Re: I. The Theory of Land Value Taxation
. Taxes on production¯on buildings, incomes, sales, payroll, imports, etc.¯would be much reduced or abolished altogether. This by itself could lead to unprecedented economic growth. As of this writing, fully 18 jurisdictions in the United States have already shifted some of their local property tax on buildings to land. Numerous studies by competent authorities (available upon request) show that all the above advantages have actually occurred in land value taxing jurisdictions. If the Single Tax is so provably good, how come it has not been widely adopted or become well known in the United States? There are many reasons for this, but the principal reasons are these: 1. Its immediate full adoption would cause tremendous economic disruption. Some property owners who are holding land-sites out of their full use, although they're certainly in a minority, would find themselves suddenly confronted with a huge tax increase. They could face bankruptcy and would likely convince their political representatives to oppose a Single Tax. 2. In their ignorance, the voters are likely to sympathize with these few landed property owners (who are usually absentees), and anyway they're not interested in a proposal which they think could never be adopted in the foreseeable future. = Steven Cord, Steven B. Cord is a Professor-Emeritus in American History from Indiana University of Pennsylvania, and a former President and Research Director of the Henry George Foundation of America and the Center for the Study of Economics. He is also the editor of Incentive Taxation, a journal on land value tax research. He is the author of many articles, booklets and books (one of which, Henry George: Dreamer or Realist? was published in 1966 by the University of Pennsylvania Press and is still in print). He has been instrumental in inducing 18 jurisdictions to collect about $70 million annually in extra land value taxation. He is currently writing a book entitled The Most Important Statement Ever Made¯a rational proof for equal rights. Contact Information: Research Director Center for the Study of Economics 1191 School St. Indiana, Pa. 15701 Phone: 724/463-3993 Jim Devine [EMAIL PROTECTED] http://bellarmine.lmu.edu/~jdevine NTMail K12 - the Mail Server for Education
Re: Front line and Afghan
At 07:23 PM 12/5/01 +, you wrote: There is an almost complete blackout on the situation in the Kandahar area. No longer are we even getting the coverage we got before the fall of Kabul and Mazar e Sharif. This is no accident. No tv images with the on the front journalists. No more are our journalists on the fron line. Mainstream journalism has revealed its bankrupt hack like nature. Few journalists have shown any flare for the war in terms of investigation and analysis. Why is it that we are not being told what is going on. Why is it that journalists refuse to raise issues and ask questions? Why dont they tell us why they are not reporting from the front line etc. They _are_ hacks, but the US government is also making a big effort to keep them that way, by keeping them away from the front line. NTMail K12 - the Mail Server for Education
Re: Re: RE: Re: Re: Physics and economics
At 11:53 PM 12/4/01 -0800, you wrote: Then the laws of probability should correspond to human behaviour in as much as they do to the behaviour of inanimate matter, and they do not. some human behavior is predictable, though much of it is not. The big problem with statistics as applied to human behavior is that we're inside the system being studied... Econometricians call that time incoherence. this is not only a question of degree, it is of a fundamental difference in substance between social and natural science, hence, the failure of math and spastics to afford an adequate explanation of human processes. I like that typo! JD NTMail K12 - the Mail Server for Education
untapped Afghan wealth?
[maybe this will be of interest to the conspiracy-minded...] November 15, 2001 LOS ANGELES TIMES Untapped Gems Could Enrich Afghans, Geologist Says By BOB POOL, TIMES STAFF WRITER With its casual show-and-tell presentations of lepidolite and dendritic opal and its pie-and-cookie refreshment break, the monthly meeting of the Culver City Rock and Mineral Club is the last place you'd expect to be caught up in a world crisis. But there the stony-faced club members were this week--talking of bombing raids and land mines and human suffering in Afghanistan. And as Taliban forces were fleeing Kabul, Westside rock hounds were learning that the dirt-poor country could become a rich one. Geologist and anthropologist Bonita Chamberlin has spent 25 years exploring Afghanistan. She told club members she is convinced that vast deposits of uranium and beryllium, oil and natural gas, gold and silver, lead, zinc and dazzling gemstones could bring unheard-of wealth to Afghans. Over the years, Chamberlin has disguised herself as a man and slipped past Soviet army guard posts or crossed mountain ranges with arms-smuggling moujahedeen to get into Afghanistan. On her most recent trip last year, she stayed in the northern part of the country and avoided Taliban forces. Five weeks ago, after terrorist leader Osama bin Laden appeared on a videotape made at an Afghan cave, the U.S. Department of Defense asked Chamberlin to identify the rocky outcropping in the background in hopes of pinpointing his location. Chamberlin recognized the regions where those sandstone and limestone formations are common. But I never know what they do with information like that. They never give me a report back, she said. Chamberlin, 55, of La Mesa, Calif., is a researcher and consultant who was introduced to Afghanistan in the mid-1970s while working with companies cultivating cotton and raisins there. The scope of her work changed during the Soviet invasion--when heavy bombing uncovered significant deposits of rubies, sapphires, emeralds and other gemstones, she said. After that, Chamberlin identified 91 minerals, metals and gems at 1,407 potential mining sites. For the last eight years, she has advocated a United Nations development program that would turn Afghanistan's deposits into a crop substitute for poppies grown for the drug trade. In 1995 she co-wrote the book Gemstones of Afghanistan. Chamberlin, who was invited before the Sept. 11 attacks to speak to the 130-member Culver City club, managed to combine ancient Afghan history with modern horrors during her talk. But it was the geology that riveted the crowd Monday night. Not many people left the meeting early, said club President Brad Smith, a Westwood silversmith. Chamberlin explained that Afghanistan has a wealth of minerals because of the way the Earth's plates collided when the Indian subcontinent rammed into the Asian continent, trapping chemicals from ancient seas along with chemicals from the land. They formed minerals that exist in very few places in the world, she said. Before the Sept. 11 attacks, Chamberlin said, she had been scheduled to return to Afghanistan to document the pillaging of archeological sites and the destruction of artifacts by the Taliban. Now, she said, she would like to go there to do some cultural diversity training so our Special Forces know how to work with tribes that are sometimes rivals. In the meantime, Chamberlin will speak to the Opal Society at 7:30 p.m. today at 9501 Chapman Ave., Garden Grove. And she is anxiously waiting to see how the Afghans survive the winter. She said authorities need to dig in and take care of 5 1/2 million starving people before they start thinking about mining. But once an infrastructure is developed, she added, Afghans could rule the world. [yeah, right. How often to the _people_ of a mineral-rich country benefit from that wealth? Maybe in Saudi Arabia...] Jim Devine [pen-l's reporter in Culver City, CA] [EMAIL PROTECTED] http://bellarmine.lmu.edu/~JDevine
Re: Re: RE: more on the Northern Alliance
I wrote: Of course. It should be remembered that the current war on drugs keeps the prices high, so that farmers and especially middlemen can benefit in a big way when taking the risk pays off. Andrew Austin writes: Are you arguing that there is a war on drugs so that opium farmers, etc. can profit? no. That would be falling for the functionalist or teleological fallacy -- or assuming (wrongly) that opium farmers have a lot of political power in Washington DC (the center of the war on drugs). Or are you making a simple point about the consequences of the drug war? Yes. Give the structure of the sentence it sounds like the former, which strikes me as an absurd claim. all I was doing was doing is what economists often do, i.e., looking how a situation sets up incentives for self-interested individuals. (I don't think that practice should be taken as far as most economists do, but it's sometimes worthwhile.) Jim Devine [EMAIL PROTECTED] http://bellarmine.lmu.edu/~JDevine Segui il tuo corso, e lascia dir le genti. (Go your own way and let people talk.) -- K. Marx, paraphrasing Dante A.
Re: Re: Victory to Empire
history is being made. I am also glad you raised the all important problem of whether reforms help or hamper humanity. The normal knee-jerk reaction from Marxists is that the mere mention of raising reforms is to succomb to reformism. However, the contradiction we face is our own irrelevance, that is if we do not start to raise sensible and realisable reforms the direction is given and it is not in the end a pretty one. There is no-one putting forward the interests of working class in any meaningful way, there is no coherence to what is said on the left and no political direction except cultish oppositionalism. In short, unless individual states are reformed, the international order cannot be otherwise than chaotic. What seems to be ignored is the predicament of historical social-democracy. There is no social ground for such reformism, in just a decade it seems to have evaporated completely. Yet the revolutionary left reifies reforms as the essence of reformism, which was never the case - reformism is not even simple the restriction of struggle to legalisied procedures though it necessarily requires this form, but the substitution of class power for inter-class recognition of leadership - little wonder it has vanished as the ruling class cares little for the fine balancing of social hegemony within any particular state. The question is what does the left fear from realisable reforms when the historical conditions for reformism have so obviously dissappeared? Practicality and realisability would bring coherence and platform to any number of class interests, interests in making the state much more democratic, controling capital and providing for all variety of social need without relying on bureacratic measures. It seems obvious that by so changing states from the bottom up, there becomes a basis in the real world for creating a more sensible international order. Could this lead to Empire more completely, in the end, stupidfying the masses (multitude if you like), it is difficult to see how, in fact it seems difficult to comprehend how Empire may be fought by any other means. For Empire to recreate reformism on a significant scale in this period of time would be to turn the clock back and recreate a parochial bourgeoisie. Greg Schofield Perth Australia --- Message Received --- From: Chris Burford [EMAIL PROTECTED] To: [EMAIL PROTECTED] Date: Tue, 13 Nov 2001 07:31:29 + Subject: [PEN-L:19564] Victory to Empire snipped Jim Devine [EMAIL PROTECTED] http://bellarmine.lmu.edu/~jdevine
more on the Northern Alliance
another point. It should be remembered that the execrable Taliban was a exemplary partner in the evil War on Drugs and that the U.S. duly rewarded it for its good deed of suppressing opium production. (The Taliban seem to have that authoritarian knack.) If the Taliban is out of the picture -- or too weak or unmotivated to continue its anti-drug role -- the Northern Alliance is likely to revert to its norm, i.e., profiting from the drug trade. A continued civil war also encourages the revival of the drug trade, by undermining public order. So those financial traders on pen-l should (1) sell heroin futures short and (2) sell the War on Drugs short. Hey, maybe this will kill the War on Drugs. If so, that's good news. Jim Devine [EMAIL PROTECTED] http://bellarmine.lmu.edu/~jdevine
Re: RE: more on the Northern Alliance
At 01:24 PM 11/13/01 -0600, you wrote: Do I detect jest in this post? The Taliban is involved in the drug trade. Officials in cities where production is heavy have publicly admitted they cannot control production and that they will not because they need the support and the farmers need the money. Officials have taken reporters to places alleged to hold confiscated opium, but it is more likely that these are storage bins and part of the processing network. The Taliban forbid kite flying, high heels, laughing and music, yet they run drugs and guns and enjoy lynching people. These guys are truly the no fun mob. I wasn't jesting, except at the end (the second-from-last paragraph). I don't know if the T is or was involved with drugs or not (since the evidence in the media is mixed), but was taking the US government as its word that the T was giving a good college try in this matter (before the administration had the incentive to make the T look as bad as possible to justify terror-bombing). (Of course, the fact that his Dubya-ness' version of a good college try is the gentleman's C says something about his administration's standards.) BTW, I don't consider the T to be a fun mob. It's the kind of authoritarian crap that I've as long as I've thought about political issues.
Re: RE: more on the Northern Alliance
Jamil Brownson wrote: What are drugs to us may only be a crop to them [Afgans], and where poverty is grindingly real, any crop that has commercial value, and in this case also has tradition backing it up, is real, hence any global legality is immaterial. Of course. It should be remembered that the current war on drugs keeps the prices high, so that farmers and especially middlemen can benefit in a big way when taking the risk pays off. If there were global legality, the price would fall, undermining much of the incentive for farmers to grow opium and the like. (It would become a normal crop, without any promise of possible big winnings.) This would be reinforced if consumer countries like the US were to fight drugs using education and treatment instead of using troglodyte tactics. Jim Devine [EMAIL PROTECTED] http://bellarmine.lmu.edu/~jdevine
Re: Bringing back torture
Chris Burford writes: Torture was especially used in Europe from the middle ages at the time of the rising bourgeois state. It is interesting that it is becoming a credible need at a time of turbulence in the creation of the international Empire. I'm not sure that this historical analogy works. I'd be that torture was pretty normal before the rise of the bourgeois state; feudal lords were not expecially admirable in terms of their allegiance to human rights. If that's true, what's important is the _decline_ of torture. I'd say that in Englad, it was the rise of the urban working class as an organized force. In the USA, it reflects the power of the small farmers -- whose influence was reflected in our Bill of Rights -- and later the urban working class. Of course, if someone knows the history better than I do, I bow to their expertise. In the US, as suggested by the torture chic article which I sent to pen-l awhile back, the rise of suggestions that torture is okay come from (1) the wave of jingoism; (2) the frustration of many with the lack of information received from terrorist-related suspects; and (3) the lack of political power of the targets. I suspect that the story is similar in the UK.
U.S. opposition
LA TIMES/November 11, 2001. THE PRESIDENCY The Political Clock Is Ticking By KEVIN PHILLIPS, Kevin Phillips' most recent book is The Cousins' Wars: Religion, Politics and the Triumph of Anglo-America. [He's a strange conservative.] WASHINGTON -- Yes, that's partisan politics-as-usual tiptoeing back into Washington. But it's still mostly in domestic affairs--spending, tax and health issues--and rarely in matters relating to the war on terrorism or the fighting in Afghanistan. That reticence, while patriotic, may be unfortunate. Questions about the conduct of wars in the United States usually heat up about five to 15 months after fighting begins. At this stage, if there's little military success, the party not in the White House usually profits from the public's skepticism of the war's conduct and makes gains in midterm elections. That happened during the Vietnam War, the Korean War, World War II and the Civil War. Could this happen in 2002? Yes, if the public gets the sense that the Bush administration has been inept in home-front security, that Osama bin Laden is still thumbing his nose at us or that U.S. bombs and missiles in Afghanistan are falling too close to the Asian and Middle Eastern fault line of a possible World War III. The Democratic gubernatorial pick-ups in last Tuesday's elections in New Jersey and Virginia--the only major statewide races held--suggest that a Democratic tide is already running on domestic and economic issues. Neither of these elections, nor any national opinion polls, even hint of a growing voter skepticism of President Bush's war policies to match that already evident on newspaper front pages and in some media broadcasts. Still, some of the questions being raised by the media deserve to be raised--constructively--by the opposition party. That's not the way American politics works, though. The opposition sits back and waits rather than risk saying too much. The exception, which is worth remembering, was in 1990. A lot of Democrats were skeptical of or opposed to President George Bush's plan to militarily recapture Kuwait from Saddam Hussein. To defuse the doubt, Bush moved U.S. troops to bases in Saudi Arabia, organized an international coalition and developed a battle plan--all before the Persian Gulf War started in early 1991. It worked, even if the coalition forces stopped before toppling Hussein. This year, however--and it's probably inevitable, given that terrorists attacked Manhattan and Washington--the U.S. military response came quickly, before all the strategic, diplomatic and conceptual ducks were in a row. The consequences to date, unfortunately, have been lots of dropped bombs but few big-time hits, a slow response to the anthrax crisis, a furor in the Muslim world that has prompted talk of the U.S. losing the public-relations war and an obvious edginess on the parts of erstwhile allies like Saudi Arabia and Pakistan. Worst of all, the U.S. failure to track down shadowy terrorist chieftain Bin Laden has forced the Pentagon to start emphasizing the havoc it has rained down on Afghanistan's Taliban regime, as if our aerial capacity was ever in doubt. On these issues, the opposition, not surprisingly, is largely quiet or in hiding. By contrast, political differences are entirely acceptable to the public when it comes to the economic-stimulus package. Democrats want more unemployment, low-income and health-care assistance, while Republicans prefer tax cuts for business and upper-income Americans. Politics are even OK in the matter of airport security: Democrats want to federalize airport screeners, while Republicans prefer to subcontract the job to private companies [for more, see: http://www.latimes.com/news/printedition/suncommentary/la-90118nov11.sto ry?coll=la%2Dheadlines%2Dsuncomment] Jim Devine [EMAIL PROTECTED] http://bellarmine.lmu.edu/~JDevine
Re: America is losing the battle for hearts and minds
Donald Rumsfeld, the defence secretary, told a news conference in India this week that the war would not take years. The week before, at a briefing in the Pentagon, he had compared the bombing of Afghanistan to that of Japan in the second world war, the point being that the latter had taken more than three years. what an idiot! the bombing of Japan was primarily aimed at civilians -- even before Hiroshima -- and almost everybody knows it.
