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Strategies & Market Trends : Booms, Busts, and Recoveries -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: TobagoJack who wrote (34430)	5/28/2003 7:29:51 PM
From: Raymond Duray	Respond to of 74559

Hi Jay, Re: Maestro Greensputin will be laughed at, at the <<end of the decade>>, I'm of the opinion that the "liquidity trap" that J.M. Keynes described as a culprit in the woes of the 1930's is a phenomenon that still plays a role in modern economies. Greens-keeper has done a fabulous job of masking the inherent softness of the American economy by flooding our capital markets with dollars. Forcing absurd prices in NASD equities until 2000, and now on to real estate as the absorber of the excess currency flow. This has had a very salutary effect on the overall U.S. economy, with eventual days-of-reckoning seemingly put off for another few quarters or years. Greenspan seems to have permanent crisis management down to an arcane art form. I expect his management to be effective for as long as he remains at the helm. My logic? If his absurd coddling of criminal derivatives traders hasn't done us in yet, maybe Greenspan is bombproof. ******* Re: I believe <<Milton Friedman>> will be discredited at the conclusion of the Script, Well, he was discredited at the beginning of the script, but when you are proselytizing a powerful religious belief system, true believers are undeterred by facts. One of my favorite authors, Greg Palast, gregpalast.com has written extensively about Milton Friedman's "Chicago School" of economists in his best seller "The Best Democracy Money Can Buy". Greg was an undercover post-graduate student at the University of Chicago in the early 1970's. These were the halcyon days when Leo Strauss, the godfather of neo-cons, and Friedman and the supply-siders were in high dudgeon, railing against the prevailing Keynesian orthodoxy of the day. Palast's classmates included several Chileans, who got a chance to put Friedman's voodoo economics: Here's a snippet from one review: americas.org Angry yet? It gets much worse. Palast also explores the myth of American free-market economics as it was applied in Chile under dictator Augusto Pinochet. What Ronald Reagan's State Department called “a casebook study in sound economic management,” and what Milton Friedman called “The Miracle of Chile,” was in truth a disaster. After 10 years of “free-market modernization,” unemployment went from 4.3 to 22 percent, real wages dropped by 40 percent and the number of citizens living in poverty doubled. You also will read about the attempted ousting of Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez. In addition to his crime of mandating food and housing for the poor, he doubled the royalty taxes paid by Exxon/Mobil. I thought I smelled oil. Worse for Chavez, his anti-corporate, anti-global economics plan seemed to be working. These are all stories the mainstream U.S. press rarely cover until they can no longer be avoided. ************ So, with Friedman fully discredited by the end of the 1970's, what did the Anglo-Saxon world go on to do? Wreck the British rail and water systems in the 1980's. Wreck the S&Ls in the U.S. in the same decade, then go on to wreck the California energy market, the stock market and multiple corporations in the next few years. Eventually, the public will catch on. But I'm not holding my breath. -Ray