CWA Local 4501 at OSU OKs Deadline for Strike
I went to the OSU workers' rally mentioned below in OSU student newspaper _The Lantern_ (the _Lantern_ editorial supports workers). Several hundreds of workers gathered in front of Bricker Hall (the admin building), demanding wage increases, safer working conditions, better educational opportunities, etc. I spoke at the rally, urging students' and teachers' support for solidarity with the workers. The morale was high, and many workers made rousing speeches; one of the unionists who spoke at the mike, however, said that some of his co-workers, whom he had asked to come to the rally, had told him that they couldn't, because they would have to go to their second jobs! It is outrageous that in a booming economy folks have to have more than one job to support themselves and their families. The OSU is rolling in the money, and I know this school (whose top administrators just gave themselves a _giant_ raise) can easily meet the workers' demand. Please e-mail, call, or write to President William E. Kirwan and demand that OSU meet Local 4501's demands. The address, e-address, phone number are as follows: President William E. Kirwan 205 Bricker Hall 190 N. Oval Mall Columbus, OH 43210-1357 [EMAIL PROTECTED] Phone: (614) 292-2424 And contact the office of the OSU Board of Trustees: The Ohio State University Board of Trustees 210 Bricker Hall 190 North Oval Mall Columbus, OH 43210 Phone: (614) 292-6359 Fax: (614) 292-5903 The names of the trustees are available at http://www.osu.edu/offices/trustees/membership/index.html. For further info, contact Gary A. Josephson: CWA, Local 4501 27 Euclid Ave. Columbus, OH 43201-2529 Phone: (614) 294-5265 Yoshie * _The Lantern_ April 3, 2000 OSU union OKs deadline for strike Travis James Tritten Lantern staff writer Around 2,000 Ohio State service and trade workers voted Saturday to strike if an agreement cannot be made with the university by the end of April. The Communications Workers of America Local 4501, which includes OSU janitors, bus drivers and electricians, is demanding an immediate $2 per hour pay hike and better opportunities for advancement. Ninety-two percent of the union's membership were in favor Saturday of striking. Union President Gary Josephson said the university has continued to ignore Communications Workers of America grievances. "We have mistakenly dragged things out thinking the university was interested in fixing things," Josephson said. The Communications Workers of America said 25 percent of their membership earns less than $8 per hour and that some are exposed to safety risks such as handling biohazardous waste at the OSU Hospitals. Union member Bob Farley said Communications Workers of America members have been underpaid and ignored by the university for a long time. "For the last 10 to 20 years they've treated us like their stepchildren and not part of the family," he said. The local's contract with the university expired on Friday, but OSU spokeswoman Elizabeth Conlisk said the university is negotiating in good faith and hopes to see an agreement made soon. "We are working very hard to get a fair contract for the workers," she said. Wages are the largest issue of negotiations, and the union's proposed pay hike is a source of disagreement, Conlisk said. "Their wage request is probably greater than what the university is willing to offer," she said. Josephson said the union is required by law to give a 10-day notice before striking, but it is likely they will not make the announcement for several weeks. Terryl Davis, an electrician who has been employed by OSU for 22 years, said the union sees the vote as a powerful message to management that a new agreement must be made. "This tells them that we are very serious," Davis said. "I think the university needs to respond." The university and the union will meet at the bargaining table again on April 11 to attempt to negotiate a new contract. Conlisk said that the university is hopeful of a forthcoming agreement, but the union was resolute on holding its ground. "The way it looks now, we may be on the picket line by the end of the month," Farley said. In the meantime, the union will be staging two lunchtime protest rallies on the OSU campus. They will be held Wednesday on the Oval and Thursday at the OSU Medical Center. http://www.thelantern.com/archives/gendisp.asp?id=954771021281 * * _The Lantern_ April 5, 2000 University workers deserve wage raise - Editorial Countless letters and columns written to the Lantern have complained that an unfair gap exists between students and administration at Ohio State. Well, it is clear now that students are not the only ones complaining. Around 2,000 OSU service and trade workers voted Saturday to strike if the university continues to ignore their grievances. The workers are demanding an immediate $2 per hour pay raise and better opportunities for advancement. Ninety-two percent of the OSU union, the
Re: Re: Current (heterodox) thinking on interest rates?
At 01:22 PM 04/02/2000 -0500, Barnet wrote: Perhaps someone could summarize (or supply citations on) current (heterodox) thinking on interest rate determination (in the U.S.). You may wish to consider the following citations on current hetero economics and interest rates. They are indirectly related to political economy though.. Strange., Susan _Casino capitalism_, Manchester: Manchester University Press; distributed by St. Martin's Press New York, 1997, pages x, 207. Provides a commentary on the systemic changes in international money and finance that occurred in the 1970s and early 1980s. Argues that the debt problems of developing countries, the slow growth of the world economy in the 1970s and the recession of the 1980s, problems of instability of the banking system, uncertainty over oil prices, and precariousness of the international political situation are the result of mismanagement of the international financial system. Discusses the evolution of the world economic disorder form 1973 to 1985, emphasizing the effects of floating exchange rates, and the volatility of interest rates, the oil price, and markets in general. Surveys various proposed remedies and reform plans for bringing the system under control. Concludes that the problem is a global one and proposes that the United States put its own economic management in order, both domestically and regarding the management of transactions conducted in U.S. dollars in the areas of banking, developing country indebtedness, and Western alliance defense. Dillard,-D.."Money as an Institution of Capitalism" Wood,-John-Cunningham, ed. Thorstein Veblen: Critical assessments. Volume 2: Veblen's political economy.. Critical Assessments of Leading Economists series. London and New York: Routledge, 1993, pages 517-38. Previously published [1987].. Horowitz,-Steven "Keynes on Capitalism: Reply", Critical-Review; 10(3), Summer 1996, pages 353-72.. Greg Hill's recent article voices the Keynesian complaint that capitalism produces unemployment because there is no mechanism that coordinates decisions to save with decisions to invest. But resources that are not spent on current consumption are either "invested" as bank deposits or "hoarded" as cash. Deposits are lent out by other banks to investors, who are informed by interest rates as to the degree of saving for future consumption that is taking place. And wage/price flexibility, as well as increases in the supply of cash, can avoid declines in real income and employment caused by increased cash holdings. Garrett,-Geoffrey, "Capital Mobility, Trade, and the Domestic Politics of Economic Policy", International-Organization; 49(4), Autumn 1995, pages 657-87..The conventional wisdom about the domestic political effects of economic internationalization in recent decades is overdrawn and too simple. Increasing exposure to trade and capital mobility has not led all countries to pursue the same types of economic policies. The political power of the left and the strength of organized labor still have a marked bearing on macroeconomic policy. Rather than being constrained by internationalization, the relationship between left-labor power and fiscal expansions has increased with greater trade and capital mobility. However, the political left and organized labor have had to pay a price for these expansions. With greater exposure to world market forces, left-labor power has been increasingly associated with lower levels of corporate taxation and with higher interest rates. Nonetheless, common assertions about the demise of partisan politics must be reconsidered. Guttmann,-Robert. _How credit-money shapes the economy: The United States in a global system_. Columbia University Seminar Series. Armonk, N.Y. and London, Sharpe, 1994. Maitra,-Priyatosh, "Internationalization of Production and Capitalism's Dilemma", International-Journal-of-Social-Economics; 20(9), 1993, pages 22-42.. To be competitive, capitalism must lower the cost of production by lower wage costs, lower inflation, lower interest rates, and lower taxes. The welfare state has become the greatest hindrance because it supports costly wage rates even in a recession with high unemployment. The consequences of a weak welfare state, however, are rising unemployment, poverty and crime. But an internationally oriented economy does not need to depend on local demand, much of which is created by full employment. One solution is for the unemployed to become self-employed. Capitalism, over the years, has achieved an unlimited capacity to produce, improve and diversify output at a declining cost per unit of output, but paradoxically has created an increasing problem in marketing its ever expanding output. Attempts to explain this. Garrison,-Roger-W.."Keynesian Splenetics: From Social Philosophy to Macroeconomics", Critical-Review; 6(4), Fall 1992, pages 471-92.. Underlying the analytical framework of Keynes's "General Theory" is a comparison
BLS Daily Report
BLS DAILY REPORT, WEDNESDAY, APRIL 5, 2000 Virtually all indicators of the health of the U.S. labor market showed vigorous growth last year, as nonfarm payrolls added 2.7 million workers and employment hit a new record high of 129.6 million in the fourth quarter, according to a review of major developments across industries and occupations by BLS economists. The jobless rate fell to a 30-year low and a record 64.3 percent of the population was working last year. "Almost half of the employment growth over the year occurred in the higher paying managerial and professional, specialty occupations," BLS economists Jennifer Martel and Laura Kelter write in the February issue of BLS' Monthly Labor Review. ... (Daily Labor Report, page A-12; text, page E-1). The record-breaking U.S. economic expansion should continue, but not at the rapid pace of the final quarter of 1999, according to the Conference Board's index of leading indicators. "The biggest risk to the ongoing expansion continues to be interest-rate increases and the prospect of still more Federal Reserve Board action," says Ken Goldstein, a Conference Board economist. "The data now suggests that some sectors are beginning to respond to Fed tightening, but certainly not enough to prevent the economy from reaching new records for longevity." ... (Daily Labor Report, page D-1)_The decline in leading indicators was the first in the index since September and the largest since January 1996. It was also deeper than analysts had expected. ... (Washington Post, page E2)_The index of leading economic indicators fell in February for the first time in 5 months as factory orders for capital goods, building permits, and stocks declined. The index decreased 0.3 percent in February, after rising 0.2 percent in January. The drop in the index, a gauge of future growth, comes after three successive monthly increases, and because of that it does not signal that the record economic expansion is in jeopardy. ... (New York Times, page C6) _The stock market's wild ride yesterday may have been nerve-wracking for investors, but some economists say a slumping market can be good news for the U.S. economy -- as long as the descent doesn't get too steep too fast. For all the breathless fears of a Wall Street crash, mainstream economists these days are still largely worried that gross domestic product is growing too rapidly. ... The Conference Board reports that its index of leading indicators -- a measure designed to predict growth over the next 3 to 6 months -- fell in February by 0.3 percent, the largest 1-month decline in more than 4 years. ... (Wall Street Journal, page A2) More work stoppages (151) occurred in manufacturing during 1999 than in other industries, according to the first annual report on collectively bargained settlements and work stoppages published recently by the Bureau of National