the Chase Fed funds desk on their trading floor, I discovered that they too had nothing to do with that money in the US. Perhaps the most important thing I learned is that money is like a hot potato. Whoever holds it and pays interest on it has to pass it along quickly to someone else who'll pay interest. If you hold it for too long, you'll get burned.
A lot of the ideas we
call neo-liberalism or corporate globalism arose from desperation to pass the
money along starting after about 1973. Money had collected in fewer and fewer
hands. There was nothing profitable to do with it in the U.S. and Europe so the
money had to go abroad. Hence rich countries forced poor countries to do away
with all the safeguards that once regulated money flows. Voila--the
global
economy
with
all
its
harmful
consequences.
But
I'm giving you conclusions. I write it from the ground up--as I said, a
detective story on the trail of that money. Eventually I found a Brooklyn
seafood importer who made a Chase loan at the very time my money came through.
He used it to bring in frozen shrimp from Thailand, Malaysia, and Singapore.
Then I ran into some friendly (and I guess naive) petroleum engineers whose
company Caltex (it's parent companies were Chevron and Texaco, now merged) had
just borrowed money from Chase to build a refinery in Thailand. A lot of my
money was headed for Asia so I followed. There I interviewed everyone from the
oil company CEO down to its migrant workers and the street vendors selling them
food outside the construction site. As a matter of fact, a couple of street
vendors were not only my best contacts to illegal migrants, but also among the
most surprising people I met. (I learned, among other things, how to make both
green papaya and jelly fish salads. You'll
find
the
recipes
in
the
appendix.)
I
am proud to say that the content comes almost entirely from the people I met
along the way. They range, as I say, from street vendors, to the former head of
Citibank, Walter Wriston. There are also interviews with American workers in
Maine and Tennessee who were affected when my mutual fund brought Al Dunlap in
to downsize their company, Sunbeam. I also wound up owning shares in the British
Railroads and in a French company that privatized the Johannesburg water system.
One result of water privatization in South Africa was a cholera epidemic. But I
wrote about that in an article for Znet, so I won't go into it now.
By
the time you finish reading "Money Makes the World Go Around" you'll
understand global capital flows from the bottom up. But don't read it if you
want to meet only good peasants and bad bankers. In this system--capitalism I
mean--clever, admirable engineers pollute the ocean, and amiable, hard working
bankers undermine our daily security. Some of the most fascinating people I met,
people working right in the midst of the contradictions, included a labor
contractor who brought Chinese and Bangladeshis to Singapore and a Chinese
shrimp trader from Malaysia who used the profits he made from my Brooklyn
seafood importer to open jellyfish factories in Vietnam. I'm sincerely
interested in what each person does, from his own point of view. That's how I
get the total picture. And from his own point of view, each person does the best
he can in a world he can't control.
(3)
What are your hopes for MONEY MAKES THE WORLD GO AROUND? What do you hope it
will contribute or achieve, politically? Given the effort and aspirations you
have for the book, what will you deem to be a success? What would leave you
happy about the whole undertaking? What would leave you wondering if it was
worth all the time and effort?
I'll
feel successful if Money Makes the World Go Around actually does what Howard
Zinn says it does. Do you mind if I repeat his quote?
"I've
been a fan of Barbara Garson's writing ever since I read her brilliant MacBird!
This book shows her at her best--able to be funny about serious things and
crystal-clear about impossibly complex matters. She brings all the formidable
abstractions of the new world economy--globalization, Eurodollars, information
highways, restructuring, currency trading--down to the human level where we can
see and feel and understand them. And always, her writing is suffused with a
passionate concern for ordinary people overwhelmed by the giants of the
corporate world." Like most ZNet readers, I had opposed the methods of
corporate globalism that Howard Zinn enumerates--Eurodollars, restructuring,
etc.--even before I did the research for this book. But I didn't quite get it,
not viscerally. How could all that money flowing in to poor countries leave
people even poorer than they were before?
