CUCKOO ECONOMICS (Abridged Ed.)

By deliberately confusing assets that can be *produced*
with assets that can only be *acquired*, modern economics
laid the ideological foundation for unemployment, poverty,
inequality, and the looming global depression.

CUCKOO ECONOMICS

(Abridged Ed.)

Gavin R. Putland

October 31, 2005

(Original Ed. released Oct.19, 2005)

Contents

 1.  Bird brains

 2.  Counterfeit "capital"

 3.  Bait and switch

 4.  The preferred enemy

 5.  "Natural" unemployment

 6.  All-devouring rent

 7.  "Free" trade

 8.  The cause of recessions

 9.  The U.S. dollar bubble

10.  Rogue states

11.  The Great Depression of 2006–?

12.  Summary

Notes

Copyright

1.  Bird brains

The history of life on earth is the history of gene
wars: the genes that survive longest are those that are
best able to propagate themselves. To call this
survival of the fittest is pointless because
fitness has no meaning apart from ability to
survive.

The European cuckoo, for example, lays its eggs in the
nests of other birds and thereby enlists the labor of other
species in the propagation of its own genes. This behavior
impedes the continuation of those species whose nests
are used, and does not assist the continuation of the class
of birds as a whole; but it assists the propagation of
the cuckoo's genes, and no other consideration affects the
measure of "fitness" of those genes or of the behavior that
they produce.

If birds were endowed with conscience and reason, they
might think it inequitable to use other birds' labor
without compensation. They might perceive that if such
exploitation is permitted, it reduces the incentive
to build nests and feed chicks. They might conclude that
birds should serve their own interests in ways that add
to the total welfare of birds instead of merely
subtracting from the welfare of others. So, if all
birds were subject to one government, would not that
government make a law against laying eggs in the nests of
other birds? Not if the history of human government
gives any guidance!

2.  Counterfeit
"capital"

The assets known as the "means of production" fall
into two categories:

• Assets that taxpayers can neither create nor
  destroy nor move out of the taxing jurisdiction may be
  called land-like assets or site-like assets
  (where a site means a piece of ground or airspace,
  including any attached rights to erect buildings on
  that ground or into that airspace, but excluding any
  actual buildings).

• The rest — that is, assets that taxpayers can
  move and/or destroy and/or refrain from creating —
  may be called house-like assets.

By this terminology, house-like assets used as
means of production include not only buildings and other
fixed structures, but also industrial and commercial
equipment of all kinds (fixed or movable) and stock in
trade. The great classical economists from Adam Smith
(1723–1790) to Max Hirsch (1853–1909) called
such assets capital. Because the production of
house-like assets adds to the total wealth of
humanity, and because the profits from such assets are an
incentive to produce the assets, capitalists
advocate the private ownership of house-like assets and the
private appropriation of profits derived therefrom.

Land-like assets include not only sites, but
other natural resources (which cannot be created by human
effort), statutory monopolies and limited licenses (which
can be created only by governments), and the so-called
natural monopolies enjoyed by providers of networked
services such as electricity, gas, water, railways, and (at
the time of writing) telecommunications [ href="#n1">1]. Returns on land-like assets, net of the
demands of labor and capital, are known as economic
rent [2]; owners of such assets
constitute the rentier class. The term "rentier"
should be understood as functional rather than
personal, because the same person may perform more than one
economic role. (For example, one man may be a worker
and a capital owner and a rentier —
and, under present arrangements, may lose more in the first
two roles than he gains in the third.)

From the viewpoint of taxpayers, land-like assets cannot
be produced, but can only be acquired. Such
acquisitions do not add to the total assets of
humanity. Furthermore, while the returns on labor and
capital applied to a land-like asset are incentives to
apply that labor and capital, the return on the asset
itself (net of the demands of labor and capital) is
not an incentive to do anything except acquire the
asset; indeed, the party acquiring the asset need not be
the one applying the labor or capital. Therefore the
argument by which capitalists rightly defend the private
ownership of house-like assets and the private
appropriation of the returns on house-like assets is not
applicable to land-like assets. But they apply it
anyway!

3.  Bait and switch

Because land-like assets by definition are protected
from competition, the returns thereon are high and increase
in line with economic growth, giving the owners both the
motive and the means to fight for the retention of "their"
economic rents. In the late 19th century, when economics
was becoming established as a separate academic discipline,
rentiers were well represented on the trustee boards of
certain prestigious American universities, whose
endowments, moreover, consisted chiefly of land grants.
And there was no academic tenure: professors who did not do
the bidding of their paymasters could be fired without
process or redress.

