Re: US pensions redux
A wage-slave has no security, even less so as they allow the employing class to play the stock markets with the part of the social wealth they create which has been 'set aside' for their future income. I notice that not much is being mentioned about dumping Social Security funds into the stock market these days. Mike B) --- Eubulides [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: [New York times] July 28, 2003 New Rules Urged to Avert Looming Pension Crisis By MARY WILLIAMS WALSH Top government officials have begun a calibrated campaign to bring attention to corporate pension plans, which they say may be on a road to collapse. But underneath their measured words are proposals that could fundamentally change the $1.6 trillion industry, altering the way pension money is set aside and invested. On Wednesday, the comptroller general placed the Pension Benefit Guaranty Corporation, the agency that guarantees pensions, on a list of high risk government operations. Elaine L. Chao, the secretary of labor, issued a statement on the same day warning that the decades-old system in which workers earn government-guaranteed pensions is, unfortunately, at risk. Treasury Secretary John W. Snow, a former railroad chief executive who had responsibility for a $1.3 billion pension fund, warned recently that a financial meltdown similar to the savings-and-loan collapse of 1989 might be brewing. Steven Kandarian, the executive director of the Pension Benefit Guaranty Corporation, gave a speech earlier this month in which he foresaw a possible general revenue transfer - polite words for a bailout of the agency. Before being named to head the agency, Mr. Kandarian was a founding partner and managing director of the private equities firm of Orion Partners. While officials want to underscore the dangers to retirement benefits that millions of Americans count on, they do not want to frighten consumers, roil financial markets or anger the companies that already put billions of dollars into the system. But some pension analysts, reading between the lines, say they think that officials are not only looking at calling upon companies to put more money into their ailing pension plans - a painful prospect at a time when cash is tight - but also at the more radical remedy of encouraging funds to reduce their heavy reliance on the stock market. At issue are defined-benefit pensions, the type in which employers set aside money years in advance to pay workers a predetermined monthly stipend from retirement until death. Today, about 44 million private-sector workers and retirees are covered by such plans. Three years of negative market forces have wiped away billions of dollars from the funds, triggering the defaults of some pension plans and leaving the rest an estimated $350 billion short of what they need to fulfill their promises. Until recently, the idea that America's pension edifice was built on a flawed foundation was preached by a tiny number of financial specialists and considered heresy by almost everyone else. But after several years of declines in the stock market, there is a growing argument that pension managers, who have been investing most of their money in stocks for years, should be in predictable bond investments that would mature when the money will be needed, matching the retirement ages of their workers. Now the view is gaining ground in academia, and getting a fair-minded hearing by well-placed financial officials, who are incorporating some of its reasoning in their pension proposals. The measures they have put forward bear little resemblance to those considered earlier this month in a rancorous House Ways and Means Committee session. The House pension bill is more generous to business. If enacted, it would lop tens of billions of dollars off the amounts companies would pay into their pension funds in each of the next three years. Businesses favor the bill's approach, but hoped to make its changes permanent. Treasury officials say they think that this approach would put benefits at risk, particularly at companies with older workers who will be claiming their pensions soon. The fact of the matter is that more money is needed in those plans, to ensure that older workers receive the benefits they have earned through decades of hard work, said Peter R. Fisher, under secretary for domestic finance, in testimony to a House subcommittee panel earlier this month. The high number of pension funds that have defaulted has already severely weakened the pension insurance agency, raising fears of a bailout. The agency finances its operations by charging companies premiums, and it still has enough cash flow to make all of its payments to retirees for now. But its deficit has grown to record size, and it cannot keep absorbing insolvent pension plans indefinitely. It could raise premiums, an unpopular idea with
Re: the fed and the yuan
On Thu, 24 Jul 2003 10:36:29 -0700, Michael Perelman wrote: The US approved of the Argentinian peg and disapproves of the Chinese peg. Does anyonc sense a policy of expediency? Not only that, but according to this morning's FT, Greenspan said that China cannot go on accumulating ever more dollar assets without putting its financial system at risk. Apparently the burden of adjustment falls on surplus countries in the New Economy. dd
Re: Slightly more patient capital?
UK has a stack-load of measures of this sort, without obvious effect. dd On Mon, 21 Jul 2003 13:49:46 -0400, Max B. Sawicky wrote: Yes but I forget who. Somewhere I have a stack of papers from a conference on this. Capital gains rates, among other complexities, reflect this purported intention of encouraging buy and hold. Best recent book is Len Burman, The Capital Gains Labyrinth. Where ya been? max It got me wondering. Did anyone ever propose something similar to a Tobin Tax on domestic stock trading (not quite the same, since Tobin's focus was speculation)? Either tax increases or tax cuts that would encourage longer-term investment? If so, what were the details? Thanks, Anders Schneiderman
The rising government deficits in the French-German axis: the bourgeoisie can't afford socialism
BRUSSELS, July 23 (AFP) - The European Commission foresees Germany's deficit hitting four percent of GDP this year, in breach of EU rules, and France's heading towards that level, according to a document obtained Wednesday by AFX News, AFP's financial news subsidiary. In a briefing note for the July 14 meeting of euro-zone finance ministers, the commission warned that German economic growth would have to rise to two percent in 2003 for its deficit to fall below the EU's Stability and Growth Pact's ceiling of three percent of gross domestic product (GDP). Equally, the French deficit was unlikely to come back below three percent of GDP in 2004, the commission said. This means the euro zone's two largest economies could in theory face fines of up to 0.5 percent of GDP for breaching the deficit limit for three years in a row. The commission predicted near zero growth in Germany this year, while the French economy would expand by slightly less than 1.0 percent. The revelation of the internal document came as the commission was studying clauses of the stability pact covering measures to be taken against countries posting deficits above three percent of GDP for three consecutive years. The briefing note also warned that Portugal's deficit would rise back above the limit this year, and that its 2004 target of below two percent of GDP is certain to be relaxed. On Germany, the commission said: The increase in welfare expenditures particularly linked to unemployment and the stagnation in federal government revenues mean that, in spite of the implementation of a consolidation package worth around one percent of GDP..., the general government deficit is likely to be close to four percent of GDP, way above the budget target of 2.8 percent. It said of France that with growth likely to fall short of one percent, the deficit is heading towards four percent of GDP although there is still room for a correction package. It noted that for 2004 France projects a reduction in the cyclically adjusted deficit by 0.5 percent of GDP. However, in the absence of further corrections in 2003 and under plausible growth assumptions, this is unlikely to be sufficient to achieve the government objective of a deficit not in excess of three percent of GDP, it said. http://www.expatica.com/france.asp
Solidarity Planning Anti-Occupation Actions!
