----------------- HES POSTING ----------------- 
Mircea seems to me right in observing that money used to be a scarce resource  
and is not now such a scarce resource (of course many individuals, companies  
and organisations may still have enormous difficulty in getting hold of it, but  
that is a different matter). 
 
I am not sure whether the suggested date for the transition is correct: was it  
in fact 1950?  Intuition seems to me to point to a later date: 1980s?   
 
Is there anyone who can provide evidence for a more exact date? 
 
Equally interesting is the reason why this happened.  Here is my suggestion:  
The USA was the only country in the world where the equity market dominated the  
economy, till the proto-Thatcherite revolution encouraged the population of  
that country to pull assets out of domesting housing and other such "safe"  
havens and encourage their employment in the more risky equity market... with  
sufficiently good results to encourage the Thatcher revolution in England  
....which produced roughly similar results.  This started a chain reaction in  
other countries, so that there was an increasing flow of monetary assets  
principally into the US economy (though in smaller quantitites into other  
"free" economies as well) from increasingly larger areas of the globe.  As  
demand for US equities grew worldwide, equity prices kepy trading upwards till  
they reached valuations which could be justified only by expectations of  
"infinite" returns on investment(Keniichi Ohmae's term).  This was of course an  
absurd situation and eventually started correcting itself beginning Spring 2000. 
 
This is not my field and I have not studied this but would welcome illumination  
from those who have studied or can perhaps easily suggest answers in these  
areas of enquiry. 
 
prabhu guptara 
 
------------ FOOTER TO HES POSTING ------------ 
For information, send the message "info HES" to [log in to unmask]