On Sat, 9 Jan 1999, Nathan Newman wrote: > You can call this what you will, but there is a fundamental collapse of > employment and production capacity around the world. Yes, but your list from the Economist includes only one First World country, or rather, region: Hong Kong. Finland took a -10% walloping from 1991-93, if I recall aright, but that didn't signify a global Depression, either, just another set of state bailouts of the system. When you look at the extensive interest rate cuts, bank bailouts, loan renegotiations and whatnot of 1998, it's hard to imagine that our ruling classes would ever allow a 1929-style meltdown to happen (which doesn't preclude a gradual, Japanese-style deflation of the American bubble, of course). They'd have to raise interest rates and totally cut off the semiperipheries from fresh credit, and not even the maniacs at the IMF are loony enough to peddle anything like that. -- Dennis
