>Quote of the day -- from the current, long-winded NY Times series on the
>spreading global economic slump: "The American stock market has ...
>soared to its highest ratio of market capitalization to gross national
>product (140 percent) ever recorded in history, a ratio that compares
>with a previous peak of 81 percent in 1929. The American ratio is more
>than twice as high as Indonesia's or Brazil's at the time their crises
>hit."
This Times series has mainly been invocations of the obvious, but what's been interesting about it all along has been its concession that Something Must Be Done about capital flows (no idea what, though), and, today, major concessions to the view of the U.S. a bubble, which most respectable authorities have mainly been dismissing. Both these concessions have to be signs of serious elite worries, Alan Greenspan's public happy talk to the contrary.
Doug