MONEY MAKES
THE WORLD GO AROUND:
One Investor
Tracks Her Cash Through the Global Economy
An Inerview done by znet
with Barbara Garson
(1) Can you tell ZNet, please,
what your new book, MONEY MAKES THE WORLD GO AROUND is about?
What is it trying to communicate?
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 wholl pay interest. If you
hold it for too long, youll 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. Voilathe global economy with all its harmful consequences.
But Im giving you conclusions.
I write it from the ground upas 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, Malysia, and Singapore.
Then I ran into some friendly (and I guess naïve) petroleum engineers
whose company Caltex (its 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. Youll find
the recipes in the appendix.)
(2) Can you tell ZNet something
about writing the book? Where does the content come from? What went
into making the book what it is?
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 effected 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 wont go into it now.
By the time you finish reading
Money Makes the World Go Around youll understand global
capital flows from the bottom up. But dont read it if you want
to meet only good peasants and bad bankers. In this systemcapitalism
I meanclever, 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. Im sincerely interested in what each person does,
from his own point of view. Thats how I get the total picture.
And from his own point of view, each person does the best he can in
a world he cant 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?
Ill 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? Ive
been a fan of Barbara Garsons writing ever since I read her brilliant
MacBird! This book shows her at her bestable to be funny about
serious things and crystal-clear about impossibly complex matters. She
brings all the formidable abstractions of the new world economyglobalization,
Eurodollars, information highways, restructuring, currency tradingdown
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 enumeratesEurodollars,
restructuring, etc.even before I did the research for this book.
But I didnt 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 Id left South East Asia. That gave me the
opportunity to present an entire cycle. Its 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. Wed 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 vendors ingredients cost more so she brought
home less money for her days work. The vendors 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 didnt 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 arent just the migrants or the
street vendor. Theyre 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 hes 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 dont care to understand why things didnt work
out the way these people had hoped.
After the crash, when rice
prices in Bangkok soared, many people Id met couldnt 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 couldnt
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. Thats 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. Ill 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. Id 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.
Ill 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 dont find errors. But Ill be prouder
if people in the global justice movement start reading the paperback.
Hmm, you notice I cant
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 publishers information click on:
http://www.penguinputnam.com/Biuiu8udddook/BookFrame?0CS^0142000507