Affairs. The report includes a 10-year statistical table of negotiated wage increases by both industry and region. ... The report tracked work stoppages by industry, union, and issues. ... (Daily Labor Report, page A-12). Small employers are not steering clear of establishing retirement plans simply because of red tape and administrative costs, but also because of a lack of pension knowledge and a perceived lack of interest on the part of employees, according to a study by the Employee Benefit Research Institute. ... (Daily Labor Report, page A-7). The "new economy" is turning out to be the economic equivalent of the collapse of the Soviet Union -- a dramatic shift that might have ushered in a long-promised sense of security, but instead has brought about a period of messy change, writes Glenn Kessler in The Washington Post (page E1). The economy, on one level, keeps surpassing expectations. Unemployment plunges but inflation doesn't ignite. Wages are rising. Budget deficits have disappeared and the nation is starting to pay off its debt. But many of the old rules about the economy and financial markets no longer appear to work, leaving policymakers at the White House and the Federal Reserve struggling to find their way. ... The world economy is likely to grow by about 4 percent in 2000, the International Monetary Fund chief says. He called current U.S. growth unsustainable and said there would have to be a balancing of mismatched expansion rates, likely in the form of a U.S. slowdown and a pickup in Japan and other economies. ... (Washington Post, page E2). After years of treading carefully around the issue of why so many countries stay poor or become poorer, the United Nations put a lot of the blame on bad government, a message many leaders seeking more aid and debt relief will not want to hear. ... The report makes "good governance" the top priority in poverty-fighting by the U.N. development program. Without good governance, reliance on trickle-down economic development and a host of other strategies will not work, the report
David Barkin's father
I think that David is still on the list. April 6, 2000 Solomon Barkin, 92, Economist in Labor Movement and Teacher By WOLFGANG SAXON olomon Barkin, a retired labor economist and professor emeritus at the University of Massachusetts who wrote prodigiously about working people, died on March 29 at his home in Leverett, Mass. He was 92. Professor Barkin spent 25 years in the labor movement, from 1937 to 1963, as director of research for the Textile Workers Union, now part of the Union of Needletrades, Industrial and Textile Employees. For the next five years, he was a manpower specialist and head of the social-affairs division of the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development in Paris. He taught economics at Amherst from 1968 to 1978, when he was given emeritus status. Then he was a visiting professor of economics at Erasmus University in Rotterdam, the Netherlands, and a senior Fulbright professor at Victoria University in Wellington, New Zealand. A native New Yorker, Professor Barkin graduated from City College in 1928 and received an M.A. degree at Columbia University in 1929. After stints as a City College instructor and assistant director of the State Commission on Old Age Security in Albany, he served on the labor advisory board of the National Recovery Administration and as a specialist in industrial economics in the Department of Commerce. His published work started in 1930 with a study of old-age security and extended into the 1980's when he sat on the editorial boards of the Journal of Economic Issues and the French-language edition of Relations Industrielles, where he continued until 1991. He also helped edit periodicals like Technical Change and Manpower Planning, Arbitration Journal and International Labor. His experiences were reflected in the book "The Decline of the Labor Movement and What Can Be Done About It" (1961), in which he argued that unions were getting bogged down in administering contracts to the detriment of their role as instruments of change. His other books included "Worker Militancy and its Consequences, 1965-75" (1975). An updated edition, subtitled "The Changing Climate of Western and Industrial Relations," appeared in 1983. Mr. Barkin is survived by his wife of 59 years, Elaine Rappaport Barkin; two sons, David, of Mexico, and Dr. Roger Barkin of Denver; a daughter, Amy Barkin of Bethesda, Md., and three grandsons. -- Michael Perelman Economics Department California State University Chico, CA 95929 Tel. 530-898-5321 E-Mail [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Re: book announcement
What was ending was the century of the "progressive" state bureaucrat, who had entered the international workers' movement in the German SPD and its 1875 Gotha Program, and who for 100 years seemed, in "socialist" and "communist" guise, to represent something "beyond capitalism". Events since 1975 have shown that the "progressive state bureaucrat", everywhere from England to China, represented, rather, something BEFORE capitalism, throwing the old statist "left" into terminal crisis. Now that the statist illusion of the revolutionary workers' movement has been laid to rest once and for all, the Portuguese and Spanish worker revolts of the mid-1970's offer one benchmark from which to judge present and future struggles. Is the statist illusion really dead? I still hear a lot of undertones of pro-big government sentiments on the left. I also note that there are many who saw Bill Clinton as the lesser of two evils -- and see Al Gore the same way. One of the problems is that when workers' movements like those of Spain and Portugal are suppressed or demobilized, in many cases people don't learn the right lessons. Such defeats encourage them to give up, to lower their standards, to look for the closet social democrat in Clinton's soul, etc. Another thing: it seems to me that the Portuguese and Spanish worker revolts of the mid-1970's seem a model of what's likely in Newly Industrialized Economies rather than in Europe or the U.S., since a lot of the blue collar/heavy industry activity has shifted to the NIEs and is shifting further down the global food-chain. Jim Devine [EMAIL PROTECTED] http://liberalarts.lmu.edu/~jdevine
Brad DeLong's column
In today's NY TIMES, Brad DeLong (an erstwhile participant in pen-l and an
editor of the prestigious JOURNAL OF ECONOMIC PERSPECTIVES) has a column,
on page 2 of the business section. It's interesting and useful in some
ways, but suffers from some basic economic mistakes.
He writes that in the 1980s: "The [government] deficit meant reduced money
for [private fixed] investment, which meant lower income growth, which
meant lower [tax] revenue growth."
This follows the pre-Keynesian (and discredited) view that saving drives
investment, so that government dissaving (deficits) hurts private
investment. It ignores how government deficits create markets for business
output, raise capacity utilization rates, and thus business profitability,
which _encourages_ investment ("crowding in").
Further, it ignores the role of Paul Volcker's monetary policy, which hiked
interest rates dramatically and thus crowded out private investment,
especially in exporting or import-competing sectors, which suffered from
the high dollar exchange rates which resulted from his policies. (I know
that the term "crowding out" is supposed to refer only to the government
budget's negative effect on private investment, but that shows a residual
Monetarist bias: the government's budget deficit -- which leads to high
interest rates (at least in theory) -- is _bad_, while tight monetary
policy -- which leads to high interest rates -- is _good_.)
Finally, it ignores the role of low profit rates -- akin to Keynes'
marginal efficiency of capital -- in discouraging private investment, along
with the corporate debt load of the time. Low capacity utilization -- a
result of Volcker's policies, not Reagan's fiscal policies -- and the
persistence of high labor costs and energy costs (high from a capitalist's
viewpoint) kept the profit rate low.
Later, he writes that "Lowered interest rates [in the 1990s] driven in part
by the shrinking of annual budget deficits..."
According to the usual sources on interest rates, the 1990s real interest
rates were high, not low. (And it's the real interest rate that counts
here.) For example, on page 19 of the 8th edition of RJ Gordon's
MACROECONOMICS textbook, the real interest rate during the 1990s has been
significantly higher than during the 1960s and especially the 1970s. It's
true that the rates were higher in the 1980s -- mostly due to tight
monetary policy -- than in the 1990s. But that was part of the Volcker
anti-inflation campaign, which should have returned real interest rates to
levels seen in the 1960s, no?
Why did private investment do okay during the 1990s? Because the Reagan era
smashed labor and eventually cut wage costs, while until recently energy
costs were down, so that the profit rate rose steeply until at least 1998.
This encouraged private investment, as the (expected) benefit from it
exceeded interest costs. The explosion of consumer debt in the late 1990s
also allowed full capacity utilization, encouraging private fixed investment.
(It's interesting, by the way, that economists who decry the negative
effects of government deficits (as Brad did in the first quote) don't
mention the negative effects of consumer deficits. After all, consumers,
unlike the U.S. Federal government, can go bankrupt, encouraging a steep
recession. Maybe the U.S. government could go bankrupt, but not until we
have a civil war or similar event.)
Finally, he refers to "social democratic adversaries" of the Reagan
program. Who are these? In U.S. parlance, "social democracy" means nothing
to anyone except intellectuals who study Western Europe. That's because
social democracy never made it as a political movement in the U.S. and the
glimmerings of social democracy never had deep roots in organized labor.
Instead, we had anemic New Deal liberalism (a weak welfare state tied
intimately to the warfare state), which is to social democracy the way a
painting on black velvet is to a Rembrandt. While there are social
democrats out there (I could name a few), they do not represent a major
force that opposed Reaganism.
Jim Devine [EMAIL PROTECTED] http://liberalarts.lmu.edu/~jdevine
thinning ozone
On the way to work, I heard a report on U.S. National Public Radio that indicated that experts were shocked because the Arctic ozone layer was thinner than expected: the expected recovery of that layer had been slowed, where the recovery was expected because ozone-depleting chloroflourocarbons (CFCs) had stopped being used. I don't believe this. I thought that CFCs were still in use in many places and that the replacement for them (HCFCs) also had negative effects on the ozone layer. (There are still a lot of leaky old refrigerators and air-conditioning units that have CFCs in them, right?) Also, is there any evidence that the ozone layer is "recovering"? inquiring minds want to know... Jim Devine [EMAIL PROTECTED] http://liberalarts.lmu.edu/~jdevine
Re: Brad DeLong's column
Both of the quotes-- deficits crowd out private investment and deficits
cause high interest rates (more specifically there that lowering deficits
cause lower interest rates) are pure Summers, but you are right that
"pre-Keynesian" is the correct general label. Bob Eisner and Bill Vickrey
spent their lifetimes trying to debunk these kind of standard mantras, that
would be ridiculous if not for the fact that they influence policy. They
are called "pre-Keynesian" because these generally depend on asssuming full
employment. My students in Principles understand this. It is amazing that
the same news summary will quote Clinton on paying down the national debt
will allow lower interest rates and then report on the Fed will decide
whether to raise or lower interest rates, without blinking. But why would
Brad contribute to perpetuating such theoretically, empirically,
historically, unsupportable views, when he surely knows better?
-Original Message-
From: Jim Devine [EMAIL PROTECTED]
To: [EMAIL PROTECTED] [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Date: Thursday, April 06, 2000 11:09 AM
Subject: [PEN-L:17753] Brad DeLong's column
In today's NY TIMES, Brad DeLong (an erstwhile participant in pen-l and an
editor of the prestigious JOURNAL OF ECONOMIC PERSPECTIVES) has a column,
on page 2 of the business section. It's interesting and useful in some
ways, but suffers from some basic economic mistakes.
He writes that in the 1980s: "The [government] deficit meant reduced money
for [private fixed] investment, which meant lower income growth, which
meant lower [tax] revenue growth."
