Re: Re: failing firms must be "promptly liquidated"

["Fred B. Moseley" <fmoseley@xxxxxxxxxxxxx>]

Chris,

I seem to have deleted by mistake your #19226 on 31 Oct. about the comment
by Prof. Kakagi on p. 12 of last week's English Language Nikkei Weekly
(how did you find this?!) that failing firms "must be promptly
liquidated".

I agree that the latest proposals of the Japanese Bankers Assoc. is mild
medicine.  Tough words, little action.  This is what Japanese government
officials have been doing for the last 4 or 5 years, ever since the
gravity of the Japanese banks' "bad loans problem" became apparent.  They
just can't seem to bring themselves to "liquidate, liquidate,
liquidate".  They want a softer, more humane capitalism, and are trying to
avoid the hard-nosed, cold-blooded US variety.  And they think it can
work, i.e. that this can be a way out of Japan's bad loans problems and
deepening recession.

But, according to Marx's theory, there is no "softer way" to get out of
the problems of low profits and high debts.  The only way to solve these
problems is to "liquidate, liquidate, liquidate".  Which will of course
make the recession worse, and perhaps turns the recession into a
depression, at least in the short-run.  The question is: how long will the
"short run" last?  Japanese officials (and bankers and capitalists) do not
seem want to take this chance, and with good reason.

Fred