Considering what happened to living standards in the USSR post-1991, I wouldn't be so sanguine about wishing for a repeat in the US.
(Not that I think that allowing people to fall into poverty is bad for moral reasons. That would be, er, wrong.)
--- On Sun, 3/22/09, dredmond at efn.org <dredmond at efn.org> wrote:
> From: dredmond at efn.org <dredmond at efn.org>
> Subject: [lbo-talk] US 2009 = USSR 1990
> To: lbo-talk at lbo-talk.org
> Date: Sunday, March 22, 2009, 9:13 PM
> On Sun, March 22, 2009 2:37 pm, Ira
> Glazer wrote:
>
> > http://krugman.blogs.nytimes.com/2009/03/21/despair-over-financial-policy
> > /
> >
> > The Geithner plan has now been leaked in
> > detail<http://www.nytimes.com/2009/03/21/business/21bank.html?hp>.
> > It’s exactly the plan that was widely analyzed —
> and found wanting — a
> > couple of weeks ago. The zombie
> > ideas<http://krugman.blogs.nytimes.com/2009/03/03/zombie-financial-ideas/
> > >have won.
> >
> > are seriously undercapitalized. And I fear that when
> the plan fails, as
> > it almost surely will
>
> It will fail. Here's the deal: Asiazilla, Bearzilla, and
> Eurozilla are
> ready and willing to finance a bailout. They have the cash
> and are willing
> to buy US Treasury bills. But they are NOT willing to
> exchange their
> hard-earned reserves for shady bonds, busted CDOs or dodgy
> Agencies. That
> game is done. China and Russia stopped buying Agencies last
> November, a
> warning shot across the bow.
>
> The US government must clean up its banking system. No
> private investor or
> group of private investors has the resources to do this.
>
> And time is running out. The real world economic crisis is
> about to touch
> off another round of financial sector deleveraging,
> bankruptcies and
> implosions: think mutual funds.
>
> -- DRR
>
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