Re: JEP Schleiffer
Robert Naiman wrote: Shleifer should get a chutzpah award, writing about ethics, given his history with USAID and Russia. He got fired from Harvard, no? Hey, it takes one to know one. Why do you think FDR made Joe Kennedy the first head of the SEC? Doug
new radio product
Just added to my radio archive http://www.leftbusinessobserver.com/Radio.html: August 12, 2004 Deborah James, director of the Venezuela Information Office, on Chavez and the August 15 referendum * Robert McChesney, author of The Problem of the Media and one of the founders of freepress.net, on the corporate media and alternatives to it it joins August 5, 2004 Frank Newport, editor-in-chief of Gallup and author of Polling Matters, on the public opinion trade and the 2004 election polls * Tariq Ali, author most recently of Bush in Babylon, on the importance to the whole world of defeating Bush, and the maddening wrongness of the no difference position July 22, 2004 Judith Levine, author of Do You Remember Me?, on her father's Alzheimer's, and the social meanings of the disease * Ian Williams, author of Deserter!, on George W's military career July 15, 2004 Nomi Prins, investment banker turned journalist, on Martha's sentencing, Ken Lay's indictment, and sex discrimination on Wall Street * Charlie Komanoff, car-hater, on why we use so much oil, and how we could use less of it July 8, 2004 Lakshman Achuthan of the Economic Cycles Research Institute and co-author of Beating the Business Cycle, on cycles in general, this odd one specifically, and the likely slowdown by yearend * Norman Kelley, author of The Head Negro In Charge Syndrome, on the crisis in black politics along with -- * Chalmers Johnson on the U.S. empire * Jagdish Bhatwati on globalization * Bill Fletcher on war and peace * Slavoj Zizek on war, imperialism, and fantasy * Naomi Klein on Argentina and the arrested political development of the global justice movement * Ralph Nader, at the Council on Foreign Relations, on foreign policy * Susie Bright on sex and politics * Richard Burkholder of Gallup on that firm's Iraq polls * Anatol Lieven on Iraq * Jomo on the Asian economies * Cynthia Enloe on masculinity in the Bush administration (and oil) * Laura Flanders on Bushwomen * Carlos Mejia, deserter from Iraq * Joseph Stiglitz on the IMF and the Wall St-Treasury axis * Lisa Jervis on feminism pop culture * Nina Revoyr on the history of Los Angeles, real and fictional * Joel Schalit on anti-Semitism * Robert Fatton on Haiti * Gary Younge on a foreign journalist's view of the U.S. * Ursula Huws on work and why capitalism has avoided crisis * Michael Albert on participatory economics (parecon) * Marta Russell on the UN conference on disability * Corey Robin on the neocons * Sara Roy on the Palestinian economy * Christian Parenti on Iraq and surveillance * Michael Hardt on Empire (several times, the last June 2004) * Judith Levine on kids sex * Walden Bello on the World Social Forum and alternative development models * Christopher Hitchens on Orwell and his new political affiliations -- Doug Henwood Left Business Observer 38 Greene St - 4th fl. New York NY 10013-2505 USA voice +1-212-219-0010 fax+1-212-219-0098 cell +1-917-865-2813 email mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED] webhttp://www.leftbusinessobserver.com
Re: Kerry would have gone to war
Michael Perelman wrote: The foreign policy difference between Bush Kerry would probably be that Kerry would be less likely to instigate crises, such as Haiti Clinton co-opted Aristide; Bush overthrew him. The first sucks but the second is worse. Doug
Re: Corporate Democrats
Kenneth Campbell wrote: The lesson here is to remain militant in the streets, not to back a bourgeois politician. Ironically, this is, itself, a flawed analogy. Militant in the streets is lingo from an era of ascendant working class interests -- in particular, radical lingo from the 60s-70s. (Militancy, itself, is older than that, of course.) Why is this an either/or thing? Why can't we, whoever we are, do more than one thing? Why isn't it better to have a bourgeois politician in office who owes a few favors to people like us rather than someone who hates us with a passion? Doug
Re: Corporate Democrats
Kenneth Campbell wrote: Wel... I do not think it is an either/or thing... I think I said the same thing as you, quoted above, in the last paragraph of that post of mine that you quote... Sorry, I wasn't responding to you really, but to the person you quoted. Doug
Re: Whither the Fed?
Yoshie Furuhashi wrote: The Fed raised the rate today. How committed are they to this course of action in the next 12-18 months? All depends on the data that comes out over the next 12-18 months. They don't have any preconceived strategy; it's strictly a seat of the pants operation. Doug
new radio product
[Tariq's position on Bush's defeat will annoy some, but it's splendid stuff - he gives some of the best radio around.] Just added to my radio archive http://www.leftbusinessobserver.com/Radio.html: August 5, 2004 Frank Newport, editor-in-chief of Gallup and author of Polling Matters, on the public opinion trade and the 2004 election polls * Tariq Ali, author most recently of Bush in Babylon, on the importance to the whole world of defeating Bush, and the maddening wrongness of the no difference position July 22, 2004 Judith Levine, author of Do You Remember Me?, on her father's Alzheimer's, and the social meanings of the disease * Ian Williams, author of Deserter!, on George W's military career it joins July 15, 2004 Nomi Prins, investment banker turned journalist, on Martha's sentencing, Ken Lay's indictment, and sex discrimination on Wall Street * Charlie Komanoff, car-hater, on why we use so much oil, and how we could use less of it July 8, 2004 Lakshman Achuthan of the Economic Cycles Research Institute and co-author of Beating the Business Cycle, on cycles in general, this odd one specifically, and the likely slowdown by yearend * Norman Kelley, author of The Head Negro In Charge Syndrome, on the crisis in black politics July 1, 2004 Phyllis Bennis, lead author of Paying the Price, on the human, economic, and environmental costs of the war on Iraq * Joe Garden, Mike Loew (both of The Onion), and Randy Ostrow, authors of Citizen You!, a manual of patriotic duty (some of the original audio was lost - details at the top of the show) June 24, 2004 Michael Hardt, co-author of Empire, on the state of the empire in the light of the Iraq war * Stonewall segment: Julie Abraham, professor of LGBT studies at Sarah Lawrence, on why she's no fan of same-sex marriage along with -- * Chalmers Johnson on the U.S. empire * Jagdish Bhatwati on globalization * Bill Fletcher on war and peace * Slavoj Zizek on war, imperialism, and fantasy * Naomi Klein on Argentina and the arrested political development of the global justice movement * Ralph Nader, at the Council on Foreign Relations, on foreign policy * Susie Bright on sex and politics * Richard Burkholder of Gallup on that firm's Iraq polls * Anatol Lieven on Iraq * Jomo on the Asian economies * Cynthia Enloe on masculinity in the Bush administration (and oil) * Laura Flanders on Bushwomen * Carlos Mejia, deserter from Iraq * Joseph Stiglitz on the IMF and the Wall St-Treasury axis * Lisa Jervis on feminism pop culture * Nina Revoyr on the history of Los Angeles, real and fictional * Joel Schalit on anti-Semitism * Robert Fatton on Haiti * Gary Younge on a foreign journalist's view of the U.S. * Ursula Huws on work and why capitalism has avoided crisis * Michael Albert on participatory economics (parecon) * Marta Russell on the UN conference on disability * Corey Robin on the neocons * Sara Roy on the Palestinian economy * Christian Parenti on Iraq and surveillance * Michael Hardt on Empire (several times, the last June 2004) * Judith Levine on kids sex * Walden Bello on the World Social Forum and alternative development models * Christopher Hitchens on Orwell and his new political affiliations -- Doug Henwood Left Business Observer 38 Greene St - 4th fl. New York NY 10013-2505 USA voice +1-212-219-0010 fax+1-212-219-0098 cell +1-917-865-2813 email mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED] webhttp://www.leftbusinessobserver.com
Re: What is the total wealth ?
Julio Huato wrote: Say, the labor force will grow at 4% per year in the future and per-capita income at 1%. Then, the next best alternative is expanding global net income at a rate of 5% per year. This growth rate is assumed constant (since there's no risk, no volatility). So that's the global discount rate we should use to price our annuity. Thus, the discounted present value of global capital is: K = 30 trillion USD/0.05 = 600 trillion USD Another approach. According to the BEA, the value of fixed reproducible tangible wealth (including consumer durables) in the U.S. was $32.8 trillion in 2002. (Note that the rate of return on those assets implied by GDP is a lot higher than Julio's estimate - around 30%.) That year, according to World Bank stats, the U.S. had 32% of world GDP. So, scaling up based on that income share, we can estimate that the global capital stock is worth $102.1 trillion - or roughly $16,000 per capita. Doug
Re: What is the total wealth ?
