Re: Re: Re: Congo
From: Chris Burford [EMAIL PROTECTED] Who benefits by the death [of Laurent Kabila]? A lot of Zimbabweans think they do, but it's premature to think the 12,000 troops will come home... We are right on the faultline that we debate in different forms: how much should the democratic deficit be overlooked in a country struggling against the dominant imperialism, or when is the dominant imperialism more progressive in that Are you factoring in the dominant subimperialism here? That's looting by Mugabe and his generals, of DRC's copper and cobalt, and use of Zim's troops, effectively, as a national mercenary team... a) it is accelerating the tortuous process towards world government Hope not! b) it is defending bourgeois democratic rights within the country? Still dreaming, comrade Chris!
Re: Re: Re: Congo
Chris Burford wrote: We are right on the faultline that we debate in different forms: how much should the democratic deficit be overlooked in a country struggling against the dominant imperialism, or when is the dominant imperialism more progressive in that a) it is accelerating the tortuous process towards world government isn't a _democratic_ world government that's needed? the world government-in-the-making that we have now (the US, the IMF, etc.) is quite the opposite. b) it is defending bourgeois democratic rights within the country? I would restate this question as follows: is the government actually making the working people (proletarians and peasants) more powerful economically and/or politically? "bourgeois" democratic rights (like free speech, etc.) are part of this. Jim Devine [EMAIL PROTECTED] http://bellarmine.lmu.edu/~jdevine
Re: RE: Re: RE: Re: Re: Re: Re: recent economic trends
Mat, So, did either Carver (never heard of him before) or Bouniatian have the tech bunching theory of macro fluctuations? The accelerator can certainly be associated with that, but is not it per se. BTW, Haberler gives Marx credit for being the first to postulate a regular endogenous business cycle, I think the basis for Michael Perelman's original remarks, even though as Michael noted, Engels thought Marx's theory was based on questionable foundations (a replacement wave with most capital equipment having the same age of replacement ). Indeed, even though many of us accept that there are tendencies for endogenous cycles, it is now hard to find anyone who believes that there are mechanical regularities of the sort that provide fluctuations of precise lengths. There are too many complications that can change the frequency. BTW, I note that some chaotic cycles appear to be (almost) periodic, but vary slightly in both frequency and amplitude with each oscillation. This is what one gets with the famous Lorenz attractor (along with occasional flips to a completely different pattern). It has also been argued by some who see chaotic fluctuations in certain micro markets, e.g. the work of Jean-Paul Chavas and Matthew Holt on milk prices that track the almost-14 year cattle cycle (Jean-Paul Chavas and Matthew T. Holt, "Market Instability and Nonlinear Dynamics," American Journal of Agricultural Economics, 1993, vol. 75, pp. 113-120). Barkley Rosser -Original Message- From: Forstater, Mathew [EMAIL PROTECTED] To: [EMAIL PROTECTED] [EMAIL PROTECTED] Date: Friday, February 02, 2001 6:08 PM Subject: [PEN-L:7719] RE: Re: RE: Re: Re: Re: Re: recent economic trends from Hagemann's piece in the Lowe volume: "Bouniatian also contributed to the evolution of the accelerator principle in the economic literature. [in a footnote here, Hagemann writes that "the essence of the accelerator principle can already be found in Carver (1903)"]. He argued that fluctuations in 'backwardly linked' production goods and raw materials supplying industries would automatically be stronger than in industries which produce final consumption goods."" "Aftalion thus can be credited for further developing and integrating the acceleration principle, namely the idea that a relatively small increase (decrease) in the demand for consumption goods can produce a much larger increase (decrease) in the demand for capital goods, into a theory of the business cycle." Bouniatian 1908 Aftalion 1913 Carver, T. N. (1903) "A suggestion for a theory of industrial depressions" QJE, 17, pp497ff. -Original Message- From: J. Barkley Rosser, Jr. [mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED]] Sent: Friday, February 02, 2001 12:54 PM To: [EMAIL PROTECTED] Subject: [PEN-L:7711] Re: RE: Re: Re: Re: Re: recent economic trends Mat, So, since you seem to have this paper, does it answer the question? Aftalion's 1913 paper was the first appearance of the accelerator effect, to the best of my knowledge, although I do not remember what its take was on tech bunching, if we can call it that. The 20s and 30s are of course after Schumpeter's original book. I have just looked at Haberler's _Prosperity and Depression_. He dates Spiethoff's work to 1925. Tugan-Baranowsky's work dates from 1901, but Haberler's brief description of it suggests that his cyclical theory depended largely on financial factors. Did he have the tech bunching theory? I think the others you all mention, even if they had the tech bunching theory, published after 1911 when Schumpeter's work appeared. Jim D. has noted that the accelerator effect may be at work now, and I suspect he may be right. I find it ironic that it has almost completely disappeared from most current macro texts at all levels, and especially at higher levels. After all, it represents "irrational behavior," and therefore obviously cannot happen Barkley Rosser Barkley Rosser -Original Message- From: Forstater, Mathew [EMAIL PROTECTED] To: [EMAIL PROTECTED] [EMAIL PROTECTED] Date: Friday, February 02, 2001 1:04 PM Subject: [PEN-L:7703] RE: Re: Re: Re: Re: recent economic trends I would look at Harald Hagemann's work on the history of business cycle theories. The debate in the 20s and 30s in German speaking countries between the Austrians and the Kiel School focused on monetary theories of the cycle vs. those approaches that viewed technological change (and the structure of production) as the fundamental underlying cause, with monetary factors exacerbating the cycle. An important paper in this debate was Burchardt's. Hagemann's paper in the Lowe memorial volume (co-authored with Michael Landesmann) looks at Tugan-Baranowsky, Bouniatian, Aftalion, Spiethoff, as well as Lowe, Burchardt and Hayek. Hagemann has other papers that cover some of the same ground, as well as Schumpeter, etc. The collections edited by Baranzini and Scazzieri and books by each of them as well as
Re: de Soto
What I read in de Soto's blurb seemed to emphasize the importance of "paper," as in paper that confers property rights that can then be traded in secondary markets. Oh goody. So the poor can be sandbagged by speculative bubbles in hotass financial markets. Whoopdy-doo! Barkley Rosser -Original Message- From: Jim Devine [EMAIL PROTECTED] To: [EMAIL PROTECTED] [EMAIL PROTECTED] Date: Saturday, February 03, 2001 11:40 AM Subject: [PEN-L:7729] de Soto Though I haven't read his book, I've thinking about Hernan de Soto (or whatever his name is exactly). His proposal, as I understand it, is to create property rights for the poor (using publicly-owned lands?), which he sees as a way to promote the development of capitalism (which he presumes is a good thing). (Dave S., please correct me if my interpretation is wrong.) Anyway, my thought is this: it sounds like a way to fight poverty (and I believe it's been done before, perhaps in Puerto Rico), but not a way to promote capitalism. The problem from the point of view of capitalism is that it gives workers direct access to the means of production and subsistence and thus undermines their status as proletarians. In simple terms, they don't have to work for the capitalists beyond the time necessary to produce their subsistence, so that the latter can't appropriate any surplus-value, accumulate capital, etc. That is, it's the opposite of "primitive accumulation" (the topic of Michael Perelman's recent -- and excellent -- book, also reviewed in the current issue of CHALLENGE). At best, the de Soto plan would create a class of petty landed producers who would work for capital only to supplement their production (for luxuries, etc.) and would pursue a "safety first" strategy of avoiding (as much as possible) being entangled in markets, except for product markets. Where possible, they'd avoid borrowing money, selling labor-time, buying inputs, etc. In labor markets, they'd likely have a "backward bending" supply curve of labor-power, where a rise in wages after a point would cause decreases in the quantity supplied (though not for the simple income-effect reason of textbooks). Even in product markets, they'd diversify production in order to avoid dependency. They might be more progressive technologically, but it wouldn't fit with the goals of the IMF, the World Bank, the US Treasury Department, the local ruling classes, etc. So this plan is unlikely to be put into action, except in ways that are specifically designed to help capitalism while avoiding the creation of an independent yeomanry (with de Soto-type rhetoric attached, of course). When it comes to property rights in this situation, to promote capitalism it's necessary to screw the poor -- though it's not sufficient. Jim Devine [EMAIL PROTECTED] http://bellarmine.lmu.edu/~JDevine "Segui il tuo corso, e lascia dir le genti." (Go your own way and let people talk.) -- K. Marx, paraphrasing Dante A.
