Re: elr/homogeneity of labor

[Randy Wray <lwray@xxxxxx>]

glad to see the elr seminar is carrying on; bill m. and warren have
made some interesting contributions, but i want to print them so i can
examine bill's exposition in detail.

mason, you might want to look at boulding's 1966 macro text; it is the
best exposition of real vs financial saving. he offered an alternative
to keynes's approach, that actually makes it easier to keep the 2
straight. i had a piece in jei--just a comment--a few yrs ago to
compare keynes&boulding saving. in any case, no keynesian --or even
boulding-- would "blame" you for not financial saving. boulding would
congratulate you for real saving.

per, you are right of course that it is almost meaningless to compare
1870 labor with 1996 labor. the key is that at each pt in time, you
take the "normal" production process. the only constant thru time is
the number of man hours. whoops, man/woman hours. otherwise we must
use nominal terms--which are what matters for most questions.

i should also add, barkley, that jan kregel presented a paper on
minsky at afee--forthcoming june jei--that would seem to be on the
other side, arguing that the fih is not euphoric, or bubble. and jan
always prefers to  call it financial fragility hypoth.

and regarding doug's post, actually the bail-out is often of holders
of the debt of the institutions, not the owners. eg in the case of
S&Ls, altho i will admit that the crooks got off easy. like paul d.,
you look around and see stability, certainty; like minsky, i look
around and see institutions that keep capitalist economies from flying
off to 1929.

randy wray