Decline of the Dollar

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the mingled sounds of satisfaction and bewilderment. At any event (reports our Ecclesiastical Correspondent) the conference managed to resolve a tricky logical and theological dilemma. The central problem arose from a rank and file 'democratising faction, led by delegates from Latin America and Africa. Their proposals included changing the Order's heirarchy, in which only the highest level at present takes a special vow of obedience to the Pope, by proposing this vow be open to all ranks. Only objector to this scheme was Pope Paul himself. This posed a problem: obedience to the Pope would thus have required... disobedience to the Pope!

Eventually delegates were persuaded to drop the idea, forcing one of them to depart with the consolatory formula that: "Obedience is not synonymous with submission to authority Jesunts are iong accustomer to the paradoxes of obedience. The founder of the Order, St. Ignatius Loyola, took (in the sixteenth century) what would today be regarded as an extreme position "If the Church shall have defined anything to be black which to our eyes appears to be white, we ought in like manner to pronounce it to be black." (Rules for Thinking within the Church. Latir edition, 1534). him and demanded a ransom from the NUM of 1p per union member as a contribution to their "rag".

Although the NUM rapidly intervened and agreed to pay £2,50C they only just forestalled a move by Yorkshire miners to offer even more - as long as the students Kept Gormley!

A Yorkshire miner, who declined to be named, told Socialist Press "I would of thought the students should pay us to have the bugger back!"

At the beginning of last month the director of the Federal Reserve Bank, Dr Arthur Burns, announced that the dollar "remains basically a very strong currency"

As if to deliberately prove him wrong, the dollar has since follow ed an almost continuous path of decline on the international marKets.

This decline is of course a response to the developing crisis of the US economy reflected in gro. wing unemployment and inflatio As previously reported in Socia ist Press, it will be increasingly difficult to reduce inflationary pressures in the US without a major confrontation and defeat of the working ciass. At present the American ruling class is not prepared lor such a conrontation preterring to attempt a reduction of unemployment by boosting purchasing power with a tax cut of $ 28 billion. This will only servi to increase inflationary pressures as capitalists react to increased consumer spending by raising prices further in an attempt to protect profit rates.

INTEREST US domestic inflation has, and will further, reduce the desire of foreign banks to hold large sums of dollars which can be exchange against fewer and fewer US commidities. At the same time, the reduction in interest rates by major US banks like the Morgan Guaranty last week further reinforced the trend against the dollar on the international money markets.

As the recession develops and profits fall, the hank interest rate on loans has plummeted downwards in a desperate attem pt to encourage investment despite low profit expectations. But at the same time, precisely because of the falling interes rates foreign depositors have less eason to invest in US banks. n effect, less reason to buy dollars.

The decline of the dollar on the international money market has already caused worry among the oil producers about receiving their revenues in a rapidly deteriorating currency. At the beginning of February Iran decided to value its own currency no longer in terms of the dollar bu in terms of the IMF's "Special Drawing Rights" i.e. a mixture of US and European currencies MAJOR But this is no solution. The SDR: contain a substantial dollar elemen! The dollar is still the major world reserve currency. Despite its growing weakness, it cannot he replaced with another currency or mixture of currencies. This is for the simple reason that the problems which beset the US economy and the dollar, also piague every other major capitalist country and its currency.

As national capitals compete more and more ruthlessly for the diminishing world surplus value and profit, there is no steady demand for the commodities of any one country by others. Thus the demand for the various currencie is constantly luctuating with the result that their exchange rates are more and more unstable in relation to one another.

This is accentuated as capitalist states price themselves out of one another's export markets through inflationary credit expr ansion aimed at holding off as long as possible from mass unemployment and the destruction of capital accumulation.

The fact is that the currency of no canitalist economy can any longer serve as a stable means of international payment. Only gold can serve this function but then only through the mechanism of a major recession and destruction of capital.

At the same time the growing US recession has reduced the demand for oil, resulting in the cessation of pumping by a major Saudi-Arabian pipeline and comnetitive price cutting by some producers. However the oil producers cartel OPEC is currently planning co-ordinated production cutbacks to prevent falling deman leading to price competition. Suc a cutback scheme is currently being sponsored by Iran, Kuwait, and Algeria.

The necessity, from the strategic view point of the American ruling class to carry through Kissinger's attempt to smash OPEC once and for all, remains, therefore, as ever. But at the same time, the econoEducation is one of the major casualties of Wakefield's Labour controlled District Council's planned cuts. More than €1,000,00C is to be cut from the education budget plus probably another £2,000,000 from the capital works in the education field.

This means that cen the planne increases in the number of teachers of less than 2% cannot be met Also the budget for the maintainence of schools, the furniture and equipment grant, and the amount available for students' grants has been decimated.

We say that the working class and its children will not be made to pay for the crisis. There must be an emergency NUT meeting to discuss a campaign to fight the cuts. They must get the support of the rest of the working class mic means to achieve it are slip ping away. An essential part of Kissinger's strategy was Presiden ords plan to reduce oil import hrough protective tarifts. Congress has just rejected this as likely to be too inflationary in the context of the already inflationary 28 billion dollar tax cut. The increasing inability to deal with OPEC by economic means only serves to increase the attrac tiveness of militury methods to the US ruling class. Yet as Cambodia and Vietnam show, the world working class is not about sit back while military intervention takes place. Thus the weakness of the dollar reflects the growing class contradictions of capital. ism and imperialism on a world scale in the area, including the miners, to prepare for strikes throughout the area. The Council Shop Stewards meeting must make clear their opposition to these attacks.

Their policy must be "No education cuts.

*No redundancies. For the amour of work available to be shared among the whole council workforce with no loss of pay.

*For all details of the finances of the council to be made available to the Shpp Stewards committee.

*For an end to private contracts.

For a massive programme of public works.

*To prepare for District-wide strikes to support these demands.

We also callon the Labour Council to refuse to carry out attacks on the working class. The "lefts' on the council should fight for these demands and should campaign to kick out all the careerists who work only for themselves.

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The "discussion" now of trope-wide "rationalisation". an "alternative" once more to the WORKERS RE. ICH iversity hoisted Portuguese flags

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MINER IRRITATION NUM leader Joe Gormley. had a narrow escape the oth- er week. Students kidnapped