Financial advisor in Bay area???
Can anyone recommend a decent financial advisor in the Bay area? Thanks, Joanna
Re: PK on Big Blackout
- Original Message - From: Sabri Oncu [EMAIL PROTECTED] People steal electricity regularly in Turkey (maybe Patrick Bond would offer some information about a similar phenomenon in South Africa) not only because they cannot pay for it but also because it is very difficult to determine who is stealing how much, although you can determine how much was stolen. Here's a better source than me: *** For South Africa's Poor, a New Power Struggle By Jon Jeter Washington Post Foreign Service Tuesday, November 6, 2001; Page A01 SOWETO, South Africa -- When she could no longer bear the darkness or the cold that settles into her arthritic knees or the thought of sacrificing another piece of furniture for firewood, Agnes Mohapi cursed the powers that had cut off her electricity. Then she summoned a neighborhood service to illegally reconnect it. Soon, bootleg technicians from the Soweto Electricity Crisis Committee (SECC) arrived in pairs at the intersection of Maseka and Moema streets. Asking for nothing in return, they used pliers, a penknife and a snip here and a splice there to return light to the dusty, treeless corner. We shouldn't have to resort to this, Mohapi, 58, said as she stood cross-armed and remorseless in front of her home as the repairmen hot-wired her electricity. Nothing, she said, could compare to life under apartheid, the system of racial separation that herded blacks into poor townships such as Soweto. But for all its wretchedness, apartheid never did this: It did not lay her off from her job, jack up her utility bill, then disconnect her service when she inevitably could not pay. Privatization did that, she said, her cadence quickening in disgust. And all of this globalization garbage our new black government has forced upon us has done nothing but make things worse. . . . But we will unite and we will fight this government with the same fury that we fought the whites in their day. This is South Africa's new revolution. Seven years after voters of all races went to the polls for the first time, ending 46 years of apartheid and white rule, churches, labor unions, community activists and the poor in all-black townships are dusting off the protest machinery that was the engine of their liberation struggle. What most provokes South Africans' defiance today are what they see as injustices unleashed on this developing nation by the free-market economic policies of the popularly elected, black-led governing party, the African National Congress. Materially, life here has only gotten worse since 1994 as the ANC has pursued a course of piecemeal privatization of state industries, whittling of import taxes and loosening of controls on foreign exchange. The policies have expanded opportunities for foreign investors but so far have deepened the poverty inherited from apartheid's segregationist policies. With domestic industries more vulnerable to foreign competition and the restructuring of public enterprises, the most industrialized country in sub-Saharan Africa has lost nearly 500,000 jobs since 1993, leaving a third of the workforce unemployed. The poorest 15 million South Africans have had their annual incomes shrink by nearly a fifth of what they were before apartheid's collapse. The ANC's top officials, many of whom were initially Marxists, say their economic policies aim to remedy the imbalances of the past, which included protectionist trade policies and concentration of wealth in the hands of a relative few. To redistribute wealth, ANC officials say, they must first expand it, and they say only the global market and foreign cash can ultimately do that, albeit not without some growing pains as the economy adjusts. Increasingly, this country of 44 million people is running out of patience as it endures a financial crisis that statistically outstrips the Great Depression. At the same time, costs of such basic needs as housing, electricity and water are soaring. We did not give up our lives and the lives of our children only to let this brazen capitalist system exploit us even more, said Shadrack Motau, an SECC board member. In South Africa, the most despised acronym is arguably not HIV, the AIDS virus that infects nearly a quarter of the adult population, but GEAR, the ANC's economic package -- Growth, Employment and Redistribution -- which opens the door to global trade. Hoping to generate revenue, streamline a bloated bureaucracy and extend service to blacks ignored by apartheid, the ANC announced six years ago that the government would sell public enterprises from the state-run airlines and the phone company to Eskom, the acronym for the public electricity commission. With encouragement from institutions such as the World Bank and International Monetary Fund, the government has so far auctioned off only small portions, while restructuring the public franchises into profit centers to showcase their attractiveness to potential investors. The alienation felt by many poor blacks
working class
Carrol wrote: Working Class means something different within different analytical frameworks. In marxism, it is a historical not a sociological (i.e., weberian) category, and it is only as a sociological category that one can make such general statements meant to apply to individuals. I am aware of that. The girl who devirginalised me in New Zealand in 1978, was from an English workingclass family, she was studying to be a preschool teacher. From 1979, I studied people like E.P.Thompson, Gyorgy Lukacs, G. A. Cohen, Ernest Mandel, Erik Olin Wright, Eric Hobsbawm, Paul Willis, Stuart Hall, Bruce Jesson, Richard Sennett and various NZ historians, on the subject of the working class. I have also read widely in epistemology, philosophy of science and social theory. My ideas about the topic are from theoretical/scientific reading and lived experience, but my own thinking about it now, is different from conservative, racist Marxist orthodoxy, and, actually, I pick up a lot of my ideas from music. J.