comic relief
In response to a conversation about a new automobile (called the Pod, I believe) that is highly computerized and talks to the driver, my 11-year-old son Guthrie said: It's HAL on wheels! Jim Devine [EMAIL PROTECTED] http://bellarmine.lmu.edu/~JDevine
Re: please post this notice about the Nov-Dec issue of CD to your e-mail list. Thanks
Title: please post this notice about the Nov-Dec issue of CD Cy should have also mentioned that I have a piece in the next issue of Canadian Dimension. - Original Message - From: Cy Gonick To: [EMAIL PROTECTED] ; [EMAIL PROTECTED] ; [EMAIL PROTECTED] ; [EMAIL PROTECTED] ; [EMAIL PROTECTED] ; [EMAIL PROTECTED] ; [EMAIL PROTECTED] ; [EMAIL PROTECTED] ; [EMAIL PROTECTED] ; [EMAIL PROTECTED] ; [EMAIL PROTECTED] ; [EMAIL PROTECTED]@policyalternatives.ca ; [EMAIL PROTECTED] ; [EMAIL PROTECTED] ; [EMAIL PROTECTED] Sent: Saturday, November 10, 2001 7:25 AM Subject: [PEN-L:19478] please post this notice about the Nov-Dec issue of CD to your e-mail list. Thanks Please post this to your e-mail list. Thanks.The November-December issue of Canadian Dimension magazine is almost entirely devoted to the so-called "war against terrorism". It features articles by James Petras, Ellen Wood, Aijaz Ahmad, John Warnock, Abby Bakan and many others especially written for CD.Some of these articles can be read on our website : www.canadiandimension.mb.caHOW MUCH DOES A SUBSCRIPTION to CD COST?Not much. A single-year subscription is $24.50 (taxes already covered). We also have a low-income option for $18.50. U.S. subscribers add $10.00. International subscribers add $15.00.HOW DO I SUBSCRIBE?Easy. You can subscribe in one of three ways:1. Fill out the subscription form on our website:www.canadiandimension.mb.ca2. Send us an e-mail at [EMAIL PROTECTED].3. Call our toll-free subscription hotline: 1-800-737-7051.We accept VISA and MasterCard. Or we can simply send you an invoice.--WHAT IS CANADIAN DIMENSION?Canadian Dimension is a magazine that shows there is an alternative to the corporate agenda and the dictates of the global market; that the vision - and not just one vision - of a better society is still alive. It provides a forum for debate, where socialists, environmentalists and anarchists share approaches to anti-globalization; where activists report their activities in campaigns all corners of Canada; where writers analyse forms of oppression and human-rights issues; where trade unionists report from the front lines; and where the latest books, films, websites, CDs and videos are radically reviewed.WHO WRITES FOR CANADIAN DIMENSION? Canadian Dimension draws on the best writers on the Left, both familiar and fresh. Walden Bello, Greg Albo, Gregory Baum, Varda Burstyn, Vandana Shiva, Michel Chossudovsky, Sam Gindin, Joan Kuyek, David McNally, Brian Palmer, Leo Panitch, , Judy Rebick, Jim Stanford, Jack Warnock and Reg Whitaker, Ellen Wood write alongside vigorous young writers like Catherine Brown, Samir Gandesha, Anders Hayden, Joel Hardin and Meg Holden. International coverage not seen elsewhere is provided by David Bacon, Henry Heller, Saul Landau, Eduardo Luro, Ahmar Mustikhan and James Petras. WHY SHOULD I SUBSCRIBE TO CANADIAN DIMENSION?The shape of the next Left will be very different from that of the previous Left, be it social democratic or socialist. Organizing efforts from Seattle to Quebec City have seen new social movements, new social visions, new concepts for organizing economies, new notions of how to fight back, both globally and locally, come into their own. We at Canadian Dimension are taking an active part in this Left renewal with the same radical energy we have displayed since our founding nearly 40 years ago._Canadian Dimension MagazineSuite 2B - 91 Albert StreetWinnipeg, MB R3B 1G5Canadatel. 204-957-1519fax. 204-943-4617toll-free. 1-800-737-7051[EMAIL PROTECTED]
multiple-choice test
We see the same intolerance of dissent, the same mad global ambitions, the same brutal determination to control everyday life, and all of life. -- Pres.-select George W. Bush to whom is Dubya referring? a) Attorney General John Ashcroft's inner circle. b) Jerry Falwell Pat Robertson. c) the World Trade Organization's leading decision-makers. d) Rupert Murdoch and the board of directors of News Corp. e) the fashion industry. f) all of the above. g) none of the above. Jim Devine [EMAIL PROTECTED] http://bellarmine.lmu.edu/~JDevine
Re: BLS Daily Report
At 02:39 PM 11/2/01 -0500, you wrote: One government measure shows that deflation is here, says Floyd Norris writing in The New York Times (page C1). The government's quarterly growth report, which showed that the economy shrank in the third quarter, reported a decline of 0.4 percent, at an annual rate, in prices for personal consumption expenditures. It was the first quarterly fall in nearly half a century, since the second quarter of 1954, at the end of a recession. The number is calculated in a more sophisticated way than the more widely followed consumer price index, and it is a figure that the Federal Reserve watches. Fed chairman Alan Greenspan prefers the core figure for personal consumption expenditures, which excludes food and energy. It is still barely positive, at 0.3 percent. What is new here is that deflation is spreading from the industrial world to consumers. hey, cool! we can see if Irving Fisher's debt-deflation theory of depressions works. I hope it doesn't. Jim Devine [EMAIL PROTECTED] http://bellarmine.lmu.edu/~jdevine NTMail K12 - the Mail Server for Education
Re: Re: BLS Daily Report
This looks bad, very bad. It's a good article, though. One crucial thing that leaps out it that it wasn't fixed exchange rates weren't the problem. The exchange-rate regime simply changes the form of a crisis. Further the E. Asian banks and financial systems didn't completely recover from 1997, as the article makes clear. The problem is of capital adequacy, which suggests that these banks will go 'rupt when the world recession deepens. With the US, Japan, and Euroland doing so poorly, E. Asia will sink. This will bounce back to depress the US further. A wild ride... Warning signs Oct 25th 2001 From The Economist print edition Asia's slump could once again strain the region's financial system The economic news from East Asia gets worse by the day. Singapore is suffering its worst recession for almost 40 years: real GDP fell by 5.6% in the year to the third quarter. Taiwan, Malaysia, Hong Kong, Thailand and the Philippines are already in or close to recession. How vulnerable is Asia to another financial crisis? In 1997 pegged exchange rates, high foreign-currency borrowing and weak bank supervision left many Asian financial systems horribly vulnerable to a sharp fall in exports and capital outflows. Most of the region's economies now have flexible exchange rates, current-account surpluses, large foreign reserves and sounder banking systemsall of which suggests that another crisis is unlikely. But a new report by Sun-Bae Kim at Goldman Sachs in Hong Kong reaches a more sobering conclusion: not only is Asia suffering a more severe economic shock than it did before the crisis of 1997-98, but its financial system is, overall, no stronger than it was then. One gauge of the size of the economic shock hitting the financial system is the slowdown in the rate of growth of nominal GDP. This is a proxy for the capacity of the economy to generate cash flow, from which debts must be serviced. Most economies have seen a much sharper fall in nominal growth over the past year than leading up to the 1997 crisis (see chart). In Malaysia, the year-on-year rate of nominal GDP growth has fallen from 20% in early 2000 to minus 2% in the second quarter of this year. How bad this cash-flow shock is depends upon the level of private-sector debt, and upon how many of the outstanding loans are already non-performing. In East Asia as a whole, private-sector debt is smaller in relation to GDP than in 1997, but non-performing loans now amount to 15% of GDP, up from 11% before the 1997 crisis. If the economic shock is bigger, do financial systems have thicker buffers than in 1997? They certainly look healthier today on various measures of liquidity. In 1997 foreign lenders triggered a liquidity crunch by refusing to roll over loans. Today, the foreign borrowing of the financial system amounts to 30% of foreign-exchange reserves, down from 70% in 1997. On various measures of solvency, however, many Asian financial systems look wobbly. The average capital-adequacy ratio of the banks is slightly lower than at the end of 1996. Ratios of government debt to GDP are much higher today than in 1997, leaving governments less able to bail out banking systems again. Public-sector debt has risen from an average of 28% of GDP at the end of 1996 to 45% of GDP today. The worrying conclusion is that although Asia's financial system is less vulnerable to a sudden liquidity crisis, there is a risk of a deeper, more drawn-out deflation, exacerbated by domestic debtsimilar to that in Japan. China alone looks better placed than in 1997: the economic shock currently hitting China is milder than in the lead-up to the previous crisis, when deflation was more severe. Nor does its financial system look significantly more exposed (thanks largely to a currency that is only partially convertible). Goldman Sachs reckons that the most vulnerable financial systems are in Malaysia, Taiwan, Thailand and Indonesia. Jim Devine [EMAIL PROTECTED] http://bellarmine.lmu.edu/~jdevine NTMail K12 - the Mail Server for Education
Re: Imperialism? Yes, please....
Welcome the new imperialism The US must make the transition from informal to formal empire Niall Ferguson Wednesday October 31, 2001 The Guardian ... Lurking inside us all there is a little Marxist who would like to believe that the complex political world around us can be explained by simple economic realities. of course, the meaning of economic is different for Marxists than for liberals. For the latter, it refers to markets, exchange, greed, etc. For the former, that's part of the picture, but there's also class, domination, exploitation, alienation, imperialism, etc. Modern Marxism introduces the dimensions of ecology, patriarchy, ethnicity, and the like (following the lead of the new social movements of the 1970s). Somehow there must be a link - I have heard this argument made repeatedly - between global inequality and the rise of Islamic fundamentalism. Is globalisation to blame? Compared with the late 19th and 20th centuries, the world economy is not very global at all. That is the main explanation for widening equalities. says he. I'd like to see an argument that the absence of globalization causes inequality. As the US has globalized in recent decades, the degree of inequality has _increased_. If nothing else, the advocates of globalization systematically ignore transition costs, which disproportionately hit the poor, disenfranchised, and working classes. ... We have to understand what the alternative to failure is. We have to call it by its real name. Political globalisation is a fancy word for imperialism, imposing your values and institutions on others. However you may dress it up, whatever rhetoric you may use, it is not very different in practice to what Great Britain did in the 18th and 19th centuries. We already have precedents: the new imperialism is already in operation in Bosnia, Kosovo, East Timor. Essentially it is the imperialism that evolved in the 1920s when League of Nations mandates were the polite word for what were the post-Versailles treaty colonies. this new imperialism (formal imperialism of the old British sort, with formal colonies, as compared to the generally informal imperialism that the US practices) is what I've called the nascent world state (dominated by the US), though the terminology doesn't matter a lot. (A despotic world state dominated by US, NATO, the IMF, the World Bank, etc., roughly in that order, would clealy be imperialistic.) The problem with this fellow's conception is not only his moral wrongheadedness. Crucially, it's the creation of a world state that helps create the Osama bin Ladens of the world, just as British colonialism in the Sudan helped create the Mahdi. Domination from the outside a country almost automatically produces nationalistic or some similar type of resistance. These days, with nationalism discredited for many, religious-fundamentalist and ethnic radicalism seem to prevail. In other words, the imposition of a world state causes a movement against that state. If we're lucky (i.e., if there's a break from the current trend), the movements against the world state will coalesce into a movement for a _democratic_ world state. Jim Devine [EMAIL PROTECTED] http://bellarmine.lmu.edu/~jdevine
kick the oil habit!
. This is an edited version of his contribution to Tuesday's Guardian-RUSI conference. [EMAIL PROTECTED] Jim Devine [EMAIL PROTECTED] http://bellarmine.lmu.edu/~jdevine
Re: Re: kick the oil habit!
At 05:30 PM 11/1/01 -0500, you wrote: The Day The World Came To Its Senses? By Bill Moore October 07,2001 it looks like Shell wants to monopolize the supply of non-oil energy sources before they take hold... Jim Devine [EMAIL PROTECTED] http://bellarmine.lmu.edu/~jdevine
strategic notes on the ongoing war
in the country. The images of dead and wounded they would produce, and the genuine assessment of casualty figures they could make would destroy support for the air campaign. Even without them, a majority of the British public has come round to wanting a bombing pause. They rightly sense that this bombing is not going anywhere, and in spite of advancements in modern weapons' accuracy, too many innocent Afghans will continue to be killed by error. To end the wobble should Washington and London turn to ground troops, as was eventually planned in Kosovo? Beware. In Kosovo, Nato ground forces would have had easily visible targets, the uniformed troops of a conventional army. Even here one needs to be careful. The contrast between the relative inaccuracy of bombing and the surgical precision of a soldier on the ground is a myth. The devastating lethality of hi-tech guns turns the modern infantryman into a bomber on legs. Remember October 1993, when 18 American soldiers were killed in Somalia, a loss which led Bill Clinton to end the whole mission? Surrounded by an angry crowd, troops of the US Army Rangers and the Delta Force (the same special forces who are supposed to move into Afghanistan to find Bin Laden) sprayed their machine guns in panic, killing up to 500 Somalis, a third of them women and children. The only American not killed said after his release from captivity that the men discarded their rules of engagement to shoot only at people aiming guns at them. We fired on anything that moved, he admitted. His words should haunt us now. In Afghanistan ground troops would face conditions closer to the Somali scenario than the one which loomed in Kosovo. Hunting in rural areas, patrolling in suspicious villages, clambering through shepherds' caves, their carnage of panic could be horrendous. Donald Rumsfeld, the US secretary of defence [and my former Congressional Representative], admitted the other day that Osama bin Laden may never be found. Although he retracted later, his remark stands as a monument to the fact that, although truth may be a casualty in war, some truths survive and take wing. The only effective way to defeat the al-Qaida network, most of whose operatives are not in Afghanistan anyway, is by intelligent international police work sustained over several years and backed by political pressure on states which support them. Trying to oust the Taliban by force is a sideshow which has turned hundreds of thousands into refugees, and disrupted aid. Even if, like the war on Milosevic, it were to succeed after 78 days, al-Qaida would still be at large and fighting on. [EMAIL PROTECTED] Jim Devine [EMAIL PROTECTED] http://bellarmine.lmu.edu/~jdevine
Fwd: Re: A sharp V-shaped economic downturn and recovery?
