gold and currencies

Doug Henwood dhenwood at panix.com
Mon Jul 12 10:40:57 PDT 1999


Charles Brown wrote:


>Edward Boorstein seems to disagree in _What's Ahead_ In his
>discussion of the business cycle he describes recessions as the
>crises that Marx was talking about.

That's a trivializing use of the word crisis. In the worst U.S. recession of the post WW II period, 1973Q4-75Q1, GDP fell 3.7%; in the second-worst, 1957Q3-58Q2, it fell 3.3%; in the third worst, 1981Q3-82Q4, it fell 2.8%. The average is -2.0%. From 1929-33, it fell 27%. If the first set of recessions are crises, what do you call the 10-15 times worse Depression?

Doug



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