Re: Re: RE: Hernando de Soto
It should be remembered that one reason why land reform was easier to impose in both Taiwan and South Korea was that many of the landlords were either Japanese or had been very close to the by-then-deposed Japanese overlords. Barkley Rosser -Original Message- From: Jim Devine [EMAIL PROTECTED] To: [EMAIL PROTECTED] [EMAIL PROTECTED] Date: Sunday, February 04, 2001 12:12 PM Subject: [PEN-L:7745] Re: RE: Hernando de Soto David wrote: In response to Jim Devine: I haven't read his book either and can go only on the reviews I have read. I think you are misinterpreting him. To be pithy, his point is not that the poor in the Third World should be given property rights in public lands, but that they should be given property rights in the land that they already possess. In other words, the great mass of the poor live in homes and operate businesses illegally or are simply beyond the laws and legal protection of their extremely bureaucratic countries. Therefore, simple financing devices that we take for granted, such as mortgages and other types of secured financing, are unavailable to the poor because they do not have legal title to their possessions. Therefore, they are unable to leverage their possessions into greater wealth. De Soto, in other words, emphasizes the lack of a rational and functioning legal system of contract and property rights as the impediment to the poor. Okay, that fits with my reading (of reviews), too. (I don't think we're wrong, BTW, since all the reviews indicate how simple de Soto's point is.) I had moved on to the _interpretation_ of his views, looking at the problems that can arise. The key problem is that even though the poor _possess_ (i.e., control) land, they don't have _property_ in that land. (Is it true that J.-J. Rousseau invented this distinction?) Either landlords or state have legal title to the land. Those poor folks who already have legal title aren't really poor. So to help the poor who possess the land either land has to be taken from landlords OR the state has to give up some public lands (or both). The first one is old-fashioned land reform, something that was seen in S. Korea, Japan, and Taiwan (encouraged by the US as part of the Cold War), but rarely elsewhere. As I said in my initial comment on this, taking land from the landlords provokes a lot of resistance from them. That either leads to civil war or massive bail-outs of the landlords (or a combination of the two), neither of which most countries can afford. (This is why most land reforms are very incomplete, giving only the worst lands to small farmers and then leaving them high and dry without access to credit, infrastructure, agricultural extension services, etc. So they end up producing pockets of poverty, as with the Mexican ejidos.) I didn't make it clear what my segue was here, but I concluded that most states would fall back on distributing government-owned lands (something I think happened in Puerto Rico). That seems feasible, since it doesn't come out of current government budgets. The problem with this is that if done enough, either classic land reform or the distribution of government lands undermines the supply of proletarian labor by giving workers a way to survive without working for capital. So it helps the poor without helping capital. I explained this before and so need not do so again here. Now there's another interpretation. This is that existing property rights in land are too ambiguous, mixed in with all sorts of pre-capitalist property relationships. Is de Soto arguing that we need to make property rights much less ambiguous, moving in the direction of some Lockean notion of absolute private property? This seems unrealistic or even disingenuous -- in that there's really no such thing as private property, in that the private ownership of property always has a societal impact, so that all sorts of governmental regulations arise, as do community protest concerning the dumping of external costs. In the end, this kind of proposal (if it is what de Soto wants) encourages those who currently own property to accumulate more, encouraging increases in societal inequality. Of course, this is what the World Bank/IMF is pushing. Jim Devine [EMAIL PROTECTED] http://bellarmine.lmu.edu/~JDevine
Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: de Soto
Maggie, It is also most certainly not true that Henry George's "main claim to fame" is his anti- Chinese writings. Heck, I had never even heard of them before you mentioned them, and I have even read most of Progress and Poverty, his most famous book (and the biggest selling book in the US on economics in the 19th century). I certainly have heard about his arguments for a single tax on land many times. This is not to defend any bad things he said about Chinese or other groups. I concur with Jim about a lot of the old leftists (although where George should be placed in the political spectrum is a rather murky business). Barkley Rosser -Original Message- From: Jim Devine [EMAIL PROTECTED] To: [EMAIL PROTECTED] [EMAIL PROTECTED] Date: Sunday, February 04, 2001 5:02 PM Subject: [PEN-L:7751] Re: Re: Re: Re: de Soto I wrote: Henry George? he was a leftist (of sorts), Maggie wrote: Jim, Jim, Jim, do NOT get me started on Henry George. Yeah, I knew about George's bad side. A lot of old leftists were bad, especially on issues of racism, sexism, nationalism. could you explain the Mechanics' views more? are they sort of like US-based Ricardian socialists? Jim Devine [EMAIL PROTECTED] http://bellarmine.lmu.edu/~JDevine
Re: Re: Re: Re: Congo
On Zimbabwe, btw, see this. http://allafrica.com/stories/200101290074.html Army May Have Had Hand In Newspaper Explosion January 28, 2001 Posted to the web January 29, 2001 The massive explosion on Sunday which destroyed the printing plant of the independent 'Daily News' in Harare was likely to have been the work of the military, according to analysts there. Last Tuesday, Zanu-PF supporters marched on the paper's offices in protest at a report that Zimbabweans had celebrated the assassination of DR Congo's President Laurent Kabila. The government subsequently sent an estimated 6,000 reinforcements into the Congo. Last June what was thought to be a grenade exploded outside the Daily News' editorial offices. This time military analysts say the explosives are likely to have been anti-tank mines placed by experts - probably in the army since no-one else would have access to the explosives or the know-how. The implications are that the army is now going to take a higher profile role in stopping the development of opposition politics in the country. This may indicate a power shift in the top echelons of Zanu-PF. But more specifically, the army may be determined to defend its role in the Congo war, from which its top leadership has profited well. The attack followed a recent warning by the Information Minister, Jonathan Moyo, that Zimbabweans would put a stop to what he called the newspaper's "madness". Last Friday. the leader of the 'war veterans' engaged in land takeovers, Chenjerai Hunzvi, said they would ''ban'' the newspaper. http://allafrica.com/stories/200102040002.html http://news.bbc.co.uk/hi/english/world/africa/newsid_1151000/1151744.stm http://dailynews.yahoo.com/fc/World/Zimbabwe/ Michael Pugliese -Original Message- From: Patrick Bond [EMAIL PROTECTED] To: [EMAIL PROTECTED] [EMAIL PROTECTED] Date: Monday, February 05, 2001 5:00 AM Subject: [PEN-L:7765] Re: Re: Re: Congo From: Chris Burford [EMAIL PROTECTED] Who benefits by the death [of Laurent Kabila]? A lot of Zimbabweans think they do, but it's premature to think the 12,000 troops will come home... We are right on the faultline that we debate in different forms: how much should the democratic deficit be overlooked in a country struggling against the dominant imperialism, or when is the dominant imperialism more progressive in that Are you factoring in the dominant subimperialism here? That's looting by Mugabe and his generals, of DRC's copper and cobalt, and use of Zim's troops, effectively, as a national mercenary team... a) it is accelerating the tortuous process towards world government Hope not! b) it is defending bourgeois democratic rights within the country? Still dreaming, comrade Chris!