This follows the pre-Keynesian (and discredited) view that saving drives
investment, so that government dissaving (deficits) hurts private
investment. It ignores how government deficits create markets for business
output, raise capacity utilization rates, and thus business profitability,
which _encourages_ investment ("crowding in").
Further, it ignores the role of Paul Volcker's monetary policy, which hiked
interest rates dramatically and thus crowded out private investment,
especially in exporting or import-competing sectors, which suffered from
the high dollar exchange rates which resulted from his policies. (I know
that the term "crowding out" is supposed to refer only to the government
budget's negative effect on private investment, but that shows a residual
Monetarist bias: the government's budget deficit -- which leads to high
interest rates (at least in theory) -- is _bad_, while tight monetary
policy -- which leads to high interest rates -- is _good_.)
Finally, it ignores the role of low profit rates -- akin to Keynes'
marginal efficiency of capital -- in discouraging private investment, along
with the corporate debt load of the time. Low capacity utilization -- a
result of Volcker's policies, not Reagan's fiscal policies -- and the
persistence of high labor costs and energy costs (high from a capitalist's
viewpoint) kept the profit rate low.
Later, he writes that "Lowered interest rates [in the 1990s] driven in part
by the shrinking of annual budget deficits..."
According to the usual sources on interest rates, the 1990s real interest
rates were high, not low. (And it's the real interest rate that counts
here.) For example, on page 19 of the 8th edition of RJ Gordon's
MACROECONOMICS textbook, the real interest rate during the 1990s has been
significantly higher than during the 1960s and especially the 1970s. It's
true that the rates were higher in the 1980s -- mostly due to tight
monetary policy -- than in the 1990s. But that was part of the Volcker
anti-inflation campaign, which should have returned real interest rates to
levels seen in the 1960s, no?
Why did private investment do okay during the 1990s? Because the Reagan era
smashed labor and eventually cut wage costs, while until recently energy
costs were down, so that the profit rate rose steeply until at least 1998.
This encouraged private investment, as the (expected) benefit from it
exceeded interest costs. The explosion of consumer debt in the late 1990s
also allowed full capacity utilization, encouraging private fixed
investment.
(It's interesting, by the way, that economists who decry the negative
effects of government deficits (as Brad did in the first quote) don't
mention the negative effects of consumer deficits. After all, consumers,
unlike the U.S. Federal government, can go bankrupt, encouraging a steep
recession. Maybe the U.S. government could go bankrupt, but not until we
have a civil war or similar event.)
Finally, he refers to "social democratic adversaries" of the Reagan
program. Who are these? In U.S. parlance, "social democracy" means nothing
to anyone except intellectuals who study Western Europe. That's because
social democracy never made it as a political movement in the U.S. and the
glimmerings of social democracy never had deep roots in organized labor.
Instead, we had anemic New Deal liberalism (a weak welfare state tied
intimately to the warfare
[Fwd: RadFest 2000] (fwd)
-- Forwarded message -- Date: Thu, 06 Apr 2000 08:44:23 -0400 From: Chris Chase-Dunn [EMAIL PROTECTED] To: WORLD SYSTEMS NETWORK [EMAIL PROTECTED] Subject: [Fwd: RadFest 2000] Would you be willing to distribute the following announcement to the WSN list? Thank you, Patrick Barrett THE HAVENS CENTER presents RADFEST 2000: ACTIVISTS AND ACADEMICS WORKING FOR PROGRESSIVE CHANGE Upham Woods, WI May 19-21, 2000 Dear friend: We would like to invite you to RadFest 2000, a weekend conference for progressive activists and academics organized by the A. E. Havens Center for the Study of Social Structure and Social Change at the University of Wisconsin-Madison. The central goal of RadFest is to provide an opportunity for progressive folks to come together to discuss issues of mutual interest and concern, strengthen networks, and devise strategies for progressive social and political change. The conference will take place on the weekend of May 19-21, 2000 at Upham Woods, a beautiful retreat located on the Wisconsin River just north of Wisconsin Dells. The opening event of the program will be a plenary panel on Friday evening, titled Globalization, Democracy, and the Construction of a Progressive Future, the central focus of which will be the challenges of building a progressive movement in the contemporary social, economic, and political context. The panel is composed of Jane Anne Morris (Program on Corporations, Law, and Democracy), David Newby (President of the Wisconsin AFL-CIO), Horace Small (National Director of the Democratic Socialists of America), and Lori Wallach (Director of Public Citizens Global Trade Watch). The remainder of the program will be primarily devoted to a series of workshops addressing a wide array of social, political, and economic topics on Saturday and Sunday. Currently, approximately 20 workshops are planned, including: Media and Democracy (with Bob McChesney, John Nichols, and Margo Robb); The New Wisconsin Idea: The Role of the Bradley Foundation in State Public Policy (with Phil Wilayto); Growing Disparities in Wealth, Income, and Job Quality (with Annette Bernhardt, Bonnie Block, Laura Dresser, and Erik Wright); Organizing and the Power of Culture for Social Change (with Si Kahn); Progressive Politics and the Electoral Arena (with Betsy Hodges, Midge Miller, John Nichols, Jim Powell, Horace Small, and Jim Young); Health Security for All (with Linda Farley and Gene Farley); Welfare Reform (with Carole Medaris and Vicky Selkowe); and about a dozen others on such topics as labor organizing, coalition building, the environment and the economy, youth activism, globalization, campaign finance reform, and prison reform. In addition, any group or individual interested in organizing a workshop is encouraged to do so. Those interested should send a workshop proposal with a title, a short description, and a list of participants to the Havens Center at the address below. We also encourage organizations to take advantage of the logistical support RadFest provides for the holding of membership meetings on Sunday afternoon. Finally, because the building of a progressive community also requires time for relaxation and strengthening social ties, we have devoted a portion of the program to recreation and entertainment. On Saturday afternoon, there will be a break in the schedule for recreational activities, including canoeing on the Wisconsin River (a spectacular sight), hiking on Blackhawk Island, and volleyball. And on Saturday evening, there will be a bonfire with music and singing. The highlight will be a performance by Si Kahn, the director of Grassroots Leadership and author of Organizing who will perform songs from his latest CD, I Have Seen Freedom. The key to the success of RadFest 2000 will be the enthusiastic participation of progressive individuals and organizations dedicated to the construction of a more just world. If you would like to be a part of this gathering, please visit the Havens Center website (http://www.ssc.wisc.edu/havenscenter) to obtain a registration form, a full conference program, and logistical information. The cost for the conference (including lodging and meals) is very modest and determined by ability to pay. There is also a discount for those who register by April 14. We encourage you to spread the word and let us know of other people or organizations you think would be interested in participating. If you have any questions, dont hesitate to contact us at the following email address: [EMAIL PROTECTED] We hope you will contribute to making RadFest 2000 an exciting event and help us in our efforts to build a progressive community. The recent WTO protests in Seattle demonstrate that there is a lot of untapped progressive energy out there. RadFest can contribute to this progressive reawakening. Sincerely, Erik Olin Wright Director A. E. Havens Center Patrick Barrett Administrative Director A. E. Havens
Re: thinning ozone
On the way to work, I heard a report on U.S. National Public Radio that indicated that experts were shocked because the Arctic ozone layer was thinner than expected: the expected recovery of that layer had been slowed, where the recovery was expected because ozone-depleting chloroflourocarbons (CFCs) had stopped being used. Recovery is slowing down because of abnormally low temperatures in the stratosphere, according to William Stevens in today's NY Times: === The ozone layer is expected to recover eventually, possibly by the mid-21st century. But computer simulations of the atmosphere have suggested that lower temperatures in the stratosphere, about 11 miles high, could increase the rate of ozone depletion in the meantime, delaying recovery by a decade or two. Measurements taken by instruments carried aloft by aircraft and balloons over the past winter have found that temperatures in the crucial layer of the Arctic atmosphere were, indeed, among the lowest on record, and that ozone losses of more than 60 percent occurred. In three of the last five winters, stratospheric temperatures in the Arctic were lower and more persistent, and covered a wider area, than at any other time in the last 20 years, said Dr. Ross Salawitch, an ozone researcher at the Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Pasadena, Calif., who was one of hundreds of American and European scientists from many institutions involved in the recent Arctic survey. The survey's results were announced yesterday by the Pasadena laboratory and the National Aeronautics and Space Administration's Goddard Space Flight Center in Greenbelt, Md. Most Arctic winters in the last decade brought unusually low ozone coincident with an unusually cold stratosphere, according to the World Meteorological Organization. When the Arctic region cools, "that's bad news for the ozone," Dr. Salawitch said, adding that the new data has "really solidified our view" that the ozone layer is sensitive not only to ozone-destroying chemicals, but also to temperature. Louis Proyect (The Marxism mailing list: http://www.marxmail.org)
reality check
DEFLATION HITS NET IPOs The market has spoken: unless e-commerce companies begin showing profits, the money tap is going to dry up, and all that's left of dot-com euphoria will be a major hangover. According to research by Investor's Business Daily, 165 high-tech companies that went public since the beginning of 1999 are now trading below their initial offering prices, despite a 90% gain in the Nasdaq over that time period. Hardest hit are the business-to-consumer operations that hawk everything from PCs to pet food over the Net. "A lot of companies out there might just be the walking dead," says a senior portfolio manager at Munder Capital Management. "Access to capital is going to be a big issue." And where has the capital gone? A lot of it is sitting in the coffers of advertising companies, who've profited nicely from the dot-coms' desperation to build their brands. (Investor's Business Daily 6 Apr 2000) -- Michael Perelman Economics Department California State University [EMAIL PROTECTED] Chico, CA 95929 530-898-5321 fax 530-898-5901
chronology of financial crisis from 19th through 20th
Good morning list, I need a detailed "chronology" of financial crisis (bank, money, debt, commodity, whatever) from 19th through 20th centuries for 1. world systemic wise (global) 2. US wise (domestic) 3. UK wise (domestic). 4. periphery wise analyses. Arrighi, Fishlow and Strange books are very helpful in terms of providing a background on the international context of 19th and 2Oth centuries capital markets, and state/capital responses to financial crises, but I need a more detailed information on the exact chrolonology/economic history of domestic and international crises (which are related anyway) in the core and periphery of the world system. I need this information in order to determine my level of analysis before choosing my countries for comparison. I should know if my variables make sense, or whether or not I should do individual case study rather than comparative analysis. I know the timing of contemporary ones world wise (Mexico, Argentina, Brazil, Turkey; debt and money crises in the late 20th century, Ottoman debt crisis in the late 19th century, etc..), but still info on these is welcome. I am somewhat confused when it comes to tracing the exact historical order of crises in the US, from the late 19th through the 20 centuries. I know it spontaneously rather than historically. Do you know any "chronological" sources that provides a background on this topic? world system people and economic historians really dig into empirical archeology of such issues; trends in business cycles, contraction, expansion, long duree trends in capital markets, bla, bla.. their views are welcome too.. Any information sincerely welcomed thanx -- Mine Aysen Doyran Phd Student Political Science SUNY/Albany Nelson A.Rockefeller College 135 Western Avenue, Milne 102 Albany/NY, 1.
