Thorts after a week selling Europe to the Japanese

DANIEL.DAVIES at flemings.com DANIEL.DAVIES at flemings.com
Wed Nov 17 00:25:06 PST 1999



>My idle suspicion is that US capitalists recognised they were up against
an
>integrated economy, which afforded Japanese capital cooperative advantages
>which the Anglo-American model explicitly disallowed their Yank
>counterparts.

Not so sure of this, in so far as you're talking about anything beyond a high savings rate, which gave Japan a lot of advantages.


>And I believe I'm not alone in suspecting that the Anglo-American brigade
>might one day turn out to inhabit very small glasshouses indeed when they
>venture to lecture others on the systemically induced generation of huge
>bad debt.

Absolutely agreed. I'm on record as saying that Alan Greenspan will go down in history as America's equivalent of Nigel Lawson.


>As for underconsumption problems - well, mebbe Japanese consumers just
>stopped buying and started saving because the opening salvo of
>Anglo-Saxon-style 'transparent liberalisation' 'reforms' made 'em
>justifiably nervous about their future?


>Waddya reckon?

Well, I'm just a lousy old monetarist, so I tend to assume that these things are the result of central bank missteps and nothing more sinister. In fact, I hope to trademark the following law-like proposition in economics/psychology:

Davies' Law: If there is a monetary explanation for any economic phenomenon, then any alternative explanation is almost certainly a rationalisation of someone's prejudices.

I think that this has predictive power over the popular notions of "Asian values", "Eurosclerosis" and "The New Economy".


>Cheers,
>Rob.

cheers mate. congratulations about the rugger, by the way. and God Save the Queen (look on the bright side, you could have Charlie-boy as your prince).

dd

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