I thought I was sending this to pen-l, but it was only to Sabri. Pen-l may be interested. Date: Tue, 30 Oct 2001 11:47:40 -0800 To: Sabri Oncu [EMAIL PROTECTED] From: Jim Devine [EMAIL PROTECTED] Subject: Re: A sharp V-shaped economic downturn and recovery? thanks for this. I have a few comments on the Brian Reading article from LOMBARD STREET. 1) the article is on the pessimistic end of the mainstream. The bears are back in town! 2) nonetheless, I find his deficit flow model to be inadequate. As I interpret his Godleyesque theory,[*] the private sector (consumers + corporations) have been dissaving too much (running too large a deficit), so that they adjust to a more reasonable saving rate. The process of adjustment lead to the recession (though that word's use isn't official yet), but eventually the economy recovers. The problem with this is that Reading doesn't take the stock of debt resulting from the previous debt-led growth process into account. The rise in saving (fall in dissaving) leads to a fall in GDP which _in turn_ causes the debt/income ratios to rise (since the stock of debt won't fall until saving is sustained). He misses the last step, which makes any recession much worse. 3) I don't agree that a big country's currency depreciation does not mean inflation -- and none comes bigger than the US. It's possible that the dollar could depreciate sharply, in which case, there would be an inflationary surge. A big fall makes up for the buffering effect of the economy being big. Even with a mild fall, dollar depreciation broadcasts stagnation to the rest of the world, which then feeds back to hit the US. 4) The new economy is not dead. I'm not totally convinced that there was a new economy, i.e., a significant rise in labor productivity growth in the late 1990s, which lowered the NAIRU (or shifted the Phillips Curve to the left, if you wish). Not only are the data shaky (and the period discussed too short), but the NAIRU/PC shifts leftward only if wages don't grow as fast as labor productivity. It's the stagnation of wages relative to productivity -- and temporary effects of high dollar exchange rates -- that allowed the US to have high demand growth in the late 1990s without old-style Phillips Curve inflation. 5) the slow growth of wages relative to labor productivity also meant a rise in consumer debt loads (until the end of the 1990s, when the corporations took up the torch and started _their_ unhealthy debt accumulation) and also the existence of an underconsumptionist undertow. The latter meant that the demand growth couldn't occur without the unhealthy expansion of private-sector debt and the rise in the US external debt. This also encourage the Fisherian debt deflation and Devinian underconsumption trap that I discussed in my previous missive on this article. [*] it's interesting that Reading doesn't cite Wynne Godley. At 03:24 PM 10/29/01 -0800, you wrote: http://www.lombard-st.co.uk/dynamic/research/showheadline.asp Dear Jim, If you go to above address, the article is there. Scroll on that page down until you see the item: -Violent US downswing followed by recovery and then click on the link daily note under this heading. I would be very much interested in reading your further comments. Best, Sabri Jim Devine [EMAIL PROTECTED] http://bellarmine.lmu.edu/~jdevine
RE: A sharp V-shaped economic downturn and recovery?
At 12:26 PM 10/30/01 -0800, you wrote: Thanks for taking the time to comment on the article. Would you be able to send me a list of a few references from where I can learn more about the Fisherian debt deflation and Devinian underconsumption trap? Best, Sabri Oncu Fisher's theory appears in Fisher, Irving. 1933. The Debt-Deflation Theory of Great Depressions. Econometrica 1: 337-57. It was also published as a book. This theory has appeared in orthodox mainstream textbooks, but not often. Devine's theory appears at http://bellarmine.lmu.edu/~jdevine/depr/D0.html [Published in Research in Political Economy. vol. 14: pp. 119-194.] See also my 1983 article Underconsumption, Over-Investment, and the Origins of the Great Depression. Review of Radical Political Economics. 15(2): 1-27. Jim Devine [EMAIL PROTECTED] http://bellarmine.lmu.edu/~jdevine
Re: Re: RE: A sharp V-shaped economic downturn and recovery?
Doug wrote: Jim Devine wrote: Fisher's theory appears in Fisher, Irving. 1933. The Debt-Deflation Theory of Great Depressions. Econometrica 1: 337-57. It was also published as a book. This theory has appeared in orthodox mainstream textbooks, but not often. Hyman Minsky has a somewhat obscure paper on the topic: -- (1982b). Debt Deflation Processes in Today's Institutional Environment, Banca Nazionale del Lavoro Review 143 (December), pp. 375-393. what did he say? I can imagine he said that Fisher's debt-deflation depression couldn't occur nowadays. He may still be right. Jim Devine [EMAIL PROTECTED] http://bellarmine.lmu.edu/~jdevine
Re: Re: Re: Re: RE: A sharp V-shaped economic downturn and recovery?
At 04:13 PM 10/30/01 -0500, you wrote: Jim Devine wrote: what did he [Minsky] say? I can imagine he said that Fisher's debt-deflation depression couldn't occur nowadays. He may still be right. It's been ages since I read it, and my copy is in storage in my parents' garage, but as I remember it, Minsky said that big government and indulgent central banks make a Fisher deflation impossible today. yeah, that's what he said many times. But these days, at least in the US, we have a smaller government (until recently running a surplus). The Fed may be indulgent at times, but until recently it was afraid of inflation (sometimes finding itself between a rock and a hard place, in Minsky's phrase, wanting to avoid debt defaults but afraid to fuel inflation). Further, an indulgent Fed could simply cause over-indebtedness to deepen. BTW, I wouldn't call recent Fed rate cuts indulgent. It's more panicked. I like PEN-L alum Penny Ciancanelli's formula - that in the Third World debt crisis, the Third World got a Fisher deflation and the First, a Minsky bailout. that's right, though the Minsky bail-out was attenuated by the late 1990s. I guess that kind of bail-out wasn't needed anymore, but the Fed helped cause the current almost-recession. Jim Devine [EMAIL PROTECTED] http://bellarmine.lmu.edu/~jdevine
Re: Aziz on Iraq
Ken Hanly wrote: Interesting that Aziz is a Roman Catholic! (From the Telgraph UK) originally, as I understand it, the Ba'ath movement was secularist. It only officially embraced Islam later, out of opportunism. So Aziz' Catholicism doesn't surprise me that much. His claims are not supported by Richard Butler, the former head of the UN weapons inspection team, who last week said Iraq retains large stockpiles of chemical weapons. but Scott (whose last name I've forgotten) who was a leader of the arms inspection in Iraq now is telling everyone that these stockpiles don't exist or are trivial. Jim Devine [EMAIL PROTECTED] http://bellarmine.lmu.edu/~jdevine
Re: Japanese Liquidity Trap
the food bag and shoes with money from the clothing bag. Every morning, she checks electricity and gas-meter readings and marks them on a wall calendar. When she noticed water bills were high, she screwed down the main water tap. This year, she threw out the old television set, and hasn't replaced it. The Kawamotos have worked out a lifelong-savings plan, plotting out income and expenses through 2023, but it doesn't look pretty. They will soon have two children in college, but Mr. Kawamoto's income isn't rising as expected, as the strapped local government tightens spending. That will leave them 5.5 million yen shy of the 30 million yen nest egg they hoped to have by 2012, when Mr. Kawamoto wants to retire, buy a little house in the country and try his hand at farming. Already, the Kawamotos have amended their savings plan, by expunging all the expenditures in the pleasure category until 2006. And so it is that in Japan, a land once notorious for its $100 melons and $6 cups of coffee, some people pine for the old days of rising prices. Mr. Kawamoto, gazing out at his garden, notes how his property's value has fallen back to nearly what he paid for it in 1975. It's easier to use money when prices are high, because whatever assets you have, they're going up, he says. Write to Phred Dvorak at [EMAIL PROTECTED] -- Michael Perelman Economics Department California State University [EMAIL PROTECTED] Chico, CA 95929 530-898-5321 fax 530-898-5901 Jim Devine [EMAIL PROTECTED] http://bellarmine.lmu.edu/~jdevine
Re: A sharp V-shaped economic downturn and recovery?
and commodity prices. The dollar may weaken, although this is still debatable. Certainly the Japanese yen will not be allowed to soar. Instead diminished private capital inflows into the US will be partially offset by increased official flows from Japanese foreign exchange market intervention. But in so far as the US trade-weighted dollar weakens, the effect will do more to lower prices in countries whose currencies appreciate than to raise prices in the US. In a world buyers' market a big country's currency depreciation does not mean inflation - and none comes bigger than the US. As the adjustment in private sector balances approaches completion, the way will be open for US growth to exceed potential once more. This is still of the order of 3½% with 1% coming from labour force growth. The 1990s improvement in productivity growth, to about 2½%, did not take it above rates achieved in the 1960s. It looked good because the 1970s and 1980s were so bad. The US in 2003 and 2004 could achieve 5½% a year growth and still the negative output gap would not be closed until 2005 at the earliest. The fall in unemployment towards NAIRU would lag the decrease in the output gap and probably not be achieved until possibly 2006. This boom would be accompanied by falling prices. The recovery in productivity and the weakness of wage pressure implies a sharp recovery in corporate profits. Meanwhile, falling prices would be boosting real incomes despite weak nominal growth. The implications for both Wall Street and the dollar are obvious. The new economy is not dead. In the exuberance of the bubble days it was exaggerated and misunderstood. Because the bubble led to such extreme financial imbalances, it was always nonsense to suppose the cycle had been abolished and the US could enjoy continued rapid non-inflationary growth forever. It was equally ridiculous to extrapolate forward the public sector surplus so that Federal debt could all be repaid. Such an extrapolation involved a similar one for the private sector deficit. Technological revolutions, of their nature, are inherently unstable. The 19 th century history shows that they cause long cycle large fluctuations, not merely in output but also in prices. There is nothing new in my analysis. But until now it has made me seem a prophet of doom - predicting a serious V-shaped US recession when the consensus denied the possibility. The danger now is that the consensus may become paranoid, seeing dangers of depression as in the short term the situation turns out worse than currently expected. But now is the time to be optimistic. The adjustment will be painful, but the prospects thereafter are exciting. Jim Devine [EMAIL PROTECTED] http://bellarmine.lmu.edu/~jdevine
Tuvalu and global warming
Farewell Tuvalu 1 of 2 Comment Farewell Tuvalu Andrew Simms Monday October 29, 2001 The Guardian The world has just shifted on its axis, but not in the way you might first imagine. A group of nine islands, home to 11,000 people, is the first nation to pay the ultimate price for global warming. For many years the most interesting thing to happen to the Pacific island state of Tuvalu was the sale of its internet domain name, .tv, for $50m (£35m). But, just as Tuvalu has traded in its virtual domain, it is about to lose its real one. The authorities in Tuvalu have publicly conceded defeat to the sea rising around them. Appeals have gone out to the governments of New Zealand and Australia to help in the full-scale evacuation of Tuvalu's population. After an apparent rebuff from Australia, the first group of evacuees is due to leave for New Zealand next year. Today governments will converge in Marrakesh for the first meeting since agreeing the Kyoto protocol on climate change; the scale of the challenge ahead is still emerging, as is the gross inadequacy of current plans. Tuvalu is paying for the rich world's experiment with the global atmosphere. At that price you could say that it has become the world's greatest creditor nation. Although a land of no mobile phones and one radio station, Tuvalu is literally going down in history. The archipelago may be home to only 11,000 souls, but on other islands another 7m are threatened. It doesn't stop there. Go further and in Bangladesh alone another 20m people stand to become environmental refugees. New and old claims to nationhood are at the root of the conflicts through which today's global economic powers are reasserting themselves. But the impact of climate change means the familiar mental landscape of international relations could be turned upside down. Several decades of dubious management of the global economy made whole parts of the world in Africa and Latin America synonymous with debt. However, the orthodox debt crisis will pale next to the scale of the emerging ecological debt crisis of climate change. Conventional debtors will become new environmental creditors and vice versa. And the world is not prepared for the implications. At the least, a new standard of universally recognised global citizenship will probably be needed to deal with the loss of nations. That will need to be coupled with an inclusive plan to tackle climate change and a commensurate compensation framework. Eun Jung Cahill Che, of the Honolulu-based Pacific Forum, asks in relation to Tuvalu: What will become of its territorial waters? What are the economic and security implications of disappearing exclusive economic zones? Can there be compensation for the loss of a country, its history, its culture, its way of life? How do you put a price on that? For at least 200 years, two dynamics have driven the global economy. One is the enormous growth of material wealth underwritten by humankind's rampant exploitation of fossil fuel. The other is the relentless widening of the gap between rich and poor. Now, everyone from Tony Blair to the head of the World Bank and former head of the IMF, agrees that the rich/poor divide fuels conflict. James Marriott, a writer, shows how brief the reign of the fossil fuel economy is going to be. His great-grandfather was the first in his family to smell petrol, and James's parents are the first, and due to climate change probably the last, generation to spend their pensions on international air travel. Costs and benefits in a warming world are grossly unfairly distributed. While countries such as the US enjoy a cheap fuel policy, the brunt of climate change - floods, rainstorms and drought - is borne by countries least able to cope - such as Tuvalu, Bangladesh and Mozambique. Ecological debt - where the rich take up more than their logical share of a finite environmental space - gives developing countries the moral high ground in international negotiations. There should be no question now of poor countries giving one cent of unpayable debt service to any rich country creditor before ecological debts are reconciled. A realistic global deal on debt would acknowledge the logical entitlement to share equally the global commons of the atmosphere and the economic opportunities it brings, within a plan to reduce the emission of greenhouse gases to environmentally tolerable levels. Rockefeller once said that the poor shall inherit the earth but not its mineral rights. He could never have guessed that the world would soon face a challenge so potentially apocalyptic, that giving the poor their rights would become the minimum necessary to clear up the mess and agree a global solution to climate change. Andrew Simms works for the New Economics Foundation and is writing a book about ecological debt. [EMAIL PROTECTED] Guardian Unlimited © Guardian Jim Devine [EMAIL PROTECTED] http
Re: Re: warm regards
Charles Brown wrote: Unlike Keynes, communist economists emphasize socialist revolution, not that we are all dead Doug writes: This is a canard that just won't die. Keynes was responding to the claims of orthodox economists that the depression would take care of itself in the long run. His response was the famous in the long run we are all dead - that something must be done now to alleviate poverty unemployment rather than waiting for market mechanisms to adjust themselves miraculously. there's an analogy here: there are some leftists (though there are very very few these days) who see capitalism as automatically gravitating toward socialist revolution in the future, just as some economists see the market as automatically solving problems in the long run. A more intelligent vision is akin to Keynes, seeing no automatic solutions, with socialist revolution as only a potential, one that may never be achieved. Actual political organizing, etc., is needed. Jim Devine [EMAIL PROTECTED] http://bellarmine.lmu.edu/~jdevine
Cold War II
in case anyone was wondering, the think-piece on the new Cold War was by me. Jim Devine [EMAIL PROTECTED] http://bellarmine.lmu.edu/~jdevine
Re: jim d's underconsumptionism