editorial on tax cuts in nytimes
Galbraith and Wray on tax cuts: http://www.nytimes.com/2001/02/05/opinion/L05TAX.html
President Kennedy, the Federal Reserve and Executive Order 11110
The only thing that Oliver Stone did not include in JFK! What with L. Fletcher Prouty, author of, "The Secret Team, "of the Liberty Lobby as a consultant on the film why not? http://www9.pair.com/xpoez/money/cedric.html Found via a link here on this website against the Fed. http://www.norfed.org/links.htm Michael Pugliese
RE: Marx's turnover cycle
The Lowe-Feldman three sector model, in which the capital goods sector in Marx's schemes of reproduction is split into 2 sectors, producing capital goods for the capital goods and consumption goods sectors, respectively, is a nice way of showing some of these issues, without the need for a cumbersome IO model. Even with this slightly more disaggregated model than your Keynesian 2 sector model, the issues can be seen quite clearly. I recommend articles by Hagemann, Gehrke, and Halevi on this. As Solow put it, the "traverse" may be the easiest part of skiiing but it is not the easiest part of economics. -Original Message- From: Jim Devine [mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED]] Sent: Saturday, February 03, 2001 4:35 PM To: [EMAIL PROTECTED] Subject: [PEN-L:7735] Marx's turnover cycle it seems to me that Marx's vision and that of Engels (see below) aren't totally in conflict and can be reconciled. Engels seems to see the problem totally in microeconomic and technological terms. Marx, on the other hand, sees depreciation as arising not only from technological factors but also from realization (demand-side) crises and the obsolescence of old capital that arises from the investment in new, more technologically advanced, fixed capital. His view is also more macroeconomic (as seen in volume I of CAPITAL, which deals with capital as a whole and says little about competition). For example, Engels' reference to the resale of old machinery isn't relevant on the macroeconomic level, since it doesn't change the vector of fixed capital in society. A turnover cycle would go as follows. If there's a recession and especially a depression, that would not only depress new investment in fixed capital but would also purge a lot of the existing stocks. Then, when the economy recovers, for whatever reason, that would lead to a bunching of new investments (which encourages the owners of existing capital to also invest, since a lot of their equipment becomes obsolete). Even if technology precedes smoothly, it gets applied in bunches. (During the 1930s in the US, technology continued to change, but it wasn't applied as much as in the 1920s.) This leads to a bunch of a need for replacement capital a few years later. It's true that depreciation is different for different kinds of means of production, but at the macro level what's important is the _average_ rate of depreciation. The need for replacement capital would encourage a new wave of investment. This is pretty abstract, but suggests that Marx's theory is relevant. Michael Perelman wrote: Here is a section from my Marx book regarding Marx's theory of replacement cycles. Notice Engel's firm rejection at the end. The simplest of these versions of a reproduction crisis reflected the life cycle of fixed capital. This idea was first broached when Marx was reading the works of Charles Babbage. He was skeptical about Babbage's notion that most capital equipment turns over within five years (see Marx to Engels, 2 March 1858; in Marx and Engels 1983: 40, pp. 278). He requested that Engels send him some information on the typical patterns of turnover of fixed capital. Engels quickly supplied Marx with figures that contradicted Babbage's conjecture (Engels to Marx, 4 March 1858; in Marx and Engels 1983: 40, pp. 279-81). According to Engels' estimates, the average piece of equipment lasted about 13 years (Ibid.). More importantly, relatively little has been written about devalorization and replacement investment, which has gone beyond Engels' brief comments on the subject. He began: The most reliable criterion [of the turnover of capital] is the percentage by which a manufacturer writes down his machinery each year for wear and tear and repairs, thus recovering the entire cost of his machines within a given period. This percentage is normally 7 1/2, in which case the machinery will be paid for over 13 1/3 years by an annual deduction from profits. . . . Now 13 1/3 years is admittedly a long time in the course of which numerous bankruptcies may occur; you may enter other branches, sell your old machinery, introduce new improvements, but if this calculation wasn't more or less right, practice would have changed it long ago [given the absence of taxes on profits at the time]. Nor does the old machinery that has been sold promptly become old iron; it finds takers among the small spinners, etc., etc., who continue to use it. We ourselves have machines in operation that are certainly 20 years old and, when one occasionally takes a glance inside some of the more ancient and ramshackle concerns up here, one can see antiquated stuff that must be 30 years old at least. Moreover, in the case of most of the machines, only a few of the components wear out to the extent that they have to be replaced after 5 or 6 years. And even after 15 years, provided the basic principle of a machine has not been supersceded by new inventions, there is
Re: Re: Re: RE: Hernando de Soto
At 01:09 PM 2/5/01 -0500, you wrote: It should be remembered that one reason why land reform was easier to impose in both Taiwan and South Korea was that many of the landlords were either Japanese or had been very close to the by-then-deposed Japanese overlords. exactly -- and the US thought it was good too, since it helped fight the Red Menace. In fact, General MacArthur sponsored the land reform in Japan. BTW, there's a book title THE TRIUMPH by John Kenneth Galbraith in which there's a radical communist revolution in a fictional South American country, where the new leader uses the precedent of MacArthur's land reform to justify his policies. Jim Devine [EMAIL PROTECTED] http://bellarmine.lmu.edu/~jdevine
Re: Re: Re: Korean news
I think back to 1982, when the ideologues in the Reagan administration were willing to sit on their hands as Mexico threatened default. As it happened, Paul Volcker was willing and able to seize the reins, and the world financial system was pulled back from the brink of collapse. (The longer-term issues, of course, were dealt with in a more insidious fashion...) I wonder if the divine AG has what it takes to pull off the same operation if a similar unraveling begins to take place. Peter "J. Barkley Rosser, Jr." wrote: Well, according to David Ignatius in the Wash Post about a week ago, one area where there may be some interesting fireworks coming up involves international finance. This is, of course, officially the purview of the Treasury Dept., and O'Neill is widely viewed as having no experience in this area, and neither does his announced Deputy, Van Damme. Apparently there is a battle royal going on over who will be Undersecretary (or is it Assistant Secretary? I suppose Brad DeLong knows... ) in charge of International Economic Affairs, the key player there on this. Anyway, there are two other angles on this. One is that many think the White House wants to centralize dealing with foreign exchange and foreign debt crises in itself and away from the Treasury. Rumor has it that O'Neill is in fact more in tune with a Summers/IMF approach of arranging deals to bail out countries in crisis. However, reportedly, Lawrence Lindsey, Dubya's "economics guru" in the White House is against any bailouts. The second is that Ignatius reports that these things may be officially dealt with by the National Security Council, that is, by Condoleeza Rice, who is not an economist. However, apparently the CIA is claiming some special ability to monitor international financial crises and can/will provide input to Rice (and presumably Lindsey also). In short, it is not clear who will be in charge the next time there is an international financial crisis, or who they will be listening to or talking to. Could be some real fun and games coming up in the not too far distant future Barkley Rosser