Daniel Davies wrote: Surely this is the entire problem at the heart of the Cambridge Capital Controversy; you can't work out what the total amount of capital is without making an assumption about the rate of profit and vice versa. Yeah, but nobody cares about that anymore. It was an obsession of some weirdos in England a generation ago, but we've moved beyond that now. Doug
Re: Bush Using Drugs to Control Depression, Erratic Behavior
Carrol Cox wrote: What in the hell would a weak anti-depressant drug be? White wine spritzers? Doug
Re: No Bounce for Kerry
If there's a great untapped reservoir of leftish populism in the American masses, why did Kucinich do so badly in the primaries, and why is Nader now down around 2%? Doug
Re: No Bounce for Kerry
Michael Perelman wrote: Kucinich had no money supporting him C'mon - he was in the debates, he was on the road a lot. He should have done better than, what?, 2% of the primary vote. Doug
Re: No Bounce for Kerry
Devine, James wrote: BTW, one reason for the lack of Kerry bounce is that so many pro-Bush people are hard-core and would never shift. Also, Krugman's column in today's NY TIMES suggests that the media did Kerry in. Cruising the dial after the speech it seemed that all the pundits pronounced Kerry's speech a major success - which confused me, because I thought it sucked. Doug
Re: What is the total wealth ?
Charles Brown wrote: What is the total wealth, networth, value of all the economies of the world ? Do any economists estimate this ? Wealth is tough. Income is easier. Acc to World Bank, per capita GDP (PPP, with all Paul A's caveats incorporated by reference) in 2002 was $7,867.94. Cash money, no PPP magic: $5,212.56. Doug
Re: What is the total wealth ?
Charles Brown wrote: So, in a very abstract sense, if everybody had equal cut from GDP in 2002, everybody would be poor, but not real poor ? Or do I misinterpret this ? It's roughly at the level of Mexico, PPP-wise. Doug
Re: Israel pushing for Kurdish state? -
Ulhas Joglekar wrote: Chris Doss wrote: Reactionary is an understatement. This is equally true of terrorists in Kashmir. About 70% of terrorists killed in Kashmir in the recent years have been non-Kashmiris. Lately the resistance in Iraq has mainly been killing people at open-air markets. The anti-imperialist content of this strategy is hard to discern. Doug
Re: Israel pushing for Kurdish state? -
Yoshie Furuhashi wrote: Have you added up all the Iraqi civilians killed by various factions of Iraqi and non-Iraqi terrorists and compared the number to that of Iraqi civilians killed by US and other foreign troops who invaded and have occupied Iraq and by economic sanctions before the invasion and occupation? Americans who vote for John Kerry who will be the next POTUS, aka the biggest terrorist and war criminal, have no moral standing to pretend to be appalled by un-American terrorists. Only those who do not vote for Kerry or Bush have the moral standing to criticize foreign terrorists. What a load of crap. Elections are about contesting for power, and often involve debased compromises; votes aren't symptoms of moral purity. And why is it impossible to hold two thoughts in mind at once? The sanctions were murderous and the war a horrible crime. There's no doubt that the U.S. and its very junior partners have killed far more Iraqi civilians than the resistance. But there are some people on the western left - some of them members of PEN-L, even - who can't acknowledge that a lot of the Iraqi resistance consists of jihadists and unreconstructed Saddamites, i.e., absolutely awful forces. As Christian Parenti said when he returned from his first trip to Iraq - there's no way anything good can come of this. Doug
Re: Israel pushing for Kurdish state? -
Devine, James wrote: yoshie writes: Only those who do not vote for Kerry or Bush have the moral standing to criticize foreign terrorists. why so much emphasis on an essentially powerless and thus meaningless act, an individual vote? It's testimony to the powers of American assimiliation that several years of living in Columbus, Ohio, turned a Japanese Marxist (i.e., one who sees politics in terms of institutions and structures) into an American green (i.e., one who sees politics as a matter of individual moral gestures). Doug
Re: Israel pushing for Kurdish state? -
sartesian wrote: So then why, Mr. Henwood, have you given credence to the notion that the US presence might lend stability to Iraq? I haven't, asshole.
Re: Diminishing Expectations
Carrol Cox wrote: the strongest argument against Chomsky's claim that the u.s. is incomparably more civilized today than 40 years ago. It just *can't* be true, can it? Everything is just awful, and getting worse by the day. Never acknowledge any progress, which can only come with The Revolution, which we can do little to promote now, but which can only come with some mysterious dispensation. And, by god, don't cite the full context of Chomsky's remark. Doug The closing of my interview with Noam Chomsky, broadcast February 10, 2002. I think he's wrong about intellectuals - take a look at the books and presses that thrive now that didn't in the early 1960s. But I don't want to quibble... [starts at 1:14:22] NC: There's plenty of dissent and opposition and concern. Plenty of grounds for optimism for people who are trying to organize and work. It's certainly far easier now than 40 years ago when Kennedy was launched his attack on South Vietnam. Then you couldn't do a thing. In the 1980s, the situation was better; you could organize for the wars against Nicaragua, the wars against El Salvador and Guatemala. But it wasn't that easy. Now there's considerably more opportunity, though the war drums are beating and people are scared. DH: You've said the country is more civilized than it was 40 years ago. What do you mean by that? NC: Incomparably more civilized. Things we take for granted now didn't exist 40 years ago. So for example, take say aggression. When Kennedy announced publicly that the U.S. was bombing South Vietnam in 1962, began using chemical weapons to destroy food crops, began programs to drive millions people into what were essentially concentration camps, there was no protest. We didn't talk about it. In the 1960s, there was barely a feminist movement. No environmental movement. In the 1960s, there wasn't yet, after hundreds of years, even the beginning of recognition of the original sin, what happened to the millions of people used to live here. That's all changed. It changed not so much in the 60s, but in the 70s, 80s, and since. That's when the major popular movements developed. They haven't carried out institutional change, but they've changed the culture and the moral level of the society very significantly. Those are real achievements. They make things very different than they were in the past. Among the intellectuals, I don't think anything's changed, but it rarely does. But among the general population, it's correct to say that the level of civilization is much higher things that would have seemed perfectly appropriate then are outlandish now. DH: That's a good note to end on. Thank you, Noam Chomsky. --- Download it yourself and listen: higher-fidelity (48kbps): http://shout.lbo-talk.org/lbo/RadioArchive/2002/02_10_17.mp3 low-fi (16kbps): http://shout.lbo-talk.org/lbo/RadioArchive/2002/02_10_17_16.mp3 Stream (but you'll have to wait an hour and a quarter): hi: http://shout.lbo-talk.org:8000/content/lbo/RadioArchive/2002/02_10_17.pls low: http://shout.lbo-talk.org:8000/content/lbo/RadioArchive/2002/02_10_17_16.pls
Re: United Nations Human Indicators Index 2004
Charles Brown wrote: CB: I notice they seem to just assume a 99% literacy rate for the U.S. ( footnote e ?) ? Is this a fudge ? Yup. I used to have the Bush 41-era literacy reports - they were appalling. Really high percentages of grownups who couldn't read a bus schedule, a simple bar graph, or basic reading comprehension questions. I don't know what they're looking like now, but it's hard to believe there's been a 10-15% improvement. Doug
Re: Human Development Index 2004
Paul wrote: It is not that I am against all indexes for all uses (and the HDI is among the most benign). I should have added that part of the impulse behind the development of the HDI was to reduce pressure for redistribution - to shift the focus from economic to social indicators. Of course, there are virtues to foregrounding social over economic indicators, and lots of people use the HDI complex for those purposes, but at the higher levels, the more sinister spin applied. My source on this is a former long-time UN press officer, and it was subsequently confirmed by someone very close to Mahbub ul-Haq, the Pakistani economist who guided the development of the index. Doug
Re: India's HDI Improves, Ranking Doesn't
Anthony D'Costa wrote: There are other splits, which have been better handled, for example language. Thus far 20 languages or so have been recognized by the government. How widely used is English? Doug
Re: Thomas Frank op-ed piece
Michael Pollak wrote: This sounds like a very good idea, or at least one worth trying. What's the argument against it? There are two basically: one, it's impossible, and two, you won't be able to do anything with it. The reason is that the incentives are all on the other side and that all state party machines are collusive. I think you're overstating things. The infiltration strategy could have some influence on who gets elected, and also on the environment in which other elected officials operate - they'll have to respond to and compromise with a whole new set of actors. Maybe. It is to be hoped that. New York state wouldn't be about to raise its minimum wage if the Working Families Party hadn't been agitating for it - and the WFP is sort of playing the entryist game. Doug
Re: Thomas Frank op-ed piece
Michael Pollak wrote: On Wed, 21 Jul 2004, Doug Henwood wrote: I think you're overstating things. The infiltration strategy could have some influence on who gets elected, and also on the environment in which other elected officials operate - they'll have to respond to and compromise with a whole new set of actors. Maybe. Sure, but when you phrase it this way, it no longer has anything to do with taking over the party at the local level the way the conservatives did. That could be the long-term goal. But there could also be accomplishments along the way. Now you're just talking about becoming part of the democratic party oursevles and working for the most progressive of the candidates that are already possible within the existing spectrum. And elect a Cynthia McKinney or a Jerry Nadler. But having more people on the inside would make it more likely that folks like that could get nominated. Speaking of Nadler, any word on hos his stomach stapling is going? I haven't seen him around the neighborhood in ages. What the conservatives did was very different. But they also had very different issues than us -- ones that 1) they deeply believed in; 2) which could be vitally affected at the most local levels; and 3) which were so far off the map that they rated immmediate news and affected the national discourse namely the school issues of prayer and creationism, and the strategy of constraining abortion by the death of a thousand pin prick regulations. I don't know if we have any issues that fill those three conditions. Can anyone think of any? Local minimum wage/living wage laws. State-financed public health insurance. Workplace safety regs. Equal pay enforcement. Alternative energy experiments. Land use/sprawl issues. Small school experiments. Road pricing. Etc. New York state wouldn't be about to raise its minimum wage if the Working Families Party hadn't been agitating for it - and the WFP is sort of playing the entryist game. No! They definately are not. They are playing the third party fusion game They're not entirely independent of the Dem Party. They're doing an inside/outside thing. Joel Rogers told me that was the New Party strategy ten or twelve years ago. Doug
Re: Thomas Frank op-ed piece
Michael Pollak wrote: Those can only be affected at the state level, -- which in our state, means taking over governorship and the speakership. Nothing short of that would have any effect at all. This is curiously maximalist for you. Organized efforts can influence incumbents if they feel like their incumbency is threatened. You don't need a total takeover to have an influence. Doug
Re: Thomas Frank op-ed piece