Rakesh wrote: Charles, here's Jim D's underconsumptionism: I think it's wrong to call my views underconsumptionism, since I don't fit with Bleaney's definition, which is based on a serious survey of the history of economic thought. Also, underconsumptionist is an epithet used too often by the self-described orthodox to avoid serious treatment of the question. If you wish to describe my perspective in one word, I would prefer over-accumulationism. quote from me Classical underconsumptionism posited that depression is normal for a capitalist economy, arising from a persistent tendency toward low consumer spending [Bleaney, 1976: 11]. Marx and many Marxists decisively criticized this theory and have been absolutely right to reject such universal stagnation tendencies [cf. Bleaney, 1976; Clarke, 1993].14 However, we should not reject the role of stagnant consumption in causing or encouraging crises under certain specific historical conditions. Unlike classical underconsumption theory, this paper (1) emphasizes forces endogenous to capitalism which drive it to over-expand rather than to stay mired in stagnation (see above); and (2) sees major periods (such as the 1960s) in which low consumption did not cause problems for capitalism. Underconsumption forces can play a role in two cases [Devine, 1983]. First, underconsumption problems can be crucial during the period after the crisis (whatever its reason), in an underconsumption trap.15 Falling wages and workers' consumption hurts profit rates if other elements of aggregate spending are prevented from rising enough to fully realize profits. Specifically, if capitalist accumulation is blocked by a mutually reinforcing combination of unused capacity, excessive debt, and pessimistic expectations, the competition to cut [[p. 125]] wages can contribute to turning a recession into a depression, as in the early 1930s (see section III.F). Second, in the theory of over-investment relative to consumption, the existence of stagnant workers' consumption requires a growing share of accumulation in the national product in order to realize surplus-value and profits. The structural tensions discussed above and rising profit rates can encourage such growth. Though in theory it is possible for growth to continue forever in this situation, accelerating accumulation implies that the economy becomes increasingly unstable and prone to collapse.16 The theory centers on the negative effects of excessively rising profit rates in an economic boom, and is developed for the 1920s in section III.C. unquote Rakesh continues: as i noted in a previous post, jim d's second form of underconsumptionism seems to bear a family resemblance to sweezy's theory of underconsumptionism in Theory of Capitalist Development... Family resemblance, yes, but since I read Sweezy criticized his view, I avoided some of his mistakes. See, for example, my critique of Baran Sweezy and the whole MONTHLY REVIEW view of the time (i.e., up to the early 1980s) in my 1983 REVIEW OF RADICAL POLITICAL ECONOMICS. Also, as noted above, the underconsumption cases are not the _only_ reasons for crises under capitalism. Jim Devine [EMAIL PROTECTED] http://bellarmine.lmu.edu/~jdevine
Re: Re: Re: jim d's underconsumptionism
At 12:45 PM 10/24/01 -0700, you wrote: now, now Jim, you may want to call your theory overaccumulation but it is precisely the kind of overaccumulation that would lead in Sweezy's estimation to underconsumption. The reason why my theory is not underconsumptionist is that overaccumulation need not end up with underconsumptionist results. In some eras, it may be relative to supply, leading to a rise in the ratio of fixed capital to output (related to the rising organic composition of capital), a fall in the rate of surplus-value, and a redistribution to raw-material producers. A combination of these depresses the rate of profit by limiting the production of profit, even if the realization side is easy. In fact you underline this underconsumption consequence yourself, so I am not putting words in your mouth. And whether you have challenged Sweezy on other points, it seems to me that you are saying the same thing as Sweezy does about in Theories of Capitalist Development (Sweezy in turn is drawing from Otto Bauer). This is of course a serious, impressive theory; I think it suffers from some of the problems specified by Shoul and others. Sweezy Bauer's theory is a version of the Harrod-Domar model that emphasizes consumption -- rather than total output -- limiting investment. (Crucially, Sweezy assumes that the output of consumption goods must be proportional to the stock of means of production, THEORY OF CAPITALIST DEVELOPMENT, p. 187.) I don't think investment needs to be limited by consumer demand, since the economy can go on a Tugan-Baranowsky path, in which the growth of Marx's department I justifies investment, which leads to growth in department I. (This is what I call bootstrap or profit-led growth.) The problem with this is not Sweezy's emphasis on technical rigidity (a la Harrod-Domar) but the fact that as more and more of the economy is dedicated to investment spending, it becomes increasingly unstable. BTW, I also don't understand the Sweezy/Bauer assumption that an increasing proportion of surplus value tends to be accumulated and an increasing proportion of accumulation tends to be invested, (p. 187). In my theory, in some historical eras, it's the rate of surplus-value that rises. I don't make any behavioral assumptions about the ratio of accumulation to surplus-value. Jim Devine [EMAIL PROTECTED] http://bellarmine.lmu.edu/~jdevine
Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: jim d's underconsumptionism
Rakesh wrote: crisis can result from failure to realize surplus value or shortage of surplus value in the production process. don't disagree--how could i? I don't try to be controversial as much as make clear the laws of motion of the system. i don't understand your interpretation of the rising OCC theory; it seems to me that you are applying Ricardian principles of declining returns to the capital stock. But this is not how Marx explained declining profitability from upward pressure on the OCC. Marx's explanation doesn't work, since investment in fixed capital automatically leads to a counteracting tendency, specifically, increases in labor productivity (which cheapens labor-power and the means of production). One doesn't need to accept the Okishio theorem to see them. Smart people like Sweezy saw the limits of Marx's argument a long time ago. I take these kinds of critiques seriously, so I see the rising organic composition of capital as mostly a cyclical phenomenon. Sweezy Bauer's theory is a version of the Harrod-Domar model that emphasizes consumption -- rather than total output -- limiting investment. (Crucially, Sweezy assumes that the output of consumption goods must be proportional to the stock of means of production, THEORY OF CAPITALIST DEVELOPMENT, p. 187.) I don't think investment needs to be limited by consumer demand, since the economy can go on a Tugan-Baranowsky path, in which the growth of Marx's department I justifies investment, which leads to growth in department I. (This is what I call bootstrap or profit-led growth.) The problem with this is not Sweezy's emphasis on technical rigidity (a la Harrod-Domar) but the fact that as more and more of the economy is dedicated to investment spending, it becomes increasingly unstable. but i don't understand your exact specification of this instability if the economy can indeed get on Tugan's happy merry-go-around. It's not happy, since business fixed investment (unlike workers' consumption spending) is subject to all sorts of fluctuations due to changes in expected profit rates and the like. In simple terms, workers _need_ to spend on consumer goods, while capitalists only _want_ to do fixed investment. (The role of credit makes matters more complicated, but let's leave that aside here.) It's true that there's an objective pressure for capitalists to do fixed investment (as I've emphasized, referring to structural tensions causing capitalists to face a cost for not investing), but a recession or depression undermines the investment by _all_ or most capitalists, thus undermining the competitive pressure to invest. Similarly, rising unemployment causes fear among the workers, so the pressure to invest that arises from class antagonisms on the job is attenuated. BTW, I also don't understand the Sweezy/Bauer assumption that an increasing proportion of surplus value tends to be accumulated and an increasing proportion of accumulation tends to be invested, (p. 187). In my theory, in some historical eras, it's the rate of surplus-value that rises. I don't make any behavioral assumptions about the ratio of accumulation to surplus-value. The idea that a greater percentage of surplus value (even as surplus value grows absolutely) is accumulated results from the pressure for rivals to capture greater economies of scale; I'll accept that. meanwhile surplus value grows in absolute terms but falls relatively to the capital advanced due to upward pressure on OCC. I can't assume that such upward pressure always and everywhere exists. Also, Sweezy Bauer don't make that assumption. So a greater percentage of the growing mass of sv has to be capitalized. A greater percentage of sv being capitalized obviously does not mean that capitalist consumption need drop in absolute terms. grossmann's idea however was that long before the mass of surplus value began to fall in absolute terms, capitalists would suffer a decline in their consumption fund. This would be enough to provoke crisis and intensified class war. I wasn't talking about Grossman, but about Sweezy Bauer. If Grossman's story is dependent on the assumption that the OCC rises steadily over time, it's got serious problems. Jim Devine [EMAIL PROTECTED] http://bellarmine.lmu.edu/~jdevine
banking queries
when was the US system of postal savings accounts abolished? why? (When did it arise?) when did the US savings loan system arise? why did credit unions become popular and when? Jim Devine [EMAIL PROTECTED] http://bellarmine.lmu.edu/~jdevine
Re: dirty laundry
All cross-posting must be discouraged, too. I can't imagine subscribing to pen-l _and_ lbo-talk and receiving two copies of so many messages... At 07:22 PM 10/24/2001 -0700, you wrote: I want to keep all dirty laundry from other lists off pen-l. -- Michael Perelman Economics Department California State University Chico, CA 95929 Tel. 530-898-5321 E-Mail [EMAIL PROTECTED] Jim Devine [EMAIL PROTECTED] http://bellarmine.lmu.edu/~JDevine
Re: Conditions and the Taliban
again, in the dock for having encouraged the delusion of Pakistani state power exerting itself beyond Pakistani borders, only to find that delusion becoming closer to reality as a result of its inconsistent and arrogant treatment of its erstwhile ally which was allowed to continue harbouring such ambitions. China also has a part in this, given its support of Pakistan's military as part of a regional containment strategy aimed at India. Thus the legacy of Richard Nixon, that bequeathed the world Pol Pot (supported throughout the 1980s by the US, UK and China) also gave us the very same Taliban and an utterly destabilised and now nuclear Pakistan. All of which is to say, there was no Russo-Afghan war. still, there was a lot of fervor on the part of many Afghans against the modernizing Afghan government and their Russian allies. Many Afghans died as a result (along with lots of Russians). It wasn't just the US elite pulling strings. The war wasn't just a campaign in the broader Cold War. Similarly, the Vietnamese weren't puppets of the Russians and the Vietnam war wasn't just a campaign in the broader Cold War. Jim Devine [EMAIL PROTECTED] http://bellarmine.lmu.edu/~JDevine
Re: Re: query: Engels anthropology
thanks for your reply. It was quite useful. Could you please give a quick summary of Dobbins' theory of the missing dialectic? At 10:21 AM 10/23/01 +0800, you wrote: If you are interested to track down a pamphlet by (I think) Peggy Anne Dobbins From Kin to Class you will find that she has discovered the missing dialectic in the equal exchange of necessary labour ... Jim Devine [EMAIL PROTECTED] http://bellarmine.lmu.edu/~JDevine Segui il tuo corso, e lascia dir le genti. (Go your own way and let people talk.) -- K. Marx, paraphrasing Dante A.
Re: late colonialism
Though I find the oil connection to be much more plausible to the current splendid little war than to the war against Serbia, there's one snag: if the US wins and then builds a pipeline through Afghanistan, it will have to be guarded with a lot of troops (paid for by guess who?) It's hard to imagine that the remnants of the Taliban and the splits from the Northern Alliance and from other groups will simply go away. This is a country that's perfect for informal warfare, while pipelines are easy to destroy. America's pipe dream A pro-western regime in Kabul should give the US an Afghan route for Caspian oil George Monbiot Tuesday October 23, 2001 The Guardian Is there any man, is there any woman, let me say any child here, Woodrow Wilson asked a year after the first world war ended, that does not know that the seed of war in the modern world is industrial and commercial rivalry? In 1919, as US citizens watched a shredded Europe scraping up its own remains, the answer may well have been no. But the lessons of war never last for long. The invasion of Afghanistan is certainly a campaign against terrorism, but it may also be a late colonial adventure. British ministers have warned MPs that opposing the war is the moral equivalent of appeasing Hitler, but in some respects our moral choices are closer to those of 1956 than those of 1938. Afghanistan is as indispensable to the regional control and transport of oil in central Asia as Egypt was in the Middle East. Afghanistan has some oil and gas of its own, but not enough to qualify as a major strategic concern. Its northern neighbours, by contrast, contain reserves which could be critical to future global supply. In 1998, Dick Cheney, now US vice-president but then chief executive of a major oil services company, remarked: I cannot think of a time when we have had a region emerge as suddenly to become as strategically significant as the Caspian. But the oil and gas there is worthless until it is moved. The only route which makes both political and economic sense is through Afghanistan. Jim Devine [EMAIL PROTECTED] http://bellarmine.lmu.edu/~jdevine
Re: Conditions and the Taliban
of the two superpowers or the current effort by the US power elite to create a world government in its image), if we want to understand an event like the recent wars in Afghanistan, we have to look at class, ethnicity, and the like inside the country. Jim Devine [EMAIL PROTECTED] http://bellarmine.lmu.edu/~jdevine
Fwd: terrorists at work.
We've been notified by Building Security that there have been 4 suspected terrorists working at our office. Three of the four, Bin Sleepin, Bin Loafin, and Bin Hidin, have been taken into custody. Security advised us that they could find no one fitting the description of the fourth cell member, Bin Workin. Police are confident that anyone who looks like Bin Workin should be easy to spot, and employees are asked to look for and report any sightings. Jim Devine [EMAIL PROTECTED] http://bellarmine.lmu.edu/~jdevine
Fwd: Who's Who?
Who's who?
Confused? Having difficulty telling the good guys from the bad guys? Use
this handy guide to differences between Terrorists and the U.S. Government:
TERRORISTS:
Supposed leader is the spoiled son of a powerful politician, from
extremely wealthy oil family
US GOVERNMENT:
Supposed leader is the spoiled son of a powerful politician, from
extremely wealthy oil family
TERRORISTS:
Leader has declared a holy war ('Jihad') against his 'enemies'; believes
any nation not with him is against him; believes god is on his side, and
that any means are justified.
US GOVERNMENT:
Leader has declared a holy war ('Crusade') against his 'enemies'; believes
any nation not with him is against him; believes god is on his side, and
that any means are justified.
TERRORISTS:
Supported by extreme fundamentalist religious leaders who preach hatred,
intolerance, subjugation of women, and persecution of non-believers
US GOVERNMENT:
Supported by extreme fundamentalist religious leaders who preach hatred,
intolerance, subjugation of women,and persecution of non-believers
TERRORISTS:
Leadership was not elected by a majority of the people in a free and fair
democratic election
US GOVERNMENT:
Leadership was not elected by a majority of the people in a free and fair
democratic election
TERRORISTS:
Kills thousands of innocent civilians, some of them children, in cold
blooded bombings
US GOVERNMENT:
Kills (tens of) thousands of innocent civilians, some of them children, in
cold blooded bombings
TERRORISTS:
Operates through clandestine organization (al Qaeda) with agents in many
countries; uses bombing, assassination, other terrorist tactics
US GOVERNMENT:
Operates through clandestine organization (CIA) with agents in many
countries; uses bombing, assassination,other terrorist tactics
TERRORISTS:
Using war as pretext to clamp down on dissent and undermine civil liberties
US GOVERNMENT:
Using war as pretext to clamp down on dissent and undermine civil liberties
STOP THE WAR!
The following comic strip was CENSORED from the New York Daily News:
http://www.ucomics.com/boondocks/viewbo.cfm?uc_full_date=20011004uc_comic=
bouc_daction=X
That's the Boondocks cartoon, which has been quite excellent lately,
risking censorship daily. BTW, speaking of censorship, I never saw a story
about UN denunciation of the war in the L.A. TIMES.
The ultimate weakness of violence is that it is a descending spiral,
begetting the very thing it seeks to destroy... Through violence you may
murder the hater, but you do not murder hate.
-- Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr.
Killing for peace is like fucking for virginity.