Bush's tax cut
Dear Penners - I'm supposed to do a television debate tomorrow with a corporate-libertarian type about Bush's tax cut. I wanted to point out that surplus projections assume continued low levels of spending on programs cut to reduce the deficit. I believe I am right about this, but if I'm not, please tell me. Medicare cuts seem one good example (especially for the local audience - half the hospitals in this area are broke). I would appreciate other examples people can give. Thanks, Ellen Frank
Re: Bush's tax cut
At 06:05 PM 2/5/01 -0500, you wrote: Dear Penners - I'm supposed to do a television debate tomorrow with a corporate-libertarian type about Bush's tax cut. I wanted to point out that surplus projections assume continued low levels of spending on programs cut to reduce the deficit. I believe I am right about this, but if I'm not, please tell me. there's an article on this type of stuff in BUSINESS WEEK, Feb. 12, page 35. Jim Devine [EMAIL PROTECTED] http://bellarmine.lmu.edu/~jdevine
Re: Re: Re: Re: Congo
At 08:22 05/02/01 -0800, you wrote: Chris Burford wrote: We are right on the faultline that we debate in different forms: how much should the democratic deficit be overlooked in a country struggling against the dominant imperialism, or when is the dominant imperialism more progressive in that a) it is accelerating the tortuous process towards world government isn't a _democratic_ world government that's needed? the world government-in-the-making that we have now (the US, the IMF, etc.) is quite the opposite. From one point of view of the dialectic yes. But it is a world government in the making nonetheless, and that is progressive relative to world anarchy, dominated by the uncontrolled workings of global capitalism. The bourgeois democratic national state was progressive by comparison to the feudal state. Ideally the feudal state would have gone straight to a primitive peasant communist state, but historical materialism does not work that way. Nor will it on the global level. There has to be a long period of struggle in which the hegemonic forces of finance capitalism find expression in an emerging world government led by the USA, but not entirely according to its will. Countervailing forces are the demand that global institutions should serve the interests of the people of the world as a whole (should not for example litter the ground with depleted uranium, or devastate dependent economies, or starve children in order to overthrow a subordinate regime). b) it is defending bourgeois democratic rights within the country? I would restate this question as follows: is the government actually making the working people (proletarians and peasants) more powerful economically and/or politically? "bourgeois" democratic rights (like free speech, etc.) are part of this. An interesting formulation that perhaps takes us a step further. The question has to be looked at in the round. Bourgeois democratic rights are relevant but are not everything. That is why in certain situations, like Zimbabwe's struggle to re-appropriate its land, and Malaysia's to defend its own capital and economic activity against a partial melt-down of the global financial system, I think these economic gains may outweigh certain internal bourgeois democratic rights. That is why I think the Chinese have a point when they say the first human right for them is the survival of the Chinese people. Chris Burford London
RE: Re: Bush's tax cut
Haven't read the Biz Week article. If you want the real skinny, you can download the CBO's Annual Economic and Budget Review, and the Clinton OMB's last budget/economic projections report. The $5.6T number in the press is a current services estimate, meaning it assumes discretionary spending maintains its constant dollar value (i.e., nominal spending increases), and entitlements continue under current law (which take into account inflation, demographic, and cost changes). There is plenty of dough to do most anything, plus pay off the debt (minus AG's mandated one trillion irreducible minimum) well inside the decade. Rather than get into how big a tax cut, I'm focusing on what's in it, for whom, and why. CTJ has done the distributional analysis already -- 70% of benefits go to the top quintile, 43% to the top *one* percent of tax filers. The best way to beat this cut is with a different tax cut. One example is my own proposal w/Bob Cherry, which will be introduced this week in a larger package by the Prog Caucus. Other possibilities are a payroll tax rate cut, a refundable payroll tax credit, or a larger child tax credit made refundable. I've got a forthcoming article in The American Prospect outlining these options, including estimates of how large they can be, assuming you spend a trillion total on any one of them. The other side wants to pigeonhole us as being anti-tax/pro-spending, or opposing tax cuts on class war lines. When you bring up alternative, broad-based cuts, they don't have very good comebacks. mbs I'm supposed to do a television debate tomorrow with a corporate-libertarian type about Bush's tax cut. I wanted to point out that surplus projections assume continued low levels of spending on programs cut to reduce the deficit. I believe I am right about this, but if I'm not, please tell me. there's an article on this type of stuff in BUSINESS WEEK, Feb. 12, page 35. Jim Devine [EMAIL PROTECTED] http://bellarmine.lmu.edu/~jdevine
Re: Re: Re: Re: RE: Hernando de Soto
The key figure in the Land Reform was Wolf Ladejinsky, an anti-communist socialist. sorry. have to go. Jim Devine wrote: At 01:09 PM 2/5/01 -0500, you wrote: It should be remembered that one reason why land reform was easier to impose in both Taiwan and South Korea was that many of the landlords were either Japanese or had been very close to the by-then-deposed Japanese overlords. exactly -- and the US thought it was good too, since it helped fight the Red Menace. In fact, General MacArthur sponsored the land reform in Japan. BTW, there's a book title THE TRIUMPH by John Kenneth Galbraith in which there's a radical communist revolution in a fictional South American country, where the new leader uses the precedent of MacArthur's land reform to justify his policies. Jim Devine [EMAIL PROTECTED] http://bellarmine.lmu.edu/~jdevine -- Michael Perelman Economics Department California State University Chico, CA 95929 Tel. 530-898-5321 E-Mail [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Debt is good biz
