[PEN-L:11411] Re: [Fwd: Fw: EH.R: Kondratieff Cycles]

[Doug Henwood <dhenwood@xxxxxxxxx>]

Carrol Cox forwarded from Andre Gunder Frank:

> > No I do NOT know what you mean in re buying Ravi Batra. Although he
> > based his analysis on US data etc., 1989-92  WAS the worst recession
> > in the US  since probably 1937  or maybe 31-33, so so far he was right as
> > far as he went [and in re the growing inequality in the distribution of
> > income he was also right].

That's a pretty odd claim. The 1989-92 period was unusual for the
length of its stagnation, but GDP was 3% higher in 1992 than in 1989,
which hardly makes it the worst recession since the 1930s. The formal
recession - July 1990-March 1991 - was the shallowest since the
1969-70 downturn.

TOTAL REAL GDP LOSS,
LAST 4 U.S. RECESSIONS

1973-75        -3.7%
1980           -2.5%
1981-82        -2.8%
1991-92        -1.5%

U.S. income distribution flattened a bit between 1989 and 1991,
though it spiked in 1992, leaving the gini a bit higher in 1992 than
it was in 1989. The expansion has widened income inequality more than
the recession did.


> > And whats MORE,
> > the 1990s have also been the WORST WORLD DEPRESSION decade EVER, or if
> > economic historians can find a worse one, 1873 ff, 1857 ff, 1720 ff,
> > 1640 ff?, i would like to know about it; 1640 would be my bet if any.
> >
> > But be that as it may,
> > if this is not a super disasterous decade of WORLD DEPRESSION,
> > I would like to be told what it has been, eg by Russians, East Europeans,
> > East Asians, Central Asians, West Asians, South Americans,
> > North/West/East/South Africans, and and...

There have been horrible social disasters in these parts of the
world, but they're not accurately described as recessions or
depressions in the economic sense except for the former USSR. Africa
shows positive GDP growth in the 1990s, and East Asia, despite the
1997-98 collapse, still shows an average growth rate of over 7% for
the whole decade. India and China, home to about 1/3 of the world's
people, both show very strong growth rates in the 1990s. The fact
that African GDP is positive in this decade shows that it's a poor
measure of human welfare, but Frank seems to be operating under his
own set of definitions.

Doug