DAVID LEONHARDT writes: > Recessions happen. If you tried to > build an economy immune to the human emotions that produce boom and bust, > you would end up with something that looked like East Germany.
I know that this is just a two-sentence blurb, but it's interesting that someone so orthodox as a New York TIMES writer would attribute business cycles to the unalterable depths of human nature alone. He says nothing about how financial regulation can keep bubbles in check or how automatic stabilization and the "balance wheel" of the government budget keeps bubbles from impacting the real economy in a serious way (and that's pretty standard stuff among broadly-defined Keynesians). Despite the obvious down-side on other fronts, that means that if the goal is to stunt recessions, we don't have to restructure the US to make it like E. Germany was (given, of course, the fact that the US is one of the richest countries in the world and is currently a world-dominating hyperpower). Naturally, he says nothing how the _objective_ nature of capitalism encourages cycles, crises, and worse. This objective (structural) nature also encourages the undermining of financial regulation and government stabilization over the long haul. If I were forced to produce a two-sentence blurb about why it's so hard to create "an economy immune to ... boom and bust," I'd blame capitalism, not human emotions. BTW, it's my impression that E. Germany and the whole Eastern Bloc did have "business cycles," but that they looked very different from the ones we experience under capitalism. Is there a Soviet-Bloc expert in the house? -- Jim Devine / "Segui il tuo corso, e lascia dir le genti." (Go your own way and let people talk.) -- Karl, paraphrasing Dante. _______________________________________________ pen-l mailing list [email protected] https://lists.csuchico.edu/mailman/listinfo/pen-l