-- Vietnam era antiwar slogan
Jim Devine [EMAIL PROTECTED] http://bellarmine.lmu.edu/~jdevine
Re: Conditions and the Taliban
Karl Carlile wrote: In many ways then the Taliban's success in establishing a state in the extraordinary way that it has is the only way possible given the tremendously contradictory nature of Afghanistan. In many ways it constitutes an extraordinary achievement on the part of the Taliban. In so far as the Taliban is despotic and ruthless it is not because this is its wilfully subjective predilection. It is because objectively this is the only way, under the narrow constraints that prevail, in which a state can exist in Afghanistan. This is the only way, given the extraordinary circumstances, in which the Afghani state can exist. The Taliban state is not a capitalist state. Consequently it inevitably bears an entirely different character to the bourgeois state. I generally agree with Karl's analysis, but there are some points I'd like to make: 1) there was a unified -- and unifying -- state in Afghanistan before the Taliban. (It was also modernizing, educating women, etc., which stimulated the ire of the fundamentalist men.) This, of course, was destroyed in the Russo-Afghan war. 2) there is some commodity exchange that crosses the whole of Afghanistan. The media point to smuggling as a major economic activity. Some of this -- or most of this -- is opium, part of the world market. 3) the Taliban isn't just a product of the pre-capitalist and thus fragmented nature of Afghan society. It's also a result of the civil war that followed the Russo-Afghan war, in which the various elements of what's now called the Northern Alliance fought with each other, while raping and pillaging and changing sides. Many people in Afghanistan -- plus, I am sure, the US policy-makers -- saw the Taliban as restoring order, something necessary to everyday normal life. 4) one of the advantages that the Taliban has is that it's of the dominant Pushtun ethnicity. 5) I think that one of most likely results of the US war against the Afghans is that the civil war will return. The UN will be given the job of reconstructing society and of supporting whatever government is imposed. Since the UN is so under-funded, Afghanistan will be yet another Africa-style basket case, too poor for much of anything (except opium production). The Taliban will survive, perhaps as two or three different guerilla groups (that hate each other). Of course, my predictions regularly turn out to be wrong. Jim Devine [EMAIL PROTECTED] http://bellarmine.lmu.edu/~jdevine
quote du jour
from Air Force Gen. Richard B. Myers, chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff: This is going to be a very, very long campaign. It may take till next spring. It may take till next summer. It may take longer than that in Afghanistan. (exerpted from http://slate.msn.com/code/TodaysPapers/TodaysPapers.asp). Jim Devine [EMAIL PROTECTED] http://bellarmine.lmu.edu/~jdevine
Greenspan translated
. To the extent that we have a solution for the savage downturn now under way, it is to reinforce the weaknesses that were already glaringly evident before September 11 - an excess of debt, an excess of speculation and an excess of spending. We at the Fed believe that the breakthroughs in new technology are for real. But railways were a real technological breakthrough as well, and in the mid-19th century there was a business cycle in which there was over-investment, vast amounts of hucksterism that encouraged wild speculation and painful periods when investors lost their shirts. It all sounds drearily familiar, and to the extent that my entire policy has relied on underpinning over-valued financial assets, the buck stops with me. The fact is, however, that the alternative to what I am doing is a full-scale credit crunch. Irving Fisher said that a combination of excessive debt and deflation was the cause of the Great Depression, and that is what I am trying to avoid. But it won't be easy. We are the world's biggest economy, but we are awash with spare capacity bought on the never-never during the wild excesses of the late 1990s. A year of falling industrial production even before September 11 meant capacity utilisation was historically low, especially in the technology sector, where the bubble mentality was strongest. There was little appetite for fresh investment among entrepreneurs anyway, but now we are relearning that Keynes was right when he said that the future is too fraught with risk and uncertainty to believe in the infallibility of financial markets. What does all this mean? It means that the global economy could be in for a very rough ride. It means that we could be at one of those points - as in 1929 and 1973 - when the prevailing economic orthodoxy is challenged. It means that politicians are going to be a lot more wary about handing over power to market forces (and central banks, for that matter). And it means my reputation is firmly on the line. Now turn that machine back on and make sure this is turned into the usual nonsense. [EMAIL PROTECTED] Jim Devine [EMAIL PROTECTED] http://bellarmine.lmu.edu/~jdevine
the ECONOMIST on the slump
the world economy is flirting with such a deep recession. Copyright © 2001 The Economist Jim Devine [EMAIL PROTECTED] http://bellarmine.lmu.edu/~jdevine
query: Engels anthropology
Has there been a serious effort to consider Engels' _Origin of the Family, Private Property, and the State_ from the perspective of recent anthropology, i.e., to present a serious critique (rather than a trashing) and reconciliation? (The effort by Evelyn Reed in the edition that I own seems to be a bit too hagiographical.) Jim Devine [EMAIL PROTECTED] http://bellarmine.lmu.edu/~jdevine
frontiers of free enterprise
this morning I received an e-mail advertisement for a product which could allegedly record everything my spouse or children do with their PCs. I can check, I guess, to see if my wife is having an on-line affair, while she can see the large numbers of messages I send to pen-l (along with the multiple choice tests I write). To make things worse, this was the advertising equivalent of a virus: it calls up a web-site. Since I use dial-up networking at home and I usually work off-line, it calls up Internet Explorer, which promptly gives me an error message. In the meantime, I can't read the newest stuff from pen-l. and people say that ObL is the big problem. ;-) Jim Devine [EMAIL PROTECTED] http://bellarmine.lmu.edu/~JDevine
Re: Re: frontiers of free enterprise
At 12:41 AM 10/20/01 +, you wrote: G'day Jim, In the meantime, I can't read the newest stuff from pen-l. No problem, Jim. PEN-L has been a fortnight ahead of the mass media on the issue of the day, a decade ahead of the Nobel judges on economic critique, and, in seeking to give actual substance to the 200-year-old ideals that actually serve to legitimate the current order, still well ahead on politics, too. that's right -- while pen-l never has petty little arguments about unimportant things and is never invaded by the new true believers in the War Against Terrorism. (WAT?) Jim Devine [EMAIL PROTECTED] http://bellarmine.lmu.edu/~jdevine
Re: Re: Re: Re: Discussion of Empire, 26.10.01
Doug Henwood wrote: C 2) Negri's belief that class struggle influences the profit rate (Callinicos' position is the orthodox rising OCC one); ... Carrol writes: Something screwed up here. Marx is fairly clear that a social element enters into the value of labor power -- that is the value of labor power is in part established by class struggle. Then it gets complicated I suppose. the key issue is whether or not the profit falls due to (1) wages rising relative to labor productivity (i.e., a fall in the rate of surplus-value due to a rise in the value of labor-power) or (2) a rise in the organic composition of capital (i.e., a fall in the value of output produced compared to the value of the means of production) due to excessive mechanization. Some orthodox Marxists see #1 as heretical, and instead emphasize #2, which they see as a result of the dynamics of capitalism working behind the backs of the participants in the class struggle and independent of their consciousness. Some unorthodox Marxists see #2 as old-fashioned, the Marxism of the second third internationals, in which capitalism automatically self-destructs due to the falling rate of profit, so that the role of class struggle is secondary. In fact, there is a large school of the unorthodox who emphasize class -- and other -- struggles over any role of capitalist accumulation. For me, the phrase orthodox Marxism is an oxymoron, while unorthodox Marxism is redundant. I would emphasize both: capitalist accumulation leads to over-accumulation and crisis (a very general phenomenon) -- while class struggle within the context set by capital accumulation helps determine the form (and specifics) of the crisis, i.e., falling rate of profit due to excess mechanization, underconsumption, high-employment/high-wage profit squeeze, scarce raw materials profit squeeze, or a combination of these. See, for example, my article on the Great Depression at http://bellarmine.lmu.edu/~jdevine/depr/D0.html. Section 1 (d1.html) is where I deal with crisis theory in general. Jim Devine [EMAIL PROTECTED] http://bellarmine.lmu.edu/~jdevine
Re: capturing ObL
who is Eric Rudolph? At 11:47 AM 10/19/01 -0700, you wrote: I wonder if capturing Eric Rudolph would be good practice when the U.S. in locating ObL? -- Michael Perelman Economics Department California State University Chico, CA 95929 Tel. 530-898-5321 E-Mail [EMAIL PROTECTED] Jim Devine [EMAIL PROTECTED] http://bellarmine.lmu.edu/~jdevine
Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Discussion of Empire, 26.10.01
can be empirically disconfirmed. The rate of exploitation has not been attentuated; as is well known, Fred supplements the OCC theory with the addition of the unproductive/productive labor ratio. I find the idea that #1 can be knocked down by including unproductive labor costs as part of surplus-value -- as Fred does -- to be unconvincing. Surplus-value is supposed to be the basis for accumulation. The spending on unproductive labor is not. So we should look to what Fred calls the conventional rate of profit, which treats unproductive labor costs as _costs_. At best, Fred's theory is a version of the labor-squeeze theory of the falling profit rate: capital's dynamics lead to excessive spending on labor (from the perspective of capital as a whole), specifically spending on unproductive labor. That's _prima facie_ plausible, but needs more work. Its validity would likely depend on historical circumstances. I find it quite objectionable that marxists are called orthodox believers who are concerned with heresies. But it's just bourgeois economics in radical disguise slinging mud. As I said above, I referred specifically to 'orthodox' Marxists -- and was NOT criticizing Marxists in general (or even orthodox ones in general). As I said, I think that the idea of a Marxist orthodoxy doesn't make sense: Marxian political economy has always been a _debate_, not an orthodoxy. Howard King's two-volume history of Marxian economics makes this clear (though they consistently take sides in the debates, often hurting their presentations' completeness and fairness). I'm glad it's implied that I'm a bourgeois economist in radical disguise. That hopefully counteracts being called an apologist for Osama bin Laden. Some unorthodox Marxists see #2 as old-fashioned, the Marxism of the second third internationals, in which capitalism automatically self-destructs due to the falling rate of profit, so that the role of class struggle is secondary. Mattick and Grossmann showed how off base this interpretation of their work was time and time again. No attempt is ever made to work through their writings and rejoinders to see if this subordination of class struggle really haunts their outlook. To be sure, both thought that the overthrow of the system required some objective weakening of it, but neither thought that the system would overthrow itself. Even though I find these two authors' works to be doubtful (though I haven't read enough of their work to be sure), I agree that this unorthodox Marxist view is incomplete, one-sided. Just like the kind of orthodox Marxism I referred to. That was my point. If you say that no-one believes in the theory of the automatic self-destruction of capitalism, you're right in general, but I have met people who do. For me, the phrase orthodox Marxism is an oxymoron, while unorthodox Marxism is redundant. I would emphasize both: capitalist accumulation leads to over-accumulation and crisis (a very general phenomenon) -- while class struggle within the context set by capital accumulation helps determine the form (and specifics) of the crisis, i.e., falling rate of profit due to excess mechanization, underconsumption, high-employment/high-wage profit squeeze, scarce raw materials profit squeeze, or a combination of these. Rakesh: A marxist does not deny the possibility of an underconsumption crisis. What Mattick argued was that insufficient demand was itself the result of a crisis in accumulation engendered by an insuffiency of surplus value *in the process of production* which thus retains its explanatory primacy in accordance with historical materialist theory. an insufficiency of surplus value in the process of production? during the 1920s in the US, when labor productivity in manufacturing soared relative to real wages? that's an excessive sufficiency of surplus-value in production. Erik Olin Wright understood this well. where? And Jim if you say that crises can be caused by any one of multiple factors, I don't see how you have a theory of crisis any more. We might as well read the WSJ. You clearly didn't read what I wrote. Again, go look at the 1994 RESEARCH IN POLITICAL ECONOMY article. It appears at: http://bellarmine.lmu.edu/Faculty/JDevine/subpages/depr/d0.html or http://bellarmine/~Jdevine/depr/d0.html. I hope that the insulting reference to the WSJ also helps counteract the insulting suggestion that I support ObL. With luck, all insults cancel out. For me, they simply indicate the quality of those who use them. Jim Devine [EMAIL PROTECTED] http://bellarmine.lmu.edu/~jdevine
more crisis theory.
