Joe Higgins (Dublin West, Socialist Party) | Oireachtas source

Let me just pursue that a little bit further, Mr. McCarthy. In your opening statement you say economists failed "to acknowledge that cataclysmic breakdowns in a market economy were indeed possible" and "in the widespread assumption that the business cycle had been permanently tamed". Now, presumably, going through college, economists learn, for example, some of the basic ideas of Karl Marx, who 170 years ago told us how inherent in capitalism was the boom and slump scenario, and explained it in detail. And also, we had the experience, as you said, of Morgan Kelly's study of about 30 boom and slumps, and particularly-----