Deep recessions around 2010 were foreseen?

Time to set up a new blog, primarily on what I wrote almost a century ago, in my doctoral work.

This is what I wrote in 1989, as part of my conclusion, after, I have to admit, around a thousand words. I did not have enough time to write something much shorter.

I wrote (Crouch, The Economic Geography of recession in the UK: the early 1980s and historical perspectives, University of Durham 1989) that (pp324-325, v3):

"It may well be that the economic record of the next twenty or so years will not stimulate much research into the contemporary long

cycle. The likelihood, suggested by long cycle theory itself, is that the economy will be on a continuous upswing with only relatively mild recessions, so that long cycle theory, an important and distinctive tool for analysing the complex trends and counter-trends of the 1960s, 1970s and 1980s, may well add relatively little to the analysis of the 1990s or 2000s. However, two points, bearing in mind the lessons of the 1960s, should be borne in mind. Firstly, the presence and continuance of upswing is a fundamental part of the dynamics of the capitalist economy, and is largely independent of policy, so that the presence of a long boom does not necessarily imply that the economic policies being followed are correct; the relevance of this in the context of the late 1980s is obvious. Secondly, once any substantial departure from the long boom takes place, as happened in the late 1960s, there is a great danger that recessionary forces will accumulate, leading to a long cycle downswing and eventually to slump. Policy makers around the year 2010 would do well to heed these points in order to avoid a rerun of the 1970s."

Remembeor of course that "the next twenty years or so" covers the period from the late seventies through to what is now, in effect, the current day. I was always a believer that if you can try to do something to analyse modern history, you should always be able to make a good stab about the future.

I will explain much more closely, at a later stage, what I meant by talking about the "long cycle". Next blog maybe? Or soon after.

In terms of modern (post 1997) economics, did Brown, Balls or Osborne hed the dangers of going into deepenin recession? I think not.