Pen-l, The economic downturn creates a business boom for some in Sacramento. Seth From the February 2, 2001 print edition of the Sacramento Business Journal Bill collectors busy as economy slows Kathy Robertson and Kelly Johnson An uptick in commercial debt collections -- one of the first signs of a downturn in the economy -- has some attorneys scrambling all the way to the bank. Property owners and institutional lenders got nervous in the fourth quarter of last year, when pundits began predicting a stall. Loan and lease defaults are now beginning to show up in increasing numbers. That's tightened credit and sent some marginal businesses into a tailspin because they can't renew their loans. Some merchants and vendors aren't getting paid, and attorneys who specialize in debt collection are reaping the benefits. "I'm booming," said Mark Serlin, an attorney who handles collections for banks and other lenders. "Last quarter, the veritable crap hit the fan -- and it hasn't gotten any better." Having just paid fourth-quarter taxes, people are making projections for the future and going, "Uh-oh," Serlin said. His business is up as much as 40 percent over last year. "I'm busy as a beaver," he noted. "I'm filing collection suits left, right and center. The weird thing is it's across the board. It's banks, leasing companies, merchants and standard credit. It's all of them. It's going to really go in the next two quarters. You're going to see a huge amount of this. "The vultures," he added, "are going to get fat this year." Ken Whitall-Scherfee, another local attorney, is seeing a "slight rise" in typical consumer-level collections, but doesn't think it's enough to declare a trend -- yet. "People were very, very nervous in the fourth quarter of 2000 and predicted a deluge, but I haven't seen it," he said. Consumer debt cases have generally been in default for several months before they reach his desk, Whitall-Scherfee said. Recent ones stem from credit-card obligations and defaults on automobile loans, but he sees no special activity in an identifiable market segment. "Even in a vigorous, healthy economy, there are a certain amount of loans that will default. That's a fact of life," he said. "The collection business never goes away -- there's no such perfect economy that everybody pays on time." Instead, collections go in cycles, from good to swamped and then back down again long enough to catch a breath before it cycles up again, Whitall-Scherfee said. Sacramento attorney Kevin Whiteford has seen a "slight increase," somewhere between 10 percent and 20 percent, in his bill collection work. He does a lot of equipment lease enforcement, where failing businesses stop paying rental payments. More significant than the numbers of cases, Whiteford said, are the dollar amounts at stake. They are up noticeably because borrowing has been easy during the good times. At the high end, Sacramento's second-largest law firm is seeing the credit crunch show up in its bankruptcy practice. "Work-outs are going up and we're seeing a weakness in the lending world," said Dick Osen, managing partner at McDonough Holland Allen. "Consumer bankruptcies started going up about a year ago. In the past six months, we've seen a slowing down in refinancing -- balloon payments or whatever. It's more difficult to re-up loans and credit standards are tightening." When times were good, banks were making more marginal loans in an attempt to remain competitive. Companies borrowed money and made deals on the assumption that double-digit growth would continue. Now there's a weeding out of those marginal borrowers, Serlin said. But that's caused lenders' antennas to go up, and they're tightening standards on loans to good companies, too. Downey Brand Seymour Rohwer, Sacramento's largest law firm, doesn't do much bill collection work, even for large clients, said managing partner Jim Day. But he's not surprised to hear there's an increase. "We do have some clients in the power-generation business which are concerned about PGE and its payment," Day said. One client that has four small hydrogeneration plants has received a letter from PGE citing "uncontrollable forces" -- that is, denial of a rate increase -- explaining the utility's lack of payment. Copyright 2001 American City Business Journals Inc. Click for permission to reprint (PRC# 1.1660.391462) Sacramento Business Journal email: [EMAIL PROTECTED] All contents of this site © American City Business Journals Inc. All rights reserved. _ Get your FREE download of MSN Explorer at http://explorer.msn.com
Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: RE: Hernando de Soto
Any details on Roy Prosterman? AIFLD land reform advisor in S. Vietnam in the 60's. Connections to "Operation Phoenix"??? http://www.google.com/search?q=Roy+ProstermanbtnG=Google+Search http://www.google.com/search?q=Roy+Prosterman+Wolf+Ladejinskyhl=enlr=safe =off Michael Pugliese -Original Message- From: Michael Perelman [EMAIL PROTECTED] To: [EMAIL PROTECTED] [EMAIL PROTECTED] Date: Monday, February 05, 2001 5:18 PM Subject: [PEN-L:7781] Re: Re: Re: Re: RE: Hernando de Soto The key figure in the Land Reform was Wolf Ladejinsky, an anti-communist socialist. sorry. have to go. Jim Devine wrote: At 01:09 PM 2/5/01 -0500, you wrote: It should be remembered that one reason why land reform was easier to impose in both Taiwan and South Korea was that many of the landlords were either Japanese or had been very close to the by-then-deposed Japanese overlords. exactly -- and the US thought it was good too, since it helped fight the Red Menace. In fact, General MacArthur sponsored the land reform in Japan. BTW, there's a book title THE TRIUMPH by John Kenneth Galbraith in which there's a radical communist revolution in a fictional South American country, where the new leader uses the precedent of MacArthur's land reform to justify his policies. Jim Devine [EMAIL PROTECTED] http://bellarmine.lmu.edu/~jdevine -- Michael Perelman Economics Department California State University Chico, CA 95929 Tel. 530-898-5321 E-Mail [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Re: Hernando de Soto