I sent an announcement of the following action planning meeting of the Columbus branch of Solidarity to local activist listservs. If any Midwestern comrades have some free time (especially if you live in a small town and don't have any socialist/anti-capitalist comrades nearby), please stop by: Sunday, August 3, 2003, 2 PM Solidarity Meeting (open to all socialists from all traditions and those who are open to working with all socialists) Date Time: Sunday, August 3, 2 PM Location: Victorians' Midnight Café, 251 W. 5th Ave., (near the corner of 5th and Neil Aves.), Columbus, OH -- Cf. http://www.geocities.com/victoriansmidnightcafe/ Contact: Yoshie, 614-668-6554, [EMAIL PROTECTED] http://solidarity.igc.org/whyjoin.html Items on the meeting agenda include the following: * Planning anti-war/anti-occupation activities (e.g., banner-drops, weekly Sunday, 5-6 PM actions, Columbus Campaign for Arms Control annual Hiroshima Nagasaki commemoration on Wednesday, August 6, 7:30 PM, an anti-occupation die-in in Columbus on Saturday, August 9, 12 Noon/an ISO-led anti-racist rally in Cincy on on August 9, 1 PM) * Mobilizing anti-war/anti-occupation activists for the Poor People's March for Economic Human Rights on Washington, D.C. on Saturday, August 23, 2003, the 40th anniversary of King's historic I Have a Dream speech (sponsored by the Kensington Welfare Rights Union, http://www.kwru.org/ehrc/ppmarch.html) -- linking movements against the wars at home and abroad * Lobbying against the Occupation of Iraq, Wednesday, August 27 * OSU Student Involvement Fair (the Student International Forum tabling), Monday, September 22, 12 Noon-4 PM, http://www.ohiounion.com/welcomeweek/involve.asp * OSU Multicultural Festival (the Student International Forum tabling), Thursday, September 25 * Actions against the Occupations and Empire, for Refugees' Right to Return, Thursday, September 25 -- Monday, September 29 (sponsored by Al-Awda, ANSWER, UfPJ, UK Stop the War, etc.) -- local actions coordinated by the Committee for Justice in Palestine --- Save the Dates! --- * ISM Activist Eyewitness Report featuring Karl of the Committee for Justice in Palestine, Friday, October 3 or Saturday, October 4 (TBA) * Immigrant Workers Freedom Ride, a Mass Rally in Queens, NY, Saturday, October 4, http://www.immigrantworkersfreedomride.com/ny.asp * The Third National Student Conference on the Palestinian Solidarity Movement, @ Douglas College Student Center, Rutgers University, New Brunswick, NJ, http://www.divestmentconference.com/, Friday, October 10 -- Sunday, October 12 * Indigenous People's Observance, Sunday, October 12 * Big Mobilizations in D.C., etc. to Bring the Troops Home and End the Occupation Now! (sponsored by ANSWER http://www.internationalanswer.org/campaigns/o25/index.html), Saturday, October 25 -- a bus organized by the Committee for Justice in Palestine * U.S. Labor Against War Conference http://www.uslaboragainstwar.org/, Saturday, October 25 (get your union, labor council, JwJ chapter, etc. to endorse the conference and/or send one delegate to it) * International Education Week Film Festival at the Ohio State University, November 14-23 (including the films sponsored by the Committee for Justice in Palestine) * SOA Watch Vigil Non-violent Civil Resistance, Fort Benning, Georgia, November 21-23, http://www.soaw.org/ * Human Rights Day -- Stand Up for Human Rights -- Don't Let the Empire Take Away Your Rights! http://www.un.org/Overview/rights.html, December 10 * A Day of Remembrance -- Commemorate Japanese Internment, February 19, 2004 * Palestinian Land Day, March 30, 2004 * Al-Awda, the Palestine Right to Return Coalition -- International Day of Action against the Occupation and for the Right of Return, April 9, 2004 [commemorating the Deir Yassin Massacre] * End the Occupation of Iraq, April 9, 2004 [the day when Baghdad fell -- recently declared to be a new national holiday by the US-backed Iraqi Governing Council] * African American Heritage Festival, April 2004, http://www.osuheritagefestival.com/ * May Day! * Al-Awda, the Palestine Right to Return Coalition -- International Day of Action against the Occupation and for the Right of Return, May 15, 2004 [commemorating the 1948 Nakba] * Juneteenth, June 2004, http://www.juneteenthohio.net/ * Pride in Solidarity -- No Pride in the Occupation (at the gay pride parade), June 2004 * ComFest, http://www.comfest.com/ * Bastille Day [commemorating 1789]/Iraq National Day [commemorating 1958], July 14, 2004 +++ Planning Speakers/Topics (provided that the following speakers are available)/Film Showings, under the auspices of either the Student International Forum or the Committee for Justice in Palestine or possibly both or more +++ -- Frances Hasso, Women's Studies, Oberlin (September 25, 2003?), Women in Palestine, http://www.oberlin.edu/gaws/faculty/hasso.html -- Steve Bloom, United for Peace and Justice, NYC (most likely early October), Anti-Racist Organizing against the
Re: A story of nickel and dimes
Well, yes, it is a comprehensive subject, you can do a solid, thoughtful course in it at Glasgow University (see http://www.lib.gla.ac.uk/courses/law/veitch.shtml). The question is what sort of juridical structure would actually deliver genuine justice in an efficient way (i.e. jurisprudential principles which promote efficient, effective, low-cost justice from a macro and micro point of view) but I suppose the basis for that, is a major reorganisation of property relations. The proliferation of credit facilities, the increased mobility of capital, and the separation of ownership, control and utilisation of economic resources is in reality a recipe for irresponsibility, parasitism and crime. This is not a specifically socialist argument, but it is true, you have to understand the magnitude of it. As regards Chirac, see also The Anti-Idiotarian Rottweiler: http://www.nicedoggie.net/archives/002578.html In my previous remarks, I did not of course cover things like subsidiaries and associated companies of Inco Ltd either. The thing I am trying to say is, that you have here a corporation, which is owned/controlled by other corporate entities, which are in turn owned/controlled by other corporate entities, and so on, all over the world, with a diffuse pattern of shareholdings and interlocking directorates, so that it would be virtually impossible for any one person, to know exactly what was really going on in the Inco Ltd empire at any specific point in time, nevermind decide anything. It is not just Kanaks or myself who cannot easily penetrate through the whole web of corporate relations, but people WITHIN Inco Ltd. probably could not either. What I am wondering is, when people like George W. Bush and Colin Powell defend private enterprise, do they really know, what they are defending ? Could it be the case that this whole vast international corporate web, constructed just for the purpose of money-making from nickel, might be in fact be a recipe for global economic irresponsibility, and for an uneconomic production and supply of nickel, never mind the political aspects ? The suggestion here is, that large corporate entitities may, purely because of their large and complex legal and organisational structure, and because of the huge separation between ownership, control, and implementation of corporate activity, be an massive obstacle to any rational utilisation and supply of the nickel resource, even if human, environmental, health, social and political issues can be resolved or even if the Green Party gets a boot up the ass. In this case, you need socialism simply to rationalise this a sector of the world economy and its relations with other sectors in the world economy, to attain some sort of real economic efficiency and responsibility. This type of argument inverts the classic bourgeois prejudice that socialism is bureaucratic and inefficient by saying well let's have a look at the efficiency of private enterprise, what does it actually mean, what does it amount to. And as far as I can see, it means that in the corporation, nobody is really responsible, not, because they do not have positions of responsibility, but because of epistemic problems, uncertainty, constraints, uncontrollable forces, risks. But these problems arise mainly out of the organisational structure of the corporation itself. It is possible to have a very exact picture of the world nickel industry and know how to mine efficiently and effectively with the latest technology. But it is mainly the legal, economic, organisational, political, social, cultural, environmentalist context in which you do this, in other words, society, that causes epistemic problems, uncertainty, constraints, uncontrollable forces, risks. In other words, corporate risks are largely manufactured by the corporations themselves. The job of the politician is to reconcile corporate objectives with whatever else is going on. As I said, I didn't want to go into the political nitty gritty of Inco mining in New Caledonia, but the literature on it shows, how complex it is. I had a debate with David Schanoes on Marxmail about the law versus class politics but if your work you way through the literature about the politics of nickel mining, you will probably agree with me David is wellmeaning, but just a little naive in his utterances. I will just refer to some the the sources about and Inco in Kanaky (mainly Canadian Mining Watch): Background on Inco's mining activities in Kanaky/New Caledonia http://www.miningwatch.ca/publications/New_Caledonia_backgnd.html Speech by Scott Hand in the presence of Jacques Chirac: http://www.inco.com/investorinfo/presentations/SMH_english.pdf 2003 Visit by a Kanak fact-finding mission to North America: http://www.miningwatch.ca/newsletter.html#Kanaks http://www.miningwatch.ca/issues.html#anchor869053 Kanak Report, 2003 http://www.miningwatch.ca/issues/Nouvelle_Caledonie/March_19_2003_release.ht ml We ought to talk about
Re: Support of open-source software by business
If you look at the history of open source, I think that it would be hard to argue that it took off because of an effort to lower costs of white-collar programmers. Most open source software and software development made its way through the back door, pushed by system administrators and programmers. Even at IBM, from the stories I've heard Gerstner's decision to embrace open source happened only after a sustained grassroots campaign by programmers and lower-level managers had invaded IBM. The issue of open source and skill isn't straightforward. It depends on what open source software you are talking about. For example, the programming languages Perl and PHP spread like wildfire because they weren't too difficult to learn, there was lots of free code available, and there were huge communities who freely supported them -- if you got stuck, you could usually get an answer from a listserv or newsgroup in a few hours. Similarly, these days setting up an Apache web server is pretty straightforward. Linux is another matter. I'm finishing up a study of nonprofits who use Linux on their servers, and what we have consistently heard from system administrators is that Linux takes significantly more skill to get started than, say, Novell or Windows 2000. However, their sense--and this has certainly been my experience from supervising sys admins in both environs--is that it takes about the same level of skill to be able to handle more complex problems (there are a lot of people who are Novel/MS certified who have no clue what to do if something goes seriously wrong). But if you were going to make a statement overall about open source and labor costs, I'd say that it's saved companies money in two ways: for software like Linux, it lets companies hire fewer but higher-skilled programmers and admins, it lets the company harness volunteer labor, and for some large projects it increases the amount of code that's available for free (since code is shared). But I don't think the real savings come in labor costs. The biggest savings are in hardware costs (OS software tends to need less powerful boxes), ongoing licensing fees, stability, security, customization, and reduced risk (for small niche software, where you have to worry that the company that built it will go under or will stop supporting it). I think where the issue of lowering labor costs is going to become a big issue is in the new surge of outsourcing. Open source development projects have gotten very good at having volunteers from around the globe working together. In other words, they've figured out the processes and software infrastructure that make it much easier to use Java programmers in India, who get paid a fifth of what they do in the U.S. Thanks, Anders Schneiderman [EMAIL PROTECTED] 07/27/03 10:19AM I've been wondering if business support for open-source software --- from IBM, for example --- is really an effort to spread knowledge and thus lower costs of white-collar programmers. Any studies of this? Bill
Re: Slightly more patient capital?
