>This is all related - in my mind, anyway, but not necessarily for
>everybody else - to something I've been saying for a long time.
>Which is that David Harvey and Robert Brenner have been making an
>argument, repeated by others, that financial growth is a symptom or
>a correlate of a stagnating real sector.
Is that Brenner's argument? Isn't he saying here that financial growth depends on real sector gains?
http://www.sok.bz/index.php?option=com_content&task=view&id=35&Itemid=49
>As we have seen, it was the revival of profitability in the
>manufacturing sector, amplified by a major reduction in corporate
>taxes, that accounted virtually in toto for the recovery in the rate
>of profit of the non-financial sector as a whole through 1995. After
>1995, this increased substantially in the non-manufacturing, mainly
>service sector as well, bringing profitability in the business
>economy as a whole still closer to the high plateau of the long
>postwar boom. With the real economy on a firmer foundation, the
>financial sector could exploit deregulation, as well unstinting
>government subsidy and support, to achieve an unexpected turnaround.
>If this symbiosis between manufacturing, service and financial
>sectors could be maintained, would not the US economy have finally
>left the long downturn behind?