Immanuel Wallerstein

christian a. gregory pearl862 at earthlink.net
Mon Sep 6 09:34:05 PDT 1999



>
> LBO 91 lays out a pretty good case that profits for US companies have
> dramatically jumped up back to their pre-70's levels, implying that
> neo-liberalism (here called conservatism) has been a rousing success to
> the crisis when it comes to restoring profitability.
>
> Of course the US isn't the world, it just plays it on TV.
>

Well said.

A question: when US corps talk about profits, how much (if any) is due to current stock market bubble? Are returns or expected returns from equity counted in this arithmetic? I'm not doubting that profits have gone up, but I'm wondering how much is due to financial returns, how much from productivity growth (value added/ hour) in manufacturing.

Christian

P.S. I wouldn't put my marbles in the "crisis" basket right now, since from the way you describe W's definition of it, it seems pretty vague. Does it start as a currency crisis? U.S. stock market bubble bursting? A solvency crisis in Southeast Asia? Each of these scenarios could make the contours of a crisis different. And then, there's what Michael said: a hyptertrophy of the welfare state? Where?



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