Can you say a bit more? What kind of measures, and why do you think they've been useless? Thanks, Anders [EMAIL PROTECTED] 07/28/03 03:03AM UK has a stack-load of measures of this sort, without obvious effect. dd On Mon, 21 Jul 2003 13:49:46 -0400, Max B. Sawicky wrote: Yes but I forget who. Somewhere I have a stack of papers from a conference on this. Capital gains rates, among other complexities, reflect this purported intention of encouraging buy and hold. Best recent book is Len Burman, The Capital Gains Labyrinth. Where ya been? max It got me wondering. Did anyone ever propose something similar to a Tobin Tax on domestic stock trading (not quite the same, since Tobin's focus was speculation)? Either tax increases or tax cuts that would encourage longer-term investment? If so, what were the details? Thanks, Anders Schneiderman
Re: Support of open-source software by business
On Monday, July 28, 2003 at 09:58:39 (-0400) Anders Schneiderman writes: ... I think where the issue of lowering labor costs is going to become a big issue is in the new surge of outsourcing. Open source development projects have gotten very good at having volunteers from around the globe working together. In other words, they've figured out the processes and software infrastructure that make it much easier to use Java programmers in India, who get paid a fifth of what they do in the U.S. This is exactly what I had in mind. Thanks for the info. Bill
Emissions trading
Does anybody know where I can find empirical analysis by progressives of emissions trading? This weekend, I got into an argument with a conservative about sustainable development. When I went to check a number of progressive enviro web sites, I was surprised to find that I was having trouble finding information on how this so-called free-market solution has been doing in the real world. Thanks, Anders Schneiderman
Cancun draft text
JOB(03)/150 18 July 2003 Preparations for the Fifth Session of the Ministerial Conference Draft Cancún Ministerial Text The attached Draft Ministerial Text is being circulated by the Chairman of the General Council on his own responsibility, in close cooperation with the Director-General. It is intended as a first draft of an operational text through which Ministers at Cancún would register decisions and give guidance and instructions as appropriate in the negotiations and other aspects of the work programme agreed at Doha. It does not purport to represent agreement in whole or in part, and is without prejudice to any delegation's position on any issue. This draft is guided by the mandates given at Doha and the actions required to carry them out. It is based on a reaffirmation of all the commitments taken at Doha, including the overall timetable for the Round. The somewhat skeletal nature of this first draft is a reflection of the reality of our present situation. It reflects how far we still have to go in a number of key areas to fulfil the Doha mandates. The task ahead of us in the short time remaining before Cancún is to fill in the gaps in this draft so that it becomes a workable framework for action by Ministers. This will be the focus of intensive consultations in the coming weeks, centred on the informal Heads of Delegation process and the General Council. Our aim is to work with delegations to produce a text for transmission to Ministers by the latter part of August. In some areas the discussions at next week's General Council on reports from WTO bodies may contribute to the evolution of this draft. In others, further dedicated consultations will clearly be necessary. We will need to continue to call upon the invaluable help of the Chairs of relevant bodies in this work. In carrying it out we will also continue to work in a transparent and inclusive way. We hope that the output of our collective effort will remain a concise and operationally focussed one, on the basis of which Ministers at Cancún can act to provide the added momentum we need for the year ahead. ___ Draft Cancún Ministerial Text 1. We reaffirm our Declarations made at Doha and the decisions we took there. We take note of the progress that has been made towards carrying out the Work Programme agreed at Doha, and recommit ourselves to completing it fully. We also renew our determination to conclude the negotiations launched at Doha successfully by the agreed date of 1 January 2005. 2. In pursuance of these objectives, we agree as follows: TRIPS Public Health 3. We welcome the decision on implementation of paragraph 6 of the Doha Declaration on the TRIPS Agreement and Public Health set out in document []. Agriculture negotiations 4. We adopt the modalities for further commitments in agriculture set out in document [] and agree that participants will submit their comprehensive draft Schedules based on these modalities no later than []. NAMA negotiations 5. We adopt the modalities for the negotiations on Market Access for Non-Agricultural Products contained in document [] and we []. Services negotiations 6. We recognize the progress made in the services negotiations and urge participants to intensify their efforts to bring this process to a successful conclusion. We call upon those Members who have not yet submitted their initial offers to do so as soon as possible. Members should submit their improved offers by [] and revised offers, with a view to finalizing the negotiations, should be submitted by []. The negotiations shall aim to achieve progressively higher levels of liberalization with no a priori exclusion of any service sector or mode of supply and shall give special attention to the sectors and modes of supply of export interest to developing countries. There shall be due respect for the right of Members to regulate in pursuance of national policy objectives. Negotiations on rule-making under the GATS shall be concluded in accordance with their respective mandates and deadlines. The Special Session of the Council for Trade in Services shall review progress in these negotiations by 31 March 2004. Rules negotiations . We instruct the Negotiating Group on Rules to accelerate its work on anti-dumping and subsidies and countervailing measures, including fisheries subsidies, with a view to shifting its emphasis from identifying issues to seeking solutions. We note the considerable progress that has been made in the negotiations on improving transparency in Regional Trade Agreements and encourage the Group to reach a decision soon on its work on transparency and to accelerate its work on the clarification and improvement of RTA disciplines under existing WTO provisions. TRIPS negotiations 8. We adopt the multilateral system of notification and registration of geographical indications for wines and spirits set out in document []. Environment negotiations 9. We take note of
Re: Red Baiting Labor Studies
what is a conservative anyway? it seems very subjective. aren't environmentalists conservatives because they want to conserve the earth? arent't democratically-oriented Marxists conservatives because they want to conserve humanity in the face of the capitalist juggernaut? how about if we define conservative in terms of defending established societal privilege? that makes more sense. Those who defend racial and gender privileges would then be clear conservatives. And so-called libertarians (free marketeers) are conservatives because they want the power of money wealth to run the world -- while covering up the implication of their theory with rhetoric of freedom. Jim -Original Message- From: Eubulides [mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED] Sent: Fri 7/25/2003 1:42 PM To: [EMAIL PROTECTED] Cc: Subject: Re: [PEN-L] Red Baiting Labor Studies
Re: Red Baiting Labor Studies
Jim, This may help: Any cognitive scientist who seeks to describe the conservative and liberal worldviews is constrained by at least two adequacy conditions. First, the worldviews must makle the collection of political stands on each side into two natural categories. For example, the liberal worldview analysis must explain why environmentalism, feminism, support for social programs, and progressive taxation, naturally fit together for liberals, while the conservative worldview analysis must explain why their opposites fit together naturally for conservatives. Second, any adequate descriptions of these two worldviews must show why the puzzles for liberals are not puzzles for conservatives, and conversely... But there is a third, far more demanding, adequacy condition on the characterization of conservative and liberal worldviews. Those worldviews must additionally explain the topic choice, word choice, and discourse forms of conservatives and liberals. In short, those worldviews must explain just how conservatibve forms of reasoning make sense to conservatives, and the same for liberals. (George Lakoff, Moral Politics: How Liberals and Conservatives Think, 2nd edtion, p. 27-28). This mode of analysis is in some ways similar to rationally reconstructing a Lakatosian research programme, except that the rationality is limited to behavioural inferences made from a set of social and personal values. Regards J. - Original Message - From: Devine, James [EMAIL PROTECTED] To: [EMAIL PROTECTED] Sent: Monday, July 28, 2003 4:56 PM Subject: Re: [PEN-L] Red Baiting Labor Studies what is a conservative anyway? it seems very subjective. aren't environmentalists conservatives because they want to conserve the earth? arent't democratically-oriented Marxists conservatives because they want to conserve humanity in the face of the capitalist juggernaut? how about if we define conservative in terms of defending established societal privilege? that makes more sense. Those who defend racial and gender privileges would then be clear conservatives. And so-called libertarians (free marketeers) are conservatives because they want the power of money wealth to run the world -- while covering up the implication of their theory with rhetoric of freedom. Jim -Original Message- From: Eubulides [mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED] Sent: Fri 7/25/2003 1:42 PM To: [EMAIL PROTECTED] Cc: Subject: Re: [PEN-L] Red Baiting Labor Studies
