Actually, I can't think of a more lucid presentation of Keynsian and
post-Keynsian economics than in Doug Henwood's "Wall Street" which covers
Kenyes, Minsky and others in depth.
Speaking of "Wall Street", I wonder if Doug can correct an impression that
I have. In dismissing Hilferding's "Finance Capital", you state that among
some of the more erroneous conclusions found there is that interest rates
can impact the business cycle. This obviously is in line with your general
foregrounding of the role of finance and money as a force equal to production.
But I wonder how that matches up with the current situation in Japan, where
neither interest rate adjustments nor Kenysians pump priming have made much
of a dent in the economy. Although there obviously differences in degree,
it seems that the slump in Japan is as intractable as the Great Depression
which was also resistant to interest rate hokie-pokie and pump priming.
So can't we say that in a certain sense the musty old categories such as
the "falling rate of profit" have more explanatory value for Japan's fix
than post-Kenysian ones?
Louis Proyect
(The Marxism mailing list: http://www.marxmail.org)
