What is particularly fascinating with John Maynard Keynes is that he wrote a theory that only works on paper since it assumes that monetary, political and financial managers will never abuse the power of indebtedness. So, what to think of this worldwide credit squeeze and its implemented cure that is no more less the cause of the disease and could spiral at any moment into a 'Greater Depression'. This week Gregory Mankiw, a professor of economics at Harvard, wrote a piece in the NYTimes asking openly what Keynes would have done to deal with the crisis. Just another nice but failed attempt to praise the Keynesian fairy tales. Mankiw cites the observation which links the root cause of economic downturns to insufficient aggregate demand. What demand when the consumers are completly tapped out in the first place? How can world governments create demand when they are literally bankrupt? “Rien n’aura eu lieu que le lieu.” - Mallarmé Plato had a cyclic – or “spiraling” – view of history, in which the cycles bear the regular scars of catastrophe, the plural catastrophes being epochal in the root sense of articulating a dehiscence between one age and another. The most dramatic expression of Plato’s catastrophic theory of history comes with the story of Atlantis and the Prehistoric Athens in the two linked dialogues, Timaeus and Critias. The Atlantis story has a pedigree, whichTimaeus supplies. The statesman Critias, who narrates the legend in the two dialogues, heard it in his youth from his grandfather, who knew it in turn from his source, the famous lawgiver Solon, who got it from certain records kept by the Egyptian priestly college at Saïs in the Nile Delta. Solon visited there in early career on an embassy from Athens. The filiations of memory that permit Critias to rehearse the story are important in context because Plato, putting his notion in the mouth of an Egyptian priest, believes that one effect of the regular cataclysmic events is periodically to interrupt the record of history and reset cultural development at its degree-zero. A deceptive account. There is an impression of "calm", since there was no major incident to report. But this is counterbalanced by a negative find: 1147 burnt-out cars, or 30% more than last year, even though the police were out in force (35,000 men deployed). Two hundred eighty persons were arrested. Other than the burnt cars there was little to report. "Only four policemen were slightly injured," declared the Interior Ministry in its communiqué this morning, adding that "no damage to public or private property" was noted.Beyond The Age Of Usury
"It is generally agreed that casinos should, in the public interest, be inaccessible and expensive. And perhaps the same is true of Stock Exchanges." — John Maynard Keynes
Life in the Ruins
France’s Toll of Destruction: 1147 Burnt-Out Cars
France has set a new record. One thousand one hundred forty-seven cars were burned during New Year's night. There are several news sources. The following is from Le Post:
Friday, 2 January 2009
From the desk of Sharon Kayser on Fri, 2009-01-02 13:03
From the desk of Thomas F. Bertonneau on Fri, 2009-01-02 12:48
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From the desk of Tiberge on Fri, 2009-01-02 12:24
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