US-Canada lumber dispute redux
[Federal Register: August 20, 2003 (Volume 68, Number 161)] [Notices] [Page 50123] From the Federal Register Online via GPO Access [wais.access.gpo.gov] [DOCID:fr20au03-31] --- DEPARTMENT OF COMMERCE International Trade Administration North American Free Trade Agreement, Article 1904; NAFTA Panel Reviews; Notice of Panel Decision AGENCY: NAFTA Secretariat, United States Section, International Trade Administration, Department of Commerce. ACTION: Notice of panel decision. --- SUMMARY: On August 13, 2003, the binational panel issued its decision in the review of the final results of the countervailing duty determination made by the International Trade Administration (ITA) respecting Certain Softwood Lumber Products from Canada (Secretariat File No. USA-CDA-2002-1904-03) affirmed in part and remanded in part the determination of the Department of Commerce. The Department will return the determination on remand no later than October 14, 2003. A copy of the complete panel decision is available from the NAFTA Secretariat. FOR FURTHER INFORMATION CONTACT: Caratina L. Alston, United States Secretary, NAFTA Secretariat, Suite 2061, 14th and Constitution Avenue, Washington, DC 20230, (202) 482-5438. SUPPLEMENTARY INFORMATION: Chapter 19 of the North American Free-Trade Agreement (``Agreement'') establishes a mechanism to replace domestic judicial review of final determinations in antidumping and countervailing duty cases involving imports from the other country with review by independent binational panels. When a Request for Panel Review is filed, a panel is established to act in place of national courts to review expeditiously the final determination to determine whether it conforms with the antidumping or countervailing duty law of the country that made the determination. Under Article 1904 of the Agreement, which came into force on January 1, 1994, the Government of the United States, the Government of Canada and the Government of Mexico established Rules of Procedure for Article 1904 Binational Panel Reviews (``Rules''). These Rules were published in the Federal Register on February 23, 1994 (59 FR 8686). Panel Decision: On August 13, 2003, the Binational Panel affirmed in part and remanded in part the Department of Commerce's final antidumping duty determination. The following issues were remanded to the Department: 1. To determine the adequacy of remuneration, and therefore benefit, based upon cross-border benchmarks. To make a new determination as to whether there is a benefit using a standard other than cross-border benchmarks. 2. To reconsider the matter of excluding reprocessed Maritimes- origin lumber in light of the Panel's opinion. 3. The Panel vacates the Department's rejection of an exclusion for used railroad ties and remands for reconsideration in light of the Panel's opinion. 4. Commerce failed to properly apply its own ``input source'' criterion by failing to grant applications submitted by all companies that relied on the source of their lumber as a basis for exclusion. The Panel remanded this issue to Commerce for consideration of those additional companies whose applications were based on input source. 5. The Panel remands the issue of the inclusion of residual products in the denominator of the subsidy calculation to the Department for further consideration. Commerce was directed to issue it's determination on remand within 60 days of the issuance of the decision or not later than October 14, 2003. Dated: August 14, 2003. Caratina L. Alston, United States Secretary, NAFTA Secretariat. [FR Doc. 03-21250 Filed 8-19-03; 8:45 am]
Niagara Mohawk
NY Press Finding NiMo George Pataki is shocked, shocked by the power outage. by Matt Taibbi Heres a fun activity you New York blackout veterans might want to try: Go online and check out the website of Niagara Mohawk (www.niagaramohawk.com), the Western New York utility that has been fingered as the possible culprit in last weeks hilarious, ridiculous power outage. Its a boring site, no questionnot exactly farmsecrets.com. But the banner at the top of the page is interesting. It reads: Niagara Mohawk, a National Grid Company. Thats what the sites looked like for about three years now, or ever since the London-based National Grid Company bought Niagara Mohawk in September 2000. Some of you might be surprised to learn that an American utilitya thing indispensable to daily life and national securitycan be owned by a foreign company. I know I was, when I first became a Niagara Mohawk customer in Buffalo last year. Niagara Mohawk, or NiMo, as its commonly known, is a popular villain in the press in Western New York (particularly in what passes for an alternative press there). Among other things, its one of about a gazillion giant companies to announce major layoffs in the area in recent years. The NiMo layoffs came in the wake of the $8.9 billion