Re: Query on Recessions

[Charles Brown <charlesb@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx>]

>>> Michael Perelman
One minor amplification of Jim Devine's excellent note.  He wrote:

"A key problem is that the Greenspan years involved not "solving"
recessions as much as delaying them."

Marx was probably correct in saying that delays -- in effect, trying to
resolve one
concrete contradiction -- only makes the inevitable crisis worse.  I
use the analogy
of preventing forest fires, where the fuel builds up, making the
eventual fire worse.

^^^^^^^^
CB:  Until the 30's and 40's isn't it true that the government didn't
solve  recessions , rather they were resolved by the businesses
themselves ?

 Doesn't it seem likely that no depressions (in the US) since the 30's
is due to government application of economic science ? Even Japan has
sort of extended slowdown , but not depression in the 90's. Does the
delaying that Greenspan did amount to blunting the sharpness of the
downturns and avoiding depression level downturn ? Some of it may be
passing the worst effects over to other countries like Southeast Asia,
Brazil, Russia ? Did "swallowing" the former socialist countries and
non-aligned countries give some resources to blunting downturns in the
imperialist countries, especially the US. ?  Also, the recovery aspect
for the working class, employment, seems to recover less in the recent
recoveries.

Or is there really a lot of forest fire fuel piling up somewhere so
that there will be a really big one ?