Prosterman wrote an effusive introduction to Ladejinsky's papers. By the way, L., because of his 'socialist' views was not allowed to go to S. Korea to administer land reform there, but one of his boys went instead. On Mon, Feb 05, 2001 at 05:43:12PM -0800, Michael Pugliese wrote: Any details on Roy Prosterman? AIFLD land reform advisor in S. Vietnam in the 60's. Connections to "Operation Phoenix"??? http://www.google.com/search?q=Roy+ProstermanbtnG=Google+Search http://www.google.com/search?q=Roy+Prosterman+Wolf+Ladejinskyhl=enlr=safe =off Michael Pugliese -Original Message- From: Michael Perelman [EMAIL PROTECTED] To: [EMAIL PROTECTED] [EMAIL PROTECTED] Date: Monday, February 05, 2001 5:18 PM Subject: [PEN-L:7781] Re: Re: Re: Re: RE: Hernando de Soto The key figure in the Land Reform was Wolf Ladejinsky, an anti-communist socialist. sorry. have to go. Jim Devine wrote: At 01:09 PM 2/5/01 -0500, you wrote: It should be remembered that one reason why land reform was easier to impose in both Taiwan and South Korea was that many of the landlords were either Japanese or had been very close to the by-then-deposed Japanese overlords. exactly -- and the US thought it was good too, since it helped fight the Red Menace. In fact, General MacArthur sponsored the land reform in Japan. BTW, there's a book title THE TRIUMPH by John Kenneth Galbraith in which there's a radical communist revolution in a fictional South American country, where the new leader uses the precedent of MacArthur's land reform to justify his policies. Jim Devine [EMAIL PROTECTED] http://bellarmine.lmu.edu/~jdevine -- Michael Perelman Economics Department California State University Chico, CA 95929 Tel. 530-898-5321 E-Mail [EMAIL PROTECTED] -- Michael Perelman Economics Department California State University Chico, CA 95929 Tel. 530-898-5321 E-Mail [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: de Soto
Barkley, we'll have to disagree. I will try and find the cites I used to use in class. Henry George may not be famous for his anti-Chinese sentiment today, but he was very famous for it in the nineteenth century. As I said before, his writings were well enough known that they were used as the basis for the laws which disallowed Chinese citizenship until the twentieth century. Of course, the Chinese exclusion acts are not taught in school as part of the standard history.. and rarely referred to by historians or economic historians (other than Asian writers). However, I used some passages from Henry George which were rabidly anti-Chinese in my micro classes when I talked about race, class, and gender. I think the author of the book I used was Tanaka, I have to look it up when I get a chance. The actual situation which led to a lot of H. Georges writings was a strike by shoemakers in New England. The owners of the shoe factories rented Chinese indentured rail workers and brought them east to break the strike. This led to tremendous anti-Chinese sentiment, and Henry George led the way. The Chinese rail workers were all indentured servants, and in the country only to work. The minute they stopped working they would be deported, so they did not have the rights of citizenship to protect them. However, rather than uniting with this disparity, George attacked the Chinese as less than human. maggie coleman J. Barkley Rosser, Jr. wrote: Maggie, It is also most certainly not true that Henry George's "main claim to fame" is his anti- Chinese writings. Heck, I had never even heard of them before you mentioned them, and I have even read most of Progress and Poverty, his most famous book (and the biggest selling book in the US on economics in the 19th century). I certainly have heard about his arguments for a single tax on land many times. This is not to defend any bad things he said about Chinese or other groups. I concur with Jim about a lot of the old leftists (although where George should be placed in the political spectrum is a rather murky business). Barkley Rosser -Original Message- From: Jim Devine [EMAIL PROTECTED] To: [EMAIL PROTECTED] [EMAIL PROTECTED] Date: Sunday, February 04, 2001 5:02 PM Subject: [PEN-L:7751] Re: Re: Re: Re: de Soto I wrote: Henry George? he was a leftist (of sorts), Maggie wrote: Jim, Jim, Jim, do NOT get me started on Henry George. Yeah, I knew about George's bad side. A lot of old leftists were bad, especially on issues of racism, sexism, nationalism. could you explain the Mechanics' views more? are they sort of like US-based Ricardian socialists? Jim Devine [EMAIL PROTECTED] http://bellarmine.lmu.edu/~JDevine
Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: de Soto
I've attached a file of notes I took from an article in the NY Sentinel written by "A Journeyman Mechanic." I hope their clear enough to explain what I mean. Of course, it's been about four or five years since i read them.maggie Jim Devine wrote: I wrote: Henry George? he was a leftist (of sorts), Maggie wrote: Jim, Jim, Jim, do NOT get me started on Henry George. Yeah, I knew about George's bad side. A lot of old leftists were bad, especially on issues of racism, sexism, nationalism. could you explain the Mechanics' views more? are they sort of like US-based Ricardian socialists? Jim Devine [EMAIL PROTECTED] http://bellarmine.lmu.edu/~JDevine Hardtime
Re: Henry George
I doubt that George was famous for his anti-Chinese views. They were common in California. Local miners used to dynamite Chinese encampments and then place bets on the number of bodies that would float by. I cannot imagine anything he could have said that would have made him seem exceptional here in California. On Mon, Feb 05, 2001 at 09:36:33PM -0600, Margaret Coleman wrote: Barkley, we'll have to disagree. I will try and find the cites I used to use in class. Henry George may not be famous for his anti-Chinese sentiment today, but he was very famous for it in the nineteenth century. As I said before, his writings were well enough known that they were used as the basis for the laws which disallowed Chinese citizenship until the twentieth century. Of course, the Chinese exclusion acts are not taught in school as part of the standard history.. and rarely referred to by historians or economic historians (other than Asian writers). However, I used some passages from Henry George which were rabidly anti-Chinese in my micro classes when I talked about race, class, and gender. I think the author of the book I used was Tanaka, I have to look it up when I get a chance. The actual situation which led to a lot of H. Georges writings was a strike by shoemakers in New England. The owners of the shoe factories rented Chinese indentured rail workers and brought them east to break the strike. This led to tremendous anti-Chinese sentiment, and Henry George led the way. The Chinese rail workers were all indentured servants, and in the country only to work. The minute they stopped working they would be deported, so they did not have the rights of citizenship to protect them. However, rather than uniting with this disparity, George attacked the Chinese as less than human. maggie coleman J. Barkley Rosser, Jr. wrote: Maggie, It is also most certainly not true that Henry George's "main claim to fame" is his anti- Chinese writings. Heck, I had never even heard of them before you mentioned them, and I have even read most of Progress and Poverty, his most famous book (and the biggest selling book in the US on economics in the 19th century). I certainly have heard about his arguments for a single tax on land many times. This is not to defend any bad things he said about Chinese or other groups. I concur with Jim about a lot of the old leftists (although where George should be placed in the political spectrum is a rather murky business). Barkley Rosser -Original Message- From: Jim Devine [EMAIL PROTECTED] To: [EMAIL PROTECTED] [EMAIL PROTECTED] Date: Sunday, February 04, 2001 5:02 PM Subject: [PEN-L:7751] Re: Re: Re: Re: de Soto I wrote: Henry George? he was a leftist (of sorts), Maggie wrote: Jim, Jim, Jim, do NOT get me started on Henry George. Yeah, I knew about George's bad side. A lot of old leftists were bad, especially on issues of racism, sexism, nationalism. could you explain the Mechanics' views more? are they sort of like US-based Ricardian socialists? Jim Devine [EMAIL PROTECTED] http://bellarmine.lmu.edu/~JDevine -- Michael Perelman Economics Department California State University Chico, CA 95929 Tel. 530-898-5321 E-Mail [EMAIL PROTECTED]
