On Mon, 10 Jan 1994 [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote:
*stuff deleted*
I was in a "discussion" with Ed Deak, head of the dept at Fairfield U., right
after the meetings and he argued that the only way to convince the bond market
to let the long rate continue to fall was to RAISE the short rate. My
response was that this is an abominable state of affairs where the Clinton
Administration is totally hostage to the Bond Market. I think we on the left
need to begin making as much noise as we can (there aren't many of us but we
can try...) about how outrageous this situation is. Democratic control of
monetary policy and a little "reflation" should cure the bond market of their
arrogance (but such a government policy would need to be forthright and
very politically up front about what was going on and why ... fat chance!) --
Or how about trying to explain to the rest of the Left what monetary
policy is--why anyone worried about the plight of the homeless, the
environment, etc., should worry about the bond market or any of the rest
of it? Speaking as someone who finally figured that out about a year ago,
most of my friends onthe Left, particularly folks who aren't professors,
haven't a clue about any of it, and from reading the Nation, etc., they
aren't likely to get it. I finally got interested after reading William
Greider, Michael Lewis (Liar's Poker), Martin Mayer, and Ron Chernow (the
book on the House of Morgan)--one liberal and three conservatives. They
were the first writers I read who turned it from wierd, intimidating
gobble-de-gook/magic into something that grabbed my interest: tales of
greed, lust, power, and stupidity.
I know there are progressives who are trying to make this stuff more
accessible. I'm sure that if I went back, for example, to some of the
work I'd read by Bowles or Gintis or Gordon several years ago, I'd find
discussions of monetary policy. But if there were, I skipped over those
sections, finding them intimidating and/or boring; I was worried about the
fate of social services, and economics, particularly finance, didn't seem
relevant or understandable. IMHO, that attitude is still true of much of
the non-academic Left, which is particularly disturbing given how
important finance was in the 80s. They may know that somehow we'd become
a "Casino Society," but they don't understand it and they don't know how
to react to it, aside from treating it as craziness. That's a pretty big
problem--a problem we need to figure out a better way to address.
Otherwise, the realm of monetary policy will be left entirely to the
monsters running it now.
Anders Schneiderman
Center for Community Econ Research
P.S. For anyone who feels I'm being too harsh: you'll get your chance to
take a shot at my first feeble efforts when my dissertation (hopefully
finished this semester) is turned into a book. It started out as a
history of U.S. housing policy and somewhere along the way turned into a
history of housing, production, and finance (if I'm lucky, packaged as a
noir whodunnit on the attempted murder of public housing and the SLs in
the 80s).
