Re: what's going to happen?

[Doug Henwood <dhenwood@xxxxxxxxx>]

Devine, James wrote:

> For anyone interested, I just gave a talk on what's going to happen to the
> U.S. economy to the Loyola Marymount University student economics society.
> My notes can be found at:
> http://bellarmine.lmu.edu/faculty/jdevine/talks/ESTalk020502.htm

A lot of folks at the WEF were saying it's going to be a W, or a U
with an extremely saggy right tail. Krugman gave a synopsis of one of
the brainstorming sessions that sounded rather downbeat I'm told.

The thing about debt, though, is you never know what the killing
level is. In the U.S., it's just kept rising, except for unpleasant
but not disastrous periods like the early 1990s. You could recycle
debt worries from 1975 or 1981 or 1989 almost word for word. Debt's a
good explanation after something cracks, but you never know the
timing. You never know when lenders will change their minds or why.

Doug