But
the Asian currency crisis occurred soon after I'd left South East Asia. That
gave me the opportunity to present an entire cycle. It's also why it took me
five years to complete the book. After the crash I got back to the same people I
met during the boom. The younger of the two Thai street vendors who I liked so
much had disappeared after a fight with other vendors over a spot. Places to
sell were scarce since so many construction sites had shut down. Her friend, the
older vendor, was desperately concerned about the missing girl who had become
like a daughter to her. She also mentioned, in passing, that the price of rice
had suddenly doubled for reasons that to her were mysterious.
But
by that time my readers and I knew why the price of rice had doubled. We'd
already spoken to Chase and IMF executives. It was not mysterious to them. Chase
had fifty billion dollars at risk in Thailand. Thai rice (and other products)
had to be sold abroad instead of at home so that the Thai government could earn
foreign currency to pay back the loans my bank had made--even though those loans
were made by Chase to private Thai companies. If the price of rice inside the
country was raised, more would be sold abroad. Yes, that meant that more Thais
went hungry in a country that produces a great surplus of rice. Yes, that meant
that the street vendor's ingredients cost more so she brought home less money
for her day's work. The vendor's letters to me after the crash are in the book
and readers will be able to assign reasons for the rice price increase and all
the other hardships she and her friends endured and are still enduring.
I
heard the same sort of thing when I got back to those bright good-natured
migrants I met in Singapore. They spent a couple of years away from their
families living in metal containers in order to earn those good Singapore wages.
But the crash made their money worth so much less, it was as if they had worked
seven of those months for no pay.
The
fishermen and tapioca farmers who the reader met building my oil refinery didn't
necessarily complain that their land had been paved over. Each person was
engrossed in the daily problems and hopes of his of her own new life. Indeed the
reason that so many mainstream reviewers like the book is because the people I
introduce aren't just "the migrants" or "the street vendor."
They're also that particular young girl who never wants to go back to the paddy
farm or see her mother, that particular man you have to like even if he's
constantly looking around for every angle, or that particular migrant who loves
welding right angles but hates straight angles. Some readers get interested in
these characters even if they don't care to understand why things didn't work
out the way these people had hoped.
After
the crash, when rice prices in Bangkok soared, many people I'd met couldn't go
back to farms that had been paved over to build refineries, nor could they fish
in water that was polluted by my shrimp farms. Not only couldn't they go back to
their old poverty, but they now had to pay off the bank loans that they
themselves had never made. Paying off loans took forms like mysteriously doubled
rice prices. That's why they were not just as poor, but poorer than before. All
sorts of rules had been forced through so that my bank could first desperately
push dollars into South East Asia, then get them out even more desperately
without losing a penny on their reckless loans.
Did
I know this before? Well, sort of. But now I really know it. I understand the
mechanisms as well as who pays the cost. I'll feel successful if people who are
part of the global justice movement come away from the book with a deepened
understanding of many of the things they already believe, plus a few new
insights. I'd also like them to acquire enough economic background to be able to
discuss global finance confidently with friends and even with their neo-liberal
economics professors.
I'll
feel unsuccessful if the book is only read by the bankers and brokers who
already know whereof I speak. They and bank regulators seem to be the people who
bought the hard cover edition. I suppose I should be proud that they don't find
errors. But I'll be prouder if people in the global justice movement start
reading the paperback.
Hmm,
you notice I can't even conceive of a success whereby my arguments change
policy. In the sixties I had about as great a success as you could have with a
political book. "MacBird!" sold half a million copies. But it was the
movement not the book that brought about real changes. I simply entertained the
movement. "United we laugh" may be my slogan. Entertaining is still an
important goal of my writing. In that respect I already have a success.
"Money Makes the World Go Around" is at least a lively read.
MONEY MAKES THE WORLD GO AROUND: One Investor Tracks Her Cash through the Global Economy: (Penguin 2002) Available from Booksense.com (the order house of independent bookstores), Amazon.com, or local bookstores. For the publisher's information click on: http://www.penguinputnam.com/Biuiu8udddook/BookFrame?0CS^