>On Mon, 9 Mar 1998, Michael Perelman wrote:
>
>> I would like to start a dialogue on why the (U.S.) economy has been
>> doing as well as it has over the past few years. We know about the
>> problems, inequities ...., but why has the house of cards stayed up as
>> long as it has.
At 02:17 PM 3/9/98 -0800, Dennis Redmond wrote:
>Well? By what standards? Unless you mean relatively low unemployment.
>Not hard to understand, given the 1.2 million employeable Americans in
>prison. Or do you mean the sheer length of the current US business cycle,
>now wheezing along in its seventh year? Let's not forget the beneficience
>of America's creditors, Central Europe and Japan, who have essentially
>allowed the US to refinance itself at lower international
>interest rates. The American house of credit cards, shaky as it is, rests
>on the solid bedrock of Deutsche Bank and Tokyo-Mitsubishi Bank.
>
>-- Dennis
Dennis,
If the U.S. wasn't the global "cash register" (based on extraordinary levels
of consumer debt, granted), Japan wouldn't be the export powerhouse that it is.
Japan's pre-Keynesian economic policies (what was its latest manuever to
inspire recovery from its 7-year doldrums -- a consumption tax ?) may be
the mortal threat to the whole E. Asian regional political economy which it
has colonized by other means (the keiretsu), inspiring many a competitive
devaluation. Your persistent celebration of Central European and Japanese
neo-mercantilism misses the flip side of the dialectical coin -- neo-liberal
America with its super-dollar and its credit card Keynesianism realizes the
value that these countries' workers produce (kind of like the pre-Plaza Accord
days all over again). You can't have your cake (boosting Germany and Japan)
and eat it too (busting on late imperial Amerikka), b/c they are partners in
crime.
I'm talking out of the side of my mouth (or some other orifice) here, just to
get you riled up and witness your ordinarily acute response.
John Gulick
Ph. D. Candidate
Sociology Graduate Program
University of California-Santa Cruz
(415) 643-8568
[EMAIL PROTECTED]
