Doug Henwood wrote:
>
> >And even if the economy is cooling, the Fed will have to decide just
> >how cool is cool enough. Indeed, the central bank will have to
> >resolve an internal debate over whether it is sufficient to slow
> >growth to a pace that would keep unemployment at its current level
> >of around 4 percent, or whether it will need to push harder on the
> >brakes and drive unemployment up, perhaps to 5 percent or higher, to
> >ensure that inflation remains in check.
>
> I don't remember this level of honesty in the past, at least in a
> family newspaper.
>
Doesn't it warm the heart that Greenspan is making these connections much more transparent so they really cannot be ignored by the NYT, paper of record. Isn't it time for a protest at the doors of the Federal Reserve Bank building a la WTO and IMF/World Bank?
>
> Bob Pollin has a paper, "The 'Reserve Army of Labor' and the 'Natural
> Rate of Unemployment': Can Marx, Kalecki, Friedman, and Wall Street
> All Be Wrong?," in the new URPE reader, Political Economy and
> Contemporary Capitalism, edited by Ron Baiman, Heather Boushey, and
> Dawn Saunders (M.E. Sharpe). Bob righteously concludes that properly
> decoded, the natural rate "returns the discussion of unemployment to
> where Marx and Kalecki wanted it to be: the analysis of class
> struggle and the distribution of income and power."
Bravo! Of course, your book is on my shelves and Kalecki's words are in my permanent files. Thanks for alerting me to this new one from URPE.
Marta