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First there is a big difference between 1929 and the present. Several of the most important changes have to do with monetary policy.

  1. The world is no longer on the gold standard
  2. Every (developed or developing) country has a central bank
  3. Central banks now work together through international agencies which didn't exist before
  4. US and European populations have safety nets available
  5. There is a ton of money sloshing around in the second world which can move into the first world whenever it is felt that prices have gotten cheap enough.

Yes, there will be inflation in the US, in fact it is already underway, but the consequences will not harm the financial industry very much. What will happen is the normal consumers will become more impoverished since they no longer have organized labor to push for wage increases as was the case during the 1970's.

One can never destroy the plutocracy through adverse economic changes. The nomenklatura of the USSR are now the new capitalists. Krupp and the other big industrialists came through WWII still big industrialists.

On a slightly different topic there is a new web site which seems to want to set itself up as a meeting place for economic discussions, not constrained by the interests of the economists who run the more visible blogs. I would suggest crossposting this diary there, there probably won't be many comments, but perhaps a community can get started if enough people do it.

http://www.economicpopulist.org/

Policies not Politics
---- Daily Landscape

by rdf (robert.feinman@gmail.com) on Mon Mar 3rd, 2008 at 10:53:49 AM EST

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