So the language of economics was corrupted so as to
conflate land with capital, economic rent with profit, and
acquisition with production, in order to obscure the
advantages of a selective tax on land-like assets [ href="#n3">3]. As the unit of heredity is the selfish
gene, which is no less "fit" if it propagates purely at the
expense of other genes, so the unit of economic analysis
became the selfish entity (individual or firm),
which was no less praiseworthy if it prospered purely at
the expense of other entities. It was as if the cuckoos,
being relieved of the burden of building nests, had used
their discretionary time to convince other birds that any
restriction on the laying of eggs in other birds' nests
would discourage the building of nests!

By calling itself neo-classical economics, the
new pseudo-science masqueraded as the successor, though in
fact it was the usurper, of the classical tradition.
Within a generation it became the new orthodoxy.

4.  The preferred enemy

The obvious winners under the neo-classical paradigm
were the rentiers; for if land-like assets were capital,
then capitalism, which demanded private ownership of
capital and private enjoyment of profit, implicitly also
demanded private ownership of land-like assets and private
appropriation of economic rent.

The other winners, whether by accident or by design,
were communists! For if land was nothing but capital,
then communism, which began by demanding expropriation of
land, was obliged in the name of "consistency" to demand
expropriation of all forms of capital, enabling the
revolutionaries to eschew intellectual distinctions between
categories of assets and stir up the masses by appealing to
crude envy.

The conflation of land with capital did not
precede these developments in capitalism and
communism, but it offered a false conceptual framework that
was willingly adopted by both rentiers and communists to
entrench their respective positions and deny the existence
of any intermediate position. It was as if the cuckoos, in
order to protect their legal right to lay eggs in other
birds' nests, had colluded with a gang of avian
revolutionaries who wanted to expropriate all nests and
raise all chicks in common!

5.  "Natural"
unemployment

As the rentiers and their economists have forbidden
heavy taxation of economic rent, governments are compelled
by default to impose punitive taxes on work, investment,
employment, and the consumption that sustains demand
— in short, on everything that capitalism professes
to encourage. All these taxes socialize the fruits of
individual effort — as communists recommend. They
also increase the cost of hiring a worker at a given
standard of living, and consequently tend to increase
inflation or unemployment or both. Central banks fight the
inflationary tendency by raising interest rates (or
otherwise restricting credit) to discourage hiring and
consumption, causing yet more unemployment, in order to
maintain unemployment at the so-called natural rate,
which the neo-classicists define as the minimum
unemployment rate that causes sufficient downward pressure
on wages to yield stable inflation.

Thus, for the neo-classicists, unemployment is
not an evil to be avoided, but the price of ensuring
that rentiers can enjoy their economic rents with minimal
interference from the tax authorities.

Obviously politicians cannot admit the "need" for a
certain rate of unemployment. They must always pretend to
want full employment, and will be judged on their success
in reducing unemployment during their terms of office.
Given that the central bank will maintain unemployment at
the natural rate, the actual rate cannot be reduced
except by reducing the natural rate. And if, due to
opposition from the rentier class, the natural rate cannot
be reduced by shifting the tax burden onto economic rent,
the only remaining method is to make life more difficult
for the unemployed, increasing the desperation of the
unemployed to get jobs and of the employed to keep them, so
that the same downward pressure on wages can be obtained
with a smaller number of unemployed. Having a smaller
number of more desperate unemployed does not reduce the
overall severity of the problem, but makes the statistics
look better. Hence we see "mutual obligation" policies
including one or more of the following:

• Idlers are compelled to seek jobs and consequently
  take jobs from people who want to work.

• Job-seekers are compelled to submit certain quotas
  of job applications per week. This keeps them busy, forces
  them to incur expenses, and artificially intensifies the
  competition for jobs — the implication being that
  the scarcity of jobs, by itself, does not cause
  sufficiently cut-throat competition.

• Unemployed people are compelled to "work for the
  dole" and submit quotas of job applications. They
  are not hired as ordinary employees to do the same
  work for the same hours at the same cost to the government
  — because if they were, they would no longer have to
  apply for other jobs.

• The dole is cut off after a certain time.