[was: Re: [PEN-L:18878] Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Discussion of Empire, 26.10.01] Rakesh writes:. oops out the door. I know the feeling. meant it's hard to see why the rate of exploitation would decrease in secular terms over the course of accumulation, though it's easy to see why it may not tend to increase sufficiently. I don't know of anyone who thinks that the rate of exploitation would decrease secularly. Any tendency for this to happen would be counteracted with what's crudely called a capital strike. Jim Devine [EMAIL PROTECTED] http://bellarmine.lmu.edu/~jdevine
Re: RE: Nobel Laureate Encourages Global Justice Movement
At 01:22 PM 10/18/01 -0500, you wrote: Peter, Jim, or anyone - In the NK lit, why doesn't the change in productivity associated with the higher wage cause a shift in the Ls curve? Mat I'm no expert, but the change in productivity associated with the higher wage refers to the demand-for-labor curve. It's either a movement along the curve (the Marginal Product of Labor must be higher to justify hiring a more expensive worker) or a shift of the curve (the efficiency wage hypothesis, in which both the AP and MP of labor rise because of greater worker motivation, etc.) On the supply side, a higher wage would evoke a higher quantity of labor supplied (a movement along the supply curve). If we're talking about the economy as a whole, the increase in quantity of labor supplied would be nil (at least in reasonable versions of NC economics). It would not shift the supply-of-labor curve. Of course, I don't believe in the theory presented above. Some other time, I'll give my take on this issue. Jim Devine [EMAIL PROTECTED] http://bellarmine.lmu.edu/~jdevine
Re: Re: Globalization and the Arab world
a lot of meaning). I would see a third-worldist as different (and I'd include the hyphen in the middle). Instead of moral-theological stuff, it would refer to social situations and structures of the world. It involves seeing the main contradiction in the world social system as core vs. periphery (imperialism vs. the oppressed), downplaying the contradictions within the core and within the periphery. (The latter contradictions typically involve the liberal business of the conflict between what's good for the whole (the core or the periphery) and what's good for individuals.) I happen to think that not only are there contradictions between the core and the periphery, but there are _class_ contradictions within each sector. Not only that, there are bad people on both sides: P.M. Berlusconi of Italy springs to mind, as does Osama bin Laden. Of course, Berlusconi's power is limited by the Italian working-class and by competition within the capitalist class, whereas ObL's power is limited only by the amount of resentment with and disgust at the targets of his ire and the amount of mindless faith he can use. BTW, today's L.A. DAILY NEWS (which plays second fiddle to the TIMES) has a picture of our fearless leader, his Dubyaness, speaking in Sacramento, California. He appears in front of a huge US flag (like Patton in the movie). The headline: Pro-War Rally (or something like that). For the on-line version, see http://www.dailynewslosangeles.com/news/articles/1001/18/new02.asp. Jim Devine [EMAIL PROTECTED] http://bellarmine.lmu.edu/~jdevine
Re: RE: Re: RE: Nobel Laureate Encourages Global Justice Movement
At 04:41 PM 10/18/01 -0500, you wrote: sorry, Jim, I meant the Ld curve. if the Ld curve shifts, why do we end up with any unemployment, presuming the labor market settles into the new equilibrium? the Bowles/Gintis argument is that employers deliberately pay a wage about the market-clearing wage in order to motivate workers. I don't believe this, since not all industries pay efficiency wages: those rendered unemployed in one industry simply more to another one. In order to get unemployment in this model, other imperfections need to be introduced. But if they are, the Walras-Arrow-Debreu model falls apart, since it can't handle having more than one different kind of imperfection. So even though the efficiency wage theory makes some sense, the W-A-D framework that it's used in should be flushed down the commode. Jim Devine [EMAIL PROTECTED] http://bellarmine.lmu.edu/~jdevine
US on a limb
from the L.A. TIMES, Oct. 18, 2001: U.S. Has Put Itself Out on a Long Limb By JONATHAN POWER, Jonathan Power is a London-based columnist As the bombing progresses, the crater the U.S. has dug for itself gets ever bigger. It is not so much that the bombing of Afghanistan has stirred a hornets' nest in neighboring Pakistan, where militant fundamentalist allies of the Taliban and Al Qaeda itch to get control of that nation's nuclear arsenal. It is that it has destabilized the United States' carefully nurtured relationships with the pillars of the Islamic world: Saudi Arabia, with its oil wealth and holy sites, and Egypt, with its large population and sense of historical destiny. If these diplomatically and militarily tight relationships become undone, then the whole script of the Middle East story will have to be rewritten. There will be no reliable fixer of the world oil price, no trustworthy Arab interlocutor with the Palestinians. Israel will be surrounded by enemies who have lost all patience with its prevarications. There will be no one to hold back the stealthy preparations that both Saudi Arabia and Egypt have made to go nuclear. The essence of the problem is this: While the pro-Western Egyptian and Saudi leadership has never had any deep sympathy for the fundamentalist radicals, neither government has ever felt motivated to shut down its ceaseless propaganda against Israel and the U.S. Indeed, they have regarded the wild talk as a safety valve, more acceptable than calls for more democracy or respect for human rights within their own political order. This balancing act could last only as long as there seemed to be progress on the establishment of a viable Palestinian state and as long as that day arrived before the militants had made too many preparations of the kind that led to Sept. 11. But there was always a kind of inevitability about terror. Yet Washington lived with the ambiguities of the Saudi government, never contemplating that Saudi Arabia would refuse the use of its large and sophisticated base. It never guessed that Egypt--which the U.S. has subsidized to the tune of $2 billion a year--would not, in the United States' great hour of need, rally itself to give the U.S. a visible Arab military ally. Instead, the U.S. has been left almost naked in its quest. True, the 56-nation Organization of the Islamic Conference has condemned the terrorist attacks on New York and the Pentagon, but the statement, if read for what is omitted, is very much the bare bones of a supportive declaration. Even in the West, ones senses, for all the rhetoric of the leadership of Germany and France, a wish by many people to hold back from serious military involvement. Only Britain has rushed forward, despite Prime Minister Tony Blair's original conviction that bombing might be counterproductive. So now the U.S. finds itself on the longest of limbs. Only good fortune--the unlikely event that the bombing does smoke out Osama bin Laden--can save face. But even Bin Laden's capture would no more end the terrorism than did the capture and eventual killing of the drug baron Pablo Escobar halt drug trafficking from Colombia. Undoubtedly, however, Bin Laden's arraignment would give time for everyone to catch their breath. The bombing offers only a small chance of such success. Meanwhile, the longer it continues, the more it riles public opinion. The big changes have to happen sooner or later, later being three months from now at most. This means that the U.S. has to use its political and financial muscle to push Israel into some forward movement agreeable to Palestinians. It means that the U.S. and Europe must stop trying to settle the petrodollar problem by marketing sophisticated armaments to the Middle East. Rather, they must seek rapid ways of cutting their dependency on Middle Eastern oil and push for a marked improvement in human rights practices. This does not mean not being engaged or friendly with these governments. Quite the contrary. All-out embargoes never did anyone any good, as relations with both Iraq and Iran have shown. But if sanctions are used, they must be used with discrimination and care, primarily aimed at the military sector. This may not make the bitter spirits of Bin Laden go away, but it will drain the swamp in which his mosquitoes hatch. As for him, he should be pursued with the same diligence that the Israelis once hounded Adolf Eichmann. With quiet police work, not noisy war work. Jim Devine [EMAIL PROTECTED] http://bellarmine.lmu.edu/~jdevine
Re: fiscal policy
://www.latimes.com/business/la-100501debt.story are they assuming that monetary policy will finally work? or that the mythical self-curative forces of the market will work? the last refers to the effects of falling prices, which are likely to spur a deeper recession (as debt loads get worse). Jim Devine [EMAIL PROTECTED] http://bellarmine.lmu.edu/~jdevine
Re: Re: A request and a suggestion.
At 11:07 AM 10/5/01 -0400, you wrote: the question i have for michael perelman is: do economics professors and theorists usually frequent lap dancers? ;-) I never inhaled. Jim Devine [EMAIL PROTECTED] http://bellarmine.lmu.edu/~jdevine
Re: New economy bull
At 01:51 AM 10/6/01 +, you wrote: the golden rule remains that an Al cut is worth a four-day rally. I really don't know why the man bothers ... in theory, he doesn't care about what happens to the stock market (or shouldn't care). He's supposedly trying to help Main Street, not Wall Street. Jim Devine [EMAIL PROTECTED] http://bellarmine.lmu.edu/~jdevine
Re: Re: Re: New economy bull
On Fri, Oct 05, 2001 at 10:56:39AM -0700, I wrote: in theory, he [Alan Greedspan] doesn't care about what happens to the stock market (or shouldn't care). He's supposedly trying to help Main Street, not Wall Street. At 12:28 PM 10/5/01 -0700, you wrote: In which theory?? the one that is put forth in the media and the textbooks. Jim Devine [EMAIL PROTECTED] http://bellarmine.lmu.edu/~jdevine
Re: The commoner on the war
At 08:41 AM 10/3/01 -0700, you wrote: You might be interested in looking at the e-magazine, http://www.thecommoner.org It has a number of articles on the war as well as some interesting theoretical articles. Its previous issue concerned primitive accumulation. the latter had an article by Michael Perelman. Jim Devine [EMAIL PROTECTED] http://bellarmine.lmu.edu/~jdevine
Edward Said
according to a SLATE summary of an article in the WEEKLY [DOUBLE] STANDARD, An article scorns Edward Said specifically and post-colonial theory in general. As Said has watched his dream of an alliance between Western liberalism and Arab nationalism crumble with the World Trade Center, he has turned to the same Orientalist language he's spent his career attacking. For example, he recently derided the terrorists for their primitive ideas, magical thinking, and lying religious claptrap. is this true? Jim Devine [EMAIL PROTECTED] http://bellarmine.lmu.edu/~jdevine
traditional values
from SLATE -- And what could be a more traditional value than insensitive stupidity? The [Washington POST] reports that the Rev. Louis Sheldon, chairman and founder of the Traditional Values Coalition, said yesterday that the public and private relief agencies providing assistance to Sept. 11 attack survivors should not aid surviving members of gay partnerships. Jim Devine [EMAIL PROTECTED] http://bellarmine.lmu.edu/~jdevine
STRATFOR
Eerily reminding me of old pen-l discussions of the US/NATO war against Serbia, today as I was driving into work, US NPR quoted the spooky STRATFOR's leader for information about US psychological warfare against Afghanistan. Jim Devine [EMAIL PROTECTED] http://bellarmine.lmu.edu/~jdevine
Re: Attack today?
At 07:34 AM 10/4/01 -0500, you wrote: Who knows? But here is a report from Iran via the Nation: cheers, Ken Hanly The US may launch an attack on Afghanistan on Thursday (today), Radio Tehran learnt through a reliable Pakistani source on Wednesday. Pakistan has handed over five military bases to the US for possible retaliatory strikes on Afghanistan, the source told the Pushto service of the Radio. The STRATFOR guy suggested that these leaks may be part of psychological operations against Afghanistan, maybe even undermining the solidity of the Taliban. It keeps them in a permanent state of alert (and fear), which isn't justified until the end. Or at least that is the theory. Jim Devine [EMAIL PROTECTED] http://bellarmine.lmu.edu/~jdevine
Re: 'globalisation' of beaks and peepers
At 12:44 AM 10/5/01 +, you wrote: Just listening to mellifluous Auntie Beeb whilst going through my evening PEN-L revelations when on comes a spot about thousands of Japanese girls spending their first year's savings on new eyelids and pointy noses. On the other hand, the bad guy in the movie Godzilla 2000 (a classic!) looks extremely Western among the Japanese -- and is dubbed to talk like John Wayne. (Of course, the Godzilla movies have traditionally been anti-nuke, thus having an anti-US subtext. But then again, in this one it's asserted that scientists somehow created Goddie in the lab. At the end, it turns out that there's a little bit of Godzilla in all of us.) Jim Devine [EMAIL PROTECTED] http://bellarmine.lmu.edu/~jdevine
Re: Greider and Takings Ideology
Steve Diamond wrote: The Greider piece is excellent. He brings to light one of the hidden mechanisms used in international trade law to carry out the race to the bottom on a global scale. Epstein has always struck me as someone who has some kind of intellectual block on reality. Considering he has spent so much of his career in Hyde Park in the heart of the south side of Chicago it amazes me that he has so little grasp of social reality... Urban renewal destroyed a thriving Black neighborhood around the University of Chicago Hyde Park that produced a _cordon sanitaire_ to protect the whites. This probably reinforced the normal academic propensity to engage in ivory-tower thinking. Jim Devine [EMAIL PROTECTED] http://bellarmine.lmu.edu/~jdevine
Re: Informed opinion?
At 01:12 PM 10/4/01 +0300, you wrote: Dove and hawk strategy to topple Taliban FRED HALLIDAY The Herald, 4 October 2001 MUCH is made of the record of the Afghans in fighting invading enemies, the British on three occasions in colonial times, the Russians in the 1980s. The terrain in Afghanistan is rugged, there are men prepared to fight and die, the intelligence available on the country is exiguous. But Afghanistan today is not the country it was two decades or a century ago: the society, and the tribal, ethnic, and religious structures that sustained past resistance, has been pulverised. but a US invasion might create the impetus to unite the Afghans. The Taliban is a group of at most 40,000 armed men, with rudimentary weapons, which has been unable to prosecute the war against its Northern Alliance opponents. Its increased reliance on foreign volunteers explains some of its recent actions: the publicity stunt of blowing up the Buddhist statues (a response, it was claimed by some, to an international Buddhist conspiracy orchestrated by Japan to arm opposition groups inside Af-ghanistan); the increasing use of militants from Pakistan; the recent appointment of Juma Namangoni, the head of the Islamic Movement of Uzbekistan, as a senior commander of Taliban forces, with 9000 men under his control. By all accounts, Afghanistan is a society with little capacity to resist and where many people would be glad to see the end of the Taliban. A purely military action by the US would provoke resentment, and resistance. and a reformed Taliban -- perhaps with new leadership -- could be created to unify the people against foreign invaders (infidels). An initiative that combined military action against the Taliban forces, and its al Qaeda allies, with a humanitarian and political initiative, would stand much more chance of success. Many attempts to bring peace, and compromise, to Afghanistan have failed over the past 15 years: amidst the despair of the present situation, there may be a better chance. An opportunity for diplomatic action, linked to military intervention, may be present. The international authority, and framework, for such a solution already exists, in the resolutions of the UN Security Council which, in 1997, set up the 6+2 process: in this, the six neighbouring countries (Pakistan, Iran, Turmenistan, Uzbekistan, Tajikistan, China) plus Russia and the US have met to discuss the formation of a coalition government, the establishment of the context for a substantial international programme of humanitarian aid and reconstruction, the termination of the drugs trade, and the ending of arms flows into and out of Afghanistan. At one point, in Tashkent in July 1999, they even got the Taliban and the Northern Alliance to sit at the same table. The problems up to now have been twofold: one, the Taliban has refused to compromise with the Northern Alliance, the force that is still recognised by most of the world as the legitimate government of Afghanistan; two, the outside states have not found common ground - Pakistan has resisted any attempts to change its support for the Taliban, and the Americans and the Iranians have found that their other differences prevent any co-operation in the context of 6+2 I recently read in the GUARDIAN (U.K.) that the Northern Alliance is a bunch of looters and rapers. Also, it's a group that lacks the large Pushtun ethnic base and clear ideology of Taliban and will look bad if allied with the infidels. Fred Halliday is Professor of International Relations at the London School of Economics and the author of The World at 2000 he used to get published in the NEW LEFT REVIEW a lot. He seems to have gone establishment. If I remember correctly, he was one of those who was unhinged when the USSR fell, since he admired that country to some extent. Jim Devine [EMAIL PROTECTED] http://bellarmine.lmu.edu/~jdevine
Re: Re: Re: Greider and Takings Ideology
At 12:32 PM 10/4/01 -0400, you wrote: I dunno, when I lived in Hyde Park, a drawbridge would have been better to get from this ivory (now endangered) tower, through the free-fire zone to the public transit stop. Besides, I think it's probably still possible to ignore social difference by driving to work there to the well-protected parking lots from the toney suburbs. right. Profs wouldn't take public transportation and would drive in from the suburbs. Those who live in Hyde Park would drive through the DMZ. why endangered? Jim Devine [EMAIL PROTECTED] http://bellarmine.lmu.edu/~jdevine
Re: New economy bull
This year has shown that inventory-free companies do not escape the business cycle or disruptions in demand Financial Times, 25 September 2001 Peter Martin There are really only two types of business: those with inventory and those without. In recent years, inventory-heavy businesses have looked with envy on their lighter-footed rivals. Indeed, they have tried hard to emulate them, through practices such as just-in-time manufacturing and complete outsourcing. Academics wax lyrical about the pull business model, in which the customer's order pulls goods through the supply chain, rather than relying on a manufacturing plan to push goods through the factory. Such an approach turns a traditional inventory-based manufacturing business into something much more like an inventory-free service supplier. But this year has provided a brutal lesson that both kinds of business are equally vulnerable. The inventory types lost out in the spring when it became clear that for all their attempts to minimise the impact of inventory on their business, things could still go disastrously wrong. A revealing article by three Booz-Allen Hamilton consultants* in the latest issue of Strategy Business magazine explores how such paragons of the modern supply chain as Cisco and Compaq ran into sizeable inventory problems. In fact, Cisco did it twice, once on the upswing - when it could not get enough components to produce the goods its customers wanted - and once on the downswing when it ended up with unwanted outsourcing capacity and far too much inventory The danger in outsourcing, then, lies not in fumbled execution but in allowing it to cloud your view of the business's underlying risks. By pushing the responsibility for manufacturing on to someone else, you do not free yourself of the burden of watching out for problems ahead and adjusting capacity commitments accordingly. Manufacturing businesses may like to think that all their troubles stem from the tyranny of the inventory cycle. This year's lesson is twofold: escaping from it is harder than you think; and it may not do you much good, anyway. Just ask an airline boss. at last! it's about time that the zero inventories mean stability fallacy died. The basic problem with this view is the fallacy of composition (i.e., an individualistic viewpoint): just because a single business doesn't need or have inventories doesn't mean that the economy as a whole doesn't have them. In any event, unwanted inventory accumulation (general overproduction) is a symptom more than a cause of economic problems. BTW, some economists argue that even service-providers _in effect_ have inventories. Excess supply in a service industry will show up as excess capacity [e.g., unused airplanes] or as 'inventory' of underutilized employees. -- Baily Friedman, MACROECONOMICS, 2nd ed, p. 66. Jim Devine [EMAIL PROTECTED] http://bellarmine.lmu.edu/~jdevine
Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Did class distinctions aid the bombing
At 04:44 PM 10/4/01 +, you wrote: From: Ann Li [EMAIL PROTECTED] I agree, that class vulnerability certainly is the topic of the now pulled Burger King commercial where the homeboy has received ( we don't know why ) a first class seat ( upgrade? gangsta loot?) and his whopper combo meal is his carry-on luggage. Has that ad been suspended? I saw it a couple of times and was stunned by its racist tone. As crass as Madison Ave. is, I couldn't fathom how that ad wound up on the air. there's a new one (that I saw last night) in which a homeboy is being driven in his limo reveling in his new wealth. He leans out the window to ask a passing limo passenger if he has some ketchup for his fries (in a clear parody of an old Grey Poupon ad). They didn't get rid of the racist tone. BTW, it may not be a racist tone at all, since for many young white folks, rapper-types are admired. Jim Devine [EMAIL PROTECTED] http://bellarmine.lmu.edu/~jdevine
Re: RE: Re: Re: Re: Greider and Takings Ideology
At 01:27 PM 10/4/01 -0400, you wrote: When I taught at Howard U. here in DC I use to take the interminable route 70 bus up Georgia Ave (before the last Metro line was finally built there). That was a good lesson in social reality. The route was (deliberately?) under-served... This under-service reflects the weak political power of the poor minority communities (a result of racism, capitalism, etc.) The transportation system management responds only to those with clout. This can be counteracted, as with the Bus Rider's Union in L.A., which is using the courts to force the public bus system to improve. The class stratification between car / subway / bus has always been striking. Of course the buse services, even where they are relatively good, are also less convenient and generally more brutish then the other modes. This creates a self-perpetuating system of transportation class segregation in the U.S. I think this has a lot more to do with the alleged aversion of Americans to mass transit than the love of the automobile. absolutely! Jim Devine [EMAIL PROTECTED] http://bellarmine.lmu.edu/~jdevine
fiscal policy
The news tells us that the US may soon institute $60-$75 billion in new anti-recession relief in the form of tax cuts and emergency spending in the near future. If the multiplier is 5, then the impact would be $300 to $375 billion. If, as more likely, the multiplier is 2, that's only about $130 billion in terms of raising GDP. But the actual GDP is about $10 _trillion_. So the $130 billion is only about 1.3% of GDP. That's not enough to prevent a rise in the unemployment rate is it? are they assuming that monetary policy will finally work? or that the mythical self-curative forces of the market will work? Jim Devine [EMAIL PROTECTED] http://bellarmine.lmu.edu/~jdevine
Re: What happens if they purge us from the antiglobalization movement?
