Alan responded to Minoru: > > Ah yes, I see exactly what you mean. The world economy is probably in for a > rough stretch for a while. > > I think the question here is "how bad will it be and long will it last?" > > There have been worldwide recessions before and we have always come out of > them, but not without suffering and not always quickly. >
Aren't you assuming what needs to be shown, namely that this is a run of the mill "worldwide recession"? Most experts disagree, and the ones who predicted this crisis (and there were many, across the political spectrum) disagree the most vehemently. The evidence is fairly overwhelming (as I myself stated/predicted here almost one year ago, after the collapse of Bear Stearns but long before the events of September) that the current crisis is an epochal event, and represents the final unraveling of the new set of economic rules and relationships, domestic and international, established during the Reagan years. (I recall also railing back then about the blind greed of the folks on Wall Street, comments that have been proven true again and again in the last 10 months, even if I do say so myself; the latest evidence of that this week was the $18 billion in "bonuses" for Wall Street paper pushers whose firms are largely on life support courtesy of the US taxpayer.) This is not just an ordinary downturn; it is a financial collapse unlike anything seen since the 1930s. Even Alan Greenspan, the acolyte of Ayn Rand and Pontifex Maximus of laissez-faire, has concurred with this judgment. And there is no going back to what existed up to 2006. There is going to have to be a new set of international institutions and rules to cope with this mess, and the US economy is going to have be overhauled across the board as well (and that means every sector, from industry to services to finance, and the ridiculous trade deals that have exported millions of decent jobs overseas). It will take at least 5 years, and perhaps over a decade, to clean this mess up, and when the job is done things are going to look very, very different in this country and abroad. John M. --~--~---------~--~----~------------~-------~--~----~ Persons posting messages to not_honyaku assume all responsibility for their messages. The list owner does not review messages prior to posting, and accepts no responsibility for the content of messages posted. -~----------~----~----~----~------~----~------~--~---
