[lbo-talk] [Marxism] Subprime crisis

Julio Huato juliohuato at gmail.com
Tue Jan 15 02:03:18 PST 2008


Doug wrote:


> Not sure what you're characterizing as "my views," but not only have
> I been moaning about the housing bubble for years, I've long said the
> current account deficit is unsustainable, and the big political
> economy question of our time is how the U.S. goes through some sort
> of structural adjustment.

I was not referring to your views on housing or CA deficits. Instead, I was referring specifically and *narrowly* to your views on the *link between the subprime debacle and the performance of the U.S. economy as a whole* -- as mediated by the expected policy response aimed to keep the credit debacle from messing up the rest of the economy. The point of the R&R paper referred by Michael Pollak is the association between, on the one hand, asset (housing, equity) prices -- inter alia -- and, on the other hand, U.S. economic performance.

And I meant *your views* as reflected in remarks such as:

http://archives.econ.utah.edu/archives/pen-l/2007w32/msg00159.htm http://archives.econ.utah.edu/archives/pen-l/2007w32/msg00161.htm http://archives.econ.utah.edu/archives/pen-l/2007w35/msg00051.htm

And when I said that your views *on this* may be shifting, I was thinking of your recent piece for Truthdig. This remark in particular, in contrast with those above, suggested to me that you were now more inclined to see the effects of the credit crisis spilling over to the rest of the economy:


> Meltdown risk is deepened by the scary way that world
> financial markets have come, in Keynes' famous phrase,
> to treat real economic activity as "a byproduct of the
> activities of a casino."

Hope that makes things clear.


> Not Found

Econmagic deletes the images after a half an hour or so. But here again:

http://docs.google.com/Doc?id=dhgjvbdv_274hf5r9jgk



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