Mason Gaffney wrote: >So, I suppose what happened in Japan in the 1930's was wiping out the memory >of the Meiji finance system. Orwell explained how this happens everywhere. >The mind-bending power of the establishment is, well, mind-bending. Thank >goodness for historians of economic thought to help check this tendency. Alas, how many economists are really familiar with the history of their discipline? The present moment arrives for them as a given, even as an immutable given, and the past, when it is viewed at all, is viewed through the lens of the present. This is a failure, since all economic data is historical and all economic systems are cultural artifacts. In my classes, I insist on an historical foundation for all study; the best argument that things can be otherwise is the fact that they have been otherwise, and the best way to understand the present moment is to understand the past that formed it. John C. Medaille