Personally I think that the Freeman-Carchedi book contains a lot of interesting material (you've got two papers cited in it, Jim D., not that that proves anything, :-)). But the arguments quoted on this list pointed in the direction of a very serious problem that the neoclassicals are aware of but which is gotten at nowhere in the book. This is the Sonnenschein-Mantel-Debreu Theorem. The problem has to do with aggregation and the shape of the excess demand function. In a nutshell, and without getting too technical, under the usual conditions, the excess demand function can take any arbitrary shape as long as it is continuous and suitably homogeneous. This would seem to be the kind of bottom line about the shape of the demand curve that was being driven at. There have been more recent efforts by people like Grandmont and Hildenbrand to come up with conditions that would exorcise this new demon. Sufficient heterogeneity of consumers may do the trick, but this potential problem has very serious implications for stability, multiple equilibria, dynamic adjustment, etc. (anybody wanting to see further discussions of such issues can check out the archives for the recently completed "Rosser seminar" over on pkt). Barkley Rosser