Re: Current (heterodox) thinking oninterestrates?
Jim Devine [EMAIL PROTECTED] 04/05/00 11:45PM In the cycle, interest rates are pro-cyclical, with the interest rate soaring to the stars in a financial crisis, and then falling as the demand for loans falls in a recession. (( CB: Would this mean bankers have a tendency to favor recession ? Would this be a motive for Greenspan, as the bankers' agent, to provoke recession, all the while increasing bank profits on the way there in the interest rate hikes themselves ? CB
Re: chronology of financial crisis from 19th through 20th
Kindleberger's "Manias, Panics, and Crashes"? Other of his writings? Galbraith's "A Short History of Financial Euphoria" may have some relevant references? Martin Wolfson's "Financial Crises: Understanding the Postwar U.S. Experience" for that period? -Original Message- From: [EMAIL PROTECTED] [EMAIL PROTECTED] To: [EMAIL PROTECTED] [EMAIL PROTECTED]; [EMAIL PROTECTED] [EMAIL PROTECTED]; [EMAIL PROTECTED] [EMAIL PROTECTED]; [EMAIL PROTECTED] [EMAIL PROTECTED] Cc: [EMAIL PROTECTED] [EMAIL PROTECTED]; [EMAIL PROTECTED] [EMAIL PROTECTED] Date: Thursday, April 06, 2000 12:49 PM Subject: [PEN-L:17761] chronology of financial crisis from 19th through 20th Good morning list, I need a detailed "chronology" of financial crisis (bank, money, debt, commodity, whatever) from 19th through 20th centuries for 1. world systemic wise (global) 2. US wise (domestic) 3. UK wise (domestic). 4. periphery wise analyses. Arrighi, Fishlow and Strange books are very helpful in terms of providing a background on the international context of 19th and 2Oth centuries capital markets, and state/capital responses to financial crises, but I need a more detailed information on the exact chrolonology/economic history of domestic and international crises (which are related anyway) in the core and periphery of the world system. I need this information in order to determine my level of analysis before choosing my countries for comparison. I should know if my variables make sense, or whether or not I should do individual case study rather than comparative analysis. I know the timing of contemporary ones world wise (Mexico, Argentina, Brazil, Turkey; debt and money crises in the late 20th century, Ottoman debt crisis in the late 19th century, etc..), but still info on these is welcome. I am somewhat confused when it comes to tracing the exact historical order of crises in the US, from the late 19th through the 20 centuries. I know it spontaneously rather than historically. Do you know any "chronological" sources that provides a background on this topic? world system people and economic historians really dig into empirical archeology of such issues; trends in business cycles, contraction, expansion, long duree trends in capital markets, bla, bla.. their views are welcome too.. Any information sincerely welcomed thanx -- Mine Aysen Doyran Phd Student Political Science SUNY/Albany Nelson A.Rockefeller College 135 Western Avenue, Milne 102 Albany/NY, 1.
Diamonds and colonialism (fwd)
I really wonder why New York Times and bourgeois sources like this suddenly rediscover Africa's heritage of colonalism!! Overall, it does not seem to me more than an "orientalist" sympaty of reconstructing the "other": we killed the folks, and let's do something to compansate it. o!!.. Mine The NY Times is much more complex. There are continual battles going on over how to report, either in the interests of the truth or in the interests of the State Department. Raymond Bonner was an honest reporter who dared to question the Reaganite line on Central America. Finally he was purged. I think everybody should read the NY Times on a daily basis, either in print or on the web. It is the best newspaper in the world, regardless of its editorial stance. Louis Proyect (The Marxism mailing list: http://www.marxmail.org)
Re: chronology of financial crisis from 19ththrough 20th
James Devine on the crash of 1929. CB "Mathew Forstater" [EMAIL PROTECTED] 04/06/00 02:39PM Kindleberger's "Manias, Panics, and Crashes"? Other of his writings? Galbraith's "A Short History of Financial Euphoria" may have some relevant references? Martin Wolfson's "Financial Crises: Understanding the Postwar U.S. Experience" for that period? -Original Message- From: [EMAIL PROTECTED] [EMAIL PROTECTED] To: [EMAIL PROTECTED] [EMAIL PROTECTED]; [EMAIL PROTECTED] [EMAIL PROTECTED]; [EMAIL PROTECTED] [EMAIL PROTECTED]; [EMAIL PROTECTED] [EMAIL PROTECTED] Cc: [EMAIL PROTECTED] [EMAIL PROTECTED]; [EMAIL PROTECTED] [EMAIL PROTECTED] Date: Thursday, April 06, 2000 12:49 PM Subject: [PEN-L:17761] chronology of financial crisis from 19th through 20th Good morning list, I need a detailed "chronology" of financial crisis (bank, money, debt, commodity, whatever) from 19th through 20th centuries for 1.
Re: Re: Current (heterodox) thinkingoninterestrates?
Jim Devine [EMAIL PROTECTED] 04/06/00 02:29PM I wrote: In the cycle, interest rates are pro-cyclical, with the interest rate soaring to the stars in a financial crisis, and then falling as the demand for loans falls in a recession. CB asks: Would this mean bankers have a tendency to favor recession ? Instead of favoring recession, I'd say that bankers fear inflation (especially surprise inflation, which hurts them directly, by redistributing real wealth to the debtors, lowering the effective real interest rate). (( CB: Yes, I understand the logic of this. If a debtor pays a loan back with money that is less in real terms because of intervening inflation, the creditor gets less money in real terms. They try to avoid inflationary surprises by insisting on zero-inflation policies. In practice, this means that they don't see recessions as a big problem. However, the high interest rates of Volcker's early-1980s recessions actually drove some bankers to the brink, which led to Volcker relenting. CB: In general, I think of bankers wanting high interest rates for the obvious reason that it is the price of money ( which they "sell" in loans). I think they are this much "in your face" at one level, but I can see that this simple profitmaking would be contradicted by other factors effecting them in the context of recessions that high interest rates induce. ((( Would this be a motive for Greenspan, as the bankers' agent, to provoke recession, all the while increasing bank profits on the way there in the interest rate hikes themselves ? He's not the bankers' agent as much as he's their representative as a collective. I know that sounds the same, but in the latter case, he sometimes might go against bankers' stated preferences (as Volcker did for awhile in 1982). ((( CB: Yes, I can see that there the relationship would be contradictory. Sometimes the interest of the group starts to diverge from individual bankers. Interest rate hikes don't improve bank profits. Instead, it's the _spread_ between the rates at which bankers borrow (like the rate on savings deposits) and the rates at which they lend which improves bank profits. The spread rose steeply circa 1992, which helped the bankers recover from the Savings Loan mess and its spin-offs to other sectors of banking. (( CB: The Fed sets the rate at which it lends to the ??? What is the relationship between the Fed rate and the spread ? Also, aren't most of the banks' revenues not from their borrowing ? Recessions don't always help the spread, though a tight-money recession might do so as deposit rates lag behind loan rates. More importantly, they help avoid inflation, which bankers hate with a passion. (( CB: My contradiction on this is, don't monopolies foster inflationary pricing ? Is this a contradiction between big banks and other big companies ? CB
Re: Re: Brad DeLong's column
Mat Forstater asked: why would Brad contribute to perpetuating such theoretically, empirically, historically, unsupportable views, when he surely knows better? I don't know about Brad, but the general problem of the continuing dominance of pre-Keynesian ideas in the thinking of economists (including the thinking of most of those who consider themselves Keynes's followers) may have something to do with a psychological inability to stand cognitive dissonance. ;-) This blinds economists to the fact that Keynes is not a rational choice theorist. That he isn't is made obvious (to those with eyes to see) by passsages such as the following (I quoted others when I first came back on this list): In "The End of Laissez-Faire", he claims that the "essential characteristic" of capitalism is "the dependence upon an intense appeal to the money making and money-loving instincts of individuals as the main motive force of the economic machine" (IX, p. 293). In "Economic Possibilities for Our Grandchildren", he says of this "main motive force" that "the love of money as a possession ... [is] a somewhat disgusting morbidity, one of those semi-criminal, semi-pathological propensities which one hands over with a shudder to the specialists in mental disease." (IX, p. 329) He grounds his theory of financial markets on the premise that: "The vast majority of those who are concerned with the buying and selling of securities know almost nothing whatever about what they are doing. They do not possess even the rudiments of what is required for a valid judgment, and are the prey of hopes and fears easily aroused by transient events and as easily dispelled. This is one of the odd characteristics of the capitalist system under which we live, which, when we are dealing with the real world, is not to be overlooked." (VI, p. 323) As the Ross Emmett review Michael recently posted shows, the "culture" of economics blinds economists to this aspect of Keynes's economics (and of Marx's). This, I assume, is what enables Robert Solow to speak as if there were no alternative to "the only game in town" - rational choice theory. It's the only game in town because almost no one in economics can think (or is allowed to think) about the subject matter in any other way. Ted Winslow -- Ted WinslowE-MAIL: [EMAIL PROTECTED] Division of Social Science VOICE: (416) 736-5054 York UniversityFAX: (416) 736-5615 4700 Keele St. Toronto, Ontario CANADA M3J 1P3
One big company
Specter of one big company in our future?
By Russell Mokhiber and Robert Weissman
Bring 'em on. A few years ago, even a few weeks ago, we might have opposed the
AOL-Time Warner merger. But now we're ready to leave 20th century thinking behind.
We recognize that this merger has "synergies that make some observers drool," as the
Wall Street Journal explained. AOL will highlight InStyle magazine? Moviefone will
pitch Warner Brother movies? Time Warner will include AOL disks in promotional
mailings? That's progress, baby!
In the past, we might have echoed the concerns of those who worried that the merger
might interfere with open access to high-speed internet connections. AOL has been a
leading proponent of open access - meaning those who control high-speed internet
access through cable systems or other means now have the power to discriminate against
internet service providers that they do not control or favor.
In buying Time Warner, AOL suddenly acquires one of the largest cable systems in the
country, and gains a material interest in opposing open access. But that's OK.
We're satisfied by AOL's verbal commitment that it will voluntarily permit open access
in the cable systems it will control (though Time Warner currently has contractual
obligations through 2001 to favor Roadrunner internet service).