Michael Hoover wrote: people do different things, as for doug, he's a reporter (he may think of himself in other terms), i've indicated number of times in past impact that i think this has on his perspective re. certain things I usually say journalist, but I won't complain about reporter. I'm clearly not objective, in the New York Times-approved sense, but getting involved in party politics would ruin whatever credibility I have - and I don't have a lot of time to spare anyway. According to the old formula for policial action - agitate, educate, and organize - I concentrate on the first two. There are plenty of people around to handle the third. Doug
Re: Greed
Ted Winslow wrote: Greed in this context can't be translated into instrumentally rational profit maximization. Ted, all this squishy talk makes economists nervous. Doug
Re: United Nations Human Indicators Index 2004
michael wrote: I recall that they jiggled to index to make the US look better. Is my memory playing tricks on me? That was long ago, in the HDI's early days. In the first iteration, the U.S. scored badly. As someone in the UN told me, orders came down from the top - the White House - to make the numbers look better. And they were remade to look better in subsequent years. One reason - the first Bush admin had published docs saying illiteracy rates in the U.S. were in the low teens. The HDI people picked up on this, hammering the U.S. standing. Literacy was dropped in favor of school enrollment stats, on which the U.S. does well. Doug
Re: Thomas Frank op-ed piece
Michael Hoover wrote: This sounds like a very good idea, or at least one worth trying. What's the argument against it? Doug in no particular order: dem party is thoroughly and hopelessly capitalist, with some exceptions, dem party has dishonorable past, some left folks' preference for 'resistance' and 'struggle', would be too hard to accomplish (not to mention, really boring), inevitable/inexorable march of socialism, folks misunderstand marx re. 'parliamentary cretinism' and 'executive of modern state as committee for managing common affairs of whole bourgeoisie', incompatible with lifestyle things, better to encourage people to read marx/lenin/whomever and join one of numerous alphabet soup vanguard party comprised of ten and hundred of comrabes, red badge of being 'the opposition', dislike/fear of success, preference for whining instead of winning, activism (at least some of what passes for it) would lose character of surrogacy for psychotherapy...michael hoover So almost all the reasons not to are really weak. You weren't stacking the deck, were you? I've got to disagree with the last - it's less a surrogate for psychotherapy than a symptom in itself. Doug
Re: Thomas Frank op-ed piece
Daniel Davies wrote: I'd be *very* careful how one went about this. It feels like entryism, and the experience of the (UK) Labour Party in the 1980s suggests that the 'mainstream' Dems would react to it very badly indeed (by which I mean that this, if it didn't work, would be the *end* of friendly relationships between the US Left (S.A.I.I) and the Democratic Party. There are lots of people in the UK Labour party who were good friends once but who still don't speak to each other, because of things that happened with Militant during the 80s. We're not talking about people like Militant I hope. Our Trots wouldn't touch the DP with a 10-ft pole. (On this question, even some ex-Trots carry on the tradition, suggesting that membership is that community is a lot like the Party of the Right, for life at least.) We're talking about Nader voters, Greens, liberal Dems, etc. Of course that they lack the discipline of Militant they'll get chewed up quickly by the DP machinery. Tom Frank (whose book is selling 10,000 copies a week) says that the Dems he now meets in DC say there is no working class, and the target demographic is suburban professionals. Doug
Re: oops, again
Michael Perelman wrote: Most of the fees and usurious interest rates and the like fall on the backs of the poor. Besides falling outside the CPI calculations, they also mean that the distribution of income is even more lopsided. How do you know they do? They should be included in the CPI calculations, based on the principles of the thing. Doug
Re: oops, again
Michael Perelman wrote: I would be very interested to know if late fees or usurious interest rates are included. I have never heard anything about such inclusion. I would be very happy to learn more about it. As it says on the top of every CPI release: FOR TECHNICAL INFORMATION: Patrick C. Jackman (202) 691-7000 Doug
Re: oops, again
Daniel Davies wrote: they wouldn't, necessarily. Fees most certainly should be included. Usurious interest rates would be difficult to define in a world of 18-21% credit card rates. And if they're not changing, but just constantly high, it's a distributional issue, a form of secondary exploitation, but not really a CPI issue. But a fee added to a service that used to be free, or an increase in a fee, most certainly should be captured by the CPI. Doug
Re: Thomas Frank op-ed piece
Michael Hoover wrote: maybe the three million or so people who voted for nader in 2000 should take control of local democratic executive committees, use structure in place to recruit candidates, slag off on dems who suck, use available funds to issue policy statements and press releases one after another, show up at public and government meetings, control of county dem mechanisms might lead to control of state dem parties... This sounds like a very good idea, or at least one worth trying. What's the argument against it? Doug
Re: oops, again
Michael Perelman wrote: I would include check cashing businesses, rent to own, Doug, are you saying that they should or they are included? I may have misunderstood you. I thought you were talking about fees in general. If you're talking about finance-related fees (and interest), then those things aren't covered in the CPI, since they're considered savings investment-related, and not goods services-related. The CPI's focus is on the TV's price and features, not how it's paid for. It'd be great to have measures of the kind of bloodletting finance you're talking about, but it sure would be hard to gather the info and present coherent summary stats. Besides, the CPI's focus is on short- to medium-term price changes. The kind of finance you're talking about is a fairly timeless feature of American poverty. Doug
Re: oops, again
Daniel Davies wrote: On the other hand, no statistical body on earth has the resource to monitor the proliferation of mobile phone payment plan options; even the consumer press gets confused on this one regularly. The BLS has a page devoted to cell phones in the CPI: http://bls.gov/cpi/cpifactc.htm. Their weight in the index is something like 0.05%. 3. Also, in order to be part of a big aggregate index like CPI, something has to be reasonably widely consumed in the economy in order to make it worth while collecting the statistics. That means that hire-purchase fees are almost certainly in there (so the financing deals on SUVs will show up as falling prices), but check-cashing services and payday loans probably aren't. In general, financial services have a surprisingly low weighting in RPIX and HICP and I would imagine that they did in CPI too. Statistics bods tend to hate financial services because it's so difficult to work out what the hell the value added is. Oddly, there's no line for financial services in the monthly CPI release ftp://ftp.bls.gov/pub/news.release/cpi.txt, but it does appear as an option in the detailed data access http://data.bls.gov/cgi-bin/dsrv?cu. My guess is that straightforward things like checking accounts would be covered, since those are fairly straightforward and essential (though 20% of Wal-Mart customers don't have them). But anything more complicated would be too complicated, and as DD says, probably not widely enough used. No doubt Pat Jackman could clear it all up in a jiffy. Doug
Re: oops, again
Daniel Davies wrote: I forgot to mention that this is the main reason why it is always vitally important when considering whether or not to lend your support to some well-meaning social benefit package, that it should always be indexed to average wages and not to CPI. It's been a while, but don't I remember Keynes using the wage unit as the numeraire in cost comparisons? I'm writing something on oil right now, and it seems to make more sense to compare prices over time using the average hourly wage rather than the CPI, given all the guesswork involved in producing a price index. Doug
Re: Thomas Frank op-ed piece
Carl Remick wrote: I think _What the Matter With Kansas?_ is a great book, but Frank doesn't really provide any explanation for conservatives' amazing, Lamont Cranston-style ability to cloud men's minds and substitute preposterous cultural issues for economic concerns that have life-and-death significance. Why *are* so many Americans so easily gulled, so mulish, so spiteful, so effing perverse? Maybe because sex, race, and religion aren't distractions from the real issues, but things that people take really really seriously? Doug
new radio product
Just added to my radio archive http://www.leftbusinessobserver.com/Radio.html: July 15, 2004 Nomi Prins, investment banker turned journalist, on Martha's sentencing, Ken Lay's indictment, and sex discrimination on Wall Street * Charlie Komanoff, car-hater, on why we use so much oil, and how we could use less of it it joins July 8, 2004 Lakshman Achuthan of the Economic Cycles Research Institute and co-author of Beating the Business Cycle, on cycles in general, this odd one specifically, and the likely slowdown by yearend * Norman Kelley, author of The Head Negro In Charge Syndrome, on the crisis in black politics July 1, 2004 Phyllis Bennis, lead author of Paying the Price, on the human, economic, and environmental costs of the war on Iraq * Joe Garden, Mike Loew (both of The Onion), and Randy Ostrow, authors of Citizen You!, a manual of patriotic duty (some of the original audio was lost - details at the top of the show) June 24, 2004 Michael Hardt, co-author of Empire, on the state of the empire in the light of the Iraq war * Stonewall segment: Julie Abraham, professor of LGBT studies at Sarah Lawrence, on why she's no fan of same-sex marriage June 17, 2004 Jomo, the Malaysian economist, on the Asian economies and their recoveries from the 1997 crisis * Seth Kleinman of PFC Energy on the state of the oil market June 10, 2004 DH on the demise of Reagan * Rick Perlstein, historian of conservatism and author of a bio of Goldwater, on the emergence of the right the role of Ronnie * Ralph Nader, talking to the ruling class at the Council on Foreign Relations (20 minutes out of a one-hour appearance), about foreign policy, globalization, and his contribution to electing George Bush along with -- * Chalmers Johnson on the U.S. empire * Jagdish Bhatwati on globalization * Bill Fletcher on war and peace * Slavoj Zizek on war, imperialism, and fantasy * Naomi Klein on Argentina and the arrested political development of the global justice movement * Keith Bradsher on the SUVs * Susie Bright on sex and politics * Richard Burkholder of Gallup on that firm's Iraq polls * Anatol Lieven on Iraq * Cynthia Enloe on masculinity in the Bush administration (and oil) * Laura Flanders on Bushwomen * Carlos Mejia, deserter from Iraq * Joseph Stiglitz on the IMF and the Wall St-Treasury axis * Lisa Jervis on feminism pop culture * Nina Revoyr on the history of Los Angeles, real and fictional * Joel Schalit on anti-Semitism * Robert Fatton on Haiti * Gary Younge on a foreign journalist's view of the U.S. * Ursula Huws on work and why capitalism has avoided crisis * Simon Head on working in the era of surveillance and speedup * Michael Albert on participatory economics (parecon) * Marta Russell on the UN conference on disability * Corey Robin on the neocons * Sara Roy on the Palestinian economy * Christian Parenti on Iraq and surveillance * Tariq Ali and Noam Chomsky on the then-impending war with Iraq * Michael Hardt on Empire * Judith Levine on kids sex * Walden Bello on the World Social Forum and alternative development models * Christopher Hitchens on Orwell and his new political affiliations -- Doug Henwood Left Business Observer 38 Greene St - 4th fl. New York NY 10013-2505 USA voice +1-212-219-0010 fax+1-212-219-0098 cell +1-917-865-2813 email mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED] webhttp://www.leftbusinessobserver.com
Re: Productivity.
