>>> Michael Perelman One minor amplification of Jim Devine's excellent note. He wrote:
"A key problem is that the Greenspan years involved not "solving" recessions as much as delaying them." Marx was probably correct in saying that delays -- in effect, trying to resolve one concrete contradiction -- only makes the inevitable crisis worse. I use the analogy of preventing forest fires, where the fuel builds up, making the eventual fire worse. ^^^^^^^^ CB: Until the 30's and 40's isn't it true that the government didn't solve recessions , rather they were resolved by the businesses themselves ? Doesn't it seem likely that no depressions (in the US) since the 30's is due to government application of economic science ? Even Japan has sort of extended slowdown , but not depression in the 90's. Does the delaying that Greenspan did amount to blunting the sharpness of the downturns and avoiding depression level downturn ? Some of it may be passing the worst effects over to other countries like Southeast Asia, Brazil, Russia ? Did "swallowing" the former socialist countries and non-aligned countries give some resources to blunting downturns in the imperialist countries, especially the US. ? Also, the recovery aspect for the working class, employment, seems to recover less in the recent recoveries. Or is there really a lot of forest fire fuel piling up somewhere so that there will be a really big one ?