A few months ago, we might have agreed with media critics like George Gerbner, who say
that goliaths like AOL-Time Warner undermine media diversity, that they are so big
that their vast size means there will be an array of issues they cannot cover properly
because they have a vested interest in the outcome. Now, we say, "C'mon, George."
AOL Chief Steve Case says he understands and is eager to learn more about the
importance of journalistic integrity. Not long ago, we might have sympathized with the
views of Robert McChesney, author of Rich Media, Poor Democracy: "This is the last
nail in the coffin for anyone who believed that the internet is the last stronghold of
media competition." Now, we tell Bob to get over it.
The internet's still a free medium - hey, AOL-Time Warner isn't stopping us from
sending this column around the net. And you want media democracy? Broadband CNN news
content will be distributed on AOL Plus.
Just a short time ago, we might have noted the consensus that the AOL-Time Warner
merger will spur a slew of new media and internet consolidations ("It's what the
future is," a chief executive who runs theme parks and a movie studio told the
Washington Post. "It sure feels like you need to be bigger - bigger yet."), and urged
that antitrust authorities block the merger to prevent this trigger effect. Now, we
say, "More mergers? That means more synergy!" (As the late Walter Adams, one of the
leading critics of corporate giantism, said, no merger was ever announced without a
ritual incantation of the synergistic gains to be realized.)
More mergers is exactly what we need. Microsoft needs a media company to compete. It
is already partnered with NBC, so we figure it should buy NBC. GE currently owns NBC -
Microsoft might as well buy General Electric, too.
And as long as it's on a buying spree, it seems highly inefficient to have two major
multinationals based in Seattle. Microsoft should purchase Boeing. And once you have
planes, you might as well get cars. We recommend buying GM, Ford and Daimler-Chrysler,
Toyota and the rest.
Meanwhile, it is obvious that, with the oil companies facing a serious political
challenge on the global warming issue, they need their own voice. We recommend they
purchase Disney-ABC. Of course, that would be after Exxon-Mobil finishes buying
BP-Arco and the other oil companies. With oil naturally comes chemicals (DuPont, Dow,
etc.) and with chemicals comes pharmaceuticals. They should all gravitate to the
Exxon-Mobil-Disney pole.
Don't worry about competition, the oil companies still face competition from other
energy sources, like the food companies. Speaking of which, with the chicken, beef and
pork processors all rapidly consolidating, the grain traders merging, the seed
business quickly moving toward monopoly, supermarkets combining and food processors
growing larger, it is time to speed the process of creating a single food company.
Let's call it Philip Morris - already the largest food company in the United States.
The food/tobacco company probably should consider merging with AOL-Time Warner. Just
think of the synergy of ordering all your food through AOL!
Among the major U.S. media companies, that leaves Viacom-CBS in need of some strategic
partners. The merger with ATT - once it has joined with MCI Worldcom-Sprint, and the
already combining Baby Bells - seems obvious: a pairing of leading cable companies to
gain efficiency.
Then there's Wal-Mart and the other major retailers. They need a major internet
presence. Hook them up with the ATT-Viacom combine, and throw in Yahoo! and
Re: Re: Re: RE: three bears metaphor killed
I'm a Henwoodite in predicting big global aspects of the future, but just an observation. What is this, a plague of Henwoodism? first Louis, and now the dominoes start falling... once we start down that slippery slope... ;-) BTW, I don't predict the future. Part of the nature of the current boom (as with previous ones) is that there's tremendous amounts of uncertainty. The dollar as a world currency is closely intertwined with U.S. military dominance. Would not a really substantial shift in the world financial and/or economic structure have to have at least one preliminary -- the withdrawal of U.S. troops from Europe? A serious struggle for hegemony between European and U.S. capital seems unlikely as long as U.S. troops are the major military force in europe. Yeah, that's why I expect that the dollar will continue to be the world currency for a long time. A reason why the US$ became (almost) "as good as gold" is that the US ran balance of payments deficits during the 1960s and 1960, creating the needed money supply for international exchanges. Much of this was part of the Cold War military offensive (when the Chicago TRIBUNE published maps showing the interlocking chains of US "allies" (SEATO, the OAS, etc.) indicating that the sun would never set...), along with foreign aid, which was largely military in function. A lot of this was international investment, too. Jim Devine [EMAIL PROTECTED] http://liberalarts.lmu.edu/~jdevine
Re: Re: Re: Current (heterodox) thinking oninterestrates?
CB: In general, I think of bankers wanting high interest rates for the obvious reason that it is the price of money ( which they "sell" in loans). I think they are this much "in your face" at one level, but I can see that this simple profitmaking would be contradicted by other factors effecting them in the context of recessions that high interest rates induce. again, they also borrow money, so they care about the _spread_. CB: The Fed sets the rate at which it lends to the ??? What is the relationship between the Fed rate and the spread ? Also, aren't most of the banks' revenues not from their borrowing ? The Fed sets the discount rate, the rate at which it lends to banks. It has enough power over money markets to keep the "Fed Funds" rate on the target they choose. (That's the rate on loans between banks for very short periods.) The "spread" can refer to any gap between two interest rates. Here I'm talking about the gap between deposit rates (close to zero these days) and loan rates. The spread can and does change over time. It mostly changes due to supply demand, specifically due to changes in expectations of future inflation, risks, etc. Banks make profits from other things, like from running trust accounts, underwriting investments, etc. I don't know the percent of profits that comes from such "off-balance-sheet activities," but Mishkin says that the income coming from these has doubled as a percentage of assets since 1979. CB: My contradiction on this is, don't monopolies foster inflationary pricing ? Monopoly power encourages inflationary persistence, as when inflation continued in the face of the early 1970s recession (that's just the clearest case). However, the US economy has become much more competitive during the last 20 years. Is this a contradiction between big banks and other big companies ? This is a big question, so I'll avoid it. Jim Devine [EMAIL PROTECTED] http://liberalarts.lmu.edu/~jdevine
RE: Re: Re: Re: RE: three bears metaphor killed
What is this, a plague of Henwoodism? first Louis, and now the dominoes start falling... once we start down that slippery slope... ;-) BTW, I don't predict the future. Part of the nature of the current boom (as with previous ones) is that there's tremendous amounts of uncertainty. What's a Henwoodite? Henwoodismo? As the econometricians point out, predicting the future is easier than predicting the past. mbs
Re: Re: Re: Re: Current (heterodox) thinking oninterestrates?
Jim Devine wrote: Monopoly power encourages inflationary persistence, as when inflation continued in the face of the early 1970s recession (that's just the clearest case). However, the US economy has become much more competitive during the last 20 years. Interesting contrast with the Specter of one big company in our future? By Russell Mokhiber and Robert Weissman which Charles Brown just posted. My casual impression is that the US economy has and is becoming more concentrated. What's yours? Banks have merged, electric companies are merging, gas companies have merged with each other and are merging with the electircs. Oil, cars, Pentagon favorites, etc. etc. There is the cheap stuff from overseas weighing on prices, but domestically? And of course the shake-out in dot.coms is just beginning. Gene Coyle
Re: Re: Re: Current (heterodox)thinkingoninterestrates?
Jim Devine [EMAIL PROTECTED] 04/06/00 04:06PM CB: In general, I think of bankers wanting high interest rates for the obvious reason that it is the price of money ( which they "sell" in loans). I think they are this much "in your face" at one level, but I can see that this simple profitmaking would be contradicted by other factors effecting them in the context of recessions that high interest rates induce. again, they also borrow money, so they care about the _spread_. (( CB: From whom do they borrow ? Aren't the biggest creditors, net creditors ? I shouldn't say " bankers". I mean the biggest net creditors in the whole system are Greenspan's bosses. (( CB: The Fed sets the rate at which it lends to the ??? What is the relationship between the Fed rate and the spread ? Also, aren't most of the banks' revenues not from their borrowing ? The Fed sets the discount rate, the rate at which it lends to banks. It has enough power over money markets to keep the "Fed Funds" rate on the target they choose. (That's the rate on loans between banks for very short periods.) The "spread" can refer to any gap between two interest rates. Here I'm talking about the gap between deposit rates (close to zero these days) and loan rates. The spread can and does change over time. It mostly changes due to supply demand, specifically due to changes in expectations of future inflation, risks, etc. Banks make profits from other things, like from running trust accounts, underwriting investments, etc. (( CB: When they underwrite, aren't they creditors ? Mortgages. ((( I don't know the percent of profits that comes from such "off-balance-sheet activities," but Mishkin says that the income coming from these has doubled as a percentage of assets since 1979. CB: My contradiction on this is, don't monopolies foster inflationary pricing ? Monopoly power encourages inflationary persistence, as when inflation continued in the face of the early 1970s recession (that's just the clearest case). However, the US economy has become much more competitive during the last 20 years. CB: Stagflation seemed to be a pinnicle of monopoly price fixing Is this a contradiction between big banks and other big companies ? This is a big question, so I'll avoid it. Regards. CB
Longest U.S. Expansion
The longest U.S. economic expansion
By Wadi'h Halabi
The monopoly media has been celebrating the longest expansion in U.S. history - eight
years, 10 months. If unemployment was the criterion, the expansion would be at least
18 months shorter.
The government estimates 9.6 million people are unemployed or want work; 55 million
U.S. residents are so poor and housing costs so high that mass homelessness and
chronic hunger rose during the expansion. Two million are in prison, 44 million lack
health insurance. If this is "as good as it gets," that tells us about capitalism
today.
Still, compared to other capitalist countries, the U.S. appears as a botanical garden
in a world of instability and wars. By one count, of the eight worst economic crises
since the 1930s, seven have occurred since 1990 - all in other countries. Why has the
U.S. economy been relatively stable?
The first thing to keep in mind is that the world economy is not entirely capitalist.
States created by socialist revolutions, including China, Vietnam and Cuba, account
today for more than 10 percent of world production. The economies of these states are
not cyclical, because planning predominates, even after capitalist inroads.
Compare U.S. cycles with the decades in the Soviet Union (before restoration) or
China, without a boom-bust cycle. 1990-91 and 1997 marked global turns for the worse
in capitalist overproduction.
Normally such turns would have led to all-out crisis. But China continued to grow, at
the fastest rate of any major economy. Its purchases from capitalist countries tripled
between 1990 and 1999 and could exceed $200 billion in 2000.
China's purchases can act like powerful "anti-clotting agents" that help keep the
capitalist system from congealing in crisis. In 1993, the chief international
economist for a Wall Street bank even admitted that without China's purchases, "there
would be world chaos."
