On Aug 23, 2007, at 6:27 PM, Carrol Cox wrote:
> I've always had differences with Ehrenreich, but I never dreamed that
> she could be this abysmally stupid. From the earliest days of
> capitalism
> all sorts of capitalist have gone bust, with no threat to the system.
> Periodically, hundreds of capitalists go broke, with no threat to the
> system.
No kidding. It's salutary to be reading Josephson's Robber Barons right now. Practically the whole history of the U.S. economy in the second half of the 19th century was of securities fraud, stock manipulation, and massive booms and busts. Big time speculators were ruined often. The economy spent a lot of time in depression. Yet the U.S. grew into a massive industrial power anyway.
Doug