Diane Monaco wrote: Dmytri, foreign inputs don't appear to be ignored in the formula you've given above, but I would definitely agree with you that as cheaper foreign labor inputs displace domestic labor inputs, productivity would rise. A productivity guy at the BLS told me that foreign labor inputs would be counted as foreign production as well, with little impact on the productivity figures. Doug
Re: Productivity.
Diane Monaco wrote: Would have little impact on which productivity figures, Doug? If foreign labor inputs are displacing domestic labor inputs, and domestic labor inputs are counted in domestic productivity figures, wouldn't there be an impact on domestic productivity figures? (domestic labor productivity)=(domestic output)/(domestic labor input) ...so if domestic labor input goes down and if domestic output stays the same or increases...then domestic labor productivity will go up. If the work is done abroad the value added is counted as part of foreign, not domestic, output. The foreign labor would be embodied in purchased components. Doug
Re: Query from a correspondent
The Federal Reserve began raising interest rates in 1972 - gently at first, but more aggressively in 1973. The fed funds rate broke 10% in July 1973 for the first time ever. Inflation had been rising - from under 3% in mid-1972 to 6% a year later - and the monthly inflation rate was hitting an 8-10% annualized range in some months in 1973. So clearly the Fed wanted a recession, which officially began in November 1973. The oil shock no doubt made it worse, but the dynamics were already underway beforehand. Doug
new radio product
Just added to my radio archive http://www.leftbusinessobserver.com/Radio.html: July 8, 2004 Lakshman Achuthan of the Economic Cycles Research Institute and co-author of Beating the Business Cycle, on cycles in general, this odd one specifically, and the likely slowdown by yearend * Norman Kelley, author of The Head Negro In Charge Syndrome, on the crisis in black politics it joins July 1, 2004 Phyllis Bennis, lead author of Paying the Price, on the human, economic, and environmental costs of the war on Iraq * Joe Garden, Mike Loew (both of The Onion), and Randy Ostrow, authors of Citizen You!, a manual of patriotic duty (some of the original audio was lost - details at the top of the show) June 24, 2004 Michael Hardt, co-author of Empire, on the state of the empire in the light of the Iraq war * Stonewall segment: Julie Abraham, professor of LGBT studies at Sarah Lawrence, on why she's no fan of same-sex marriage June 17, 2004 Jomo, the Malaysian economist, on the Asian economies and their recoveries from the 1997 crisis * Seth Kleinman of PFC Energy on the state of the oil market June 10, 2004 DH on the demise of Reagan * Rick Perlstein, historian of conservatism and author of a bio of Goldwater, on the emergence of the right the role of Ronnie * Ralph Nader, talking to the ruling class at the Council on Foreign Relations (20 minutes out of a one-hour appearance), about foreign policy, globalization, and his contribution to electing George Bush May 20, 2004 Marathon Special: State of the Empire Gary Younge, New York correspondent of The Guardian, on U.S. reactions to the torture photos, comparisons with British and other European imperialisms, and race in the U.S. vs. the UK * Cynthia Enloe of Clark University, famous for her feminist analyses of the military, talks about masculinity in the Bush administration, the oil industry, and military prisons * George Monbiot, author of Manifesto for a New World Order, on offshoring as reparations, the WTO, the limits of localism, and the democratization of global governance along with -- * Chalmers Johnson on the U.S. empire * Jagdish Bhatwati on globalization * Bill Fletcher on war and peace * Slavoj Zizek on war, imperialism, and fantasy * Naomi Klein on Argentina and the arrested political development of the global justice movement * Keith Bradsher on the SUVs * Susie Bright on sex and politics * Richard Burkholder of Gallup on that firm's Iraq polls * Anatol Lieven on Iraq * Laura Flanders on Bushwomen * Carlos Mejia, deserter from Iraq * Joseph Stiglitz on the IMF and the Wall St-Treasury axis * Lisa Jervis on feminism pop culture * Nina Revoyr on the history of Los Angeles, real and fictional * Joel Schalit on anti-Semitism * Robert Fatton on Haiti * Ursula Huws on work and why capitalism has avoided crisis * Simon Head on working in the era of surveillance and speedup * Michael Albert on participatory economics (parecon) * Marta Russell on the UN conference on disability * Corey Robin on the neocons * Sara Roy on the Palestinian economy * Christian Parenti on Iraq and surveillance * Tariq Ali, Noam Chomsky, and Cynthia Enloe on the then-impending war with Iraq * Michael Hardt on Empire * Judith Levine on kids sex * Walden Bello on the World Social Forum and alternative development models * Christopher Hitchens on Orwell and his new political affiliations -- Doug Henwood Left Business Observer 38 Greene St - 4th fl. New York NY 10013-2505 USA voice +1-212-219-0010 fax+1-212-219-0098 cell +1-917-865-2813 email mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED] webhttp://www.leftbusinessobserver.com
Re: Christian Parenti reporting from Falluja
Perelman, Michael wrote: I believe that he was shot at while in Iraq. I'm making an exception to my usual rule of ignoring Proyect, but this really pisses me off. Christian has spent a total of nearly three months in Iraq. He's been in the middle of firefights and met with insurgents who threatened to kill him. It's quite possible he was nearly kidnapped a week or two ago in Sadr City. Christian's a good friend of mine, and I'm very fond of him. I really wish he wouldn't go into war zones; I'd much rather have him alive. But how dare a toxic nut sitting in Manhattan can question his motives, veracity, or nerve? Fuck you, you little creep. Michael, I can't believe you indulge this slandering little shit over over. Most of the time I ignore it, but this really makes my blood boil. Doug
Re: Christian Parenti reporting from Falluja
Michael Perelman wrote: He was running around with Dar Jamil, who has been regularly reporting for KPFA. Dar was in the middle of everything, so I assume that Christian was also. Again, the personal stuff adds nothing here. I don't agree with some of what Christian says, but you can just point out the disagreements without attacking the person. Successful politics rises above the personal. Stunning. Unbelievable. What motivated that piece of slander was nothing but a personal attack. I think I need another PEN-L vacation. Doug
Re: FW: New column in Salon: Length matters -- on the duration of unemployment
Devine, James quoted Jamie Galbraith: As the chart shows, the index reached highs on three occasions. The first was just after President Reagan's stinging midterm election defeat in 1982. The second was just as Bush the elder was beaten in 1992. And the third peak came in 2003, with a trivial decline since then. The first instance was at the end of a long deep recession, and immediately preceded a period of strong employment growth. The second was at the end of a long period of stagnation and jobless recovery, and immediately preceded a period of strong employment growth. Past performance in no indication of future results, but I wouldn't put it to the same use as Jamie G. did. Doug
Re: DONKEY. ELEPHANT. CHICKEN?
