Lakshmi Rhone wrote: > ... US businesses want the specter raised by Obama’s election (a mobilized > public, rationally interested in basic principles of social justice) fully > vanquished before they accept a greater government role in the management of > the economy....
I think that's what I said. > I am not sure what your last point is, but it reads as if you are blaming > monetary expansion for overcapacity. Why was there “excessive private debt”? > What does excessive mean? I wrote: >> as a result of a long economic boom, we see a combination of excessive private-sector debt, unused industrial capacity, unsold inventories of housing, and pessimistic long-term expectations, which it term forms a barrier to any private-sector-driven recovery.<< The word "term" should have been "turn." Anyway, the long economic boom after the 1980s was partly a result of monetary policy, partly a result of fiscal policy (Dubya's tax cuts & wars), and partly due to the tendency of the private sector to over-expand (as with the 1990s and 2000s bubbles). What "excessive" means in my reference to excessive debt (and excessive unused capacity, excessive unsold inventories of housing, and excessively pessimistic long-term expectations) depends on the historical context. Further, the various elements of the package should be considered together, not separately, since they interact and reinforce each other. In isolation, for example, US corporations don't seem to have excessive debt right now. But in the context of excessive consumer debt, underutilized capacity, a horrible housing market, and general pessimism, it's enough to block new fixed investment and expansion of employment. It's the last part that defines "excessive." > When talking about protectionism, I had that Lazy Boy vs. China story in > mind. But how prevalent is that kind of phenomenon? -- Anonymous. _______________________________________________ pen-l mailing list [email protected] https://lists.csuchico.edu/mailman/listinfo/pen-l