Re: Emissions trading
It's terribly controversial, of course, with many good greens supporting it as a means to implement Kyoto. The worst aspects must be the Clean Development Mechanism projects in places like Brazil, Thailand and here in South Africa. I spent a week in Oxford recently with comrades Rising Tide, Carbon Trade Watch and The Cornerhouse, who have a fantastic critical analysis. Let me know if you want a couple of excellent new papers off-list; they get into the major market-failure and poli-econ issues, essentially calling this phenomenon by the names it deserves: carbon imperialism and the privatisation of the air. Cheers, Patrick [EMAIL PROTECTED] - Original Message - From: Anders Schneiderman [EMAIL PROTECTED] To: [EMAIL PROTECTED] Sent: Monday, July 28, 2003 4:09 PM Subject: Emissions trading Does anybody know where I can find empirical analysis by progressives of emissions trading? This weekend, I got into an argument with a conservative about sustainable development. When I went to check a number of progressive enviro web sites, I was surprised to find that I was having trouble finding information on how this so-called free-market solution has been doing in the real world. Thanks, Anders Schneiderman
Re: Emissions trading
On Monday, July 28, 2003 at 10:09:44 (-0400) Anders Schneiderman writes: Does anybody know where I can find empirical analysis by progressives of emissions trading? This weekend, I got into an argument with a conservative about sustainable development. When I went to check a number of progressive enviro web sites, I was surprised to find that I was having trouble finding information on how this so-called free-market solution has been doing in the real world. Hasn't Robin Hahnel written some on this topic? You might check with him. Bill
Re: Emissions trading
I have seen good articles in Z and in Dollars and Sense (and The Ecologist) on this in the past; though they were not elaborate empirical studies, they referred to real world cases and problems. Mat
Slavery and mechanization
Journal of Agrarian Change, Vol. 3 No. 3, July 2003 Plantation Slavery and Economic Development in the Antebellum Southern United States by CHARLES POST By contrast, capitalists can reduce the size of their labour force to adapt new, labour-saving machinery in response to changing competitive pressures simply by laying off their redundant workers and expanding the size of the reserve army of labour. Having consumed their capacity to work for a specified period of time, the capitalists no longer have any obligation to their former workers who are free to compete with one another to find other buyers for their labour power. In sum, while capitalists have and do attempt to intensify the labour of wage workers through speed-up and lengthening working hours, the most effective means of increasing output and reducing costs the mechanization of production is available to capitalists, but not to slave-owners. === Michael Thad Allen. The Business of Genocide: The SS, Slave Labor, and the Concentration Camps. Chapel Hill and London: University of North Carolina Press, 2002. xii + 375 pp. Illustrations, map, notes, bibliography, index. $39.95 (cloth), ISBN 0-8078-2677-4. Reviewed by L. M. Stallbaumer-Beishline, Department of History, Bloomsburg University of Pennsylvania. Allen's study focuses on activities of the WVHA, which was formed out of a desire by Himmler to introduce modern, managerial practices to the financial administration and economic enterprises of the SS. Himmler's interests in the economy reflected his goal to bring the SS worldview into private industry and to create a new economic order founded on productivism and German racial supremacy... Against the backdrop of how the WVHA emerged and functioned, Allen examines the careers of several men in the commercial and engineering sectors of the SS economic administration. He convincingly illustrates that the SS mid-level managers were driven by a plexus of ideologies. They were neither cogs in a machine, nor trapped in a bureaucratic iron cage, nor banal technocrats. Allen finds that the commercial pursuits of the SS were far less successful than the construction engineers. He explains the differences in outcome may be due to the engineers' ability to combine technical knowledge with ideological commitment. This becomes obvious when we compare Allen's study of DESt, TexLed (Textil- und Lederverwertung GmbH, Textile and Leather Utilitzation Ltd), and Hans Kammler's SS construction corps. (clip) TexLed's success can be explained by several factors, including the simple fact that textile manufacturing is a labor intensive job which proved perfectly suited to the use of concentration camp laborers. Yet sound management also contributed to TexLed's ability to meet supply demands and run at a profit. TexLed was managed by Fritz Lechler and Felix Krug, who fully identified with the SS plexus of ideologies, and they possessed modern, technological management skills. Like Ahrens, they purchased the most modern sewing machines that could increase output, but did not require skilled laborers. Therefore, their operations fully exploited concentration camp labor through modern managerial techniques, controlled labor costs, and profit-oriented operations. At both German commercial operations, forced laborers were exploited and treated cruelly (a topic that is discussed only briefly), but TexLed demonstrated to Allen that ideological extremism and business sense could be integrated coherently (p. 70). full: http://www.h-net.org/reviews/showrev.cgi?path=236351058984838 -- The Marxism list: www.marxmail.org
The Guardian - Energy's Moribund Tendencies
Some of my current thoughts on the deteriorating state of the US energy sector - in today's Guardian. Comments most welcome. And thanks to Eugene. Nomi
Re: The Guardian - Energy's Moribund Tendencies
- Original Message - From: nomi prins [EMAIL PROTECTED] To: [EMAIL PROTECTED] Sent: Monday, July 28, 2003 11:36 AM Subject: [PEN-L] The Guardian - Energy's Moribund Tendencies Some of my current thoughts on the deteriorating state of the US energy sector - in today's Guardian. Comments most welcome. And thanks to Eugene. Nomi == Energy's moribund tendencies Nomi Prins Monday July 28, 2003 The Guardian Enron unleashed a flood of corporate failures. Yet, throughout 2002, it was the telecommunications sector that routinely delivered entries to the top 10 US bankruptcy list, culminating with WorldCom, the mother of all chapter 11 filings. The energy sector's woes were less dramatic, giving the impression it might escape. But investigations, over-capacity, deceptive accounting and huge debt in a sea of downgrades characterise nearly every US merchant energy company. Only the year of debt refinancing with a nervous Wall Street has prolonged the decay. Mirant bagged the biggest bankruptcy of the year honours two weeks ago. There's more to come. The power marketers took advantage of deregulation to not only control the creation and distribution of energy, but to engage in complex financial activities designed to inflate profits and gouge consumers, trading everything from natural gas and electricity to bandwidth and the risk of earthquakes or rain. After 1996 deregulation, energy debt issuance rocketed. The sector borrowed more than $1.2 trillion through loans, credit and bonds; $80bn is due by 2006, $23bn within the next six months. That debt supported numerous endeavours, none of which had anything to do with customer service. It capitalised those highly leveraged, speculative trading operations, since shut down or still unwinding at huge losses. Debt was also stashed in goodwill buckets on corporate balance sheets. The sector hasn't produced the write-downs that telecoms did, but this is coming. Debt funded plant and generator constructions and acquisitions, contributing to today's capacity glut. US companies raised money to buy international ones. Debt provided the avenue for energy firms to expand fibre-optic networks that nobody needed. The sector vaporised half a trillion dollars in market value. Once prominent investment grade, merchant companies such as Dynegy, Reliant Resources, El Paso, Mirant, Calpine, CMS, Aquila and Allegheny were downgraded to junk and slapped with fraud investigations. Their stock remains 90% off past highs. Companies shed assets at fire sale prices and refinanced, yet posted 20% declines in revenue last quarter. El Paso got a new chief executive after months of searching: Douglas L