[lbo-talk] Capital strike?

Doug Henwood dhenwood at panix.com
Mon Sep 29 10:29:16 PDT 2008


On Sep 29, 2008, at 12:26 AM, C. G. Estabrook wrote:


> Doug Henwood wrote:
>> On Sep 27, 2008, at 10:05 PM, C. G. Estabrook wrote:
>>> To what extent can the current imbroglio be accurately described
>>> as a capital strike?
>> Not much at all. Banks are refusing to lend to each other. If
>> they're on strike, it's against their own kind.
>
> Of course the classic response to a labor strike is that "the
> workers are only hurting themselves."

I'm not sure what the relevance of that observation is. We're in a classic flight-to-safety panic of the sort that Keynes wrote about. The system is frozen up, and stuffed with bad assets. We've got liquidity, balance sheet, and confidence problems up the wazoo. And now the "left," such as it is, is denying that there's really a problem.

Doug



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