buyout, which was announced on September 5, 2000. At the time of the buyout, National Grid USA announced plans to eliminate between 500 and 750 jobs, or somewhere between five and eight percent of its total workforce. Wall Street liked that news. On September 1, 2000, before the National Grid rumors started, NiMos share price was $13.87. On the day of the announcement, it was $15.75. Ultimately, National Grid USA hopes to eliminate as many as 950 jobs. Meanwhile the NiMo corporate officers who signed off on the buyout deal rode into the sunset. CEO William Davis left with a golden-parachute payment of $2.7 million, and he and nine others were kept on staff at four times their annual salary. The NiMo deal, National Grid itself and the blackout all have a common ancestor: energy deregulation. http://www.nypress.com/16/34/newscolumns/cage.cfm -- The Marxism list: www.marxmail.org
Leo Panitch: left-nationalist?
(Turns out that Leo Panitch has a bit in common with Hardt-Negri. His solution, however, is not in the miscegnating multitude but in what they used to call the Great White North on SCTV. Blowed up real good.) Socialist Worker 407, August 6, 2003 N www.socialist.ca Socialist Project launched in Toronto By Paul Kellogg A panel discussion July 18 on Global Capital and National Identity turned into a launch of the Socialist Project in Toronto. The event jointly sponsored by a political economy class at York University and the Socialist Project was organized around a panel featuring Dick Bryan from the University of Sydney in Australia and Abbie Bakan from Queens University and a leading member of the International Socialists. But Leo Panitch from York University and co-editor of the influential annual Socialist Register in his capacity as discussant used the opportunity to announce the formation of the Socialist Project and to invite the 70 or so in the audience to sign up at a table in the back. The statement of principles of the Socialist Project, circulated at the meeting, contains some excellent ideas. Our political project is defined by the struggle to move beyond capitalism. To be for equality and democracy, to be for justice and solidarity, to be for the end of all oppressions and the full and universal development of individual and collective capacities to be for all of this is to be against capitalism. But the emphasis of Panitch was very different. To the surprise of many in the audience, he began his remarks by identifying himself as a left-nationalist. He then proceeded to provide a theoretical justification for this position, developing an argument that the national states of all advanced capitalist countries including Canadas and the states of Western Europe and Japan have been so incorporated into the empire-building project of the United States, that they have lost their sovereignty. Taking back this sovereignty is something that will be opposed by capitalists and the rich they now completely identify with the class project of the United States bourgeoisie. The sovereignty campaign, then, becomes one that has to be taken up by the left and the working class hence the justification for a life-long Marxist like Panitch calling himself a left-nationalist. full: http://www.web.net/sworker/407-11-socialistproject.html -- The Marxism list: www.marxmail.org
Cato fun and games on fixing future blackouts
Our friends at the Cato Institute already have a piece out in the New York Post making the one argument I didn't think anyone would be crazy enough to make: let's get rid of all the rules on the transmission system! --- Instead, why not try deregulating the grid? Kill the cap on transmission profits. Jettison the state regulations that protect transmission companies from competition. Cease the endless political debate over how the transmission lines ought to be organized and managed and let grid owners discover for themselves how to most efficiently run their businesses - something market agents are more adept at learning than legislators or regulators. --- Of course, there's the obvious problem of the natural monopoly. But they claim to have a solution to the problem: - Most analysts are convinced that the transmission system is a natural monopoly, and so recoil at the very thought of competition to the grid. But it already exists, in the form of natural-gas pipelines. All new power plants, after all, are natural gas-fired. They can be located far from urban areas and their product shipped to urban areas via the electricity-transmission system, or they can be located in urban areas and their output shipped locally. The competition between gas and electric transmission is no worse than the competition between cable and satellite television service providers. Does anyone understand what the hell they are saying? Are they saying that instead of swapping electrical power, power plants would swap natural