Foshee, a former Halliburton boss with no pipeline experience. He received a $2.65m joining package, not exactly confidence inspiring. El Paso and others count on Washington buddies to follow a too big to fail motto that has the federal energy regulatory commission handling investigations with kid gloves. The FERC dropped a ball by upholding corporate contracts negotiated with California at the height of the 2000-2001 price gouging period, but individual states continue fighting. Montana has filed a suit against 13 energy and two Wall Street firms for price rises resulting from their California market manipulation. Companies such as Dynegy, Reliant Resources and El Paso remain at death's door despite huge refinancings, though some analysts think El Paso will survive because it has real pipelines, providing stable (read regulated) income. According to Tyson Slocum, head of energy research at Public Citizen: The rough water is far from over; anyone who says otherwise isn't investing their own money. True. Last week, Aquila in Missouri persuaded the Colorado public utilities commission to use its assets as collateral for daily operations, a desperate request. Then there's Allegheny, which has sought SEC approval for a $2.2bn cash injection. Because of the entwined relationship between its regulated utility and unregulated trading businesses, a likely bankruptcy would cause significant service disruptions. The picture is bleak. The question of a broad sector implosion is not if, but when. As Robert Rubin, Deutsche bank utility and energy credit analyst, put it: There are no winners in this sector, only non-losers. ·: Former banker Nomi Prins is author of the forthcoming book, Money for Nothing
Convict leasing
Matthew J. Mancini. One Dies, Get Another: Convict Leasing in the American South, 1866-1928. Columbia, S.C.: University of South Carolina Press, 1996. xi + 283 pp. Index, Bibliography. $34.95 (cloth), ISBN 1-57003-083-9. Reviewed by Garland Brinkley, Department of Economics, School of Public Health, University of California-Berkeley. Published by EH.Net (October, 1999) Several economic historians have asserted that African-Americans were better off in the aftermath of the Civil War. Ransom and Sutch's (1977) classic leisure for labor trade-off, for example, suggests that freedmen worked fewer hours and fewer days and that fewer members of the family spent time in the fields after the Civil War with the resultant higher utility (but lower income). What are noticeably absent from previous histories of the South, was the continuation of slavery under the even more brutal conditions driven by economic incentives. While most believe that the thirteenth Amendment abolished slavery and involuntary servitude, a loophole was opened that resulted in the widespread continuation of slavery in the Southern states of America -- slavery as punishment for a crime. (clip) Georgia practiced the most undiluted and typical form of convict leasing of any of the southern states. However, political favoritism determined the issuance and bid price of convict leasing contracts and political pressures ensured no interference in the working and living conditions of the convicts. Average prison sentences lengthened dramatically during this period. Convicts were invariably leased to prominent and wealthy Georgian families who worked them on railroads and in coal mining. Even though reformers exposed the brutalities of the system in Georgia, the demise of convict labor in Georgia came about due to political reform and market forces when the bids that contractors had to pay for convict labor finally became equal to free wage rates. Alabama used the convict labor system as an enormously successful revenue generating mechanism. Not only did convict leasing last longer in Alabama than in any other southern state, but it was also notable due to the extreme quantity of convicts in the system. Convict leasing began in Alabama in 1846 and lasted until July 1, 1928 when Herbert Hoover was vying for the White House. In 1883, 10 percent of Alabama's total revenue was derived form convict leasing while in 1898, 73 percent of total revenue came from this same source. Death rates among leased convicts were approximately ten times the death rates of prisoners in non-lease states. In 1873, for example, 25 percent of all black leased convicts died. Possibly the greatest impetus to the continuance of convict labor in Alabama was to depress the union movement. Arkansas was notorious for the brutality of its convict leasing system resulting from the lack of official monitoring of convict laborers. Economically different from other southern states, Arkansas actually paid companies to work their prisoners for much of the time the system was in place. Arkansas' system of convict leasing was also quite political in terms of issuance of contracts and oversight or lack of oversight of convicts. No state official was empowered to oversee the plight of the prisoners and businesses had complete autonomy in the disposition and working conditions of convict laborers. Mines and plantations that used convict laborers commonly had secret graveyards containing the bodies of prisoners who had been beaten and/or tortured to death. Convicts would be made to fight each other, sometimes to the death, for the amusement of the guards and wardens. full: http://www2.h-net.msu.edu/reviews/showrev.cgi?path=6957943393384 -- The Marxism list: www.marxmail.org
Against Liberal Intervention
There is an interesting exchange on the In These Times website between Ian Williams, a Nation Magazine contributor who backed war with Yugoslavia but not in Iraq, and John R. MacArthur, the publisher of the excellent Harpers Magazine. For obvious reasons, I don't want to waste bandwidth with Williams's arguments for a kinder and gentler imperialism (http://www.inthesetimes.com/comments.php?id=286_0_1_0_C) but do urge one and all to read MacArthur's comments at http://www.inthesetimes.com/comments.php?id=285_0_1_0_C from which the following excerpt is drawn: I recall a hair-raising speech by the currency speculator-turned-human-rights-promoter George Soros, in which he argued for creation of a U.N. rapid deployment military force that could intervene anywhere in the world on a moments notice to prevent the powerful from killing the weakby killing the powerful. Around the same time, it became fashionable on the left (especially in the neighborhood inhabited by Susan Sontag and David Reiff) to denounce the U.N. peacekeepers in Bosnia for not being sufficiently anti-Serb, the Serbs being ultra-nationalist fascists. At a human rights group board meeting I heard a well-known U.S. television journalist actually refer to the blue-helmeted soldiers in Sarajevo as capos in a concentration camp, who functioned as oppressors, not protectors, of the noble Bosnians. Liberal military interventions by the United States and its allies followed in due course. Bush I had already played the human rights card by promoting the fake baby incubator atrocity in Kuwait, a brilliant maneuver that undermined both the no blood for oil and the no more Vietnams lobbies. Then came Somalia, which was a disaster for Americans and Somalis alike; Haiti, where the United States intervened in support of the sometimes repressive Bertrand Aristide; and lastly, Kosovo, which achieved reverse ethnic cleansing of Serbs on behalf of the Kosovo Liberation Army. Like Saddam, Slobodan Milosevic was alternately denounced by do-gooders on the left as a Hitler-like fascist and the last Stalinist, first cousins to Christopher Hitchens Islamic Fascists. Kosovo was the clearest assertion of the new doctrine of liberal intervention, a legal and moral template for the overthrow of Saddam. According to its critics, the NATO bombing campaign was a pre-emptive war in clear violation of international law (Kosovo was legally part of Serbia, which had attacked no other country). But liberals were happy because the 78 days of aerial mayhem led to the eventual removal of Milosevic from power. Leftists more radical than Kouchner, like Paul Berman, now seek to expand the concept of liberal pre-emption by claiming Abraham Lincoln as their patron saint. Lincoln, they say, was bent on liberating the whole world, not just the southern statesa foolish exaggeration about a practical politician who nearly wrecked his career by opposing Americas imperialist invasion of undemocratic Mexico in 1846 (and who initially wanted to send the slaves back to Africa). Its no coincidence that President Bush has chosen the USS Abraham Lincoln for his welcome- home photo op. -- The Marxism list: www.marxmail.org
egg on Boskin's face