The Washington TIMES wrote:
... The communist influence on Saturday's protest extends far beyond the
participation of avowed Marxists, Trotskyists and Maoists. Among the
scheduled speakers are members of the Institute for Policy Studies, a think
tank which during the Cold War consistently trumpeted the Soviet position,
supporting the goals and causes of virtually every revolutionary terrorist
movement backed by Havana, Hanoi, and Moscow, according to one historian.
which historian? a nut like Ronald Radosh?
Want more? Should any protesters manage to get themselves arrested
Saturday, they will call on the attorneys of the National Lawyers Guild
(NLG), organized by lawyers for the Communist Party in 1936. The NLG is
affiliated with the International Association of Democratic Lawyers,
described by the CIA in 1978 as one of the most useful Communist front
organizations at the service of the Soviet Communist Party.
now, _there's_ a reliable source.
while we're on the subject of guilt by association -- attacking the peace
demonstrations as harboring commies -- it should be mentioned that the
Washington TIMES is owned by Reverend Sun Myung Moon, who has described
himself as being the Almighty.
A better question is this: Why are we sending aircraft
carriers halfway
around the world to look for enemies, when our nation's worst enemies
communists proclaiming an anti-American jihad will be right there in front
of the Washington Monument on Saturday?
aren't you glad that Osama bin Laden's brand of simplistic and bloody
thinking is taking hold amongst the pundits?
Jim Devine [EMAIL PROTECTED] http://bellarmine.lmu.edu/~JDevine
Re: Re: Re: RE: Re: RE: Evidence against bin Laden
I agree with Doug. Michael, you seem to be rejecting any discussion that's unpleasant. At 10:10 AM 10/03/2001 -0400, you wrote: Michael Perelman wrote: Please Andrew, we have better ways of using our time. In other words, no political debate, please, we're economists? I don't get what your standards are, Michael. More transparency, please! Doug Jim Devine [EMAIL PROTECTED] http://bellarmine.lmu.edu/~JDevine
Fwd: RE: Re: RE: Evidence against bin Laden
Date: Wed, 03 Oct 2001 08:04:08 -0700 To: Austin, Andrew [EMAIL PROTECTED] From: Jim Devine [EMAIL PROTECTED] Subject: RE: [PEN-L:17980] Re: RE: Evidence against bin Laden At 07:47 AM 10/03/2001 -0500, you wrote: The Taliban is a brutal atavistic and patriarchal regime. so is the Saudi Arabian regime -- a force that has financed the Taliban -- but Saudi Arabia is an ally of the US. We should also remember that the US helped create this brutal atavistic and patriarchal regime. If the US supported it, how can it be bad, from a wave the flag perspective? The al Qaeda network and bin Laden are international criminals. So are the clique of Cuban-Americans in Miami who bombed airliners filled with civilians in order to express their hate for Castro. But the US protects and has worked with that clique. It also supported Jonas Savimbi in Angola and RENAMO in Mozambique, two extremely bloody terrorist organizations. In fact, the US elite should be seen as a bunch of international criminals because they bombed civilian targets in Serbia Iraq, among other places. But strictly speaking, there are no international criminals because strictly speaking there is no international law. A law that is honored mostly in its breach is not truly a law. Jim Devine [EMAIL PROTECTED] http://bellarmine.lmu.edu/~JDevine
Re: Evidence against bin Laden
At 01:53 AM 10/4/01 +, you wrote:
Just building on this ObL stuff while I may; isn't there something of a fetish
happening here? I mean, I go a good way with Andy's position on the bloke,
but I keep harking back to EP Thompson's explanation for why the magistrates
couldn't nip the Luddite movement in the bud. Experienced investigators and
military chaps that they were, they kept looking for the head of the snake
('General Ludd'). But there was no head. Just a culture of sullen, socially
sanctioned silence, not to mention a widespread sympathy for the redressers.
What looked organised, was actually a culture - perhaps a subculture - at work
- autonomous bodies of men popped out at night and did their thing and
disappeared back into their milieu by morning.
I was thinking that even if ObL and his network did the dirty deed (as
seems likely, even though the power elites haven't produced the evidence
they promised), there will be copy-cats, as often happens with spectacular
homicides. (Also, a lot of folks admit to crimes they haven't committed,
just to get attention.)
I think there's an actual organization, though. The timings of the bombings
is too accurate: hitting the two towers at the WTC so close together in
time for it to be a subculture's effects.
But getting rid of ObL and his cronies wouldn't abolish the social
historical forces that gave rise to Islamic fundamentalism as a force to
mobilize people to engage in terrorism. In fact, it might easily create
martyrs (and US NPR said this morning that ObL _wants_ to be a martyr),
encouraging an even stronger movement in the future. Israeli assassinations
of Palestinian leaders has not been a successful strategy, even from an
Israeli perspective.
Jim Devine [EMAIL PROTECTED] http://bellarmine.lmu.edu/~jdevine
Re: Re: Event Studies
At 02:15 AM 10/4/01 +, you wrote: Rarely do so many dramatic forces bunch together like this. Do any of you have any thoughts about what to expect in the economy? Well, we can't discount the possibility of a big Keynesian splurge under the cover of war and rumours of war, but it does all depend on stuff like how long it is before Washington acts, and how firm the Capitol bipartisanship is at the time (and if the odd thermonuclear plant doesn't go up, and if a few trillion Yen aren't recalled from Wall St, and if ...). Didn't ol' Storm Thurmond (you know who I mean, anyway) take a nasty turn in the House yesterday? Is he okay, or is the House differently balanced today - more or less likely to man the pump? Thurmond's in the Senate, but I know what you mean. I don't think the balance has changed a lot. I certainly think rate cuts ain't up to much. Capital just ain't seeing investment opportunities right now, and it doesn't matter how cheap money is while that persists. Failing a return of consumer confidence, a lower buck seems the main hope for US producers and investors. Am I being too simplistic in thinking that printing a few hundred billion of those right now would not only prime some pumps, but also make production in the US profitable again? Krugman's article in Sunday's NEW YORK TIMES magazine fits with what a lot of the economists interviewed on US NPR yesterday: the WTC bombing mostly hurts demand, as you say. BTW, PK's article is amazing in that he didn't say much that was new. He'd clearly written the article already and then added a few pages to bring in the 911 effects. It's all about how the nominal interest rate can't go below (close to) zero, so the US may end up in a situation like Japan (the horizontal LM curve situation). He still doesn't bring in stuff like the fact that people may not want to borrow (because of unused capacity excessive debt), even with negative real interest rates, so that spending won't respond (the vertical IS curve situation). Nor does he bring in the possible problem of credit rationing, in which banks refuse to lend, no matter what the interest rate. Jim Devine [EMAIL PROTECTED] http://bellarmine.lmu.edu/~jdevine
Re: Re: Re: Evidence against bin Laden
I wrote: US NPR said this morning that ObL _wants_ to be a martyr... What, did they talk to OBL on the phone? it's probably based on on dit evidence (i.e., rumor). But it sounds like a plausible possibility. Jim Devine [EMAIL PROTECTED] http://bellarmine.lmu.edu/~jdevine
pen-l standards
Doug and I asked Michael Perelman about what the standards are for shutting off discussions on pen-l. Now, I ask Doug: what are your rules for lbo-talk? Jim Devine [EMAIL PROTECTED] http://bellarmine.lmu.edu/~JDevine
Re: Guardian state - identity cards
At 06:09 PM 10/02/2001 +, you wrote: . It was also very hard (Martin Guerre aside) to pretend to be someone else - nowadays, anything that depends on computers and cards can be wrong or forged, and difficult to find, check, disprove and correct. Recently, there's been a rash of identity theft, in which the thieves pretend to be someone else, using their credit cards, etc., exploiting the computerized information. It seems to me that the computerized info is much easier to use against individuals than it is to use it for them. It's hard to get incorrect information out of one's credit record. Jim Devine [EMAIL PROTECTED] http://bellarmine.lmu.edu/~JDevine
Re: The Guardian and MI5
At 11:45 AM 10/2/01 +0300, you wrote: Spy Story Private Eye, No. 1037 21 September - 4 October 2001 Michael, shouldn't it be basic that we should distrust all of the bourgeois media -- not just the GUARDIAN -- because they have clear bourgeois biases, including favoring the national security state, etc.? Even though the New York TIMES doesn't seem to be connected with the CIA, I am very careful with what I believe in their stories. BTW, traditionally the CIA was the liberal spy agency in the US (compared to the FBI). Its agents were sophisticated Ivy League types who hobnobbed with (and corrupted) liberals, social democrats, and laborites. The CIA traditionally embraced a more long-term and enlightened perspective than the FBI. Is the MI5 the same way? If so, one can learn something from them (and their allies in the media) while being extremely careful not to believe everything they say. BTW2, what is PRIVATE EYE's connection with the intelligence goons? Jim Devine [EMAIL PROTECTED] http://bellarmine.lmu.edu/~jdevine NTMail K12 - the Mail Server for Education
Re: RE: Evidence against bin Laden
Andrew Austin wrote: Even if bin Laden's supporters and sympathizers wish to ignore the evidence that is leaking out the pores of official sources all over the world, there is plenty of hard evidence on the series of terrorist actions organized by bin Laden already publically available. Cruise the FBI website and check out the most wanted. BTW, as far as I know, there are NO bin Laden supporters or sympathizers on pen-l. To whom are you referring? The only way that people on pen-l can be seen as supporting bin Laden is if one makes the Osama bin Laden-type assumption that the world is black and white, so if you're not a gung-ho supporter of the war against bin Ladin, you're support him. That's nonsense. I learned a long time ago not to trust official sources (whether of the US or of the USSR, which existed back then). The FBI, like the KGB, is not known for its trustworthiness. In fact, both agencies got a reputation for breaking the civil liberties of dissenters and for allying with the worst forces in society (like the KKK in the US, anti-Semites in the USSR). This distrust makes a lot of sense even today, even though the Cold War is over, because the US power elite still does everything to save its collective ass, i.e., by any means necessary. The terroristic US bombing of the aspirin factory in the Sudan while Clinton was President is only one example. (BTW, did Dubya ever denounce that attack?) This doesn't mean that the bombing of the WTC wasn't a total atrocity. But it does mean that the elite insiders will exaggerate any evidence they do have -- and I wish they would show that evidence to the world, as they'd promised, rather than leaking it selectively the way J. Edgar Hoover used to leak dirt about his political enemies -- in order to shore up their power positions and to push their agendas. (Look at how Ashcroft jumped at the chance to limit civil liberties.) Until I and the world see the alleged evidence, the suspicion will persist that this is just another version of the Bay of Tonkin incident. How is it that the vaunted US intelligence services didn't warn us at all about Sept. 11 but then the _next day knew for a fact_ who the culprit was? Only Colombo and other works of fiction can do that. Sure, I said that I thought that it was bin Laden, but I was guessing. I would guess -- given the poor quality of the government's intelligence -- that they're guessing too, likely believing their own propaganda. The Taliban's position is complete nonsense, as they know that even excepting the WTC-Pentagon attacks enough evidence exists to prosecute bin Laden on previous actions. Taliban's representatives are dishonest when they say they will give him up with sufficient evidence. The Taliban is not to be trusted. I don't trust them either, but that's no reason to kill large numbers of innocent Afghans, as seems to be the US plan. The news today is that the terrorist action against America on 11 September 2001 was to be followed the next day by a terrorist action against European sites. The authorities have harddrives, maps, manuals, witnesses, financial linkages nailed down, etc. The case look certain. look[s] certain? So let's bomb Afghanistan? Have you volunteered to join the Air Force yet? are you going to put your money where your mouth is? Jim Devine [EMAIL PROTECTED] http://bellarmine.lmu.edu/~JDevine NTMail K12 - the Mail Server for Education
Prozac
awhile back, Carrol Cox reacted to my comment that I'd heard that after 911 Prozac usage was up -- by saying that it takes weeks before it (and I guess other SSRIs) have an impact. I agree: however, it's a symptom of the nature of our times that it was _prescribed_, despite the long lag time. Further, there is an immediate placebo effect. Jim Devine [EMAIL PROTECTED] http://bellarmine.lmu.edu/~JDevine Is it peace or is it Prozac? -- Cheryl Wheeler. NTMail K12 - the Mail Server for Education
Re: Guardian state
Peter Preston wrote: So, as a white-faced world carries on waiting, what will all good civil libertarians be doing this week? Packing their bags and heading for Brighton to demonstrate against David Blunkett's sudden passion for national identity cards? Perhaps. But let's do logistics first. white-faced? meaning Caucasian? or scared? Jim Devine [EMAIL PROTECTED] http://bellarmine.lmu.edu/~jdevine
Re: Capitalism's ethic is grow or die.