gas?? Incidentally, one of the arguments that seems to the making the conservative circles is that electric transmission could be easily deregulated: just look at the wonderful competition that happens in natural gas pipelines. Even if you assume that natural gas transmission is very competitive (anybody happen to know if that's the case?) you'd think they would get that there is just a wee bit of difference between electricity and natural gas transmission systems -- as is evidenced, for ex, by all the articles now blaming enviros other community groups for preventing the building of additional power lines near/across people's property Anders PS here's the full article: THE RIGHT WAY TO FIX THE GRID By JERRY TAYLOR PETER VAN DOREN August 19, 2003 -- LAST week's blackout put a bright spotlight on a usually obscure topic - grid reliability. Everyone seems to agree that the feds should mandate more investment in transmission lines and that had those investments taken place over the years, Thursday's blackouts wouldn't have happened. We're not so sure. It's still unclear why the systems that normally prevent transmission anomalies from spreading failed to do their job. So no one knows whether the sort of investments contemplated by the politicians and regulators would have reduced the chances for a blackout. Yes, the need for more investment in the grid seems clear. The system was designed to handle a limited number of transactions, not the large interstate exchanges of electricity now common. Moreover, transmission capacity has been stagnant relative to the growth in power generation, stressing the system even more. Why has the grid deteriorated? * Transmission projects are considered, approved and paid for at the state level - but the benefits cross state lines. And state-level decision-makers understandably resist using ratepayer dollars to pay for investments that will mainly help out-of-staters. * In much of the country, incumbent utilities and state politicians actively resist improving the grid. Vertically integrated companies (which own the generating plants, transmission lines and distribution networks within a service territory) often fear that a more robust transmission system would boost potential competition. Many politicians also oppose grid improvements because new transmission capacity would make it easier for out-of-state customers to bid-away the cheap power from in-state consumers. * Returns on transmission are regulated, so utilities have found that they can make more money by investing in virtually anything besides transmission infrastructure. * With many regulatory fights still unresolved, and the potential for profit thus unclear, investors have delayed risking their money on the grid. The solution now in vogue to solve these problems is to give the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission more authority over transmission investment. State regulation of transmission is, after all, an archaic relic of another era; and all who use the transmission system are vulnerable to the weakest links in it. But forcing utilities to invest in transmission upgrades through increased federal regulation is too crude and blunt a policy hammer. It may get the job done to some degree, but running industries by federal dictate is less efficient than ensuring
Wall Street externalities
By Michael Gormley Associated Press Writer Wednesday, August 20, 2003; 11:45 AM ALBANY, N.Y. -- A New York official said Wednesday that corporate scandals of the last two years have cost the state nearly $13 billion and cut the value of retirement accounts for many older workers by 10 percent or more. A report from Comptroller Alan Hevesi said scandals on Wall Street and in the accounting and energy industries took a $2.9 billion bite out of the state's economy, cut tax revenues by $1 billion and reduced the state employees' retirement fund by $9 billion. New York City alone lost $260 million in tax revenue and $7 billion from the public pension system's value, mostly due to lost jobs and reduced stock values. People are outraged by these unethical and criminal acts, but no one should have the impression that the only victims are the tens of thousands of people who lost their jobs, or their retirement plans, or the investors who lost billions, Hevesi said Wednesday. Every taxpayer in America is affected by this. Hevesi determined the state's cost by taking a fraction of the $35 billion nationwide loss that the Brookings Institution blamed on the scandals in a 2002 report. He said the state's economy is about 8.4 percent of the national economy. The sole trustee of New York's $90 billion pension fund, Hevesi has sought measures to make corporate governance more open to protect pensioners savings. He is also a lead plaintiff in suits filed by several states to recover billions of dollars from corporations lost as a result of scandals.