July 27, 2003/New York TIMES It Looked Good on Paper By DANIEL ALTMAN IN a flash of intuition, Michael J. Boskin had found a silver bullet. Or so it seemed. About six months ago, Professor Boskin, an economist at Stanford who was chairman of the Council of Economic Advisers under the first President George Bush, released a paper suggesting that the federal government had a bounty of $12 trillion coming that no one had bothered to count. Baby boomers and others, who spent decades making tax-free contributions to their I.R.A.'s and 401(k) plans, would soon begin paying taxes on withdrawals from those accounts, Professor Boskin noted. The windfall from all that, he argued, would more than cover the deficits in Social Security and Medicare. He even suggested that the government sell securities abroad, backed by the expected revenue, to cover its more imminent deficits. But now it appears that Professor Boskin fired a blank. On July 17, after his ideas were discussed on TV, he quietly notified his colleagues that his equations contained an error. Though he is busily overhauling his paper even now, his latest moment of fame may have already passed. Professor Boskin worked in the White House throughout the Bush administration and, in the mid-1990's, headed a much-publicized Congressional commission to improve government measures of prices. In those years, he was known as a smart, hard-headed insider who did not hesitate to tell Congress, federal agencies and even the Federal Reserve how to do their jobs. But in the last seven years, apart from periodically advising the second President Bush and making occasional television appearances, Professor Boskin said little that was heard outside the academic universe. That was, until January, when he released his bombshell paper. When word of his findings entered the public domain, Professor Boskin instantly became a darling of the business news media. The doom-and-gloom red-ink budgetary forecasts of recent years have overlooked some astoundingly good news for the government, crowed Barron's in its issue of June 16. BusinessWeek declared Professor Boskin clearly back on top of his game in its June 30 issue, calling him the Alan Greenspan of his generation. Yet while the news media were bubbling with praise, the academic backlash was coming to a boil. On Feb. 10, just weeks after he drafted his new paper, Professor Boskin presented his results at a seminar held by the economics department of the University of California at Berkeley. Immediately, said Emmanuel Saez, an associate professor at Berkeley who attended, participants took issue with one of his crucial assumptions: that the I.R.A.'s and 401(k) plans were earning a much higher effective return than the government was paying on its debt. TYPICALLY, an unpublished paper like Professor Boskin's would have circulated among academic economists, who would then have offered their comments in private. But in this case, Alan J. Auerbach, the organizer of the seminar, joined William G. Gale and Peter R. Orszag of the Brookings Institution, a research group, to rebut the work of Professor Boskin even as he was revising the paper. They reiterated the question about rates of return and raised several new, equally profound concerns. To begin with, they wrote, the vision of trillions of uncounted dollars to save Social Security and Medicare was just a mirage. The government's statistics already account for the effects of all the contributions, they wrote, and about 85 percent of withdrawals from tax-deferred saving accounts. The three also said Professor Boskin was overestimating the tax rates that would apply to the withdrawals, another factor that would artificially inflate the amount of revenue the government might garner. Then they took issue with his assumption that all changes in private saving by Americans would be matched by new corporate investment in the United States. Indeed, this last assumption by Professor Boskin was a trifle contradictory. Early in his paper, he called the notion that a dollar of debt sold by the government would replace a dollar of corporate investment an unrealistic assumption in an open economy. But if foreigners could buy Treasury bonds, why could Americans not send their savings overseas, too? While Professor Auerbach and his co-authors prepared their paper, other commentators took a whack at Professor Boskin's results. Bruce Bartlett, a senior fellow at the National Center for Policy Analysis, a lobbying group, complained that the government would not be able to sell bonds backed by the deferred tax revenue. It's not like a corporation that suddenly discovered an asset that it didn't know it had, he said in a phone interview last week. Everybody realized, after they thought about it for a while, that there was less there than met the eye. Academics, meanwhile, spotted yet another problem. When people take money out of I.R.A.'s and 401(k) plans, securities like stocks and
U.S. mortgage borrowing
My brief look at mortgage borrowing in the U.S.: http://www.dissidentvoice.org/Articles7/Sandronsky_Mortgage.htm Seth Sandronsky _ Add photos to your e-mail with MSN 8. Get 2 months FREE*. http://join.msn.com/?page=features/featuredemail
Re: Support of open-source software by business
The primary aim for business is certainly to tap into cheap programming labour. This is sometimes even recognised by the chief priest of open-source, Eric Raymond, but in his wordsphrasedas a positive feature. On why open source (and the more radically minded 'free software') willout-competeclosed software, Raymond writes inCathedral and the Bazar: "[...] because the commercial world cannot win an evolutionary arms race with open-source communities that can put orders of magnitude more skilled time into a problem" Communities can engage thousands ofskilled labourerswhile even the biggest multinational company can hardly afford to pay more than a few hundred developers. However, this touches on something else that I believe to be as interesting, the fact that voluntarylabour of communitiesachieve better thanthe best and brightest of alienated wage labour. Companies does not choose 'open source', it isalready therechallenging commercial interests, the best chance companies havefor damage-control isto engage in order to manipulate, for the community activitynot to develop into direct antagonism with capitalist interests (as itdoes anyway, exemplified with programs forfile-sharing and circumvention of copyright protection). Secondly, those individual firms investing in open source has done so against the backdrop ofMicrosoft monopoly.They have little to loose since no commercial product is able to race against the commercial frontrunner (windows). Instead they can increase profits from secondary sales, for example, having communities to improvesoftware applicationfor hardware that issold by the company. Do you Yahoo!? Yahoo! SiteBuilder - Free, easy-to-use web site design software
Fighting terrorism with blurry vision; the latest teachings of Paul Wolfowitz, or, would the real terrorist please stand up clearly
In the armed forces, they teach you to handle a gun, and identify your target carefully, before taking aim and shooting, but now Wolfowitz has a new idea... Posted on Mon, Jul. 28, 2003 Wolfowitz: U.S. Must Act on 'Murky' Info WILLIAM C. MANN Associated Press WASHINGTON - The Pentagon's second-ranking official says the United States must be prepared to act on less-than-perfect intelligence in a world where the main threat is terror, even though information about terrorism is inherently murky. If you wait until the terrorism picture is clear, you're going to wait until after something terrible has happened, Deputy Defense Secretary Paul Wolfowitz said Sunday on NBC's Meet the Press. And we went to war, and I believe we are still fighting terrorists and terrorist supporters in Iraq, in a battle that will make this country safer in the future from terrorism. Making the rounds of television talk show, Wolfowitz told Fox News Sunday that Iraq now is the central battle in the war on terrorism. He similarly linked the U.S.-led invasion and its aftermath to President Bush's war on terror. At the same time, he emphasized that intelligence dealing with terrorists is intrinsically murky. On CBS' Face the Nation, Sen. Carl Levin of Michigan, ranking Democrat on the Armed Services Committee, said he was struck by Wolfowitz's use of the word. Boy, it sure didn't sound murky before the war, Levin said. There were clear connections, we were told, between al-Qaida (terrorists) and Iraq. There was no murkiness, no nuance, no uncertainty about it at all. ... That's the way it was presented to the American people. http://www.thestate.com/mld/thestate/news/world/6400489.htm For biographical notes on Wolfowitz, see the US Department of Defence http://www.defenselink.mil/bios/depsecdef_bio.html
Re: Support of open-source software by business
In a message dated 7/28/03 3:24:35 PM Pacific Daylight Time, [EMAIL PROTECTED] writes: Communities can engage thousands of skilled labourers while even the biggest multinational company can hardly afford to pay more than a few hundred developers. However, this touches on something else that I believe to be as interesting, the fact that voluntary labour of communities achieve better than the best and brightest of alienated wage labour. Companies does not choose 'open source', it is already there challenging commercial interests, the best chance companies have for damage-control is to engage in order to manipulate, for the community activity not to develop into direct antagonism with capitalist interests (as it does anyway, exemplified with programs for file-sharing and circumvention of copyright protection). Here is the irresistible rebel movement confronting the immovable object of maximum profit. Victory to these worker/rebel in their current struggle. Could you please list once again your writings on this matter. I read much of the material but lost the location. Melvin P.