chinese exclusion acts
[was: Re: [PEN-L:7785] Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: de Soto] At 09:36 PM 02/05/2001 -0600, you wrote: . Of course, the Chinese exclusion acts are not taught in school as part of the standard history.. and rarely referred to by historians or economic historians (other than Asian writers). the economic historian (Gary Walton) I once was a Teaching Assistant for at UC-Berkeley made a big thing about these laws in his US econ. hist. course. As a libertarian, he used them to argue against unions. (An anecdote: Walton was a big fan of Fogel and Engerman's whitewash of US southern chattel slavery, TIME ON THE CROSS. Due to marital difficulties, he missed class and eventually Richard Sutch substituted. Sutch, who actually knows something -- a lot -- about the subject, trashed TIME ON THE CROSS up and down. When Walton came back, he discovered that his students had become very hostile toward the book that they'd shelled out a lot of bucks for. So he insulted Sutch to the students. How professional!) Jim Devine [EMAIL PROTECTED] http://bellarmine.lmu.edu/~JDevine
Re: chinese exclusion acts
Years ago, Thomas Kuhn taught a class on philosophy of science at Tigertown. He was ill, and had to hand over the teaching to Carl Hempel. The two were different as could be: Kuhn was disorganized, vague, rambling, and of course very anti-empiricist. Hempel was beautifully clear, crystalline in fact, razor sharp, and ultra-empiricist. We were very confused, having gotten these two great philosophers in the reverse order from their historical development. We kept saying, whenever Hempel would launch into one of his lucid empiricist explanations, "But Prof. Kuhn said . . . . " Hempel would say, in his brittle hoch-Berliner accent, "Ach, jawhol, he _vud_ say zat, ja. Naturlich. Ach. Now, as I vas saying." But he was quite respectful, if obviously more than a bit irritated at how our brains had been filled with postempiricist rubbish. --jks (An anecdote: Walton was a big fan of Fogel and Engerman's whitewash of US southern chattel slavery, TIME ON THE CROSS. Due to marital difficulties, he missed class and eventually Richard Sutch substituted. Sutch, who actually knows something -- a lot -- about the subject, trashed TIME ON THE CROSS up and down. When Walton came back, he discovered that his students had become very hostile toward the book that they'd shelled out a lot of bucks for. So he insulted Sutch to the students. How professional!) Jim Devine [EMAIL PROTECTED] http://bellarmine.lmu.edu/~JDevine _ Get your FREE download of MSN Explorer at http://explorer.msn.com
Re: President Kennedy, the Federal Reserve and Executive Order 11110
The gist is this: Kennedy signed an executive order in June '63 to issue Treasury notes backed with silver. This would have been good because the Treasury is good and the Fed is bad. Then, he got killed. The notes were quickly withdrawn. Old Abe Lincoln just happened to support this same policy. He of course met with the same demise as Kennedy, but the web site admits that this was "mere coincidence." I understand that we on the left have our complaints against the Federal Reserve System. I'm with you in that general direction. How do you get from that to a motive for the alleged conspiracy, however? The Fed doesn't have guns or secret agents. BTW, it doesn't help your case that your starting point is Oliver Stone's thoroughly discredited film. The sad part is that the system doesn't need conspiracies or cabals to survive. It doesn't hinge on the gold standard or the floating currency. It has woven an intricate web of deception and intimidation that can only be unraveled by the concerted action of the many. One person alone could never fix this society, not even JFK. Andrew Hagen [EMAIL PROTECTED] On Mon, 05 Feb 2001 10:51:48 -0800, Michael Pugliese wrote: The only thing that Oliver Stone did not include in JFK! What with L. Fletcher Prouty, author of, "The Secret Team, "of the Liberty Lobby as a consultant on the film why not? http://www9.pair.com/xpoez/money/cedric.html []
Hunt for Daewoo executive
http://news.ft.com/ft/gx.cgi/ftc?pagename=Viewc=Articlecid=FT3K5PYKUIClive=t rueuseoverridetemplate=ZZZUGORQ00Ctagid=ZZZNSJCX70Csubheading=global Prosecutors to launch global hunt for Daewoo founder By John Burton in Seoul Published: February 5 2001 19:30GMT | Last Updated: February 6 2001 01:38GMT South Korean prosecutors plan to indict up to 30 Daewoo executives and launch a global search for Kim Woo-choong, the group's founder, for alleged involvement in one of the world's biggest accounting frauds, which led to the conglomerate's collapse. Mr Kim, once one of Korea's most respected businessmen, fled in 1999 as Daewoo's financial problems erupted and has since been reported as hiding in countries including France, Germany, Sudan and Morocco. Eight senior Daewoo executives, including the former heads of its car, shipbuilding and trading units, were arrested last week as prosecutors probed allegations that they had inflated the group's assets by Won41,000bn (22bn) to hide Daewoo's troubled finances and persuade banks to make new loans. The executives claim that Mr Kim oversaw the accounting fraud as Daewoo encountered severe problems in servicing $80bn in debts due to Korea's financial crisis in 1997 and troubled economies in emerging markets where most of Daewoo's overseas units are based. "The signs are pointing in one direction and that is upward towards Mr Kim," said one former top financial adviser to Daewoo. "But the prosecutors will need to question Mr Kim to prove their case for accounting fraud." Prosecutors also want to question Mr Kim about allegations that he may have embezzled funds from a secret $20bn London-based fund, that was used to help finance Daewoo's extensive overseas operations. Mr Kim is suspected of secretly owning property and funds in addition to $1bn in declared assets he transferred to creditors under a 1998 debt restructuring programme. Prosecutors may have problems interrogating the former Daewoo chairman since he has stayed mostly in countries that do not have extradition agreements with Seoul. Officials are considering cancelling his passport to force Mr Kim to return to Korea. The case is sensitive since Mr Kim built his industrial empire over 30 years through close connections with some of Korea's leading politicians, who are suspected of having received funds from Daewoo. The group rapidly expanded through the takeover of state-run companies in Korea and followed a similar strategy abroad. Prosecutors, who launched the Daewoo probe last September, are rushing to make arrests since the statute of limitations for some Daewoo executives is due to expire in the next few weeks. Daewoo's trade union has complained about the slow pace of the investigation and yesterday offered to send its own search party to find Mr Kim. A spokesperson for the union said they had been told Mr Kim, had been spotted in Nice, in the South of France, as well as at a golf course in Palm Beach, Florida.
