Thank you, James!
1985 1985-05Read it in the scan (PDF at ETOL), page 4 →
Read from the scan by machine and not corrected: expect misread words, and now and then a caption or a line from a neighbouring story. For anything you quote, read the scan.
Scan page 4
The economic crisis of U.S. capitalism has steadily deepened since the late 1960s with the end of the postwar boom. The forces that fueled the economic stability and prosperity of the 1950s and '60s have exhausted themselves. In fact, they are rapidly turning into stimulants of severe economic dislocation and colThe artificial expansion of industry and agriculture through unprecedented government spending (particularly military spending) has led to a swelling of the national public and private debt, becoming an immense burden on the economy.
From a debt of $43 billion in 1940, this national obligation has ballooned in 1984 to the incredible sum of $1.7 trillion. And the debt is growing faster and The interest charge on the soaring public debt is soaring even faster. It has risen 500 percent since 1945 and stood at $134 billion in 1983. At this point the government has to borrow to pay interest on the old debt, thus adding new debt The threat of a looming economic collapse resulting from the spiraling debt is not something Marxists have invented. The capitalist class is fully aware of the "debt bomb"' as the following excerpts from a Business Week article (Oct. 12, The U.S. economy stands atop a mountain of debt $2.5 trillion high.
The U.S. is the Debt Economy without peer. To fuel nearly three decades of postwar economic boom at home and export it abroad, this nation has borrowed an average net $200 million a day, each and every day, since the The most pessimistic view (is that] the specter of a chain reaction of defaults by borrowers and failures by lenders /will] thrust the world into It is not the 1930s, and governments and central banks are now more knowledgeable, better able and more willing to aid institutions in trouble, as the Federal Reserve aided Franklin National Bank and the German cenYet the dangers are greater than in the 1930s. The amounts at risk are The nation's burden of debt is like a string drawn very taut.... The string has not broken, and it may not. The energy of every economist, of every government official, of every lender and borrower will be directed in the weeks and months ahead to keeping the string from breaking. Yet no one knows the precise breaking point and, while there are schemes and theories galore, no one really knows how to ease the tension, either. Carolt 881984
Scan page 5
The Depression and today RECOVERY C sell billions of dollars worth of securities every day