the cost of job loss
18% of Workers in Study Lost Jobs The university survey of 1,015 working-age adults covers 2000-03. Many who were laid off didn't get any jobless benefits. From Associated Press July 28, 2003 TRENTON, N.J. - Two-thirds of workers laid off in the last three years received no severance package or other compensation from their employer, according to a new study by researchers at Rutgers University and the University of Connecticut. The study of 1,015 randomly selected working-age adults, titled The Disposable Worker: Living in a Job-Loss Economy, also found that one in five of those interviewed, or 18%, had been laid off during the 2000-03 period. Of those who lost their jobs, only 49% of the ones who had earned at least $40,000 annually said they received unemployment insurance benefits. For those who made less than $40,000 a year, the number with unemployment insurance benefits shrank to 35%. There's neither private sector nor government support that's going to most people, said Carl Van Horn, director of the John J. Heldrich Center for Workforce Development at Rutgers, which conducted the study. Serge Kher had never been unemployed until his job as general manager of a car dealership in Virginia Beach, Va., was eliminated in March. After sending out 107 resumes, trolling Internet job sites and looking into different fields, the 48-year-old father of four had just one interview. I'm starting to go crazy, he said. There are days when I feel that I'm worthless. Kher, now a stay-at-home dad, got one month's severance pay and is collecting $300 a week in unemployment benefits. His family went without health benefits for two months until his wife found a job offering the insurance. Still, he's received more aid than most Americans laid off since 2000, according to the study. Barely one-fourth of those surveyed said their employer extended their health benefits after they were laid off, and less than one-fifth said they received help finding a job, career counseling or skills training. Despite the National Bureau of Economic Research's July 17 proclamation that the recession ended in November 2001 - because gross domestic product began rising then - Van Horn says he and plenty of other economists disagree that there has been a turnaround. There are still a lot of people unemployed, he said. If you're a typical person and not an economist, you don't really care about the GDP. Businesses continue to announce thousands of layoffs. The national unemployment rate hit a nine-year high of 6.4% in June, and many economists think it could hit 6.6% this year before starting to decline. In addition, workers are remaining unemployed longer than in previous recessions, wrote Van Horn and the study's co-author, Kenneth Dautrich, director of Connecticut's Center for Survey Research and Analysis. Thirty percent of those surveyed received only one to two weeks' notice their jobs were being cut, and 34% had no warning. The survey also found that 40% of those who lost their jobs worry it will happen again in the next three to five years. Since James Malloy, 58, was laid off as a truck driver in September 2000, he's washed cars and mowed lawns, then worked part-time for the Durham, N.C., transit company with no benefits to keep up with his mortgage and car loan. I was just scratching for pennies. It was tough times, said Malloy, whose brother also hasn't had steady work for about three years. Married with two grown children, Malloy finally got a full-time supervisory job working nights with the transit system on July 1. But a new company just took over the transit system and quickly cut four of its 130 jobs. Does he feel secure? Not very, Malloy said.
the aerospace duopoly
Jet lag for Boeing but Airbus orders pour in David Gow Tuesday July 29, 2003 The Guardian Airbus, the European plane-maker, yesterday outshone its US rival, Boeing, by announcing 600 orders for the next two years in an upbeat assessment of the aviation market. Rainer Hertrich, co-chief executive of Eads, the European aerospace and defence group which owns 80% of Airbus, said the industry was clearly coming to the bottom of the cycle and there were signs of recovery all over the world. His comments contrasted with more cautious remarks last week from Phil Condit, Boeing's chairman and chief executive, who spoke of a recovery in 2005 at the earliest. Mr Hertrich reaffirmed that Airbus would deliver 300 planes this year, beating Boeing - which expects to sell 280 planes - for the first time. Mr Condit said Boeing would deliver at most 290 planes and perhaps as few as 275 next year. Mr Hertrich's announcement of 600 firm orders in 2004-2005 indicates that Airbus expects to deliver at least 300 planes in each of the next two years, though sources said some deliveries could be deferred. Next year Airbus is counting on 118 orders from leasing companies, 79 from Europe, 46 from north America, where airlines are being kept afloat by federal aid, and just 27 from Asia where travel was hammered by the Sars outbreak. Eads confirmed that fewer deliveries at Airbus, greater research and development spending on the new A380 superjumbo, and the weaker US dollar helped depress first-half earnings to ?592m (£420m) from ?775m in 2002. Eads cheered investors by disclosing that its net cash remained strong at ?918m while its net exposure to customer financing - almost entirely from Airbus - was a conservative ?1.6bn. The half-year figures were depressed by a ?88m charge for restructuring the ailing space business, though Mr Hertrich said Eads would probably book a further ?200m charge in the final quarter. The group, ramping up production of the Eurofighter and preparing for the launch of the A400M military transporter, said growing defence orders would boost sales and earnings this year and next.
the tickle on the wrist
[New York Times] July 29, 2003 A Warning Shot to Banks on Role in Others' Fraud By FLOYD NORRIS Enron lied to investors about its financial condition, but it could not have done so without active help from its friendly bankers. And that help constituted fraud. That was the conclusion reached by the Securities and Exchange Commission and the Manhattan district attorney as they disclosed settlements yesterday with two of the nation's largest financial institutions, J. P. Morgan Chase and Citigroup. If you know, said Stephen Cutler, the S.E.C.'s enforcement director, that you are helping a company mislead its investors, then you are in violation of securities laws. That is not the way financial institutions have seen it in the past. Our view historically, wrote Marc J. Shapiro, vice chairman of J. P. Morgan Chase in a letter to Robert M. Morgenthau, the Manhattan district attorney, was that our clients and their accountants were responsible for the clients' proper accounting and disclosure of the transactions. Now, he said, his bank will hold ourselves to a higher standard. The settlements do not create precedents to the extent they would had the cases been litigated, but they serve notice on banks and other financial institutions that they will face major legal difficulties if they are caught engaging in transactions similar to the ones that Citigroup and J. P. Morgan did with Enron before that company went broke. It is clear that both banks knew quite well that they were entering into transactions with Enron that were in reality loans for hundreds of millions, and even billions, of dollars. But they were structured in convoluted ways to allow Enron to report them not as loans - which would have shown the company to be deeper in debt than it wanted to appear - but as other kinds of liabilities related to its trading activities. In some cases, Enron even found ways to account for borrowed money as providing cash flow from operations, thus making it look like the company was making money that it was not. In one case, it borrowed money from Citigroup and bought Treasury bills, which it immediately sold. It claimed the proceeds of the sale increased operating cash flow by $500 million. The two banks thus had superior knowledge over other Enron creditors because they knew Enron's financial picture was not as good as it appeared. But that information did not do them much good - they ended up as Enron's two largest creditors when it filed for bankruptcy in December 2001 - in part because each did not understand that Enron had other partners in deception, and thus did not know the total amount of hidden debt. Weeks before Enron filed for bankruptcy, it disclosed many loans that it had previously hidden. When one J. P. Morgan executive expressed shock at the amounts involved, his colleague reponded: Shutup and delete this email. Citigroup may have had a slightly better understanding than J. P. Morgan of what was going on, or maybe it was just more averse to taking on large risks. It unloaded some of its disguised loans to Enron through bonds sold to institutional investors, largely pension funds, which suffered losses when Enron collapsed. The deals at the heart of yesterday's case created little in the way of dubious reported income for Enron; the company did that through other transactions that produced paper profits without producing operating cash flow. These deals provided cash flow to reduce the gap - closely watched by some investors - between reported profits and cash flow. After Enron collapsed, Citigroup realized far earlier than J. P. Morgan that what it had done looked bad. It was more cooperative with investigators, and that is one reason it got off with a lighter punishment. The S.E.C. agreed to fine Citigroup in an administrative proceeding, in which the company accepted a cease and desist order. J. P. Morgan, on the other hand, faced a civil suit filed by the S.E.C. in federal court, and had to accept an injunction barring it from future violations of securities laws. In some of the transactions at issue, it was at least arguable that Enron's accounting was permissible under generally accepted accounting principles, particularly if one looked at each separate transaction rather than at the entire structure of related transactions. The banks knew what was going on, but they comforted themselves by saying that was not their business. J. P. Morgan may have gone further. It signed letters, which the S.E.C. and Mr. Morgenthau say were deceptive, in an effort to persuade Enron's auditors that the accounting was proper. Even after investigations began, Mr. Morgenthau said, J. P. Morgan insisted that one company it had created, called Mahonia, was independent of the bank despite substantial evidence to the contrary. Mahonia, Mr. Morgenthau noted, was able to engage in billions of dollars of transactions even though its nominal capitalization totaled 10 British pounds, or about $16. Now both
