Dear Jerry;
Thanks for your messages. A happy new year to you and other friends in OPEL!
I tried to send a message three times to OPEL in Nov. -Dec. last year,
though somehow continued to fail to reach anyone. Its main points were
three.
(1) A new book of mine with Costas Lapavitsas, Political Economy of Money
and Finance(Macmillan, and St.Martin's) has just appeared. This contains
much of relevant arguments relating to the recent discussions on OPEL. We
shall be happy if some OPEL members read it and possibly write a review in a
suitable jouranal.
(2) I agree with Paolo's communication with you [OPEL:348] that Marx did not
treat money saving originating from workers. It must have reflected the
actual situation in his age. However, the savings of workers such as in
pension funds became very important in our age. We have to reconsider the
influence of Keynesian policies in view of this.
(3) We used to treat flow of incomes based on annual labour expenditure in
studying the working of the law of value and Marx's scheme of reproduction.
This may be insufficient in understanding the source of capital gain (or
loss) in a bubble economy, which would not form a zero-sum game. Outside of
the annual flow of labour and income, there must be an external social
motion in stored assets with fluctualing prices. The mutual relations
between the internal flow economy and the external motion in a stock economy
must be carefully analyzed. Marx's theory of money and credit includes
precious suggestions for such studies. Am I on a proper truck of thinking?
What literatures would you suggest on such a field?
If you or any OPEL member receive this mail this time, will you please give
me a line of receipt?
All the best,
Makoto Itoh