Re: Perelman on Brenner

["Devine, James" <jdevine@xxxxxxx>]

Doug writes:>U.S. profit rates are way up from their recession lows. I don't see
anything about that in Brenner's NLR piece. Does that mean the crisis
is postponed?<

I haven't read Brenner's article, but I would guess that like Fred Moseley he'd emphasize the fact that US profit rates aren't as high as they were in the 1960s and that the profit-boom since the 2001 recession is as yet very short-lived so we can't point to a serious upward trend. 

To my mind, the post-2001 profit boom would be a continuation of the general trend since the 1980s, i.e., the employers' offensive at the center of the neo-liberal policy revolution aimed at boosting the profit rate. This effort seems to have become more concerted over time, culminating (so far) in Dubya's efforts, but hasn't been successful as yet. Part of the problem is that the neo-liberal policy revolution has been world-wide, depressing both private and social wages and encouraging the existence and persistence of the underconsumption undertow encouraging realization problems.  This means that profit booms are most likely to be based on increased indebtedness.[*] Currently, consumer debt has played a big role, but I guess Dubya's fiscal policy involves a "passing of the torch" to the government sector, so that it will be the government's increasing indebtedness that might sustain future economic booms. 

Of course, increased indebtedness only delays the next recession. Government indebtedness can increase for a longer period, but the anti-government debt forces are mobilizing. It's not just Krugman anymore. 

[*] The late 1990s boom was based also on an investment boom, which went too far and left the US economy with imbalances (such as unused fiber-optic cable) which discourage private accumulation. 

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Jim Devine jdevine@xxxxxxx &  http://bellarmine.lmu.edu/~jdevine