feedin' at the trough
washingtonpost.com FEDERAL CONTRACTS States News Service Monday, July 28, 2003; Page E09 Indyne Inc. of McLean won a $429.8 million contract from the Air Force for western range operations communications and information. Anteon International Corp. of Fairfax won a contract valued at up to $50 million from the Interior Department for information technology services. SRA International Inc. of Fairfax won a contract valued at $41 million from the Defense Department for systems engineering and program support services. Beta Analytics International Inc. of Upper Marlboro won a contract valued at up to $12.5 million from the General Services Administration for management organizational and business improvement services. Planning Systems Inc. of Reston won a $10 million contract from the Navy for research and development work. ATT Government Solutions of Vienna won a contract valued at up to $4.7 million from the Army for construction of a frame relay network linking guard sites. ITT Industries Inc. of Roanoke won a $2.2 million contract from the Army for communication, detection, and coherent radiation equipment. Compass Solutions Corp. of Alexandria won a contract valued at up to $2.1 million from the General Services Administration for participation in the Logistics Worldwide program. SFA Inc. of Largo won a $1.6 million contract from the Navy for tactical electronic warfare engineering and support. Doors Inc. of Virginia Beach won a $1.4 million contract from the Navy for overhead and hollow metal core doors. BriarTek Inc. of Alexandria won an $805,612 contract from the Navy for support for the RexNet program. Optical Scientific Inc. of Gaithersburg won a $794,074 contract from the Commerce Department for enhanced precipitation identification sensors. Radian Inc. of Alexandria won a $643,990 contract from the Army for research and development services. Dylantic Contract Management Services Inc. of Virginia Beach won a $643,500 contract from the Army for medical transcription services. Norfolk Shiprepair and Drydock Inc. of Norfolk won a $295,602 contract from the Homeland Security Department for drydocking and repairs of the Coast Guard's Jefferson Island vessel. Alliance Technical Services Inc. of Norfolk won a $292,433 contract from the Homeland Security Department for dockside repairs to the Coast Guard cutter Diligence. Unicor-Federal Prison Industries won a $185,539 contract from the Army for miscellaneous electrical power and distribution equipment. Comptech Corp. of Rockville won a $72,345 contract from the Defense General Supply Center for ballnut guides. These contracts were awarded by the federal government to companies in Maryland, Virginia and the District. For more information, call States News Service at 202-628-3100, ext. 266
Re: Fighting terrorism with blurry vision; the latest teachings of Paul Wolfowitz, or, would the real terrorist please stand up clearly
Wolfowitz is just making an official justification for what has been a long-standing practice of US occupiers. The cases of bombing in Afghansitan based on murky data are legion. Afterwards the typical response is to report that the bombing is being investigated even after it is clear that innocent people were killed. In a few rare instances there was some compensation but usually the events just disappear off the media radar. Here is a recent example from Iraq. Where is the media outrage at innocents killed? There is no talk of anyone being disciplined or charged. No apology. No compensation. Just kill innocent people destroy property and take off. Of course some US killings of innocents are not really accidental they are targetted because they are in the headquarters of politically incorrect media stations such as AlJezeera. The same thing happened in the attack upon Yugoslavia. Cheers, Ken Hanly Bloody U.S. Raid in Baghdad Leaves Iraqis Furious Mon July 28, 2003 07:02 AM ET By Cynthia Johnston BAGHDAD (Reuters) - Caked pools of blood and a bullet hole in the window of Baghdad's al-Sa'ah restaurant are the only remaining signs of a U.S. raid that killed five Iraqi civilians as they unwittingly drove into a firestorm. Furious residents of the upscale Mansur district accuse U.S. soldiers of firing indiscriminately at passing cars Sunday as colleagues raided a villa in a vain search for Saddam Hussein. The cars came down the road. They didn't know the Americans were here. They were normal civilians and wanted to go home, one witness told Reuters Monday as he stood in the courtyard of the Sa'ah restaurant. They (U.S. soldiers) opened fire right away. A U.S. military spokesman said the raid was conducted by Task Force 20, a special team set up to hunt Saddam and his key aides, but gave no other details. A soldier at a nearby hospital said the bodies of five people had been brought in from the scene of the raid, including a boy in his early teens. Monday morning not a soldier was in sight in Mansur, and four burned or bullet-riddled cars had been taken away. All these things are making people hate the Americans, said Muhammad, a Mansur resident. In the beginning, all the Iraqi people welcomed the Americans, but now the Americans have built a wall between themselves and the Iraqi people. NO WARNING Residents who witnessed the shooting said about 75 U.S. soldiers poured into the area in the early evening, blocking off the main street but failing to prevent innocent motorists straying into the fire zone from quiet side streets. They need to have barbed wire up so that people know there is an operation, one witness said. This is a residential area. They need to take care of the civilians. There are kids here. Another witness, who gave his name as Abbas, said he had turned away cars in a street near the restaurant. But smaller streets remained open. Witnesses said soldiers opened fire from atop a Humvee armored vehicle at the first car that neared their position. Moments later they raked a second car with gunfire as well. It was indiscriminate firing, one witness said as others nodded in agreement and pointed out a bullet hole in the window of the restaurant. Flying bullets also hit the gas tank of a parked car, setting it and another car ablaze. In minutes, the shooting was over and the soldiers withdrew. They just left, one resident said. Then the Iraqi firemen came to put out the fires. - Original Message - From: Jurriaan Bendien [EMAIL PROTECTED] To: [EMAIL PROTECTED] Sent: Monday, July 28, 2003 5:52 PM Subject: Fighting terrorism with blurry vision; the latest teachings of Paul Wolfowitz, or, would the real terrorist please stand up clearly In the armed forces, they teach you to handle a gun, and identify your target carefully, before taking aim and shooting, but now Wolfowitz has a new idea... Posted on Mon, Jul. 28, 2003 Wolfowitz: U.S. Must Act on 'Murky' Info WILLIAM C. MANN Associated Press WASHINGTON - The Pentagon's second-ranking official says the United States must be prepared to act on less-than-perfect intelligence in a world where the main threat is terror, even though information about terrorism is inherently murky. If you wait until the terrorism picture is clear, you're going to wait until after something terrible has happened, Deputy Defense Secretary Paul Wolfowitz said Sunday on NBC's Meet the Press. And we went to war, and I believe we are still fighting terrorists and terrorist supporters in Iraq, in a battle that will make this country safer in the future from terrorism. Making the rounds of television talk show, Wolfowitz told Fox News Sunday that Iraq now is the central battle in the war on terrorism. He similarly linked the U.S.-led invasion and its aftermath to President Bush's war on terror. At the same time, he emphasized that intelligence dealing with terrorists is intrinsically murky. On CBS' Face the Nation, Sen.
futures market military intelligence
http://www.nytimes.com/2003/07/29/politics/29TERR.html Both Pacifica News and the New York Times have stories about using the futures market to predict terrorist activities. I find the story fascinating in one respect. Futures markets should predict future activities given certain assumptions, including that the participants have adequate access to information. If the futures market participants have good enough information, then United States could just dismantle its intelligence agencies and rely on the futures market. It also suggests that the typical American -- or at least herds of typical Americans -- have information virtually equivalent to the government. Quite an admission on the part of the Pentagon. -- Michael Perelman Economics Department California State University Chico, CA 95929 Tel. 530-898-5321 E-Mail [EMAIL PROTECTED]
