----- Original Message ----- From: "Michael Perelman" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
This is a very important development, perhaps lending support to Herb Stein's dictum that if something is unsustainable, it cannot go on for ever. ==================== My personal favorite snip: The U.S. dependence on foreign capital concerns economists on both ends of the political spectrum. In a speech this March, Lawrence H. Summers, a Treasury secretary in the Clinton administration and now the president of Harvard University, warned of "a kind of global balance of financial terror," in which the economic well-being of the United States depends on the actions of foreign governments. "There is surely something off about the world's greatest power being the world's greatest debtor," he said. "In order to finance prevailing levels of consumption and investment, must the United States be as dependent as it is on the discretionary acts of what are inevitably political entities in other countries?" Oh how that fealty to Ricardo's vision wavers when portfolios move against a neolib. Run, run, run for the mercantilist- nationalist-jingoist safety blanket...........
