Re: Japanese Liquidity Trap

[Chris Burford <cburford@xxxxxxxxxx>]

At 03/11/01 00:14 -0500, you wrote:


> Chris,
>
> I think you are exactly right about this.  This is the answer to your
> puzzle of several weeks ago - that Marx predicted high interest rates at
> the peak of an expansion, but now we have low interest rates.  The answer,
> as you say, is expansionary monetary policy, which was non-existent in
> Marx's day, but is widely used today.  Expansionary monetary policy may
> make the crisis less acute, not by reviving business investment (that
> requires a revival of the rate of profit), but rather by lowering the
> interest burden of existing debts.


I appreciate your reasoned support, Fred, for my impressions.

On this last point above -  expansionary monetary policy lowering the
interest burden of existing debts - it occurs to me that this is a sort of
inflationary liquidation of old capital - but probably not vigorous enough
to allow a stagnant economy to revive.

Presumably the (bourgeois) politicians do not consciously consider this aim
when they turn to expansionary monetary policy, and at best have only an
intuitive or empirical understanding that it may be convenient to them in
certain circumstances. They then hope or pray.

They have to censor from their consciousness the fuller pattern?

Regards

Chris Burford

London