Yoshie Furuhashi wrote: In short, a politically sensible compromise between the Nader/Camejo and Cobb/LaMarche factions within the Green Party would have been Camejo's proposal for free states, i.e., the Green Party at the national convention endorsing both campaigns and leaving each state Green Party free to choose the campaign that is best suited for growing the Green Party in the state. What kind of national party runs 50 separate campaigns? Why not go down to the county level and run 3000 campaigns? I suppose having two tickets is better than '96, when the Greens had four VP candidates (among them, the charming Lorna Salzman). But this looks more like further proof that the party is just too ill-developed to run a national campaign. Running for the office of chief executive of the world bourgeoisie doesn't seem like the time to conduct scores of simultaneous experiments. Doug
Re: The Age of Anxiety
Michael Perelman wrote: I recently attended a history of economic thought conference in Toronto. Judy Klein, who has unremarkable work I assume that sound recognition software's way of rendering done remarkable work. about the overwhelming influence of military thought on both economics and mathematics, has used the crude computers that military could in its fighter craft during World War II as a way of demonstrating that relationship. For example, rational expectations comes directly out of the server mechanisms that the gunners used. Some of the early work in portfolio theory was funded by the navy. Doug
new radio product
Just added to my radio archive http://www.leftbusinessobserver.com/Radio.html: July 1, 2004 Phyllis Bennis, lead author of Paying the Price, on the human, economic, and environmental costs of the war on Iraq * Joe Garden, Mike Loew (both of The Onion), and Randy Ostrow, authors of Citizen You!, a manual of patriotic duty (some of the original audio was lost - details at the top of the show) June 24, 2004 Michael Hardt, co-author of Empire, on the state of the empire in the light of the Iraq war * Stonewall segment: Julie Abraham, professor of LGBT studies at Sarah Lawrence, on why she's no fan of same-sex marriage June 17, 2004 Jomo, the Malaysian economist, on the Asian economies and their recoveries from the 1997 crisis * Seth Kleinman of PFC Energy on the state of the oil market they join - June 10, 2004 DH on the demise of Reagan * Rick Perlstein, historian of conservatism and author of a bio of Goldwater, on the emergence of the right the role of Ronnie * Ralph Nader, talking to the ruling class at the Council on Foreign Relations (20 minutes out of a one-hour appearance), about foreign policy, globalization, and his contribution to electing George Bush May 20, 2004 Marathon Special: State of the Empire Gary Younge, New York correspondent of The Guardian, on U.S. reactions to the torture photos, comparisons with British and other European imperialisms, and race in the U.S. vs. the UK * Cynthia Enloe of Clark University, famous for her feminist analyses of the military, talks about masculinity in the Bush administration, the oil industry, and military prisons * George Monbiot, author of Manifesto for a New World Order, on offshoring as reparations, the WTO, the limits of localism, and the democratization of global governance May 6, 2004 Heather Boushey talks about child care, in anticipation of Mother's Day * Merrill Goozner, author of The $800 Million Pill, talks about drug development, and why medicines are so damned expensive along with -- * Chalmers Johnson on the U.S. empire * Jagdish Bhatwati on globalization * Bill Fletcher on war and peace * Slavoj Zizek on war, imperialism, and fantasy * Naomi Klein on Argentina and the arrested political development of the global justice movement * Keith Bradsher on the SUVs * Susie Bright on sex and politics * Richard Burkholder of Gallup on that firm's Iraq polls * Anatol Lieven on Iraq * Laura Flanders on Bushwomen * Carlos Mejia, deserter from Iraq * Joseph Stiglitz on the IMF and the Wall St-Treasury axis * Lisa Jervis on feminism pop culture * Nina Revoyr on the history of Los Angeles, real and fictional * Joel Schalit on anti-Semitism * Robert Fatton on Haiti * Ursula Huws on work and why capitalism has avoided crisis * Simon Head on working in the era of surveillance and speedup * Michael Albert on participatory economics (parecon) * Marta Russell on the UN conference on disability * Corey Robin on the neocons * Sara Roy on the Palestinian economy * Christian Parenti on Iraq and surveillance * Tariq Ali, Noam Chomsky, and Cynthia Enloe on the then-impending war with Iraq * Michael Hardt on Empire * Judith Levine on kids sex * Walden Bello on the World Social Forum and alternative development models * Christopher Hitchens on Orwell and his new political affiliations -- Doug Henwood Left Business Observer 38 Greene St - 4th fl. New York NY 10013-2505 USA voice +1-212-219-0010 fax+1-212-219-0098 cell +1-917-865-2813 email mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED] webhttp://www.leftbusinessobserver.com
Re: Skewering Fahrenheit 9/11
Michael Hoover wrote: first problem with above article: venue environment that author viewed film, get out some man, go see film in mass. equivalents of kissimmee fl, ocala, fl, eustis, fl (places where film is playing, towns where no films like this ever play)... I saw it in Danvers, Mass., on a visit to the in-laws. Not exactly Kissimmee, I don't think, but a long way from Northampton, too. Though there were some members of the choir in the audience, most weren't. And the reaction was vocal, emotional, and quite positive. Visiting my father in suburban NJ yesterday, we overheard a sweet gray-haired lady in a chain steakhouse urging fellow diners to see the movie. She was wearing a powder-blue suit, not a George Bush, war criminal t-shirt. so what does article leave readers with, self-congratulatory air of author who is able to see michael moore for what he 'really' is, like wow... michael hoover It leaves readers like me with the feeling that Valentine is repackaging cheap envy as a critique. Doug
Re: Simon and Garfunkel
David B. Shemano wrote: How would it work in PEN-Ltopia? Simon Garfunkel would have been sent to the glue factory long ago. Doug
Re: Sowell
What Marxist would deny that incentives affect behavior? Didn't Old Whiskers say somewhere that an 800% return would draw forth capital from the moon? Doug
Re: Chechnya and capitalism
Kenneth Campbell wrote: Respectfully, I have to disagree. Michael is an excellent moderator. Michael does something akin to actual life: keep differing ideas in contact, because there is something that comes out of it that's better than the sectarianism Jim mentioned in a separate thread. I am sure you put me in the same sniper category as Doug. I have accepted that horrible fate. But those two chaps are both better moderators than you. (That is just my opinion, since you have opened up that line of comment.) Why thank you. Michael was my role model as a moderator. I've got a higher tolerance for polemic than he does sometimes, but I've got a lot of respect for the way he runs PEN-L. We owe him thanks, not rotten tomatoes. Doug
Re: Sowell
Grant Lee wrote: The wonders of the internet. Here is Sowell explaining his shift away from Marxism: http://www.salon.com/books/int/1999/11/10/sowell/index1.html David Shemano From that interview: So you were a lefty once. Through the decade of my 20s, I was a Marxist. What made you turn around? What began to change my mind was working in the summer of 1960 as an intern in the federal government, studying minimum-wage laws in Puerto Rico. It was painfully clear that as they pushed up minimum wage levels, which they did at that time industry by industry, the employment levels were falling. I was studying the sugar industry. There were two explanations of what was happening. One was the conventional economic explanation: that as you pushed up the minimum-wage level, you were pricing people out of their jobs. The other one was that there were a series of hurricanes that had come through Puerto Rico, destroying sugar cane in the field, and therefore employment was lower. The unions preferred that explanation, and some of the liberals did, too. So how is incompatible with Marxism that raising wages above market levels can reduce employment? He just decided that the living conditions of sugar workers were less important than the needs of the economy. Doug
Re: The Chicago smirk
Michael Perelman wrote: I suspect that the Sowell thread is exhausting itself into repetition, but he did make me think about the program that Doug did with Bhagwhati. Each time this renowned economist gave a simplistic answer to Doug's question, he would giggle. I was kind in the editing, and shortened a lot of his guffaws. Doug
Re: Nike me
Michael Perelman wrote: Nike just sent me a large packet c/o my publisher describing all the wonderful corporate responsibility activities that they support. Very slick indeed. There's so much attention on them now that they may indeed behave better than other shoe and garment makers. Doug
Re: Chat about Financial Advice, was Re: Marxist Financial Advice
Carrol Cox wrote: Let's remember that very few if any of the subscribers to this list have much in the way of discretionary investment. How do you know? A lot of PEN-Lers are professors with retirement accounts that invest in stocks and bonds. Many, maybe most, are in the upper quintile of their national income distribution. Even the righteous S.artesian probably has a pension from the railroad. So these aren't just idle theoretical speculations. Doug
Re: Marxist Fianancial Advice
Devine, James wrote: I said that the superficial stuff of volume III I missed this. What's superficial in v 3? Doug
Re: EMH
Chris Doss wrote: but you don't know _when_ the flame-war or long obscure discussion or predictions of instant doom will happen. In the SM, it's the timing that's crucial. jd --- You can make a good guess based on the email addresses of the participants. I've just been here a couple months, and I already think I vould make a bundle. :) And you know just how to set them off. Poor George Soros - he had to work for decades to build his rep as a speculator to the point where a simple letter to the editor could set off the market reaction he wanted. Here, all you have to say is __ and __ pulls the flamethrower out of the closet. Doug
