>Describing symptoms in other terms does not add up to an explanation, it is
>just another description. Why is there too much saving, and what defines too
>much in any case?
Bourgeois economics can of course also explain this. Inequalities and and the
effect of the collpase of the real estate bubble on the average net worth among
other things can explain the lack of spending and the excess of savings can be
defined in many ways, one of which is when the full-employment interest rate is
driven to zero or under. Of course, every one of these things relies on more
detailed explanations and more factors, and you can study them in as much detail
as you want.
>What is finally determinant, ie what is the determining last
>instance?
Only dogmatisms can answer this, and I'm sure bourgeois economists can be as
dogmatic as marxists.
>In any case Japanese over-saving is *itself* only a sypmtom not a cause of the
>underlying crisis.
Of course. Trouble is, everything can be looked at as a symptom. You can go from
the economic into the social and the psychological and the biological... but you've
go to stop somewhere.
>The system runs into
>realisation problems when the rate of exploitation is too low to valorise both
>existing capital and newly-created capital in each cycle.
I agree with another comment of yours: deficit spending is not a panacea and won't
solve all problems. But this is precisely the problem that taxation and/or public
spending can solve. The recipe is simple. Whether it is applied or not is a political
problem. Of course, capitalists would rather not have that problem solved, even if
they would benefit from a solution in the long run.
>I think this seriosuly misses the point about what is happening in Japan.
>Today the Nikkei is down to below 12k. That's an unprecedented debacle and
>effectively means the bankrupting of huge swathes of Japanese finance and
>industrial capital
No. It's been widely reported and I wrote about this yesterday: the Nikkei is not
representative of the japanese stock market. This is not an unprecedented
debacle.
>Deficit spending works? So Milton Friedman and monetarism really were just
>arbitrary and unnecessary innovations after 1973, and Keynesian pump-priming
>really had not resulted in massive inflationary crisis, huge public deficits,
>unmanageable disequilibria in global payments, and chronic corporate
>unprofitability?
As far as I can see, Friedman and talk about "massive inflationary crisis" are
nothing more than vulgar ruling class propaganda. What's the problem with
inflation? What's the problem with disequilibria (there isn't such a thing as
equilibrium)? And especially... what's the problem with low profitability? It seems a
good thing to me.
>Why would printing money
>encourage a risk-averse public which saves too much, to stop saving and start
>consuming?
Because inflation helps indebted people and makes folks cash-averse and more
importantly because printed money should be used to reduce unemployment and
poverty. The problem is not that all Japanese are so propersous that no one wants
to spend but that not all Japanese have enough money.
Anyway, as I see it deficit spending is not merely supposed to stimulate but to
*replace* private spending. This is precisely where my version of deficit spending
and the mainstream version diverge. Public money is often used on useless stuff
because using it on useful stuff would take away profit opportunities from private
capital.
>Why would it bale out Japanese corporations which already can
>borrow money for free, and do not have the problem of having to produce
>transparent accounts?
As far as I know, only some banks and their affiliated businesses can borrow for
free. The problem is 1)real rates, which are not zero in a deflationary environment 2)
lack of profitable opportunities, which means that real rates should be negative,
which means that solid inflation is needed.
Anyway, the goal of deficit spending should not be to help corporations but the
country.
>it can hardly be said that there has not been a
>decades-long attempt to get accumulation going again,
Certainly, but the attempt has been feeble in the face of the renewed strenght of
accumulation that neoliberalism has unleashed.
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