>Doug Henwood fwd'd:
>
>>Greenspan: Economy Soft, Not Falling Down
>
>
>(Dr. Richebächer had something to say about this today. Any thoughts
>about the "crucial novelty" vis-a-vis global synchronization he
>mentions?)
>
>
>BUBBLE AFTERMATH
>by Kurt Richebächer
>
>"Encouragement of consumption is no benefit to commerce,
>for the difficulty lies in supplying the means, not in
>stimulating the desire of consumption; and we have seen
>that production alone furnishes those means. Thus, it is
>the aim of good government to stimulate production, of
>bad government to encourage consumption."
>
> Jean-Baptiste Say,
> "A Treatise on Political Economy", 1803
Ooooh, "the tedious Say" (as Marx called him)! Heresy heresy! Weird to quote him in this context, because he's famous for the law named after him, that supply creates its own demand - which supposedly makes depressions impossible. But Richebacher is arguing for depression.
His synchronization argument has a problem - there was no synchronized upturn in the EU, Japan, or much of the "South."
Doug