Jonesing for the Dow/Savings Rate

[Carl Remick]

Re below:  To me the single most interesting fact in Doug Henwood's Wall
Street is this:  "the price of the S&L bailout would have funded the
presence of 10 full-time bank examiners in every thrift in the country
for close to 200 years." (pg 88)

Carl Remick

-----Original Message-----
From: Patrick Bond [mailto:pbond at wn.apc.org]
Sent: Friday, August 07, 1998 3:24 PM
To: lbo-talk at lists.panix.com
Subject: RE: Jonesing for the Dow/Savings Rate

I don't think there's a real dispute here... just that "investment" 
should mean the kind of "productive" (surplus-value-generating) 
investment that in "normal" or non-crisis processes of capital 
accumulation _undergirds_ financial assets. The failure to undergird 
financial paper ("fictitious capital") with productive assets is what 
bubbles are all about, right? The idea of overaccumulation (excess of 
investment in productive assets) helps us understand why investors 
switch from productive to financial-speculative circuits...


> From:          Carl Remick <cremick at rlmnet.com>
> Re Michael Brun's observation: I thought the Savings and Loan crisis
and
> other recent bubbles pointed to an excess of investment, not a
deficit,
> and by the above syllogism to an excess of saving as well. Excess
> saving/investment is money for which no income-earning opportunities
(at
> least no reasonable, non-fraudulent ones) are available. 
> 
> Good point. I can't fathom this tendency to talk about capital
formation
> in the abstract without mentioning the idiotic ends to which this
> capital is typically applied.