Re: Marxist Fianancial Advice
Sabri Oncu wrote: One typical example you would find in many a papers is the Royal Dutch/Shell phenomenon. Here is what Thaler says about it: Consider the example of the Royal Dutch/ Shell Group, as documented in Rosenthal and Young (1990) and Froot and Dabora (1999). Royal Dutch Petroleum and Shell Transport are independently incorporated in, respectively, the Netherlands and England. The current company emerged from a 1907 alliance between Royal Dutch and Shell Transport in which the two companies agreed to merge their interests on a 60/40 basis. Royal Dutch trades primarily in the United States and the Netherlands and is part of the SP 500 Index; Shell trades primarily in London and is part of the Financial Times Stock Exchange Index. According to any rational model, the shares of these two components (after adjusting for foreign exchange) should trade in a 60-40 ratio. They do not; the actual price ratio has deviated from the expected one by more than 35 percent. Simple explanations, such as taxes and transaction costs, cannot explain the disparity. But is that because market prices aren't reflecting buying and selling, or because the buyers and sellers are irrational? Like I said, market prices can be efficiently reflecting nonsense. Doug
Re: Marxist Fianancial Advice
sartesian wrote: And I stand by what I said: behind every free market, behind every investment instrument there's a death squad. Plain and simple. Well yeah, so? Do you have a pension plan at the railroad? Do you think people should spend their golden years eating catfood? Doug
Re: Marxist Fianancial Advice
sartesian wrote: One more thing, and I promise to come off it The query about Marxist financial advice devolved, or evolved, into a discussion of efficient markets, as if somehow markets were an abstraction from the social relations that drive free exchange; as if in fact, free markets did not require compulsion, force, and death squads to enforce their ultimate rationality. Markets, and efficiency, are thus fetishized... to the point that some who claim to be Marxists actually advocate buying emerging market country bonds, and Venezulean bonds in particular. Oh right, Marx would never have been interested in writing about bourgeois economic theory. Doug
Re: Mark Jones Still Wrong
Devine, James wrote: I'd like to think that he is sitting up on some cloud somewhere getting a chuckle over how he still generates such controversy. I'd better start sinning now, so I won't end up in the same place as Mark. I'm already doomed, since I cheered on the slaughter of Afghan babies. Doug
Re: Marxist Fianancial Advice
Devine, James wrote: BTW, the stock market is basically unpredictable _even though_ it doesn't fit the efficient markets hypothesis. Again, I must turn into a pedant and ask just what you mean by that. There are several forms of the EMH. Quoting myself from Wall Street, characterizing Eugene Fama's review: Fama distinguished among three varieties of the EMH: the weak, semi-strong, and strong forms. The weak form asserts that the past course of security prices says nothing about their future meanderings. The semi-strong form asserts that security prices adjust almost instantaneously to significant news (profits announcements, dividend changes, etc.). And the strong form asserts that there is no such thing as a hidden cadre of smart money investors who enjoy privileged access to information that isn't reflected in public market prices. This isn't entirely nonsense, is it? Would you argue that stock prices don't adjust almost instantaneously to fresh news? Would you argue that there isn't a strong element of randomness in prices? If you say the market is basically unpredictable, then you're subscribing to at least part of the EMH. The anomalies that have been identified over the years - that low P/E stocks outperform high P/E ones, for example - imply that stocks are, at least to some degree, predictable. The same with Shiller's work on overreaction, which implies that speculators who bet against extremes of mob psychology (which is essentially the strategy of both Keynes and Soros) are part of a smart money cadre that aren't trading on the basis of nonpublic information, but on an unpopular analysis. You could say that the market efficiently reflets the often nonsensical consensus of investors, which is something EMH types wouldn't agree with. Even some dissidents have a problem with irrationality. The first time I met Joseph Stiglitz was late in the dot.com mania. I was very curious to hear his analysis of that lunacy. But his info theory still holds that investors are rational, just not all equally informed. So he wondered aloud, Why do people buy those stocks? Doug
Re: EMH
Devine, James wrote: The anomalies that have been identified over the years - that low P/E stocks outperform high P/E ones, for example - imply that stocks are, at least to some degree, predictable. the SM is predictable in the sense that pen-l is predictable. My god, if the stock market were that predictable, I'd have set up my own hedge fund *years* ago. Doug
Re: Marxist Fianancial Advice
Daniel Davies wrote: The more hazy idea behind efficient markets theory is that stock market prices are in some way the best forecast of discounted value of future cash flows. Yup. It's been ages since I read this stuff, but some of the more honest economists conceded there was a joint hypothesis problem with EM theory - the speed with which prices reflected the thinking of market participants, and the quality of that thinking itself, two separate issues that often get conflated into a best available wisdom argument. Greenspan loved to cite the wisdom of the markets as a way of avoiding the word bubble in the late 1990s. Doug
Re: Marxist Fianancial Advice
Daniel Davies wrote: That point (which is, incredibly, very well established and true) is that 40% of the entire volatility of the NYMEX contract in September Frozen Concentrated Orange Juice occurs in the single day on which the Department of Agriculture releases its forecasts for orange production. I just can't for the life of me see how this factoid is at all consistent with the FCOJ futures market having any information advantage over the US government. Surely you've read, or read about, the paper (I think by Richard Roll) claiming the OJ futures market is better at predicting the weather than the U.S. Weather Service? Doug
Re: Marxist Fianancial Advice
Yoshie Furuhashi wrote: The anti-war/anti-occupation movement has been far bigger -- perhaps the biggest in history, counting participants worldwide -- under Bush than it was under Clinton. That's because the wars and threat of future wars were bigger. If Bush decided to invade Iran, the antiwar movement would probably grow further - is that what you're hoping for? Doug
Re: Putin
Chris Doss quoted Anatol Lieven: Yet the bitterly anti-Western ideology These days, that sort of bitter ideology passes for anti-imperialism in some circles. If it had been the Red Army killing Chechen rebels, that would have been fine. But now Putin's Russia has gone over to the dark side, so anyone against Putin is against imperialism. Ditto the broader radical Islamic movement. Ditto Milosevic. Oddly enough, these arguments are made in the name of Marxism, which reminds me of the Randy Newman lines: If Marx were living today/he'd be rolling around in his grave... Doug
Re: Marxist Fianancial Advice
Sabri Oncu wrote: Jim: diversify, diversify, diversify. hold for long-term, not short. Hold more bonds (and fewer stocks) when old; reverse that when young. This is what you are taught at ivy league business school finance classes if they still adhere to the efficient market hypothesis of course. Market prices are efficient in that they instantly react to buying and selling, but that of course doesn't mean that investors are rational. But empirically speaking it's really really hard to beat the market - that part of EM theory is empirically solid. Unless you're Keynes or Soros, Jim's right. Doug
Re: Marxist Fianancial Advice
Sabri Oncu wrote: Doug: Market prices are efficient in that they instantly react to buying and selling, Rubbish! You know, my new PhD is in this, right? I didn't. What's your argument? Doug
Re: Thomas Frank's new book
Eugene Coyle wrote: What's Wrong With Kansas, the new book by Thomas Frank is interesting. His acknowledgements include a roster of Pen-L ers. Including, if I'm remembering correctly, Eugene Coyle. Doug
Re: Marxist Fianancial Advice
Funke Jayson J wrote: For people on this list fortunate enough to have some personal financial considerations to think about (retirement funds etc), how do you handle planning for your financial future while reconciling those actions with your personal convictions? How do (fortunate?) Marxist living in a capitalist society plan for their own financial welfare? Do folks find socially responsible funds (I mean they still contribute to capitalism, right?) as an answer? Municipal bonds? Money markets? How are any of these better than the other? You can't reconcile principles and investments, esp if you have a Marxist view of the origins of profit as originating in the uncompensated labor of others. Most of the big socially responsible funds have very loose standards, admitting about half of the SP 500 (I haven't checked in a while, but a few years ago the biggies had Microsoft and Wal-Mart in their portfolios). Money market funds invest in U.S. Treasury securities - is it ethical to lend money to Washington? There are things like community land trusts and community development credit unions, but they generally pay very low returns. I'd say it comes down to investing prudently but conventionally and doing the right thing with the rest of your life. Doug
Re: Deflation?
Michael Perelman wrote: Are wage increases outstripping benefit cuts? In the U.S., real wages (ex benefits) are about flat, though they stayed positive through mid-2003 or so. The compensation measures in the productivity series are rising, mainly because health insurance premiums are up 10-12%/yr. But flat direct wages doesn't equal falling wages or a race to the bottom. Doug
Re: Deflation?
H, I think it's worth testing the hypothesis that when PEN-L gets a thread going on economic vulnerability, the economy is about to accelerate. This is a good real-time test. Doug
Re: Deflation?
