accumulated large amounts of financial assets and therefore do not 
have a clearcut preference for low interest rates at all. They 
have adjusted to monetarism by becoming, half way, banks 
themselves. At the same time other concerns have accumulated vast 
loads of debt in order to finance take-overs. Other large debtors 
are government and part of the households. 
Employment policy is today dominated by forces extraneous to it - 
by the development in the financial sector. The main constraint 
for employment policy in most countries, however, comes from 
abroad: Via interest policy countries are tied up in the 
international tangle of opposing policies and interests; the 
autonomy of small countries in the field of macroeconomic policy 
has nearly vanished. 
The conflict of debtor and creditor re-appears dramatically on the 
international plane. Surplus countries are ranged against deficit 
countries.The role of the countries as creditors or debtors is 
sometimes changing: The U.S. has now a hybrid role,being a 
creditor towards Latin America and a debtor towards Japan and 
Europe. Most important is the conflict between the developing 
world and the capital exporters among the developed countries.The 
explosive potential of the internal and external debts which have 
piled up is such that one cannot exclude a financial crisis which 
by shattering the prestige of the banks will lead to a shift of 
power away from the financial sector. 
The Political Business Cycle in Reforming Socialist Countries. 
The present development in certain socialist countries which have 
started on the path of radical reforms gives rise to a speculation 
that a political business cycle may develop there.