But back to the U.S. stability. Explanations for this stability include regulation of
interest rates by the Federal Reserve; government expenditures ("Keynesian
mechanisms"); advances in technology; and bank-deposit insurance. All imply that
capitalism has learned to regulate if not overcome its cycles. Nothing could be
further from the truth.
A simple test of the validity of these explanations is to ask, Why don't other
capitalist countries use these measures to avoid the problems they are facing?
Most have tried. The Japanese economy has been stagnant or in recession for a decade.
In efforts to revive it, the Japanese government has been making capital available at
no interest. It has spent hundreds of billions of dollars on stimulative packages. The
economy remains in recession. Now the Japanese government is neck-deep in debt and
Moody's just placed it on credit watch.
It is impossible to understand the U.S. stability in national isolation. A stunning
statistic, revealed in Business Week, is that the U.S. economy is using 72 percent of
the world's savings. Capital has been flooding into the U.S. since the Gulf War and
U.S. capitalists use this at effectively no cost to themselves. The net U.S. debt to
the rest of the world tripled between 1992 and 1999. It exceeds $1.6 trillion, but net
payments on that debt in 1999 came to less than 1 percent of that sum.
In addition, unequal exchange - whereby U.S. monopolies sell their commodities above
value while buying from weaker parties below value - almost invisibly draws tens of
billions to Wall Street. Speculation, currency manipulation and other Wall Street
maneuvers draw billions more.
U.S. industry has grown since 1990. But at least 25 percent of the rest of the
capitalist world's industrial production has been idled or destroyed in the same
period. Much of this has taken place under Wall Street/International Monetary Fund
"guidance" in Warsaw Pact states now under capitalist rule, including the USSR. But
the U.S. has also overseen the "enforced destruction" of Iraq's and Yugoslavia's
economies, with devastating regional impact. And use of industrial capacity in Japan
has fallen from 90 percent to 70 percent in the face of global gluts.
Headlines blare that the current "boom" is taking place in peacetime, unlike previous
long expansions. But U.S. imperialism has been the main force in two major (and by no
means concluded) wars, in the Gulf and the Balkans, and countless less-publicized
conflicts in Latin America, Africa and Asia. The Pentagon budget is at wartime levels.
All that capital flowing into the U.S. is trying to escape wars, instability and
losses abroad. In the three months after the U.S. started bombing Yugoslavia last
March, capital flooded into the U.S. at a $1.1 trillion annual rate. Wall Street is
using its position of economic and military dominance, and the improvements in
communications and transport, to push off capitalism's toxins - starting with
unemployment - onto weaker
textbook query
Has anyone looked at the textbook, AN INTRODUCTION TO THE MARKET SYSTEM by Kalman Goldberg (ME Sharpe 2000)? Is it worth it? Jim Devine [EMAIL PROTECTED] http://liberalarts.lmu.edu/~jdevine
Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Current (heterodox) thinking oninterestrates?
My casual impression is that the US economy has and is becoming more concentrated. What's yours? it depends on one's time frame. Compared to the "good old daze" of the 1950s 1960s, the US economy is currently less monopolistic, not only due to globalization but also deregulation of trucking, airplanes, etc., and anti-trust (ATT), along with some technical change. But I think the long-term trend in the future is toward increased monopolization, as seen as the major world auto companies edge toward creating a world oligopoly. Banks have merged, electric companies are merging, gas companies have merged with each other and are merging with the electircs. Oil, cars, Pentagon favorites, etc. etc. right, but you should realize that a lot of banks had local monopoly power before they merged with out-of-state banks, etc. Jim Devine [EMAIL PROTECTED] http://liberalarts.lmu.edu/~jdevine
Re: Re: Re: Re: Current (heterodox) thinkingoninterestrates?
CB: From whom do they [banks] borrow ? Aren't the biggest creditors, net creditors ? they borrow from all people who have bank accounts, though the most important are those who can afford to save most and also can afford to keep the largest amounts in the bank. CB: Stagflation seemed to be a pinnicle of monopoly price fixing currently, we're having the opposite of stagflation, i.e., low official unemployment rates and low inflation. Jim Devine [EMAIL PROTECTED] http://liberalarts.lmu.edu/~jdevine
Re: Brad DeLong's column
Later, he writes that "Lowered interest rates [in the 1990s] driven in part by the shrinking of annual budget deficits..." According to the usual sources on interest rates, the 1990s real interest rates were high, not low. I wrote "lower*ed*" for a reason... Brad DeLong
Re: Re: Brad DeLong's column
Both of the quotes-- deficits crowd out private investment and deficits cause high interest rates (more specifically there that lowering deficits cause lower interest rates) are pure Summers, but you are right that "pre-Keynesian" is the correct general label. Nah. In the context of the 1980s and 1990s, the Federal Reserve has its target for real GDP and unemployment that it will try to hit--so a bigger deficit means higher interest rates. It's not the pre-Keynesian childish babbling of a Say, but a certain (I think correct) view of how the Federal Reserve behaves... Brad DeLong -- -- -- -- -- -- -- -- -- -- -- -- -- -- -- -- -- -- -- -- -- -- -- -- "Now 'in the long run' this [way of summarizing the quantity theory of money] is probably true But this long run is a misleading guide to current affairs. **In the long run** we are all dead. Economists set themselves too easy, too useless a task if in tempestuous seasons they can only tell us that when the storm is long past the ocean is flat again." --J.M. Keynes -- -- -- -- -- -- -- -- -- -- -- -- -- -- -- -- -- -- -- -- -- -- -- J. Bradford De Long; Professor of Economics, U.C. Berkeley; Co-Editor, Journal of Economic Perspectives. Dept. of Economics, U.C. Berkeley, #3880 Berkeley, CA 94720-3880 (510) 643-4027; (925) 283-2709 phones (510) 642-6615; (925) 283-3897 faxes http://econ161.berkeley.edu/ [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Current (heterodox) thinking oninterestrates?
The airlines are highly concentrated. Deregulation caused a temporary dip in concentration which has now been overcome. They fix prices oligopolistically. Jim Devine wrote: My casual impression is that the US economy has and is becoming more concentrated. What's yours? it depends on one's time frame. Compared to the "good old daze" of the 1950s 1960s, the US economy is currently less monopolistic, not only due to globalization but also deregulation of trucking, airplanes, etc., and anti-trust (ATT), along with some technical change. But I think the long-term trend in the future is toward increased monopolization, as seen as the major world auto companies edge toward creating a world oligopoly. Banks have merged, electric companies are merging, gas companies have merged with each other and are merging with the electircs. Oil, cars, Pentagon favorites, etc. etc. right, but you should realize that a lot of banks had local monopoly power before they merged with out-of-state banks, etc. Jim Devine [EMAIL PROTECTED] http://liberalarts.lmu.edu/~jdevine
Re: Re: Brad DeLong's column
sorry. Later, he writes that "Lowered interest rates [in the 1990s] driven in part by the shrinking of annual budget deficits..." According to the usual sources on interest rates, the 1990s real interest rates were high, not low. I wrote "lower*ed*" for a reason... Brad DeLong Jim Devine [EMAIL PROTECTED] http://liberalarts.lmu.edu/~jdevine
Query re JR Hicks
In a 1990 article in Scientific American, Brian Arthur says: "Moveover, if one or a few firms came to dominate a market, the assumption that no firm is large enough to affect market prices on its own (which makes economic problems easy to analyze) would also collapse. When John R. Hicks surveyed these possibilities in 1939 he drew back in alarm. 'The threatened wreckage,' he wrote, 'is that of the greater part of economic theory." Arthur gives the date, 1939, in that passage, but does not provide a cite for the Hicks' quoted remark. Anybody know where I should look for this? Thanks. Gene Coyle
The CCC
At 03:15 PM 4/6/00 -0700, you wrote: The airlines are highly concentrated. Deregulation caused a temporary dip in concentration which has now been overcome. They fix prices oligopolistically. right, but they show in miniature what I'm talking about. Initially, there was a surge in competition (People's Express, etc., as the CAB was broken up). Then, the concentration centralization of capital (the CCC) reasserted itself. Of course, in the process, labor was weakened severely. For most of the rest of the economy, especially manufacturing, the new era of oligopoly hasn't hit yet. Jim Devine [EMAIL PROTECTED] http://liberalarts.lmu.edu/~jdevine
Re: Query re JR Hicks
Hicks, J.R. 1946. Value and Capital, 2nd ed. (Oxford: Clarendon Press): p. 84: "It is, I believe, only possible to save anything from this wreck ... if we assume that the markets confronting most of the firms with which we shall be dealing do not differ very greatly from perfectly competitive markets." He asks "But why should anyone care about the wreckage." -- Michael Perelman Economics Department California State University Chico, CA 95929 Tel. 530-898-5321 E-Mail [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Re: Query re JR Hicks
I'm running out but it *might* be "The Foundations of Welfare Economics" Economic Journal that year. I can check tomorrow, but you could also e-mail Edward Nell at [EMAIL PROTECTED] and he would probably know off the top. -Original Message- From: Eugene Coyle [EMAIL PROTECTED] To: Pen-L Pen-L [EMAIL PROTECTED] Date: Thursday, April 06, 2000 5:22 PM Subject: [PEN-L:17792] Query re JR Hicks In a 1990 article in Scientific American, Brian Arthur says: "Moveover, if one or a few firms came to dominate a market, the assumption that no firm is large enough to affect market prices on its own (which makes economic problems easy to analyze) would also collapse. When John R. Hicks surveyed these possibilities in 1939 he drew back in alarm. 'The threatened wreckage,' he wrote, 'is that of the greater part of economic theory." Arthur gives the date, 1939, in that passage, but does not provide a cite for the Hicks' quoted remark. Anybody know where I should look for this? Thanks. Gene Coyle
Re: RE: Re: Re: Re: Re: Current (heterodox) thinkingoni nterestrates?
I wrote currently, we're having the opposite of stagflation, i.e., low official unemployment rates and low inflation. Susan Fleck asks: Would that be disemployment? officially it's called disinflation. Jim Devine [EMAIL PROTECTED] http://liberalarts.lmu.edu/~jdevine
RE: Re: RE: Re: Re: Re: Re: Current (heterodox) thinkingoni nterestrates?
