The two party system is a powerful mechanism for maintainging capitalist dominance in an electoral democracy, and it always throws up the contradiction of whether you totally ignore any differences between the two main parties, or you are mesmerised by the difference. There is a wider question of how much the present crisis makes the business of relying on the qualities of single individuals to fulfill all the roles expected of them quite unrealistic and opens the door to consitutional reform [bourgeois constitutional reform, just to reassure Louis]
BUT promoting mass purchasing power is a dramatic need of global capitalism at the moment, just when it needs also to maintain corporate profits. Its only solution is to accept major losses of capital value, but that will ricochet back onto purchasing power, especially in the USA. They have been demanding Japan stimulates domestic consumption for some time. They desperately need to maintain US consumption although the savings ratio there is zero. How are they going to stimulate mass purchasing power?
I would ask people to be more ready to change thread titles to illuminate the major issues they are contributing on.
Chris Burford
London.