On Nov 20, 2007 8:43 PM, Jim Devine <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote: > 3. Write-offs > > Expose Wall Street's shadow-banking system. They're playing with $300 > trillion in derivatives and still hiding over $100 billion of toxic > off-balance sheet asset-backed securities, plus another $300 billion > hidden worldwide. A lack of transparency is killing our international > credibility. Write it all off, now! > > [again, purge, purge! Let's be the capitalist Stalin, purging them all! > > [I don't see how this is the result of a recession, however.] >
Farrel's suggestions for the financial sector are not so bad. The author is not suggesting Wall Street writeoffs will be a result of recession. In this case, recession may be the result of allowing the financial class to fail. Wouldn't it be a good thing for the working class as a whole in the longer term to break the power of the financiers? 9. Inflation > > Expose the "core inflation" farce Washington uses to sugarcoat reality. > > [This is total crap. He's saying that "Washington" under-measures > inflation, using the core inflation rate (which leaves out energy & > food inflation). But it's only fools like Farrell who read it this > way. > > [Instead, the core inflation rate is an effort to get a handle on what > part of inflation is persistent rather than being a flash in the pan. > He may be right that inflation is under-measured (given the Boskin > commission changes), but a recession wouldn't expose anything about > that. It's just Farrell's hobby horse.] There are real problems with the (core) inflation measures. According to this measure wage increases are inflationary but a stock market bubble counts as growth not inflation. Isn't there a problem with setting monetary policy on this basis? I agree with most of your other comments but I think it is very important to decouple the interests of the working class from the financier class. -raghu.