I was playing with words, but also was thinking that disinflation was only a situation of low inflation, not necessarily linked to low unemployment, given that the neoclassical explanation would suggest that low unemployment rates signal wage pressure thus 'fueling' inflation. I think it's time to go home here in the Eastern Time Zone. Susan Fleck -- From: Jim Devine[SMTP:[EMAIL PROTECTED]] Sent: Thursday, April 06, 2000 7:08 PM To: [EMAIL PROTECTED] Subject: [PEN-L:17797] Re: RE: Re: Re: Re: Re: Current (heterodox) thinkingoni nterestrates? I wrote currently, we're having the opposite of stagflation, i.e., low official unemployment rates and low inflation. Susan Fleck asks: Would that be disemployment? officially it's called disinflation. Jim Devine [EMAIL PROTECTED] http://liberalarts.lmu.edu/~jdevine
Re: Re: Re: Brad DeLong's column
Mat writes: Both of the quotes-- deficits crowd out private investment and deficits cause high interest rates (more specifically there that lowering deficits cause lower interest rates) are pure Summers, but you are right that "pre-Keynesian" is the correct general label. Brad ripostes: Nah. In the context of the 1980s and 1990s, the Federal Reserve has its target for real GDP and unemployment that it will try to hit--so a bigger deficit means higher interest rates. It's not the pre-Keynesian childish babbling of a Say, but a certain (I think correct) view of how the Federal Reserve behaves... Because the Fed fine-tunes the economy to attain a target real GDP, Say's Law is a first-guess guide to the workings of the macroeconomy, so that an increased government deficits drive up interest rates? But I thought that macroeconomists had abandoned the idea of fine-tuning! (BTW, before I start my diatribe, notice that higher interest rates (Brad's topic) are not the same thing as "crowding out" of private investment (Mat's topic). This is especially true because government deficits encourage private spending via the accelerator effect.) In the early 1980s, the Fed wasn't targeting real GDP. Rather, it was trying to break the back of inflation (and indirectly, that of the working class). In the process, the second problem with Brad's riposte was revealed, i.e., the assumption that the Fed has the _power_ to target real GDP. There are several problems with this assumption: the health of the banks and the financial system can be threatened by policy, so that there's a conflict among Fed goals; the Fed doesn't control the relevant real long-term interest and thus the economy well at all; and they don't know what potential output is. In 1982, the anti-inflation war started hurting banks (and encouraged the international debt crisis) and so Volcker retreated from his anti-inflationary war. Luckily for him, oil prices fell sharply, so that the war against inflation could be won despite rising real GDP. So the Fed accommodated the expansionary effects of fiscal policy (the famous Reagan deficits). In the late 1980s, because the Fed believed the NAIRU to be 6 percent, Greenspan (PV's successor) perceived that the economy started over-heating. So the Fed tried to engineer a "soft landing" in 1989 (sound familiar?) That is, it tried "to reduce aggregate demand without actually bringing on a recession" with "a mildly contractionary policy." Despite last-minute efforts to slow the recession, "the soft landing turned into a stall," the recession of 1990. The Fed found itself "pushing on a string," having little effect on the economy. Official unemployment rose from 5.3% in 1989 to 6.8% in 1991 and 7.5% in 1992. If the Fed had been able to target output, it would have gotten unemployment to stop rising once it got beyond the perceived NAIRU (6% at the time). [The NAIRU is the rate of unemployment below which the economy is supposed to produce an inflationary explosion. It corresponds to potential output.] Martin N. Baily Philip Friedman (whose MACROECONOMICS textbook I'm quoting above, p. 249) point to several problems with this effort in 1989. (1) a mild decline or slowing of real GDP can be translated into a steep one by the accelerator effect [a factor that many macroeconomists have forgotten]; (2) they don't have control over fiscal policy, which was mildly contractionary in the 1989; (3) there had been over-investment in offices and shopping centers, combined with excessive borrowing, which discouraged further investment spending; (4) the balance sheets of many banks were affected, as excessive borrowing encouraged the borrowers to go bankrupt, undermining bank assets; (5) there was a steep rise in oil prices (due to the war between Kuwait and Iraq), which encouraged a cut-back in consumer spending. Finally, (6) the yield curve became very steep, as the Fed pushed short-term interest rates down but long-term rates stayed high. Under conditions like this, the Fed _can't_ target real GDP. [Baily Friedman's sources, by the way, are quite respectable: Olivier Blanchard, Robert Hall, and Alan Sinai. Baily himself heads the President's Council of Economic Advisors at this point.] After a long process of recovery (the length of which encouraged the ouster of President Bush), the Fed started a long period of groping in the dark. I don't know how the Fed can target real GDP if it can't forecast the future. They didn't know where the NAIRU was, so they didn't know where potential output was (or what the "speed limit" for GDP growth was). Greenspan hiked rates in 1996, assuming that the economy had fallen below NAIRU. In retrospect, we know that his estimates of the NAIRU were way off, much too high. (Brad had pointed to the problems with the NAIRU theory in a previous NY TIMES column. Others have pointed out that the margin of error in calculating the NAIRU
Re: RE: Re: RE: Re: Re: Re: Re: Current (heterodox) thi nkingoni nterestrates?
At 07:32 PM 4/6/00 -0400, you wrote: I was playing with words, but also was thinking that disinflation was only a situation of low inflation, not necessarily linked to low unemployment, given that the neoclassical explanation would suggest that low unemployment rates signal wage pressure thus 'fueling' inflation. the way I understood it, disinflation refers to the decline in persistent, built-in, inflation that is very difficult to get rid of in a year via recessionary policies. Persistent recessions (like the early 1980s) and persistent declines in oil prices help lead to disinflation. So would increasing worker insecurity, which would give any given unemployment more power to deter inflation. So we might see an association between lower unemployment (which has more impact because of insecurity) and lower inflation. I think that's part of what's happened. I think it's time to go home here in the Eastern Time Zone. good idea. I should too. Jim Devine [EMAIL PROTECTED] http://liberalarts.lmu.edu/~jdevine
Re: Re: Re: Re: Brad DeLong's column
(BTW, before I start my diatribe, notice that higher interest rates (Brad's topic) are not the same thing as "crowding out" of private investment (Mat's topic). This is especially true because government deficits encourage private spending via the accelerator effect.) Very true... In the early 1980s, the Fed wasn't targeting real GDP. Rather, it was trying to break the back of inflation (and indirectly, that of the working class). Correct. But starting in 1984 or so they *were* trying to target real GDP... In the process, the second problem with Brad's riposte was revealed, i.e., the assumption that the Fed has the _power_ to target real GDP. They think they do (albeit imperfectly, with substantial errors) Brad DeLong
Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Brad DeLong's column
I wrote: In the process, the second problem with Brad's riposte was revealed, i.e., the assumption that the Fed has the _power_ to target real GDP. Brad says: They think they do (albeit imperfectly, with substantial errors) well, I think I'm the king of England (albeit imperfectly, with substantial errors)! people at the Fed have to think that they have this power. If they admitted that they can't do it, and that the attainment of the "Goldilocks economy" was just a matter of luck, then their confidence would crumble. Jim Devine [EMAIL PROTECTED] http://liberalarts.lmu.edu/~jdevine
Re: Diamonds and colonialism (fwd)
I wouldn't say it's the best paper but certainly the best in the US. Its editorial stance is another matter altogether. Anthony P. D'Costa Associate Professor Ph: (253) 692-4462 Comparative International Development Fax: (253) 692-5612 University of WashingtonBox Number: 358436 1900 Commerce Street Tacoma, WA 98402, USA xxx On Thu, 6 Apr 2000, Louis Proyect wrote: I really wonder why New York Times and bourgeois sources like this suddenly rediscover Africa's heritage of colonalism!! Overall, it does not seem to me more than an "orientalist" sympaty of reconstructing the "other": we killed the folks, and let's do something to compansate it. o!!.. Mine The NY Times is much more complex. There are continual battles going on over how to report, either in the interests of the truth or in the interests of the State Department. Raymond Bonner was an honest reporter who dared to question the Reaganite line on Central America. Finally he was purged. I think everybody should read the NY Times on a daily basis, either in print or on the web. It is the best newspaper in the world, regardless of its editorial stance. Louis Proyect (The Marxism mailing list: http://www.marxmail.org)
Hicks citation
Hicks, J.R. 1946. Value and Capital, 2nd ed. (Oxford: Clarendon Press): p. 84: "It is, I believe, only possible to save anything from this wreck ... if we assume that the markets confronting most of the firms with which we shall be dealing do not differ very greatly from perfectly competitive markets." He asks "But why should anyone care about the wreckage." -- Michael Perelman Economics Department California State University Chico, CA 95929 Tel. 530-898-5321 E-Mail [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Current (heterodox) thinkingoninterestrates?
