[lbo-talk] Wherein Krugman laments his cribbing of Henwood has come to naught

Sean Andrews cultstud76 at gmail.com
Thu Sep 22 13:19:22 PDT 2011


It's not a perfect universe, nor is this a recipe for revolution. But in terms of a continuum, you've gotta admit there could be *better* policies.

s

On Thu, Sep 22, 2011 at 15:00, Carrol Cox <cbcox at ilstu.edu> wrote:
> In other words, it's all because policy makers made mistakes; they adopted
> the wrong policies. That implies there were _good_ policies, policies that
> would have worked, to follow. And there is no explanation of why those bad
> policy decisions were made.
>
> 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
>
> ___________________________________
> http://mailman.lbo-talk.org/mailman/listinfo/lbo-talk



More information about the lbo-talk mailing list