<!DOCTYPE HTML PUBLIC "-//W3C//DTD HTML 4.0 Transitional//EN"> <HTML><HEAD> <META http-equiv=Content-Type content="text/html; charset=US-ASCII"> <META content="MSHTML 6.00.2900.2668" name=GENERATOR></HEAD> <BODY id=role_body style="FONT-SIZE: 10pt; COLOR: #000000; FONT-FAMILY: Arial" bottomMargin=7 leftMargin=7 topMargin=7 rightMargin=7><FONT id=role_document face=Arial color=#000000 size=2> <DIV>Doug Henwood wrote: "Sometimes there are real <BR>breaks, but those are rare. It's like Keynes's distinction between <BR>risk, which is statistically quantifable within predictable <BR>parameters, and uncertainty, which isn't. Risk is a lot more <BR>prevalent than radical uncertainty."</DIV> <DIV>Comment: Actually,  for Keynes uncertainty was the prevalent state of the world at least in respect to economic affairs.For him, the concept of risk is associated with the concept of probability, a precise numerical value, which is more proper of card and table games which can be subjected to repeated trials and the generation of long historical records.</DIV> <DIV>For Keynes, however, most economic events were non ergodic, i.e. lacking immutable market fundamentals with objective probability distributions. Therefore, for him, in this uncertain world, the fundamentals do not provide a reliable guide to the future, which is subject to sudden and violent changes and,  therefore, future market valuations were subject to dissapoinment.This was his standard response to classical general equilibrium models which assume ergodicity.</DIV> <DIV>Cristobal Senior<BR></DIV></FONT></BODY></HTML>