To defend such policies, governments must cultivate the
myth that unemployment consists in unwillingness to work,
whereas in fact unemployment, by definition, is an
oversupply of willing workers relative to the
available jobs. Here it may be instructive to note that
the closest human analog of the cuckoo is the man whose
illegitimate children are supported by the husband of his
mistress. Etymologically, "cuckoo" and "cuckold" ought to
be synonymous. Yet it is the husband of the adulteress,
not her partner in adultery, who is called the cuckold!

6.  All-devouring rent

No worker can live, and no enterprise can trade, without
occupying space on the surface of the earth. Yet all the
usable space is owned. So the rents and prices of land are
competed upward, and the returns to labor and capital are
consequently competed downward, until the returns to labor
(net of the cost of access to residential land) are reduced
to the minimum for which workers will "consent" to acquire
skills, work, and raise the next generation of
workers [4], while the returns to
capital (net of the cost of access to commercial land) are
reduced to the minimum for which the financiers will
consent to save and invest. Every direct improvement in
the condition of the working class or the employing class
is competed away in the land market, so that the
ultimate benefit accrues not to the nominal recipient, but
to the cuckoo in the nest: the land-owning class.

That is why the ever-increasing sums handed out in
wages, welfare, charity, and industry assistance never seem
to be enough. But because the real reason is not widely
understood, the rentiers and their economists can easily
blame the nominal recipients for allegedly squandering the
assistance given to them. It is as if the cuckoos, having
laid their eggs in other birds' nests and taxed all the
birds to help feed the cuckoo chicks, explained the host
birds' lack of reproductive success by accusing them of
wasting the food!

The effective demand for land-like assets tends to
increase due to population growth (which increases
competition for use or acquisition of assets), economic
growth (which increases capacity to pay for the assets),
and improvements in technological infrastructure (which
increases the amenity of certain types of assets,
especially sites). But, as the assets are land-like, this
additional demand cannot be offset by additional supply.
So land-like assets tend to appreciate in real
terms. This causes speculative demand for
land-like assets as individuals and corporations buy assets
in the hope of reselling them for higher prices, or try to
save money by early acquisition of assets that they intend
to use later. The speculative motive raises prices because
all buyers must compete with the speculators. Worse,
assets held by speculators are likely to be unused or
underused because the owners are not yet ready to use them,
or because the owners wish to avoid commitments that would
fetter their ability to sell at the most opportune times.
This effect raises not only prices, but also rents, as not
only buyers but also renters must compete with the
speculators.

A sufficiently heavy tax on the holding of land-like
assets requires the owners to use the assets efficiently in
order to generate sufficient income to cover the tax. That
is enough to eliminate the price and rent premiums caused
by the non-use and under-use of speculatively held assets.
In this case — and only in this case — the
benefit to workers and owners of capital is not
competed away in the land market, because it arises from
reduced competition for land!

Rentiers and their economists agree that such a tax is a
bad idea, but disagree as to the reasons. Some, who seem
never to have looked out the window of a bus or train,
flatly deny that the culture of speculation leads to
non-use or under-use of land. Others pretend that such
non-use or under-use is socially desirable in that it
prevents any initial use that would interfere with
conversion to a higher use at the optimal time, as if the
initial use were not desirable in itself, and as if the
higher use would not interfere with conversion to a still
higher use at a still later time — yea, as if the
cuckoos were helping other birds by giving them time to
become better parents!

7.  "Free" trade

The neo-classicists claim that income tax is compatible
with "free" trade because it is "non-discriminatory"
between domestic and international transactions. Never
mind that the tax on export income raises export prices as
if it were a tariff in every country of destination of
those exports. Similarly, they claim that a value-added
tax (VAT) or goods-and-services tax (GST) is compatible
with "free" trade because it is finally paid in the country
of consumption and is "non-discriminatory" as regards the
country of origin. Never mind that the VAT/GST on imports
raises their prices as if it were a tariff. Never mind
that the same tax inflates export prices through its
compliance costs and its influence on the cost of living,
hence wages. Never mind that as long as taxation is
"non-discriminatory" by the neo-classicists' definition,
trade can be taxed to the point of prohibition and still be
considered free!

In fact, all taxes on house-like assets impede
trade and raise prices by discouraging the production of
such assets, while all transaction taxes impede
trade and raise prices by discouraging transactions.

The only taxes that do not impede trade or raise
prices are holding taxes on land-like assets. The
economic rents of such assets are not incentives to
produce anything. So as long as the holding taxes take no
more than the annualized economic rents, they cannot
restrict the supply or raise the price (or hire or rent) of
any product or asset.

