The real Question to ask.

I am basically a lazy individual, and very rushed this morning, so I will only present this article for my Readers. Study the context of the piece, and overlay it on Today. There are serious considerations which make decisive differences between the two eras. The most fundamental being the interrelationships between social groups–i.e., Politics. A simple Buyer and Seller have an ordered agreement, basically focused upon Price. Extended beyond the simple Buyer concept comes the institutional Agent; here, We must focus on the group interest inherent within the Corporate power, and the entrenchment of that power in the negotiations. The Great Depression held a huge number of simple Buyers and Sellers without overriding group interests, while those group interests which existed were rather young and primitive. The incidence of entrenchment was relatively low, and Few could hold to a Price schedule unaffected by exterior pressures. Can the same thing be said about the Corporate structure today?

Study of the basic formulation of social groupings will express the Concept that Power alignments between Interests within the Group are settled early in the arrangement, and vary only under sharp pressure from exterior forces; some of the great upsets of economic activity has been the advent of Corporate Raiding, hostile Takeovers, and Stockholder challenges. Groups do everything they can to protect their interior power alignments, and extrude exterior pressures from their decision-making. The Great Depression showed little success in maintaining internal cohesion due to the great stress of economic circumstance placed upon all. The current Corporate structure is expressing much greater resilience than their unlucky predecessors, and there has been much less alteration of Price schedules because of that strength.

Now We come to the crux of the argument. The Great Depression expressed a long period of recovery, which was not duplicated in successive Recessions until the recent pattern. The Question becomes what connects the two eras with common delayed outcomes? It is not really a matter of fiscal or finance policy, as there has not been much variance in any of the policies since the Great Depression. The Corporate structure has not varied in content, only in relative degree of power. It must revolve around the degree of entrenchment of power within the power matrix, and individual immunity to the adverse forces afflicting the general run of the economy. We must examine How this immunity was created, the extent of it’s power, and whether this independence is of benefit to the greater economy. These are the real Questions which must be answered to gain real understanding. lgl