Rob wrote: Well, It doesn't look like too much growing is in the offing (see short report on Japanese consumption projections and consumer sentiment) until some capital eats itself towards new profitability and investment possibilities (look for major indigestion in both the domestic banking sector and the US equity markets, per Kenichi Ohmae's thesis - I reckon they can feed all the Fed electrodes they like into the Wall St cat now; it won't be bouncing after today). the grow or die tendency of capitalism isn't always realized. GoD leads to over-accumulation either relative to natural constraints (à la David Ricardo or Mark Jones) or by creating its own barriers (à la Marx). Accumulation can be blocked by excessive debt accumulation, unused industrial capacity, and pessimistic expectations (on the demand side) or by bottlenecks in labor-power or natural-resource or (in the short run) fixed capital-goods markets or environmental disasters (on the supply side). Jim Devine [EMAIL PROTECTED] http://bellarmine.lmu.edu/~jdevine
Fwd: News: Bin There
From SLATE's news summary -- The NY [TIMES] leads with President Bush's approval of a covert effort to provide aid... Also, the paper reports, the anti-Taliban forces seem to be coalescing around the former king of Afghanistan. How covert can it be if it's reported on the front page of the TIMES? And does the king really want to leave Rome? does anyone know anything about the king? Jim Devine [EMAIL PROTECTED] http://bellarmine.lmu.edu/~jdevine
more on 911's impact
As someone said, next they'll be blaming hemorrhoids on 911: again, from the SLATE new summary -- The [Washington POST] front reports that because of the increase in general stress created by the terror attacks, there's been a dramatic rise in problems among chronic pain patients who before September 11th were able to keep their troubles--associated with cancer, bad backs, diabetes, asthma etc.--in check. The LA [TIMES] goes inside to report on another post-911 upswing, especially among Manhattanites: terror sex. The story quotes one man who exemplifies the trend: 'What's sick is that on the day that it happened, I watched the towers crumble, and then I'm walking north, really freaked out, but I was noticing more women than I ever do,' said an unmarried Manhattan record executive in his 30s who contacted several women he was dating casually, all of whom he has had sex with since the attacks. 'Usually there are girls where you say she's not my type. Everything was my type all of a sudden.' sales of Prozac are also up. Jim Devine [EMAIL PROTECTED] http://bellarmine.lmu.edu/~jdevine
Re: Re: When causality becomes a toy of the powerful
I think there is a footnote someplace in _Capital_ in which Marx says that the economists blamed the U.S. Civil War for a slump that was coming anyhow. In his POLITICAL ECONOMY OF THE COTTON SOUTH, Gavin Wright argues that the prosperity of the slaveowners before the Civil War would have ended anyway, since the slump in cotton demand was coming anyhow. Jim Devine [EMAIL PROTECTED] http://bellarmine.lmu.edu/~jdevine
Re: Re: Re: Successful Anti-war demonstration in Chico
At 09:10 AM 10/1/01 -0700, you wrote: Is Westwood the neighborhood in LA, or the town up in the mountains? It's tough to get 100 people together for *anything* in Chico... Westwood is right in the middle of the highly-populated West Side of L.A. However, it's sometimes as hard to get to as a town up in the mountains, since the traffic is so bad. Jim Devine [EMAIL PROTECTED] http://bellarmine.lmu.edu/~jdevine
Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: comments, please
At 09:38 AM 10/1/01 -0700, you wrote: Mark has unsubbed, but maybe he is lurking out there. I think that the distinction is semantic. Oilism would suggest that the physical structure of petroleum is at the core. I suspect that Mark is arguing that the social relations are a fundamental part of the equation -- not much different from what I understand you to say. I'm the one who introduced the word Oilism. The first time I heard it, back in the 1970s or early 1980s, it was two liberal mainstream economists who were proposing an alternative to Monetarism. Just as the Monetarists of the day saw all inflation as due to excessive increases in the supply of money, these two economists were proposing that changes in the price of oil explained most of the US inflationary experience. BTW, one of my gee-whiz graphs that I've used for public speaking has the real price of energy measured over the decades and also a measure of stagflation (the so-called misery index = the inflation rate plus the unemployment rate). The correlation is pretty striking.[*] That's sort of a weak kind of Oilism. I think Mark embraces a stronger kind. Mark was also asking, if I understand him correctly, how, in light of the 2d law of thermo., we could maintain anything like life as we know it. Yes, Mark puts a big emphasis on natural constraints: it seems that he believes that we're running out of oil and that this is inevitable... as long as we have capitalism. I really don't understand why capitalism _per se_ is so dependent on oil in his view (so that social relations are a fundamental part of the equation). I can imagine capitalism could use atomic power instead. Why not use solar power? It's not the power source that defines capitalism. Instead, it's surplus-value. Of course, there would be a serious crisis going from the current version of capitalism to solar-powered capitalism. But they'd likely figure out how to make workers and other dominated groups pay the cost. Blair Sandler's line was that given our inefficiencies we can do more with less -- granting us a little wiggle room, but not very much. he puts emphasis on the need for changing the political balance of power. [*] It turns out that the inverse of the profit rate is even more correlated with the misery index: when profit rates fall, the degree of stagflation rises. See my Rising Profits and Falling Inflation: An Empirical Study, Review of Radical Political Economics, 32(3), 2000: 398-407. Jim Devine [EMAIL PROTECTED] http://bellarmine.lmu.edu/~jdevine
war against the weak
and criminology at Westminster University. It was used to repress political activity. A fishing expedition used for scanning information on a whole community. Given that during the same period we saw the bombing of Harrods, Enniskillen and the Grand Hotel in Brighton, we can safely say that the one thing it did not do was stop, stem or in any way combat terrorism. What did isolate terrorism was the political will of Republicans, the British government and the unionist community in Northern Ireland. Omagh showed us that this could not extinguish terrorism completely because a few dedicated people can cause enormous havoc. And recent events in Northern Ireland further show that when political will is lacking the door is opened for further acts of terror and violence. And it is in politics that the latest global war on terrorism is flawed in both its conception and inception. First, it is a war of the strong against the weak. It is the most powerful nations that will get to define what terrorism is and how it should be fought. Haiti, for example, would be hard pushed to get together a coalition to bomb France for allegedly harbouring Baby Doc Duvalier - not because their case against him or his hosts is weak, but because the odds of military success would be negligible. Second, the war on terrorism is being led by nations that have at least as distinguished a track record in perpetrating terrorism as in combating it. If Gerry Adams vowed to lead the campaign against terrorism, most in Britain would flash a bemused grin. When America pledges the same, much of Central America, South America, South-east Asia and parts of Africa split their sides. I have no more desire than anyone else to be slain in a random act of violence, whether it is instigated by a fanatic or the politically committed. But the legislation proposed will not minimise that possibility at all, but maximise the likelihood of my spending two nights in a holding cell unable to contact a lawyer or my family because an unreconstructed immigration officer thinks I've stolen my passport. Like most others, I understand that in the current climate, it is better safe than sorry. The question the current plans raise is who will really be safe, and who will just be sorry. Jim Devine [EMAIL PROTECTED] http://bellarmine.lmu.edu/~JDevine
Fwd: Re: Capitalism's ethic is grow or die.
I forwarded my short comment on grow or die to Blair Sandler (whose work I referenced). He comments: My article argued, more or less as you suggest in your lsat paragraphs, precisely that the degree of environmental resistance/consciousness/conscience constitutes the environmental regime, which can be more or less green (less green = brown, say). Some sectors of capital resist tooth and nail, but with the development of greener environmental regimes, some sectors of capital benefit competitively from a yet greener enviro regime, so, as with many issues, capital splits. We see this concretely in the auto-petroleum industry, where auto manufacturers and oil refiners have split over who should bear the costs of cleaner cars. Even more so, car makers, seeing the global warming writing on the wall (however much they may wish and try to delay the inevitable) are desperately trying to separate their fortunes from that of the oil industry with electric and fuel cell vehicles. Of course, the internal combustion engine is a known profit-maker (for all kinds of reasons), so they will not rush to alternatives any faster than they are driven to. Jim Devine [EMAIL PROTECTED] http://bellarmine.lmu.edu/~JDevine
Re: Re: Re: Bombing Afghanistan...
At 10:44 AM 9/26/01 -0500, you wrote: And is there not some evidence that there are binLaden forces or at least supporters and separate Taliban forces? I forget where I picked that up, but I am sure I read something to that effect. Cheers, Ken Hanly there was a personal message that I forwarded to pen-l that suggested that bin Laden is much richer more powerful than Taliban is, so that they couldn't throw him out turn him over to the US if they wanted to. Of course, they would never admit this powerlessness. Jim Devine [EMAIL PROTECTED] http://bellarmine.lmu.edu/~jdevine
Re: Re: Defining Recession
Typically, a recession is defined by whether friends/acquaintances lose their jobs. When we personally loose a job, that's depression. Robert D. Manning Rochester Institute of Technology I'd agree -- except I think the terms have shifted. Remember, Depression was orginally coined as a euphemism for panic. (I know this because of reading some really bad early 20th century mysteries about a professional swindler.) These days, the shift has occurred again. Recession is now used where depression: used to be; downturn is used where recession used to be. And correction is used where downturn used to be. .. except that there's an official definition of a recession (two quarters' worth of declining real GDP). (It should be noted, however, that the NBER that makes these determinations is in no way official, since it's a non-governmental organization.) So in addition to the usual euphemizing and neologismizing) mentioned above, there's been a bit of an obsession with whether or not we're in an officially-defined recession. But often forgotten is the fact that even without an official recession, workers can be in a recession, since even a slowdown in real GDP causes unemployment to rise. Indeed, Greenspan used to be striving for a soft landing, in which workers were to be screwed but his friends would do fine... Yes, Hoover started to use the word depression since crisis and panic sounded so bad. Rolling readjustment is a recent euphemism. Apropos of nothing, I remember that I told pen-l's Brad deLong that it was possible -- quite possible -- that a soft landing could become a recession if and when the accelerator effect (the discouragement of real fixed investment by slow or falling GDP) kicked in. He pooh-poohed me. Jim Devine [EMAIL PROTECTED] http://bellarmine.lmu.edu/~JDevine
Economic Slide Makes Spending Respectable
September 24, 2001 /L.A. TIMES Commentary/Economic Slide Makes Spending Respectable By ROBERT POLLIN, Robert Pollin is a professor of economics and codirector of the Political Economy Research Institute at the University of Massachusetts-Amherst U.S. economic policymakers have failed for almost a year to respond adequately to the looming global recession. The calamitous events of Sept. 11 certainly strengthen the recessionary forces. But they have also made the solution to the recession--large-scale injections of government spending, even if the federal surplus evaporates--both obvious and politically irresistible. Federal Reserve Chairman Alan Greenspan has cut short-term interest rates eight times this year, bringing rates down from 6.5% to an eight-year low of 3%. But unemployment jumped from 4.4% to 4.9% in August, consumer confidence was at an eight-year low, and the stock market had been falling broadly for nearly two years. Conditions in Japan, Europe and most developing economies were at least as bad. Greenspan's interest rate cut last week sought to encourage the stock market once it reopened after the terrorist attacks. But the Dow Jones index still fell by 7% Monday, and the other indexes experienced similarly sharp declines. The market kept tumbling all week, suffering its largest one-week drop since the Depression. The rampaging stock market had been the economy's primary growth engine for most of the 1990s. But this pattern was unsustainable because it encouraged both businesses and households to borrow heavily to finance investment and consumption spending. Private-sector debt burdens thus became severe when the market bubble burst 18 months ago. This has weakened any positive impact of Greenspan's interest rate cuts. The $300 rebate checks households are receiving barely register against such destabilizing financial forces. Still, before Sept. 11, the largest obstacle to countering the recession was the completely unfounded belief that the federal government's surplus was the bedrock of prosperity that had to be guarded, even in a recession. When the government runs a surplus, this means it is collecting more in tax dollars than it is injecting into the economy as spending. But increased government spending--to hire workers and buy products already sitting on businesses' shelves--is precisely what is needed to fight a recession as private-sector spending slumps. The Sept. 11 calamity has finally made increased government spending politically respectable, even if it means moving the non-Social Security federal budget into a deficit. On Sept. 14, Congress committed $40 billion for disaster relief, reconstruction, increased transportation security and countering terrorism. Senate Majority Leader Tom Daschle (D-S.D.) said this amount was just a minimal down payment to what will be required. Even if we were to rapidly inject $200 billion--combining a wider range of government spending and immediate cuts in payroll deductions--it would directly increase national spending by only about 2%. But such an injection would also bring positive ripple effects: benefiting the airlines and other severely damaged industries, encouraging firms to avoid layoffs and counteracting the declines in households' incomes. Equally important benefits will flow to other countries that depend heavily on selling their exports in the U.S. market. By contrast, the Republican proposal to cut capital gains taxes provides no such benefits. This simply increases the after-tax reward for selling stocks and bonds at a profit, which is more likely to encourage a new round of stock market speculation than increase new private sector investments in capital equipment. Just as with this year's initial Bush tax cut, it will also reduce the revenues available to the government to pursue an effective post-Sept. 11 spending program while redistributing income to the wealthy. Of course, the controversy over increased government spending concerns whether the funds will be used effectively. One standard appropriate to the recent attacks would seem clear: to use government funds to protect innocent people everywhere from further terrorist attacks as well as self-defeating cycles of violent reprisals. Increasing government spending is no magic bullet. But it will be a force for good by reducing the spread of unemployment, poverty and social despair that would accompany a severe global recession. Jim Devine [EMAIL PROTECTED] http://bellarmine.lmu.edu/~jdevine
viruses
It's a strange day when I seem to get more e-mail messages (from Tony Theriault) with viruses (viri?) attached than I get pen-l messages... Jim Devine [EMAIL PROTECTED] http://bellarmine.lmu.edu/~jdevine
Re: Re: Re: Not good
At 12:27 PM 9/24/01 -0700, you wrote: When, going back over a year ago, maybe two, some on PEN-L, Rob Schaap most articulately but joined by many others, predicted a world-wide recession, Doug took up the other side. the stock market was roaring, profits were high, consumers were optimistic. What could we all have been talking about? let's be fair. I was predicting recession, but I couldn't pin it down to a specific date. (I said something about Inauguration Day, 2001, but the fact that this was accurate was an accident.) On the other hand, Doug is right to be skeptical. Leftists have predicted 10 out of the last 3 recessions and some leftists think that recessions somehow automatically lead to improvements (perhaps by leading to the mobilization of the working class). Though I get a little tired of Doug's unrelenting skepticism (or what seems like unrelenting skepticism), it has its place. This summer it seemed beyond denial that a recession was underway. Doug held his ground. When anyone expressed a different view he demanded data. Around Labor Day I told of flying on an empty airplane, and felt that the recession was well underway. Doug wanted airline capacity factors before he'd afford any credibility to my anecdote. Well, he's right about the validity of anecdotal evidence. It can say something, but it can also be a fluke. Anecdotal evidence can, on occasion, give us new insights. But it can't be used to come to macroeconomic generalizations. Now it seems he can't let go of the idea that things will be roaring again soon. And if they aren't, he asks if people aren't better off when the economy is roaring. That's the wrong question. It _would_ be better for US workers (and minorities, who are typically last hired first fired) to have unemployment falling rather than rising. A big issue is whether that situation is sustainable, without a large-scale war and deficit spending. Jim Devine [EMAIL PROTECTED] http://bellarmine.lmu.edu/~jdevine
query
Can someone name some good English-language newspapers produced outside the US? (General newspapers, not business ones: for example, the Guardian Unlimited is pretty good, in terms of having a non-US perspective.) I download news story from www.Avantgo.com and I am looking for new sources. Jim Devine [EMAIL PROTECTED] http://bellarmine.lmu.edu/~jdevine