Hence, by collecting more of its public revenue from
holding taxes on land-like assets, and less from other
taxes, a country can make itself more competitive. This
of course would compel other countries to do likewise. So
the rentier class and its economists are constantly on
guard to ensure that no country is the first to take this
step; they know that the price of freedom (from the need to
work for a living) is eternal vigilance [ href="#n3">3, pp.237–260].

8.  The cause of
recessions

In a rational market, the capitalized (or
"lump-sum") value of a land-like asset is the discounted
present value of the future rent stream. (That is, the
capitalized value is the lump sum that would yield an
interest stream equal to the rent for the same risk, or the
sum of the future rental payments individually discounted
for time and risk.) But the market is not always rational.
When assets of a certain type are conspicuously
appreciating, people want to buy them. In so doing, they
accelerate the rise in prices, inducing more people to buy
the assets, and so on, causing a speculative bubble
— that is, a state in which prices are decoupled from
rents and are supported solely by the circular argument
that prices will continue to rise. Eventually the illusion
becomes unsustainable and the price rise slows down, which
takes away the alleged justification for current prices,
and so on, until prices dive back to earth: the bubble
"bursts". But eventually the natural appreciation of
land-like assets leads to a new bubble in the same asset
class. So the market for any land-like asset class is
cyclic.

A bursting bubble in a particular asset market has two
counteracting effects. On the one hand, it drives
investors away from that asset class and, by default,
towards some other asset class that may also be susceptible
to bubbles. On the other hand, those who have invested
heavily in the collapsed market have to reduce their
expenditure, and some become insolvent. As one agent's
expenditure is another's income, and as one agent's debt is
another's asset, a chain reaction ensues, reducing the
funds available for investment in other asset markets,
possibly causing them to collapse, and so on; these are the
ingredients of a recession. After an isolated
bubble-burst, the former effect tends to dominate; thus the
stock-market crash of 1987 led to a land bubble. But after
a second burst in quick succession, the cumulative
belt-tightening and bad debt tend to cause a recession;
thus the land burst of 1989 led to the recession of
1990–91.

In short, a burst in one asset market interferes with
the cycles of other markets, sometimes pushing them out of
synchronism by encouraging bubbles, and sometimes drawing
them into synchronism by triggering further bursts (and a
recession). This mutual interference, complicated by
external shocks, makes it difficult to discern the
autonomous cycles of some asset classes, and causes
irregularities in cycles that can be more easily discerned.
The clearest cycles are the residential land cycle
(typically 9 years in duration) and the commercial land
cycle (typically 18 years). A bursting land bubble is
the most reliable single predictor of a recession;
in particular, the global recessions of 1974–5,
1981–2, and 1990–91 were heralded by bursting
"property" bubbles, i.e. land bubbles [ href="#n5">5].

A sufficiently heavy holding tax on land-like assets
would prevent recessions by preventing speculative
bubbles. If the tax were based on capitalized values
or changes in capitalized values, it would force
speculators to consider the tax implications before bidding
up prices. If based on changes in annualized
values, it would directly reduce the changes in after-tax
rents that translate into speculative gains; in particular,
if it were to take all real increases in rental
values, it would prevent real increases in capitalized
values and thereby entirely eliminate the
speculative motive.

The first years of the 21st century were marked by a
global property bubble. The inevitable burst began
in Australia in early 2004. It has spread to the British
Isles and Europe, and in due course must reach the United
States. Although this global bubble was confined to
"housing" (i.e. residential land), it was the biggest
asset bubble in history in terms of the combined GDPs
of the affected countries [6]
— and that measure fails to account for the number
and economic weight of the countries involved. The bigger
the bubble, the bigger the burst. The bigger the burst,
the bigger the recession.

But even that is understating the problem.

9.  The U.S. dollar
bubble

As the money supply is controlled directly or indirectly
by government, money is a land-like asset and a component
of the so-called interest of money is economic rent. This
economic rent accrues to those who merely possess
money. What of those who also create it?

