BETWEEN GLOBALIZATION AND INTERNAL STABILITY, THE RESISTIBLE INTERNATIONALIZATION OF THE RENMINBI

China's RMB is becoming a major international currency. It has joined major international currencies and intends to continue its growth although it has not yet become a fully convertible currency. Its share in world trade, reserves remains limited. On the one hand, the increase in its international use is increasing, on the other hand the decline in trade, the accumulation of internal problems - decline in GDP growth, growing domestic debt - are leading the Chinese authorities to push back the opening of the capital account, to control interest rates. Social stability has become a priority.

In Shit We Stand United: Solidarity and Separation on the Lower Grounds

In his Interpretation of Dreams Sigmund Freud quotes a poem by Heinrich Heine: "Selten habt Ihr mich verstanden/selten auch verstand ich Euch./Nur wenn wir im Kot uns fanden,/so verstanden wir uns gleich". ("Rarely did you understand me, and rarely did I understand you; Only when we found ourselves in the muck did we understand each other at once.")In my contribution, I want to examine this ability of the excrement to function as a kind of universal equivalent for understanding; a kind of perfectly convertible currency or primordial gift (according to Freud's account). What is it that makes this border-element between culture and nature so specifically useful when nothing else seems to help in human communication?This question shall be raised specifically with regard to the "scatological rituals" examined and analyzed by Stephen Greenblatt as well as with to the issue that D. A. F. de Sade makes of the excrement in his "120 days of Sodom", where it plays an astoundingly predominant role when it comes to finding unequivocal proofs of human autonomy.

Collective intentionality and the state theory of money

The circulation of non-convertible currency and the source of its value raise important ontological questions that touch upon the conditions of its acceptance. The aim of this paper is to address such questions by illustrating how collective intentionality and constitutive declarations can be employed in order to develop an adequate ontological framework for explaining the emergence and the persistence of the current monetary standard. This analysis of money differs from that of mainstream commodity theory in that it argues against individualism, which traditionally underwrites both economic and philosophical analyses of money. The resulting ontology is based on an account of collective intentionality developed upon the "sharedness" of individual intentional states; this account supports the state theory of money, combining it with an ontological analysis of the state and its authority.

Reflections in Twenty Years of Political and Economic Change in Poland

This article deals with a discussion of the policy perspectives on the past 20 years of economic change in Poland. The article looks at the range of areas (political and economic systems) subject to transition; the evolutionary nature of the change; and the sequence of change. The article calls upon more than 20 years of research into these areas and questions and discusses the nature of change in the stabilization, liberalization and privatization programs. It concludes by providing insights on lessons that may be learned from reform efforts. The authors conclude that the Polish experience proved conclusively that reducing the budget deficit through the elimination of state subsidies, controlling the money supply, and creating a stabilized rate of exchange and a fully convertible currency can be successful even in a state-controlled, state sector-dominated socialist economy as existed in Poland in 1989-1990. The article further asserts that it is also now apparent that only a radical stabilization-liberalization program is capable of abolishing the massive shortages which became the main characteristics of the failed socialist system. Further, the authors argue that the changes initiated in Poland as a result of the implementation of the Balcerowicz Plan fundamentally changed the mentality of economic activity from state-centered to private-centered. It is this change in the dynamic mentality that may be most important in Poland achieving success over the past 20 years.

Some Requirements for Achievement of Full Convertibility of the Ruble

The problems of when and how the ruble will become a fully convertible currency are analyzed in the article. Some requirements for achievement of its full convertibility must be fulfilled. Firstly, the ruble should become a currency of payments for Russian exports of oil and natural gas. Secondly, all restrictions on currency operations have to be abolished.

The Cuban Economy in the 1990s: External Challenges and Policy Imperatives

Cuba has entered the decade of the 1990s in a state of profound existential crisis. The countries of Eastern Europe, whose economic and political institutions and ideologies were adopted by Cuba, albeit with some modifications, were abandoning those same institutions and ideologies. Cuba's place in the international system had become one of growing isolation: Cuba had become a curiosity from the 1960s rather than the wave of the future, as it once perceived itself. By mid-1990, it appeared almost certain that the generous subsidization of the Cuban economy by the Soviet Union was about to end. Moreover, the Cuban economy was in serious difficulty as a result of some external factors, namely the convertible currency debt crisis and the problems and uncertainties in its relationship with the Soviet Union since 1985, but also as a result of internal institutional incapacities and deformities.