[lbo-talk] question for Doug

Dennis Claxton ddclaxton at earthlink.net
Wed Oct 20 12:57:13 PDT 2010


I've been reading In and Out of Crisis by Albo, Gindin, and Panitch. It's very good and only 140 pages.

The other night, after reading that book and then some of Richard Walker on California and the crisis, I started thinking that it's fairly easy to pinpoint what triggered the crisis. People stopped making mortgages en masse and the whole tangled web started unravelling.

Then I was trying to think of a similarly simple explanation for what caused the dot.com crash and I couldn't do it, even after looking at After the New Economy. Maybe if I read Doug's book cover to cover again I could, but not after thumbing through.

So Doug, I wanted to ask if there's a trigger to the dot.com crash as easily recognizable as the one for the housing crash.

Also, a lot of the ripple effects of the housing crash are easy to see. People stop buying furniture and appliances for example. What are some obvious ripple effects of something like the dot.com story, besides Meg Whitman trying to buy a California governorship?

If you've got time to give a bullet point or two, I'd love to hear them.



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