Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Current(heterodox)thinkingoninterestrates?

["Charles Brown" <CharlesB@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx>]

>>> Jim Devine <jdevine@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxx> 04/07/00 11:27AM >>>

> >CB: From whom do they [banks] borrow ? Aren't the biggest creditors, net
> creditors ?

I wrote:
>they borrow from all people who have bank accounts, though the most
>important are those who can afford to save most and also can afford to keep
>the largest amounts in the bank.

CB responds:
>CB: Is Chase Manhattan a net debtor to its bank account holders ? How many
>people is that ?  How about Morgan Guaranty or progeny ? What is the money
>trail here ?

I think it's a mistake to emphasize the role of specific companies or
individuals so much.

_________________

CB: This is not emphasis. The main thing is the class of creditors, fincance captial. However, one does have to get specific when one gets to the details. We are discussing details, not the main emphasis.

There are specific people who are the ruling class, and at some point it is important to name names.

There were groupings of leading U.S. capitalists in the early 60's , according to  Nitkin.

But I'd even go further and say a main flaw of Marxist economics is not being more specific and personal about who is the ruling class. Marxists take the class analysis domiance too far. The bourgeoisie , being into the individual, name names of Communist leaders more, learn individual personalities. An advantage of bourgeois economics and politics over marxist is making the political personal in this way.

In other words, one can take the anti-Big Man theory of history too far after a certain point.

Capitalism has big subjects. It is not all an objective system, especially after the bourgeoisie advance their economic science enough to cope more and more with the objective aspects of the market system, with special help from Karl Marx (  in reverse).
_________________-



 It's important to remember that there are markets are
at work here and that markets can work independently of the will of any
individual or company. But there are lots of problems with markets even
when individual manipulation and monopoly play no role.

> >CB: Stagflation seemed to be a pinnicle of monopoly price fixing

I wrote:
>currently, we're having the opposite of stagflation, i.e., low official
>unemployment rates and low inflation.

>CB: And we don't have deflation. Everything is just perfect.

no, it's just that issues of inflation and unemployment are far from the
sum total of the measure of what can be wrong with this society (both
domestically and internationally).

_________

CB: Yes, I know they are not the sum total. I am against capitalism in the U.S. because it also generates permanent mass poverty, reduced welfare benefits, lack of affordable health care for 40 million, enviromental pollution, alienation and forced overtime for millions of workers (mortification of the body and soul of proletarians), job insecurity, industrial accidents,  male supremacy ,  chronic mass street crime, alcoholism and druge addiction, et al. ,  Permanent mass unemployment contributes to these muchly.

_________
 In addition to the stuff I talk about in
my "Three Bears" screed and stuff people on pen-l discuss every day,
increased inequality seems an obvious issue that one misses if one focuses
totally on issue of stagflation, etc. But I think that to really understand
the current "disinflation" (falling inflation and unemployment), you have
to look at the increase in inequality. The victory in the "war against
inflation" is intimately tied to the capitalist victory against workers in
the 1980s and the increases in inequality within the working class, which
are linked to the increased insecurity of workers.

_______________

CB: I am for overthrowing capitalism whether we are in boom or bust, stagflation or disinflation. Capitalism isn't working.


__________




<ellipsis>

>There is never anymore deflation, lowering of prices as a general trend.
>This seems an evidence of institutionalization of a monopoly price fixing.

actually, it's _good_ that we don't have deflation, since it encourages
mass bankruptcies among debtors (i.e., us).

______________

CB: Yes, you all said this about 8 months ago when there were some signs fo deflation. Maybe there is another word for it, but there has to be a positive type of price reduction. Not just prices not going up, but prices going down , especially on basic consumer goods for the working class and poor. For example, sales tax is regressive because it hits working class disproportionately. We need deflation of basic consumer basket goods and services. Price controls  from a People's Price Society.

CB