The Reagan-era recovery was speculative, not a real industrial revival.

Evidence

The drift back to Keynesian measures did not amount to a solution to the problems facing the world economy. Mike Davis - whose writings on American capitalism in the Reagan era were nothing short of brilliant - described US economic recovery in the 1980s as ‘a pathological prosperity’. He noted, inter alia, ‘the general shift that is occurring in the profit-distribution process towards interest incomes, with the resulting strengthening of a neo-rentier bloc reminiscent of the speculative capitalism of the 1920s’ and ‘the striking reorientation of mainline US industrial corporations away from consumer-durable mass markets and towards volatile high-profit sectors like military production and financial services’. The Reagan boom did not signify a revival in the global fortunes of American industry. — Alex Callinicos, Against Postmodernism, 528

Categorization

• XREF: Directly parallels Jameson’s late-capitalism/financialization claims but grounds them in Davis’s data; useful ammunition for the reader’s counter-thesis. — connects to: The 1980s boom was overheated growth within decay, not renewed expansion — Alex Callinicos, Against Postmodernism: A Marxist…, 531