The April-May 1968 issue of Viet-Report is dedicated to covering “Pro-War Latin America.”
It includes:
– a report on the OLAS conference by Viet-Report editor Ruth Shereff (who attended the conference);
– “Guatemala: Military Camp Under Liberal Command” by NACLA staff member Jon Frappier, who visited Guatemala- in the summer of 1966 to report for the SDS Radical Education Project;
– an interview with Blase Bonpane, until recently a Maryknoll priest in Guatemala;
– “The New Man and the New Order in Cuba” by Mike Goldfield, member of REP who visited Cuba during January and February 1968;
– a report on university social science counterinsurgency research in Latin America by VR editors Carol Brightman and Michael Klare (also of NACIA staff);
– “Insurgents’ Guide to the Care and Feeding of U.S. Capital in Latin America” by Lois Reivich and Edie Black (both of NACIA staff). Due to layout errors, this guide is scrambled in places.
– An examination of some prevailing facts, figures and statistics regarding Latin America by Alex Georgiadis (visiting lecturer at Brooklyn College) and Karen Spalding (assistant professor at Rutgers);
– “The New Strategy of U.S. Investments” by Edie Black;
– Three book reviews:
Jim Petras on Internal Security and Military Power by Barber and Ronning, Ohio State Press, 7966, $6.50;
Allen Young on Latin America: Reform or Revolution by Petras and Zeitlin, Fawcett World Library, 1968 511 pp, $0.95 in paperback; Julie Nichamin on The Economic Transformation of Cuba by Boorstein, Monthly Review Press, 1968, 300 pp., $7.95.
Copies obtainable at 50c from Viet-Report, 133 West 72nd Street, NYC 10023; (212) 799-0870.
“The Sieve of Gold” by Michael Hudson, Ramparts, May 1968, pp. 39-43.
Written by a former (1961-67) balance-of-payments analyst for the Chase Manhattan Bank, this article is one of the clearest and simplest documented explanations of the gold and dollar crisis we have read. Its analysis of the U.S. crisis reminds the reader of the old story of how empires finance their expansion by the use of credit, i.e., through the mechanism of actually devaluing their currency without officially doing so. Foreign bankers accept the effectively devalued currency as long as the empire-builders continue to engender confidence. However, as soon as the empires suffer military reverses (for instance, the barbarian invasions of the Roman Empire or the Tet offensive against the U.S. empire), confidence falters. The bankers (or, in the case of the Roman Empire, the money changers) refuse to accept the imperial currency at its official value (and eventually may refuse to accept it altogether). It is a case of the chickens coming home to roost.
* How to Read the Financial News, C. Norman Stabler, Perennial Library, Harper and Row. New York, 1966, 26i pp, 95c in paperback. First written in 1932 shortly after the general public acquired a special interest in financial operations, this book is now in its tenth revised and updated edition. It includes sections explaining the operation of the stock market, Federal Reserve System, Securities and Exchange Commission, commodity exchanges, bond market, government financing, mutual funds, the World Bank, International Monetary Fund and Inter-American Development Bank. It also includes a glossary of financial terms and an explanation of the construction and use of trade indexes. The author was financial editor and columnist for The New York Herald Tribune for over thirty years.
For the Radical Education Project (REP) literature list, write to: REP, Box 625, Ann Arbor, Michigan 48107; (313) 761-1320. The list includes:
– Exploitation or Aid? U.S.-Brazil Economic Relations, a Case Study in U.S. Imperialism by Andre Gunder Frank (10c);
– Latin America: Capitalist Castle with a Feudal-Seeming Facade, by A.G, Frank (10c);
– The Argument of Latin America: Words for North Americans, by Carlos Fuentes (10c);
– The Long March: Guerrilla Movements, Theory and Practice, by Regis Debray (20c);
– American Economic Imperialism: A Survey of the Literature, edited by William Caspary (20c);
– A New Look Into U.S. Investments in Latin America, by Edie lack (10c);
– Stock Ownership and the Control of Corporations, by Don Villarejo (35c);
– The Fantastic Rise in Corporate Profits, by AFL-CIO Department of Research (5c);
– Mergers and Concentrations of Corporate Power, by AFL-CIO Dept. of Research (10c);
– Scarce Resources: The Dynamic of American Imperialism, by Heather Dean (10c);
– Economic Aspects of U.S. Imperialism, by Harry Magdoff (Monthly Review Press) (50c);
– The Contradiction of Advanced Capitalist Society and its Resolution, by Martin Nicolaus (10c);
– Power in American Society, by Jim Jacobs ($0. 15);
– U.S. Foreign Policy and Imperialism, by Steve Johnson ($0.15);
– Movement Speakers Guide ($0.10);
– Prospectus of the Radical Education Project ($0.25).
REP also publishes the Radicals in the Professions Newsletter.