Devine, James wrote: in which the global downward harmonization of wages and social benefits is dragging down consumption Where are wages falling? And where is consumption falling (even after subtracting debt growth)? Doug
Re: WSJ Reporters to Conduct Byline Strike
Michael Pollak wrote: [Well here's a creative tactic in a labor dispute making it onto the front page of the WSJ. I just asked a friend who is a reporter there and he says yep, it's on -- he has a front page piece tomorrow running with no byline and considers it a matter of pride. Things are getting rancorous.] Nobody gives a rat's ass about bylines. - Ben Bradlee, during a Washington Post byline strike in the 70s. Doug
Re: Further confirmation of Mark Jones
Radicals trying to parse bourgeois discourse around oil now should remember that a lot of it is infected by market sentiment, and with oil up 250% over the last five years, market sentiment is very frothy. (Sentiment follows prices, it doesn't lead them.) A lot of the recent gains were driven by speculators, not actual producers or users, and they're attracted by price movements, not fundamentals. For a lot of them, the fundamentals are just after-the-fact rationalizations of market dynamics. Since many, maybe most, experts quoted in the papers are Wall Street analysts, they're going to reflect the bullish consensus. I suspect we're closer to a price peak than further sustained increases. Doug
Re: Further confirmation of Mark Jones
Michael Perelman wrote: A week or so ago, Ian Masters interviewed Fadel Gheit, Vice President for Oil and Gas Research with Oppenheimer Inc. He was explaining how many $$ each international flash point added to the price of oil. Several dollars each for Nigeria, Venezuela, Saudi Arabia Iraq. I think that it was on the order of $12 or so. True, up to a point, but remember, the analysis often follows the price. That's one of the things that civilians often don't get about speculative markets. Doug
new radio product
Just added to my radio archive http://www.leftbusinessobserver.com/Radio.html: June 10, 2004 DH on the demise of Reagan * Rick Perlstein, historian of conservatism and author of a bio of Goldwater, on the emergence of the right the role of Ronnie * Ralph Nader, talking to the ruling class at the Council on Foreign Relations (20 minutes out of a one-hour appearance), about foreign policy, globalization, and his contribution to electing George Bush (full transcript at the CFR) it joins: - May 20, 2004 Marathon Special: State of the Empire Gary Younge, New York correspondent of The Guardian, on U.S. reactions to the torture photos, comparisons with British and other European imperialisms, and race in the U.S. vs. the UK * Cynthia Enloe of Clark University, famous for her feminist analyses of the military, talks about masculinity in the Bush administration, the oil industry, and military prisons * George Monbiot, author of Manifesto for a New World Order, on offshoring as reparations, the WTO, the limits of localism, and the democratization of global governance May 6, 2004 Heather Boushey talks about child care, in anticipation of Mother's Day * Merrill Goozner, author of The $800 Million Pill, talks about drug development, and why medicines are so damned expensive April 29, 2004 Sean Jacobs, one of the organizers of the Ten Years of Freedom film festival, talks about the festival and South African politics * Richard Burkholder, Gallup's director of international operations, talks about the firm's polling in Iraq * Aimee Liu, author of the novel Flash House, talks about the CIA in Asia and trafficking in women April 15, 2004 Jagdish Bhagwati, professor of economics at Columbia and author of In Defense of Globalization, talks about trade, capital flows, poverty, and development April 8, 2004 Chalmers Johnson, author of The Sorrows of Empire, talks first about the political economy of Japan (recovery for real? rightward move among the elite?) and then the evil effects of the U.S. empire on the outside world and on our democracy along with -- * Chalmers Johnson on the U.S. empire * Jagdish Bhatwati on globalization * Bill Fletcher on war and peace * Slavoj Zizek on war, imperialism, and fantasy * Naomi Klein on Argentina and the arrested political development of the global justice movement * Keith Bradsher on the SUVs * Susie Bright on sex and politics * Anatol Lieven on Iraq * Laura Flanders on Bushwomen * Carlos Mejia, deserter from Iraq * Joseph Stiglitz on the IMF and the Wall St-Treasury axis * Lisa Jervis on feminism pop culture * Nina Revoyr on the history of Los Angeles, real and fictional * Joel Schalit on anti-Semitism * Robert Fatton on Haiti * Ursula Huws on work and why capitalism has avoided crisis * Simon Head on working in the era of surveillance and speedup * Michael Albert on participatory economics (parecon) * Marta Russell on the UN conference on disability * Corey Robin on the neocons * Sara Roy on the Palestinian economy * Christian Parenti on Iraq and surveillance * Tariq Ali, Noam Chomsky, and Cynthia Enloe on the then-impending war with Iraq * Michael Hardt on Empire * Judith Levine on kids sex * Walden Bello on the World Social Forum and alternative development models * Christopher Hitchens on Orwell and his new political affiliations -- Doug Henwood Left Business Observer 38 Greene St - 4th fl. New York NY 10013-2505 USA voice +1-212-219-0010 fax+1-212-219-0098 cell +1-917-865-2813 email mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED] webhttp://www.leftbusinessobserver.com
Re: Andre Gunder Frank article
Andre Gunder Frank wrote: Iraqi oil is again being priced in US dollars and no longer in Euros as under the dreadful Saddam Hussein. Not exactly. You could argue that the sharp rise in oil prices is a reflection of dollar weakness. Since the December 2001 low, oil is up about 106% in dollar terms, 83% in yen, and just 53% in euros. And since the U.S. is much less energy-efficient than the other two zones, the economic impact is greater. It wasn't supposed to turn out this way, was it? Doug
Re: Time of Oil (Hubbert's peak)
Yoshie Furuhashi wrote: It's fascinating that the concept of time is missing in all the PEN-l discussions of oil, except in Tom's postings. At 6:47 PM -0400 6/1/04, Doug Henwood wrote: Someday we may run out of oil, but I suspect we'll choke ourselves or ruin the climate completely before we do. At 4:41 PM -0400 6/2/04, Doug Henwood wrote: So do you think we'll run out of oil - in the economic, not physical sense - before we choke on the smoke and CO2? Before is a time-related concept, no? Doug
Re: Time of Oil (Hubbert's peak)
Yoshie Furuhashi wrote: At 4:41 PM -0400 6/2/04, Doug Henwood wrote: So do you think we'll run out of oil - in the economic, not physical sense - before we choke on the smoke and CO2? Before is a time-related concept, no? Doug Yeah, but saying before we choke on the smoke and CO2 and saying before we exhaust all known oil reserves both have the same End-Time status in discussion of time -- which is to say, irrelevant. Marx and Keynes' innovations concern the introduction of secular time -- time of production, time of circulation, time of consumption, and perilous dependence of each on the others -- to political economy. - Gosh, I didn't know that. Thanks! What do you suppose in the economic, not physical sense means? Doug
Re: Hubbert's peak
Michael Perelman wrote: Hasn't been a decade since a major oil discovery has occured? So do you think we'll run out of oil - in the economic, not physical sense - before we choke on the smoke and CO2? Doug
Re: Hubbert's peak
sartesian wrote: Which gets us to another point, and the one where industry, ideology, and cash flow meet: The Hubbertists have created a veritable industry out of predicting catastrophe. Which brings me to a question about the politics of this. Mark Jones, may he rest in peace, was a big fan of Petroconsultants, who are major catastrophists, right? But aren't the catastrophists in the oil industry eagerly lobbying for tax breaks and reduced environmental regulations? Aren't they, in a phrase, apologists for the industry? Is this another case of politics making strange bedfellows, or am I missing something? Doug
Re: Hubbert's peak
Ted Winslow wrote: Like the sadism to which they are closely linked, envy and insatiable greed are protean. Marx points to them as the psychological basis of crude communism. General envy constituting itself as a power is the disguise in which greed re-establishes itself and satisfies itself, only in another way. The thought of every piece of private property as such is at least turned against wealthier private property in the form of envy and the urge to reduce things to a common level, so that this envy and urge even constitute the essence of competition. Crude communism is only the culmination of this envy and of this levelling-down proceeding from the preconceived minimum. It has a definite, limited standard. How little this annulment of private property is really an appropriation is in fact proved by the abstract negation of the entire world of culture and civilisation, the regression to the unnatural simplicity of the poor and crude man who has few needs and who has not only failed to go beyond private property, but has not yet even reached it. The community is only a community of labour, and equality of wages paid out by communal capital - by the community as the universal capitalist. Both sides of the relationship are raised to an imagined universality - labour as the category in which every person is placed, and capital as the acknowledged universality and power of the community. http://www.marxists.org/archive/marx/works/1844/manuscripts/comm.htm I'm in awe. Really. This is sublime stuff. I haven't read this in years, so thanks for the reminder. Doug
Re: the new number one reason to vote Nader
Michael Hoover wrote:
[EMAIL PROTECTED] 5/31/2004 2:06:42 PM
Gitlin is a repulsive character, but everything he says in this
passage is, sadly, true:
But there is no evidence that nonvoters differ from voters in any
ideological way.
poli sci guy stephen earl bennett's 1990 'deconstruction' ('the uses
and abuses of registration and turnout data', _ps_) of above exposed it
for canard it actually is...
That's not what a bunch of public opinion pundits told me recently.
Most surveys found little difference between voters nonvoters. One
deconstruction isn't necessarily the last word.
