The same Economist article that begins "All across Europe, it appears, the powers that be were quietly delighted when Oskar Lafontaine resigned as Germany's finance minister . . . " appears, a bit further down, to be in complete agreement with Brad de Long's characterization of what the business establishment thinks about reflation:
"On the issue where Mr Lafontaine's interventions caused the greatest dismay -- his unsubtle efforts to talk the ECB into cutting interest rates -- this old-left unreconstructed Keynesian was actually correct. Interest rates in Europe were too high, as the ECB may recognise by trimming them at the earliest opportunity after Oskar's departure. And Wim Duisenberg, the EDB's boss, was wrong to retort that rates are "historically low": that may be true of nominal raets, but not of real ones -- the kind of mistake (or attempt to mislead) you might expect of a politican, not a central banker."
>From the "Oskar Bravo," the "Economics Focus" article in the 3/30/99 issue
-- p. 80 in the American eidition.
__________________________________________________________________________ Michael Pollak................New York City..............mpollak at panix.com