query
In Steve Keen's interesting book, DEBUNKING ECONOMICS, he refers to Piero Sraffa's view that a company with a fixed plant facing low demand wouldn't utilized the whole plant but would use it in (rough) proportion to the variable inputs. Does anyone know the specific reference? If it's in Sraffa's 1926 The Laws or Returns under Competitive Conditions, what page? if you're on PKT, please respond off-list, since I'm not receiving PKT these days. Jim Devine [EMAIL PROTECTED] http://bellarmine.lmu.edu/~jdevine
Re: The great electricity swindle: the New Zealand case
The Cato rhetoric sounds like aiming to do what has already happened in New Zealand. The NZ Magazine Revolution ran an article on it in the latest issue (no. 21), from which I have adapted the following excerpts: In 1990, the Labour Government inaugured the abolition of the system of state power boards, providing for corporations led by professional company directors, CEO's, employers etc. Lavish, all-expenses paid conferences and trips were provided for these people, for consultants etc. Corporatisation effectively began in 1992. Power prices went up on average about 23.5 percent between 1990-1995. The price power companies paid during the same time went up just 3.7 percent. The vast majority of the population was against the sale of the state assets, but the government did it anyway. Deregulation via state corporations and privatisation led to huge differences in charges to consumers - one year, Asburton households faced annual charges of $555 just to be connected to the power supply, while in Christchurch just down the road, charges were $109. In 1993/94, King Country power charges nearly doubled. In 1992-93, NZ experienced the worst drought in 100 years, causing supply problems. But Electricorp executives had aimed at realising a $400 million profit in 1992 by selling more power; having reached their target, they paid themselves about $600,000 in bonuses. Planning for adequate capacity wasn't really well-considered in the corporate plan. In 1998, Auckland experienced blackouts for 6 weeks when 4 power cables in the CBD crashed. The cables were 40 years old, and needed replacement or maintenance, but profit margins were more important to Mercury Energy: between 1993 and 1997, profits went from $21.8 million to $82 million annually. Executive salaries were lucrative: CEO Wayne Gilbert earnt close to half a million dollars a year. At the same time, while in 1992 Mercury Energy employed 1141 people, by 1998 half the workforce had been laid off, including experienced cable fitters. Thus, when the Auckland cables crashed, the company had to get skilled staff out from Australia, because they couldn't actually do the repair job themselves. The total cost of the power crisis to Auckland was estimated at $1 billion. A commision of inquiry comprising some captains of industry was set up, but it was largely a whitewash. (The Electricity Industry Reform Act 1998 did however force the separation of generation, retail supply networks, and power retail sales. Thus, companies were prohinbited from owning an electricity supply network (lines) operation as well as either a power retailing or generation operation, and had to divest from part of their operations. In the winter of 2001, drought hit again and lake levels dropped alarmingly low. Blackouts were prevented only through extra generation of the Huntly station, at great expense. (Genesis, the owner of Huntly, isn't intending to stockpile coal this year, because it is trying to do a deal with Solid Energy (likewise a semi-private state-owned coal corporation), both are hedging for maximum profits). In 1999, the Labour Government set up an inquiry to look into the electricity industry, appointing former Labour MP David Caygill to lead it (I personally campaigned against Caygill in 1987 with the NZ Socialist Alliance group). Caygill was paid $1500 per day for this, and the result was a report that cost $7 million, which just recommended market policies and selfregulation by the corporations. Talking about electricity is a highly lucrative business, as you can see. Bill Rosenberg, an occasional