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<P>>----- Original Message -----
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<P>>From: "Doug Henwood"<DHENWOOD@PANIX.COM>
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<P>> > Profitability for non-financial corps rose pretty steadily from 1982
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<P>> > to 1997, and has been going sideways to down since.
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<P>> >From: "Patrick Bond"<PBOND@WN.APC.ORG>
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<P>>Reply-To: lbo-talk@lists.panix.com
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<P>>But over the period 1980-2000, it's still way off 1950-80 rates, you'd
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<P>>concede.
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<P>I would use the two "phases": 1946-1973 and 1973 to 2000. These phases distinguish between pre-1973 and post-1973, since the cycles that start with 1973, the year the US finally went off the gold standard, and the foreign exchange rates entered their present period of anarchy, will have different characteristcs due to reflexive effects from the increased anarchy in world market relations caused by speculative currency trading, and so forth.</P>
<P> Marx states in Vol. 3 in his discussion of Pre-capitalist (Merchant Capital) economic relations that in the capitalist mode of commodity production the credit system can never break free of the monetary system. In this case the national currencies created by fiat of central banks and backed by the productivity of the national economy can never break free of the money material par excellence--gold (with silver a distant second).</P>
<P>Of course, they can't go back to gold, because of the risk of deflationary breakdown and national bankruptcy, but what lies ahead with credit money is inflationary breakdown and national bankruptcy. Hence every central bank is on the lookout for the least appearance of the inflation spectre.</P>
<P>It seems like any economic statistics for the 20th century would have to take into account transitions from one economic phase to another.<BR></P>
<P>RS</P>
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