> > Henwood, it was August of 1998,
> >
> > and he was proclaiming the
> >
> > arrival of the Big Bear Market that
> >
> > would undo nearly two decades'
> >
> > worth of prosperity. [dd: is this true?]
>
>
>Oh Doug, say it isn't so. You spend so much print stating that you
>refuse to predict a collapse of capitalism and the stockmarket. They
>must be mistaken.
I was my usual equivocal self. The last paragraph:
"In the past, crisis managers have succeeded in staving off full-blown disaster, and in shifting the costs of adjustment onto the poor and weak. Maybe they can do it again, and this is indeed another buying opportunity. Or maybe not, and we have a true global slump on our hands."
Two months later I wrote:
"It may be that the worst of the world financial crisis is over. Markets that looked just a few months ago like early 1930 have stabilized -- and in the case of U.S. stocks, rediscovered old ardors -- and politicians and central bankers that looked asleep now are quite awake. The second feature is almost certainly the cause of the first, marketeers' professed anti-statism to the contrary."
My line was that the crisis looked bad because the bailout machinery was so slow to kick into action. It did, and so I thought the crisis was probably over. A certain person denounced me for being "superficial" at the October Communist Manifesto birthday conference for that shift.
Doug