For half a century the U.S. dollar has been the
de facto international currency. Importers
need reserves of dollars to pay their suppliers. Central
banks need reserves of dollars to protect their currencies.
Poor countries must borrow dollars to get capital, and must
earn dollars to service their debts. Hence the growth in
international trade causes growth in the global demand for
U.S. dollars, allowing the U.S. to export dollars —
which cost nothing to produce — and receive real
goods and services in return. That is how the U.S. manages
to import 50 percent more goods and services than it
exports. When the exported dollars are invested, they can
be invested only in U.S. assets, creating a demand for
U.S. Treasury Bills without high interest rates, and
inflating the price/earnings ratios of U.S. property,
stocks, and bonds. This inflow of investment creates a
surplus on the capital account, which balances the
deficit on the current account (including imports,
exports, interest, rent, and dividends).

The U.S. dollar is also the dominant currency —
and until November 2000 was the exclusive currency —
for international trading in oil. Therefore any
increase in the global demand for oil or the price of
oil causes a corresponding increase in global demand
for the U.S. dollar and boosts its value, protecting the
U.S. economy against the inflationary effect of higher
global oil prices and allowing the U.S. to increase its
trade deficit. Hence the reinvestment of exported dollars
in U.S. assets is sometimes called recycling of
petrodollars.

One consequence of this recycling of petrodollars is
that the value of the dollar is out of proportion to its
earning capacity (interest on dollars, or yields on other
dollar-denominated assets). That is one characteristic of
a bubble.

After 1971, when the U.S. dollar ceased to be backed by
gold, the dollar's position as the world currency became
increasingly dependent on its use in the oil trade, so that
the argument supporting the dollar became circular: dollars
would buy oil because oil exporters would accept
dollars because dollars would buy other products
because exporters of other products would accept
dollars because dollars would buy oil! Valuation by
circular argument is another characteristic of a
bubble.

One thing that could burst the bubble is a credible
alternative to the dollar — such as the href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Euro">euro.

10.  Rogue states

Iraq began selling oil for euros instead of dollars in
November 2000. When Iraqi oil exports resumed after the
U.S.-led invasion, payments were again in dollars [ href="#n7">7].

Iran expressed interest in the euro from 1999, and had
converted most of its currency reserves to euros by late
2002. In 2003, Iran began accepting payment in euros for
oil exports to Europe and Asia. In mid 2004, Iran
announced that it would establish a euro-denominated
international oil bourse (exchange), which is now due to
start trading by March 2006 [8, href="#n9">9]. George W. Bush named Iran in his "axis
of evil" in January 2002. If Bush's speech was designed to
revive the flagging fortunes of extremist candidates in
Iranian elections, it could hardly have been more
successful: on October 26, 2005, Iran's newly elected
President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, quoting the late Ayatollah
Ruhollah Khomeini, declared that "Israel must be wiped off
the map."

Since September 2000, Venezuela and 13 other
Latin-American countries have entered into barter
agreements whereby Venezuela sells oil for goods and
services instead of dollars. In April 2002, editorials in
the U.S. media welcomed news of a coup against Venezuela's
elected President Hugo Chavez; but the coup collapsed after
two days [10, href="#n11">11]. In mid 2005, Venezuela decided to
move its currency reserves out of U.S. banks and liquidate
its investments in U.S. Treasury securities. By early
October, about 60 percent of its reserves had been
converted to euros [12].

The U.S. may threaten Iran and Venezuela; but if Russia
and Norway start selling their oil for euros, the U.S. will
have to take it on the chin.

11.  The Great Depression of
2006–?

Given that the value of the U.S. dollar must fall,
nobody wants to be the last sucker holding dollars.
Therefore any perception that the crash is imminent will
trigger selling of dollars in an effort to pre-empt the
crash. That selling will amplify the perception, causing
more selling, and so on; so the perception will become
reality. Moreover, the rush to sell dollars will extend
to dollar-denominated assets, including U.S. property,
stocks, bonds, and bills. So the burst of the dollar
bubble may be the trigger for the expected burst of the
U.S. property bubble — among other things.

If, on the contrary, the U.S. property bubble bursts of
its own accord, the falling value of this class of
dollar-denominated assets will reduce the attractiveness of
holding dollars. Worse, the recession precipitated by the
property burst will bring down other dollar-denominated
asset markets. If the initial collapse of the
U.S. property market is not enough to prick the dollar
bubble, the ensuing collapse of other dollar-denominated
asset markets will certainly be enough, and the dollar
crash in turn will drive further selling of
dollar-denominated assets.

In either case, there will be a multiple burst
involving not only the global property bubble, which is
already deflating outside the U.S., but also the
U.S. dollar bubble and every other asset bubble that has
been pumped up by recycled petrodollars. The bigger
the burst, the bigger the recession.

