All would be well if only policy makers were more intelligent.
That is all very interesting I guess, but it down't have much to say to leftists.
Carrol
On 9/22/2011 2:31 PM, Sean Andrews wrote:
> http://krugman.blogs.nytimes.com/2011/09/22/what-profit-hath-a-man-of-all-his-labor/?smid=tw-NytimesKrugman&seid=auto
>
> What Profit Hath A Man Of All His Labor?
>
> I’m in a weird mood as the markets tumble. It will pass, but right now
> I feel like the preacher in Ecclesiastes, wondering about the point of
> it all.
>
> Here’s the point: back around 1998 I was among those who looked at the
> crisis in Asia and realized what it implied — namely, that the
> problems that caused the Great Depression had not been solved, and
> that it could happen again. The speculative attacks on smaller
> nations, the liquidity trap in Japan, were omens for all of us. In
> 1999 I wrote a book, The Return of Depression Economics, saying all
> that.
>
> When the 2008 crisis struck, it was immediately clear that this was
> what we had been afraid of. And it was desperately important that
> policy makers realize that we were in a world where the usual rules no
> longer applied.
>
> But they didn’t. The banks were rescued — but as soon as that
> happened, the moralizers and deficit worriers, the people who see
> hyperinflation lurking under every bed, took over. Warnings that we
> were repeating not just the mistakes of Japan but the mistakes of
> Hoover and Bruening were waved away as the squeaking of people of no
> consequence, never mind the fact that some of us had pretty fancy
> credentials.
>
> And now we are exactly where I feared we’d be, repeating all the old
> mistakes and experiencing all the old consequences.
>
> As I said, I’ll get over it. But grant me a moment to look on the past
> three years, and despair.
>
> ___________________________________
> http://mailman.lbo-talk.org/mailman/listinfo/lbo-talk