"Centralization" was Re: IMF fires back at Stiggy

[Kevin Robert Dean]

"What is probably true is that the staff of the IMF
(and the World Bank) have over time become more
confident about the ability to use markets to serve
the public interest. What caused this shift? Quite
simply, the evidence. Through the 1980s, central
planning represented an important alternative to
markets as a way of organizing economies. The collapse
of the Soviet Union and the fall of the Berlin Wall
suggested to many that markets, whatever their faults,
were a more durable way of organizing a country's
economy. This feeling was reinforced by the good
economic performance of the United States and the
United Kingdom, both of which had moved to more
market-oriented systems during the 1980s."
>http://www.imf.org/external/np/speeches/2002/061302.htm
> >

This will be an economics 101 question from me--but I
hear this often repeated that it was the problem of
"Central Planning" that caused 'The Collapse'.  To
what degree is it true?  Was Soviet economics really
one of guys sitting around 'planning' the economy, or
is there more to it than that?

=====
Kevin Dean
Buffalo, NY
ICQ: 8616001
AIM: KDean75206
Buffalo Activist Network
http://www.buffaloactivist.net
http://www.yaysoft.com

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