Here's the Krugman article Max sent, massaged into plain text. I could agree about 80% with it. The 20% I can't agree with are the words "he can do it again" in the seventh paragraph. The reason Greenspan can't tell that 1987 joke again is everybody knows the punch line. He might try; but some members of the audience will start laughing too early and it'll spoil the timing. Easing monetary policy is a necessary, but NOT A SUFFICIENT condition for addressing the crisis. In case, the Russian, Japanese and Indonesian examples haven't made the point strongly enough, this is no mere "financial crisis" or "economic crisis" -- it is a momentous political crisis. This probably hasn't sunk into American thinking yet because, naturally, there is no real political struggle in the U.S. Not about anything that matters, anyway. August 30, 1998, Sunday Section: Editorial Desk Let's Not Panic -- Yet By Paul Krugman Could the current craziness in world financial markets translate into a global slump, maybe even a new Great Depression? Of course it could. The story might go something like this: Over the next few weeks, investors, made jittery by the debacle in Russia, stage runs on the currencies of many third world countries. The governments of these countries respond by raising interest rates to 30, 50, 70 percent -- stabilizing their currencies but pushing their corporations into bankruptcy, provoking devastating bank runs and plunging their economies into deep recession. Meanwhile, Japanese lawmakers are unable to agree on a plan to rescue the nation's dysfunctional banking system. The result is a sharp drop in the yen, but Japan's central bank, declaring that a strong yen is essential, defends the currency with higher interest rates, which sends Japanese industry into a tailspin. The direct effects of these developments on the United States and the European Union are relatively small. But the dismal news undermines the euphoria that had driven Western stock prices to hard-to-justify heights. As stocks fall, so does the consumer spending that had offset the drag from Asia's collapse. Despite all this, the Federal Reserve and the Bundesbank are reluctant to cut interest rates. The Fed believes that the stock crash validates its earlier warnings that the market was driven by ''irrational exuberance'' and -- like the Bank of Japan in the early 1990's -- welcomes the bursting of the financial bubble. Meanwhile, the Bundesbank -- which will hand over the monetary reins to the new European Central Bank in only a few months -- wants its successor to understand the importance of sound money and stable prices, and is unwilling to blur that message with any hasty reflationary moves. Within a year or two, of course, it becomes clear that everyone has been far too cautious, and many countries start trying to boost spending any way they can. But it is too late: self-fulfilling pessimism has become so deeply embedded in the private sector that even zero interest rates and large tax cuts are not enough to get the world economy moving again. I hope you don't regard this scenario as a literal prediction of what is going to happen. For one thing, real crises never play out according to the expected script. Anyway, this scenario, or any similar scenario, is not all that persuasive. It requires not only that world financial markets be governed by Murphy's Law -- that everything that could go wrong does -- but also that all of the major policy makers play right into Murphy's hands. The odds are that at least a few things will go right, that Japan will pass a halfway decent bank reform law, that the markets will take a deep breath and realize that Brazil and Russia are, after all, rather different places. Even if financial markets do continue to tumble, Alan Greenspan and his counterparts in other advanced countries have the tools they need to prevent paper losses from turning into a slump in real output. Mr. Greenspan turned a stock market crash into a real-economy non-event in 1987; he can do it again. But will he? That's where I start to worry. The real risk to the world economy comes not from bad fundamentals but from rigid ideologies -- ideologies that might make policy makers fail to respond, or even move the wrong way, if a global slump starts to develop. One of those ideologies is the belief that a strong currency means a strong economy, that stable prices insure prosperity. Notice that my scenario had the Bank of Japan actually raising interest rates in a recession in order to defend the yen, and the Bundesbank refusing to cut rates because it doesn't want to encourage laxity in its successors. Both actions would be deeply foolish. Alas, given the strong-yen rhetoric of Japan and the stable-price rhetoric of Germany, both are also quite plausible. In his classic book ''Golden Fetters,'' Barry Eichengreen, an economist at the University of California at Berkeley, showed that the spread of the Great Depression was, more than anything else, caused by the dogged determination of many nations to remain on the gold standard at all costs. Nobody is on the gold standard these days, but the urge to defend monetary purity, never mind the real economy, remains. The other ideology might be summarized as ''blaming the victim.'' Just listen to what one now hears about Asia: that it shouldn't even attempt a quick recovery through monetary and fiscal expansion, because it will only delay the correction of deeper structural problems. This admonition sounds like an eerie echo of the famous advice that Herbert Hoover received from Andrew Mellon: ''Liquidate labor, liquidate stocks, liquidate the farmers, liquidate real estate . . . purge the rottenness out of the system.'' It is easy to imagine that effective action against a slump might come too little, too late, because the initial stages of that slump are regarded not as danger signs but as just punishment for economic sins. In the end, a global slump is quite an easy thing to prevent. The only way it can happen is if the people who have the power to prevent it fail to take the risk of such a slump seriously, and continue to cling to ideologies inherited from a more benign era. If Mr. Greenspan and his colleagues have an appropriate degree of nervousness -- if they understand that while a replay of 1929 is unlikely, it is possible -- then everything will be more or less all right. The only thing we need to fear is the lack of fear itself. Regards, Tom Walker ^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^ #408 1035 Pacific St. Vancouver, B.C. V6E 4G7 [EMAIL PROTECTED] (604) 669-3286 ^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^ The TimeWork Web: http://www.vcn.bc.ca/timework/
