Sure, but the debt/GDP measure doesn't say anything about Japan's ability to pay its debts. The structural deficit in Japan at the worst point in the recession so far--1996--was not significantly higher than the U.S.'s highest structural deficit in the 1990's and no one ever predicted cataclysm for it. And it's been lower than Germany and France.
What needs explanation is the inability of fiscal spending--even such as it is--to stimulate demand.
> Please...How is saying that there may well be no exit from the next
> depression other than revolutionary action 'triumphalist'? I am not
holding
> my breath till the FT, including Martin Wolf, comes to this conclusion.
So, after all "rescues" of one sort or another that capital has managed for itself over the last 500 years, you really think the next depression will be the killer? How so? Why will it be different than any of the other crashes?
> The main effect of which within the US has been to incite even more
> speculative mania on the stock market and a troubling current account
> deficit that now requires Greenspan to raise interest rates to fend off
> speculative attacks on the dollar. This is not Keynesianism or any
coherent
> theoretical program but brinkmanship, bound to fail soon.
I don't disagree that the "program" is ad hoc or that it has a kind of desperate quality. But folks--and Greenspan himself--have been saying that the market is overvalued and destined for a big correction, crash, what have you, for almost 3 years now. Likewise, people--myself included--have been pointing to the payments imbalance for at least that long. My question to you is, why do you think the crash is imminent now--I mean like now as opposed to a year or 6 months ago?
>
> What's messianic about coming to the conclusion that the contradictions of
> capital can only be overcome by the working class taking matters into its
> own hands? Dismissing this as messianic sounds so...i don't know...cold
war
> hawkish, revisionist and tired.
I admit to being tired. But I wasn't being dismissive. I really meant this question: Why now, as opposed to 6 months ago? Or do we just keep saying the crisis is imminent until it happens?
All best Christian