> And, as we know, there could never be a huge real estate and asset price
> bubble in a country with keiretsu-style biz networks. Japan's wacky asset
You can have bubbles which coexist with a foundation of genuine investment, though. *Something* kept Japanese rates of investment as a % of GDP near the 28-30% level during the 1990s, and it sure wasn't profitability (low), a stock boom or a real estate splurge. I've said it before, and I'll say it again: if the Left is serious about challening the power of global capital, we need better explanations of why non-American capitalisms work, how they're structured, and what their weaknesses might be. Adorno always made the point that any investigation of the totality must start with the concrete micrology. But all too many Lefties (myself included) rhetorically condemn "capital", "globalization", "neoliberalism" with no real sense of just what the heck the total system is, anyway.
-- Dennis