PEN-L contributor, shows another aspect of the story in an interesting paper (The Privatisation of New Zealand's Electricity Services, available online): whereas corporatisation and privatisation occurred to provide for competition that would lower prices (a fraudulent lie), the reality is that the privatised companies first start buying each other up, and then are bought out by Canadian, Australian and American interests. Rosenberg says, By the end of 1998, TransAlta had 530,000 customers, or about one third of the market. ECNZ had 470,000 and Contact Energy 430,000. Trustpower was some way behind with 114,000, but has since built that up to 218,000. Virtually all New Zealand's approximately 1.9 million electricity and natural gas consumers are being supplied from seven companies as opposed to 39 at the start of the year wrote Dow Jones Newswires at the end of 1998. According to Rosenberg, Contact Energy, controlled in the U.S.A., TransAlta, owned in Canada, and Trustpower - which is currently undergoing competing takeovers by Australian Gas Light of Australia, and Alliant of the U.S.A. - now generate over 40% of the country's electricity. Transmission is still state owned, but about 30% of the supply network is owned by UtiliCorp of the U.S.A. TransAlta, Contact Energy and Trustpower between them have almost two thirds of the electricity retail market. So, from
Re: US-China trade
- Original Message - From: Eubulides [EMAIL PROTECTED] http://www.feer.com Fighting China on U.S. Soil [John Gulick asked me to forward his comments the article as he is having trouble 'subbing. Michael Perelman can you help him out?] Post title: Re: US-China trade Ian Murray posted the following article: Fighting China on U.S. Soil I write: The massive and growing merchandise trade deficit with the PRC, aided and abetted by the undervalued yuan, is the red herring of red herrings. As long as China continues to plow its ample central bank reserves into U.S. Treasury notes, China's trade surplus sponsors the U.S.' imperial misadventures in Iraq and elsewhere, not to mention lowers the cost of parts, components, and labor-power for profit-squeezed stateside capital. All the noise about invoking the WTO anti-dumping clause is a maneuver to intimidate the CCP from diversifying its currency reserves, not a serious attempt to save our manufacturing jobs. If fricking U.S. gov't and fricking U.S. productive capital had any serious long-range plan to save our manufacturing jobs, they'd support higher levels of corporate taxation and social infrastructure investment, which they don't and haven't for some, oh, 35-odd years. In any truly liberal international order, which these ideologues purport to advocate, it is way too late in the day to save our manufacturing jobs. And it's pathetic to see the usual jerkoff Democratic Party opportunists like Gephardt jump on this bandwagon. If you want to save our manufacturing jobs, chump, you'd support a graceful easing of U.S. hegemonic pretensions abroad, not a sorry-ass gesture like blaming the PRC for violating the rules and regs of the WTO, coming from the biggest WTO rules and regs violator !!! If the Democratic standard-bearer makes this the centerpiece of his (and it will be a his) campaign, count me out. Just as I was actually considering holding my nose and voting for someone who has a chance of beating Dumbo. Even if I'm wrong, and even if some rump of the U.S. ruling class wants a revalued yuan and gets a revalued yuan, this will wreak havoc on China and hence those fractions of U.S. capital that benefit from an 8 percent per annum growth clip in the PRC. Besides lifeline loans from soon-to-be merged and purged state banks, the only thing keeping alive most ailing state-owned enterprises, the linchpin of social stability in China, is the low-ball yuan. We'll see how much U.S. elite circles like it when the global production platform for so many of its TNC's erupts in social chaos. John Gulick John Gulick Assistant Professor Department of Sociology University of Tennessee 916 McClung Tower Knoxville, TN 37996 email: [EMAIL PROTECTED] work phone: 865 974 7029 fax: 865 974 7013