12.  Summary

In short, the neo-classical economy works like this.
The supplies of certain assets, including land, are not
within the control of taxpayers. The returns on such
assets (economic rent) are not due to any activity of the
owners (rentiers) and therefore could be taken for
public revenue, by means of holding taxes, with no ill
effects. But this option is rejected. Instead,
governments impose taxes penalizing everything that the
neo-classicists profess to encourage. These taxes deter
employment and feed inflation. Central banks fight the
inflation by raising interest rates, causing more
unemployment, for which the politicians' remedy is not to
create more jobs (which would defeat the efforts of the
central banks) but to intensify the competition for the few
jobs that are available. Meanwhile, the opportunity to
speculate on land-like assets creates a permanent
artificial demand for those assets, causing permanent price
premiums and rent premiums exacerbated by periodic
speculative bubbles, which burst causing periodic
recessions. One of these overpriced land-like asset
classes is residential land, for which working people must
pay out of wages that have been depressed by the
deliberately engineered scarcity of jobs, eroded by income
tax, and devalued by indirect taxes. Unemployment,
poverty, and housing stress are the price that must be paid
so that rentiers can continue to enjoy the economic rent
that they do not produce. This is the prize for which the
Cold War was fought, the End of History, the capitalist
Nirvana.

Notes

[1] A networked service is a monopoly
in the sense that any new competitor wishing to serve its
first customer must either replicate the whole network,
which is prohibitively expensive, or connect to the
existing network on terms dictated by the owner or governed
by regulation; none of these options admits free and fair
competition.

[2] The so-called "rent" of real
property comprises the rent of the land plus the hire of
any building(s) attached to the land; only the former is
economic rent. The so-called "rent" of a vehicle is not
economic rent, but a return on capital.

[3] M. Gaffney, F. Harrison,
and K. Feder, The Corruption of Economics
(London: href="http://www.shepheard-walwyn.co.uk">Shepheard-Walwyn,
1994; 271pp.).

[4] Of course workers can hardly refuse
to acquire skills and to work. But nowadays they can
easily refuse to raise the next generation of workers if
the future for workers looks bleak. That is their biggest
bargaining chip.

[5] Concerning the theory that
recessions are due to high oil prices, suffice it to say
that (i) there were recessions before there were oil
shocks; (ii) the recession of 1990–91 started
before the oil shock that allegedly caused it; and
(iii) in the words of Alan Greenspan, "we create these
elaborate models for policy responses and we put in oil
prices [but] they don't create a recession in the models"
[answer to a question from the International Monetary
Conference (London, June 8, 2004), transcribed by
Ashley Seager and quoted in Fred Harrison,
Boom Bust (London: href="http://www.shepheard-walwyn.co.uk">Shepheard-Walwyn,
2005), p.65].

[6] href="http://economist.com">The Economist, June
16, 2005; href="http://economist.com/opinion/displayStory.cfm?story_id=4079458">http://economist.com/opinion/displayStory.cfm?story_id=4079458,
href="http://economist.com/opinion/displaystory.cfm?story_id=4079027">http://economist.com/opinion/displaystory.cfm?story_id=4079027.

[7] William Clark et al., "U.S. Dollar
vs. the Euro: Another Reason for the Invasion of Iraq", href="http://projectcensored.org">Project
Censored, #19 for 2002–3, href="http://projectcensored.org/publications/2004/19.html">http://projectcensored.org/publications/2004/19.html;
5 refs.

[8] William Clark et al., "Iran's New
Oil Trade System Challenges U.S. Currency ", href="http://projectcensored.org">Project
Censored, #9 for 2004–5, href="http://projectcensored.org/censored_2006/index.htm#9">http://projectcensored.org/censored_2006/index.htm#9;
5 refs.

[9] Cóilín Nunan,
"Petrodollar or Petroeuro? A new source of global
conflict", href="http://www.feasta.org/documents/review2/index.htm">Feasta
Review, No.2, href="http://www.feasta.org/documents/review2/nunan.htm">www.feasta.org/documents/review2/nunan.htm;
32 refs.

[10] Hazel Henderson, "Globocop
v. Venezuela's Chavez: Oil, Globalization and Competing
Visions of Development", April 2002, href="http://hazelhenderson.com/editorials/globoCop04-02.html">http://hazelhenderson.com/editorials/globoCop04-02.html.

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[12] Gregory Wilpert, "Venezuela's
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