Re: Krugman’s Latest
W. Kiernan wrote:
Wojtek Sokolowski wrote: >
You seem to imply that the ruling class seeks to harm working class in addition to profit seeking. How can you separate the two?
Because the investing class is so often willing to take a sizable monetary loss in order to diminish the leverage of the working class. What else would you call it when the Fed hoists rates in order to discourage industrial credit and cool off the economy, just so they can run the unemployment level back up a couple of ticks? Keep in mind that during the Reagan and Bush I administrations the Fed would put the damper on whenever the unemployment rate threatened to dip below the magic “NAIRU” figure of six percent or so, when the Clinton Administration demonstrated that even unemployment rates a full two percent lower didn’t result in the feared avalanche of uncontrollable wage-driven inflation. How I wish that fucker Greenspan’s pencil neck were within reach of my hands.
But Greenspan hasn’t run a tight policy since the first few months of 1987. He let unemployment get very low in the mid-90s, and did everything he could to keep the economy from sinking in 2000-1. The reason, of course, was that the working class had already been defeated in the 1980s, so it didn’t matter. But that’s another story.
Doug