Doug
Re: Mike Davis on Hubbert's Peak
sartesian wrote: Anybody interested in knowing just how flexible and elastic the speculations about peaks really are would do well to read the original peakist himself, the petroleum Malthus, M. King Hubbert. Take a look at http://www.hubbertpeak.com/hubbert/nehring.pdf and you will read the King predicting a peak in the non-communist world's oil production in the early to mid 1980s, etc. etc. etc. Didn't exactly happen that way, now did it? Wow, those are some spectacularly wrong projections. But there's a long history of this sort of thing, isn't there? There's a chart reproduced in Baumol et al's Productivity American Leadership - must remember to dig out the book scan the page - that tracks oil production over the last 100 years with similar projections marked at various points in the history. Someday we may run out of oil, but I suspect we'll choke ourselves or ruin the climate completely before we do. Doug
Re: the new number one reason to vote Nader
michael a. lebowitz wrote: Dissent Magazine, Spring 2004 Ralph Nader and the Will to Marginality by Todd Gitlin Yes, I love it! The new slogan: 'A Vote for Nader is a vote against Todd Gitlin' is sure to mobilise old SDS'ers. Gitlin is a repulsive character, but everything he says in this passage is, sadly, true: But there is no evidence that nonvoters differ from voters in any ideological way. They are not bashful saints or hidden leftists biding their time until a candidate appears with the precisely correct political position. They are disproportionately low-income and younger people who, if they want anything from politics, want practical results. Their cynicism about politics is self-interested; they have real needs. What they are not looking for is a prophet or a new party. If those who suffer most from corporate domination were susceptible to Nader's appeal, why was his black vote in 2000 so puny-only 1 percent in Washington, D. C., for example, where Nader won 5 percent overall? He certainly didn't increase turnout among blacks or any other minority. A Green vote was a luxury that could only be afforded by those who didn't need politics to defend their material interests. In fact, Nader's base is a sliver of upper-middle-class whites-the liberal intelligentsia, you might say-disproportionately located in such states as Minnesota, Wisconsin, Iowa, and New Hampshire with the smallest black populations.
Re: Daily Kos Flakking for Kerry, but the Gap Grows Wider between Kerry and Rank-and-File Dems
Yoshie Furuhashi wrote: the problem of Anybody But Bush Democrats So what's your alternative? Nader? He wants what you've rejected in the past - a phased withdrawal of U.S. troops, their replacement by an international force under a UN mandate, and internationally supervised elections. That's a long way from the unconditional, immediate: * Bring Them Home Now! http://www.bringthemhomenow.org/ slogan you have in your sig file. Doug
Susie Bright interviews some guy
In Bed with Susie Bright: Work Ethics with Doug Henwood http://www.audible.com/huffman/store/productEntry.jsp?source_code=AUDP0286BN 092001productID=PF_SUZY_040507 Author: Susie Bright Audio Original Nonfiction Non AudibleListener Price: $5.95 Audio Length: 33 min. Provider: Susie Bright Year Published: 2004 Is the American work ethic ruining our sex lives? Susie has thought so for years, and now she gets to pose her question to economist Doug Henwood. Doug Henwood is the editor and publisher of The Left Business Observer, a contributor to The Nation, and the host of a weekly radio show on WBAI in New York. Susie and Doug talk about work ethics, marriage incentives, and why economists just seem to miss the sex part of any equation. Then, in the Try This at Home mailbag, Susie gets to the bottom of douching. Don't forget, you can send your confidential questions and feedback about the show to [EMAIL PROTECTED] (Episode 159) For general info on Susie's show, see http://www.audible.com/susiebright.
Re: Susie Bright interviews some guy
[EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: Is the American work ethic ruining our sex lives? Without wanting to devalue the intellectual property inherent in this, what was the answer? :-) What's your guess, given the predilections of both interviewer and interviewee? Doug
new radio product
Just added to my radio archive http://www.leftbusinessobserver.com/Radio.html: May 20, 2004 Marathon Special: State of the Empire Gary Younge, New York correspondent of The Guardian, on U.S. reactions to the torture photos, comparisons with British and other European imperialisms, and race in the U.S. vs. the UK * Cynthia Enloe of Clark University, famous for her feminist analyses of the military, talks about masculinity in the Bush administration, the oil industry, and military prisons * George Monbiot, author of Manifesto for a New World Order, on offshoring as reparations, the WTO, the limits of localism, and the democratization of global governance May 6, 2004 Heather Boushey talks about child care, in anticipation of Mother's Day * Merrill Goozner, author of The $800 Million Pill, talks about drug development, and why medicines are so damned expensive April 29, 2004 Sean Jacobs, one of the organizers of the Ten Years of Freedom film festival, talks about the festival and South African politics * Richard Burkholder, Gallup's director of international operations, talks about the firm's polling in Iraq * Aimee Liu, author of the novel Flash House, talks about the CIA in Asia and trafficking in women April 15, 2004 Jagdish Bhagwati, professor of economics at Columbia and author of In Defense of Globalization, talks about trade, capital flows, poverty, and development April 8, 2004 Chalmers Johnson, author of The Sorrows of Empire, talks first about the political economy of Japan (recovery for real? rightward move among the elite?) and then the evil effects of the U.S. empire on the outside world and on our democracy they join: - April 1, 2004 Carlos Mejia, who left his national guard unit in Iraq to protest the war, and who faces desertion charges, talks about the war and his prospects * In a return engagement, Robert Fatton, author of Haiti's Predatory Republic, talking about the social structure of Haiti and the forces behind Aristide's rise, fall, rise, and fall March 25, 2004 DH on outsourcing - as big a deal as they say? * Leo Panitch, co-editor of The Socialist Register 2004, on the American empire along with -- * Nina Revoyr on the history of Los Angeles, real and fictional * Bill Fletcher on war and peace * Barbara Ehrenreich on Global Woman * Slavoj Zizek on war, imperialism, and fantasy * Keith Bradsher on the SUV * Susie Bright on sex and politics * Anatol Lieven on Iraq * Lisa Jervis on feminism pop culture * Joseph Stiglitz on the IMF and the Wall St-Treasury axis * Joel Schalit, author of Jerusalem Calling, on the Counterpunch collection, The Politics of Anti-Semitism * Naomi Klein on Argentina and the arrested political development of the global justice movement * Robert Fatton on Haiti * Laura Flanders on Bushwomen * Ursula Huws on the new world of work and why capitalism has avoided crisis * Simon Head, author of The New Ruthless Economy, on working in the era of surveillance, restructuring, and speedup * Michael Albert on participatory economics (parecon) * Michael Hudson, author of a report on the sleazy world of subprime finance * Hamid Dabashi on Iran * Marta Russell on the UN conference on disability * Corey Robin on the neocons * Sara Roy on the Palestinian economy * Christian Parenti on his visit to Baghdad, and on his book The Soft Cage (about surveillance in America from slavery to the Patriot Act) * Tariq Ali, Noam Chomsky, and Cynthia Enloe on the then-impending war with Iraq * Michael Hardt on Empire * Judith Levine on kids sex * Walden Bello on the World Social Forum and alternative development models * Christopher Hitchens on Orwell and his new political affiliations -- Doug Henwood Left Business Observer 38 Greene St - 4th fl. New York NY 10013-2505 USA voice +1-212-219-0010 fax+1-212-219-0098 cell +1-917-865-2813 email mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED] webhttp://www.leftbusinessobserver.com
Re: Russian health care
Chris Doss wrote: Don't even get me started on the truly crap reporting on Russia that goes on in Western newspapers. For one thing, they interview the same goddamn people all the time. It's Yavlinsky, Khakamada, Chubais, yada yada yada over and over and over again (why? these people are pro-Western. They also speak English.). Has Zyuganov _ever_ been interviewed by the NYT, or Glazyev, or _any_ Russian politician below the presidential level who is actually popular? Part of the problem is that few NYT reporters in Moscow actually speak Russian beyond a rudimentary level. And even the occasional one who does doesn't feel comfy with the popular characters you mention - the pro-Western liberals are just their kind of people. Doug
Re: Russian health care
Someone wrote: the same sorts of bad boys who write for Russ Smith's NY Press, including veteran ranter Matt Taibbi. Russ Smith no longer owns the NY Press, and hasn't for over a year. Taibbi is part of the new gang at the paper, and his politics are decidedly to the left. His stuff for the eXile was harshly critical of the hacks who write for the western press, and for all the proper reasons. He's writing a book on the presidential campaign for The New Press; his favorite candidate was Kucinich, and his profile of Wesley Clark in The Nation massively annoyed the Clark campaign, again for all the proper reasons. Doug
Re: a victory of sorts in india...
Isn't there someone here who can tell us how the BJP is really the lesser of two evils? Doug
Re: a victory of sorts in india...
ravi wrote: Doug Henwood wrote: Isn't there someone here who can tell us how the BJP is really the lesser of two evils? i am a bit confused by the above. i think the BJP is the worse of the many evils. are you asking for a contrary opinion to mine? or did you misunderstand mine? That was a cheap joke about U.S. politics, and the argument you sometimes see that Bush is actually a lesser evil than Kerry. (See, for example, Gabriel Kolko's piece in Counterpunch.) The BJP strikes me as thoroughly awful. Doug
Re: Bush apology?
Devine, James wrote: all I noticed was that the King (who speaks English as a second language) seemed more articulate than the Pres. I guess standards vary among hereditary monarchs. Doug
Re: Grounds of Misunderstanding? was Re: Iraq Communist Party ...
Carrol Cox wrote: I mention this as a possibility, that would explain a good deal of the clashes between me and some others over the last several years. I have never _once_ written about what I think the u.s. should do. I don't think what I think about that is going to butter any parsnips. My focus has _always_ been on what an organized _movement_ should do to organize itself and grow. I don't know whether this clarifies anything or not. It is a harmless academic pastime to muse over what it would be nice for the u.s. to do, but it doesn't get us anywhere. What's the point of this movement if not to change U.S. policy? Doug
