>Over on LBO-talk, Lou Proyect has accused Doug Henwood of not noticing
>that there is a capitalist crisis, and I have bet Max Sawicky $1000 to a
>kilo of dried roubles that the Dow will crash to 3000 within a year.
>Earlier this week, Doug Henwood apparently argued on his radio show that
>it is 'scaremongering' to suggest that Japan's bad debts equal a trillion
>dollars.
I did not argue that; I suggested the possibility that the $1 trillion price tag is one of those extreme estimates that often come at the end of a cycle, like projections of $100 oil in 1980, or the $1 trillion estimate for the costs of the U.S. S&L disaster that circulated just as the crisis was peaking. What got Lou upset was my guest on that show, Hugh Patrick of the Colubmia Business School, who knows a hell of a lot more about Japan than all of us put together. Patrick said that Japan has serious problems, but they're not as bad as the English-language press is making them out to be. I don't know for sure one way or the other, and you don't either, even if you think you do.
Doug