Re: Re: chinese exclusion acts
Piece of sectariana on Robert Fogel. He was an editor of a publication that the CPUSA put out briefly in the early 50's, "New Foundations." In the Greenwood Press reprint of Radical publications in the U.S. 1900-1960 series they put out in the early 70's. Forget if he was in the YCL or if the Party had renamed it the Young Worker's Liberation League or somesuch. Eugene Genovese alludes to Fogel's background (does Herbert Gutman, as well?) in an essay in, "In Red and Black." His newish one on egalitarianism looks like it got respectful reviews. Michael Pugliese -Original Message- From: Justin Schwartz [EMAIL PROTECTED] To: [EMAIL PROTECTED] [EMAIL PROTECTED] Date: Monday, February 05, 2001 9:01 PM Subject: [PEN-L:7790] Re: chinese exclusion acts Years ago, Thomas Kuhn taught a class on philosophy of science at Tigertown. He was ill, and had to hand over the teaching to Carl Hempel. The two were different as could be: Kuhn was disorganized, vague, rambling, and of course very anti-empiricist. Hempel was beautifully clear, crystalline in fact, razor sharp, and ultra-empiricist. We were very confused, having gotten these two great philosophers in the reverse order from their historical development. We kept saying, whenever Hempel would launch into one of his lucid empiricist explanations, "But Prof. Kuhn said . . . . " Hempel would say, in his brittle hoch-Berliner accent, "Ach, jawhol, he _vud_ say zat, ja. Naturlich. Ach. Now, as I vas saying." But he was quite respectful, if obviously more than a bit irritated at how our brains had been filled with postempiricist rubbish. --jks (An anecdote: Walton was a big fan of Fogel and Engerman's whitewash of US southern chattel slavery, TIME ON THE CROSS. Due to marital difficulties, he missed class and eventually Richard Sutch substituted. Sutch, who actually knows something -- a lot -- about the subject, trashed TIME ON THE CROSS up and down. When Walton came back, he discovered that his students had become very hostile toward the book that they'd shelled out a lot of bucks for. So he insulted Sutch to the students. How professional!) Jim Devine [EMAIL PROTECTED] http://bellarmine.lmu.edu/~JDevine _ Get your FREE download of MSN Explorer at http://explorer.msn.com
Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: RE: Hernando de Soto
Any details on Roy Prosterman? AIFLD land reform advisor in S. Vietnam in the 60's. Developer of and leading apologist for the counterinsurgent land reform in El Salvador in the early 1980s. For more: Philip Wheaton. 1980. _Agrarian Reform in El Salvador: A Program of Rural Pacification._ Washington DC, EPICA Task Force. Carmen Diana Deere. 1982. "A Comparative Analysis of the Agrarian Reform in El Salvador and Nicaragua _Development and Change_ 13. Martin Diskin and James Stephens, 1982. _El Salvador Land Reform 1980-82: Impact Audit._ OXFAM America. Best, Colin
Re: Re: President Kennedy,the Federal Reserve andExecutive Order 11110
Heh, as lbo'ers know I follow conspiracy theorizing a bit as a hobby but, beyond what I'm sure all of us agree with (COINTELPRO, MKULTRA, Contra Cocaine/CIA) I don't agree with the vast bulk of it. And, you are right that an ironic consequence of conspiracy theories is to postulate a pure, unsullied system that would operate to the benefit of all if these Illuminist Elite Cabalists were thrown out. Back to Jeckyl Island... http://www.apfn.org/apfn/reserve.htm Michael Pugliese -Original Message- From: Andrew Hagen [EMAIL PROTECTED] To: [EMAIL PROTECTED] [EMAIL PROTECTED] Date: Monday, February 05, 2001 9:22 PM Subject: [PEN-L:7791] Re: President Kennedy,the Federal Reserve and Executive Order 0 The gist is this: Kennedy signed an executive order in June '63 to issue Treasury notes backed with silver. This would have been good because the Treasury is good and the Fed is bad. Then, he got killed. The notes were quickly withdrawn. Old Abe Lincoln just happened to support this same policy. He of course met with the same demise as Kennedy, but the web site admits that this was "mere coincidence." I understand that we on the left have our complaints against the Federal Reserve System. I'm with you in that general direction. How do you get from that to a motive for the alleged conspiracy, however? The Fed doesn't have guns or secret agents. BTW, it doesn't help your case that your starting point is Oliver Stone's thoroughly discredited film. The sad part is that the system doesn't need conspiracies or cabals to survive. It doesn't hinge on the gold standard or the floating currency. It has woven an intricate web of deception and intimidation that can only be unraveled by the concerted action of the many. One person alone could never fix this society, not even JFK. Andrew Hagen [EMAIL PROTECTED] On Mon, 05 Feb 2001 10:51:48 -0800, Michael Pugliese wrote: The only thing that Oliver Stone did not include in JFK! What with L. Fletcher Prouty, author of, "The Secret Team, "of the Liberty Lobby as a consultant on the film why not? http://www9.pair.com/xpoez/money/cedric.html []
Re: Bush's tax cut
I think you are right about the assumption as to continued levels of social spending. If they had built in room for Bush's welfare for religion program, for example, they would have had to adjust their numbers. I couldn't locate the BW article Jim cited, but I found one from the previous week. BW, Feb 5, p. 30. Quoting from the article: "In a speech last year, Treasury Secretary Lawrence H. Summers noted that tax collections have risen as a share of gross domestic product even though the federal tax burden for most American families is the lowest since the 1970s. The explanation: a rise in realized capital gains (mainly from stocks), which provide tax revenues but aren't counted as contributing to GDP." Although 2000 was a bad year for stocks, there may have been an increase in reported capital gains. We don't have the numbers yet. One economist cited in the article believes such a gain could come from lots of people cashing in long held stocks this year. The article notes that if so, the surplus will not look nearly so rosy next year. If we're facing a bear market for 2-3 years, that would produce much smaller surpluses. (In the latest symptom of the bear market, eToys is laying off all their employees.) Maybe that's why they want to push the tax cut so badly now. Bigger perceived surplus = bigger tax bonanza for the very rich. As a preview of what you may hear from your opponent, Rush Limbaugh asserts "liberal media bias" in the description of Bush's tax cut as "enormous." In my judgment, Limbaugh is probably reading whatever's hot off the fax from RNC HQ. Limbaugh says "Bush is only asking to return about a quarter of that overpayment to you, the taxpayers, but what do we hear from Democrats? The same old lingo, "Can we afford it?"" http://www.rushlimbaugh.com/home/daily/site/content/roll.html. His position leaves open the door for a rebuttal that shows that we indeed cannot afford it. Rush notes that the surplus is projected to total $6 trillion over 10 years. He argues that the Bush tax cut amounts to only a quarter of that. The Republican line is that the taxes belong to the people who paid them. On that he is technically wrong. Taxes, once paid, belong to ALL the people. It is their power and their right, as filtered through their democratically elected representatives, to decide what to do with it. The better economic policy is to pay down the national debt. We need to get ready for the influx of baby boomers hitting retirement age. If we used all of the surplus to pay down the debt, our nation would again be a net creditor within 10 years. Then we'd deal with the retiring boomers. Under the Bush plan, the national debt will continue to grow. Then, baby boomers will hit retirement age and we'll be bankrupt. Good luck. Andrew Hagen [EMAIL PROTECTED] Note: The above was a thought experiment in how to properly phrase political rhetoric. It does not necessarily constitute evidence of my policy positions or beliefs. On Mon, 05 Feb 2001 18:05:48 -0500, Ellen Frank wrote: Dear Penners - I'm supposed to do a television debate tomorrow with a corporate-libertarian type about Bush's tax cut. I wanted to point out that surplus projections assume continued low levels of spending on programs cut to reduce the deficit. I believe I am right about this, but if I'm not, please tell me. Medicare cuts seem one good example (especially for the local audience - half the hospitals in this area are broke). I would appreciate other examples people can give. Thanks, Ellen Frank
