Banks, Bucks and Bolsheviks

[Rakesh Bhandari]

Doug, he is not the enlightened one; he's the neo Proudhounist one posing
as an anarcho syndicalist and wanting to attack the problem in the sphere
of circulation, in the sphere of credit. My hero William J Blake concluded
his short summary of Marx's critique of the shoddy Hegelian: "Proudhonism
as dogged the footsteps of Marxism from 1847 to the present day. Its type
of thinking is the standard 'radical' approach to the world. It is common
to currency refomrers and fascists (in theory), and its isolation of the
banker as the source of all evil is extremely popular. But it lacks any
understanding of the totality of production relations, and is gaseous."
Boddhi has basically been begging for someone to write The Poverty of
Enlightenment.

Boddhi, I didn't get your point about a net present value of stock
earnings. Are you suggesting that because of low interest rates, present
stocks are worth their price (Doug has that neat and short description of
present value calculations in his book)?  As far as I get it, that's the
irony. A falling rate of profit means that the rate of interest must fall
even more, which means that a stock that's still paying out the old
dividend will be worth even more?  A falling rate of profit should express
itself in a stock market boom.

rakesh