Other problems with concentration ratios concern determining the appropriate market. Do we look at all of agriculture as a single market or do we just look at egg producers or pumpkin growers as the market? Jim Devine wrote: it depends on one's time frame. Compared to the "good old daze" of the 1950s 1960s, the US economy is currently less monopolistic, not only due to globalization but also deregulation of trucking, airplanes, etc., and anti-trust (ATT), along with some technical change. Banks have merged, electric companies are merging, gas companies have merged with each other and are merging with the electircs. Oil, cars, Pentagon favorites, etc. etc. -- Michael Perelman Economics Department California State University Chico, CA 95929 Tel. 530-898-5321 E-Mail [EMAIL PROTECTED]
story
Friends, Saturday marks the third anniversary of my father's death. Each year I try to do a couple of things in his honor. I read a war memoir each year in appreciation of the importance of WW2 in his life. This year I read "My Just War" by Gabriel Temkin, a Polish Jewish refugee who fought in the Red Army against the Nazis. Below is a story I gave my father for his birthday theyear he retired from the glass factory (1984). An editor once criticized the anti-semitic remark made by the narrator (me at age 11 or 12), but this just reflected the almost casual anti-semitism of most of the townspeople, a sad thing especially since the Great War had ended not long before. Comments welcome. Michael Yates At the Factory Gate If I had some money, I would walk down the steep path to town, landing on Seventh Avenue, and past the row houses and small neat homes, make my way to Petroleum Sales. My eyes gleamed in anticipation for this was a store filled with a child's delights: gumballs, exotic stamps, airplane kits, baseball cards, and fake cigarettes which smoked when you blew into them. These cigarettes were a special favorite of mine. With one of them dangling out of the corner of my mouth, I could pretend that I was a tough guy hanging around my uncle's dairy store looking cool and hard in jeans hung low on my hips, held up with a thin pink belt. Once in the alley behind the school yard, "Scoop" Folta, dazzling in his sunglasses and d.a. haircut, actually asked me for a cigarette. "Got a weed?," he said. I felt for a moment that maybe we could be friends, but then I shamefacedly remembered that my cigarette wasn't real. Bald old Mr. Ringler kept a sharp eye out for youthful thieves, but they didn't have trick mirrors and store dicks in that poor town, so you could pocket a treasure or two if you were careful. Mean-faced Mr. Ringler! I never minded stealing his trinkets. He wore a suit and he looked like my dad's bosses. He was rich and probably a Jew. Surely he would never miss a set of triangle stamps from Monaco or a baseball or a pack of those cigarettes. Petroleum Sales was in the middle of a block on Fifth Avenue, between 7th and 8th streets. On leaving, I always turned left toward the stores downtown. I might be a little apprehensive because my pal Jack's mother could come stumbling drunk and disheveled out of the side door of the bar at the Fifth Avenue Hotel. Slobbering, toothless, and in a flimsy housecoat, she would babble out some wild tale, trying all the while to grab and kiss you. More than once Jack and I witnessed this together. He would swear and tell her to get the hell home. I would pretend not to notice, and we never talked about it. Jack liked me, and I was glad for that. I knew he liked me because he invited me home even when his mother was there. Oh, I saw some terrible scenes. At eighth grade graduation, our parents were invited to a communion breakfast after morning mass. Jack's mother came, in a pretty dress and wearing makeup, trying hard to make small talk and mingle among the parents unnoticed. But no one except my mother would speak to her. Poor woman. She was like an old and broken plate, shoddily glued together and with all of the cracks showing. We waited for her to break, the meaner among us snickering as her voice rose and her speech thickened. The nuns shared knowing glances with the parents, secretly blaming Jack for the sins of his mother. Funny how those angels of mercy had so little compassion for those who needed it and how easily they were impressed by all of the material things which they had forsaken. Finally, she announced, almost in a shout, that she had to go home to turn off the stove. We watched her leave in silence and then returned to our eggs and toast, basking in the glow of our parent's pride. All but Jack. He had no appetite. Tonight there would be a violent argument. His mother would screech at his bookkeeper father. Jack's dad could add faster than a calculator, but he didn't have speed enough to avoid the flying shoes and the screams of "Eddie, you bastard;" Eddie, you cocksucker." When I think of Jack's mother, I remember something she told my grandmother. Grandma was working at Greenbaum's department store, and one day she was accosted by Jack's two aunts who tried to sell her some pies which they had just bought on sale at the supermarket. Jack's mother sidled up to my grandmother and said, sotto voce, "you have to watch out for my sisters. They're crazy." The Fifth Avenue Hotel was a three-story gray tenement, buttressed by fire escapes. It was home to an assortment of derelicts, old bachelors, and shady deals. Through the side door oozed the cool, sickening smells of dirt and stale beer. Ceiling fans muted the sodden chatter of the barflies and petty racketeers who drank away the afternoons there. I longed to walk in there and order a coke or ask for change
Conference announcement
This message comes to you on behalf of the conference committee of the Conference of Socialist Economists (CSE). CSE will be holding a conference on 1st and 2nd July 2000 in London, entitled Global Capital and Global Struggles; Strategies, Alliances, Alternatives. The aim is to promote a dialogue between academics and activists on the process of neoliberal globalisation and how to resist it. Topics such as the Seattle Round, the politics of the IMF/World Bank, Fortress Europe, the internationalisation of the labour movement, etc. will be discussed (see text at the end of the message). We are looking for other organisations and web sites through which to publicise the conference. If you or your organisation can help in this way, please either:- 1) distribute what follows in cyberspace or on paper, preferably in the `attached file' version which can be printed out as a proper leaflet 2)contact us and we will send you paper leaflets - say how many you can use and where they should be sent 3) consider if you could mention the conference and the CSE web site in your magazine, newsletter etc 4) consider if you could do some kind of `swap deal' on publicity with CSE - you put our leaflets in your mailing, we put yours in ours; reply by e-mail in the first instance to open discussions about this Details of the conference will also be posted in the next fortnight on www.gn.apc.org/cse, where in due course you will be able to download summaries of the talks to be discussed. Thanks for your support Anne Gray === Everyone welcome to an international conference on GLOBAL CAPITAL AND GLOBAL STRUGGLES: STRATEGIES, ALLIANCES, ALTERNATIVES 10am-6pm Saturday-Sunday 1st-2nd July 2000 University of London Union (ULU), Malet St, London WC1 New networks of struggles are posing a serious threat to neoliberal globalization. Their slogans include, 'No issue is single', 'Let our resistance be as transnational as capital', and 'No new round -- WTO turnaround'. This conference aims to involve intellectuals and activists in debate on global capital's strategies today, as well as counter-strategies and alternatives. Questions for debate include Why is global capital liberalizing trade, production and finance? How do social movements build alliances at the local and global level? What strategies could build on their strengths and overcome their limitations? What alternative models of international economy are being promoted? Plenary talks John Holloway, 'Changing the world without taking power' Andy Mathers Graham Taylor, 'Europe-wide struggles against neoliberalism' Stuart Rosewarne, 'Migrant workers, citizenship and labour markets' Silvia Federici, 'New forms of anti-capitalist internationalism' Hugo Radice, 'Globalization, labour and socialist renewal' Workshops Workshop talks and discussions include a diverse range of issues and struggles, e.g. ideologies of social movements, global-local dynamics, community politics, GM seeds, privatization of public services, environmental governance, New Labour's Knowledge Economy, financial liberalization, labour exploitation, trade unions, immigrant workers, EMU, Third World debt crunch. Registration fees: #60 institutionally-funded, #15 high-waged, #10 low-waged, #5 unwaged. Sponsored by the Conference of Socialist Economists (CSE) All details -- programme, abstracts, papers, accommodation info -- will be provided on the CSE webpage, www.gn.apc.org/cse CSE 2000 Registration Form The registration form is also available on the webpage, www.gn.apc.org/cse It can be sent by post with a cheque, payable to 'CSE'. Or it can be sent by email with credit card details. Registration fees: #60 institutionally-funded, #15 high-waged, #10 low-waged, #5 unwaged. Name Institution Address Email Amount paid (see rates above) Cheque enclosed? Credit card bookings name of card holder card type number expiry date Send to: CSE Registration Dr Alfredo Saad Filho South Bank University Business School 103 Borough Road London SE1 0AA UK email [EMAIL PROTECTED] Louis Proyect (The Marxism mailing list: http://www.marxmail.org)
[fla-left] [analysis] Republicans, White House back funding for US military intervention in Colombia (fwd)
forwarded by Michael Hoover World Socialist Web Site http://www.wsws.org Republicans, Clinton White House back funding for US military intervention in Colombia By Patrick Martin 5 April 2000 The US House of Representatives voted March 30 to approve $1.7 billion in funding for counterinsurgency warfare in Colombia which will include a Vietnam-style deployment of US advisers and military helicopters against peasant guerrillas. The 263 to 146 vote came after a two-day debate in which there were frequent comparisons between the early stages of the US intervention in Vietnam and the present conditions in the Andean region of South America (Peru, Bolivia and Ecuador as well as Colombia). The center of the aid package is the provision of 30 Blackhawk and 33 Huey helicopters for the Colombian Army and police forces, together with hundreds of US advisers and technicians to keep the equipment in order and instruct Colombian soldiers in its use. In addition, some $470 million in training and equipment will go directly to the Colombian army and $115.5 million to the police, including the establishment of two new specialized anti-drug battalions. Majorities in both parties voted to support the huge increase in military spending in Colombia, which came as part of a $12.6 billion emergency appropriations bill providing for additional funds for US military operations in Kosovo, as well as disaster relief in North Carolina and other states. The margin among Republicans was 143-61, while Democrats gave their support by a vote of 119-84. Both the Republican leadership, headed by House Speaker Dennis Hastert, and the Clinton White House supported the bill. The immediate prospects for final passage of the bill are unclear because of a procedural dispute between Senate and House Republican leaders over how much of the additional spending contained in the House bill should be loaded onto emergency legislation and how much should be included in normal appropriations bills, which will go through Congress much more slowly. But all of the funding for operations in Colombia and neighboring countries is certain of final passage and approval by the White House. The congressional Republicans more than doubled the Colombia funding requested by the White House Office of Drug Policy. The House Appropriations Committee added $500 million to the program's budget, for assistance to Bolivia, Ecuador and Peru, and $282.5 million for a high-tech communications surveillance system for federal drug enforcement officials. At the same time they blocked proposals to increase funding for drug rehabilitation efforts at home as well as a proposed reduction in the crippling debt burdens of the countries in the Andean region. Bipartisan majorities voted down amendments aimed at reducing the scale of the US role in the fighting in Colombia, a civil war which has raged for four decades. Only one such limitation was approved, an amendment offered by conservative Mississippi Democrat Gene Taylor to place a ceiling of 300 on the number of US advisers who could be deployed at any one time in the South American country. There is no limitation, however, on the total number of US military personnel active in the region, including those engaged in electronic surveillance and aerial attacks on guerrillas, most of whom operate from bases outside Colombia. The extent of the US involvement in the Andean region is largely unknown to the American public, and the debate over US policy there has been confined to elite circles in Washington. The issue did not arise in the presidential nomination campaigns in either party, and neither Bush nor Gore has made any recent statement on the subject. But for nearly a year the Pentagon has been preoccupied with the strategic and logistical problems created by the hand-over of Howard Air Base in Panama, part of the return of the Canal Zone to Panamanian sovereignty. Most US surveillance flights over the Andes originated from Howard Air Base, and only a series of makeshift substitutes have been found, including the Dutch-controlled islands of Aruba and Curacao in the Caribbean. The US military had expected to develop an airfield at Manta, a Pacific Ocean port in Ecuador within easy range of both Colombia to the north and Peru to the south, but the political and economic crisis in Ecuador delayed negotiations to obtain base rights and a long-term deal was only reached at the end of 1999. The Air Force expects to complete installation of navigation and safety equipment by mid-May, in what will be the first major US air base on the South American mainland. Passage of the Colombia aid package was hailed by Barry R. McCaffrey, the White House drug policy director. The retired general declared, "This program will strengthen democratic government, the rule of law, economic stability and human rights in that beleaguered country." If
Atheist professor fired (forwarded from Jim Farmelant)
KANSAS FIRES FREETHINKER PROFESSOR Texans know Fred Whitehead, Ph.D. from his talk on Freethought history at the 1999 Atheist Alliance convention and his research into Comfort's German Freethinkers. Fred is an outspoken advocate of freethought nationally and at his university. It got him fired last week from his Kansas University professorship in medical humanities after 21 years of teaching. His "research does not fit the mission of the Medical School," said Dr. Deborah Powell, Executive Dean of the School. "This is surely the most extensive peer review in the entire history of the University," Whitehead responded. "The Medical Center has many religion-based events, such as an annual Religion and Medicine symposium. Yet last November, when I sponsored a national conference at this center on the Evolution Controversy, I was harassed by two administrators. My subsequent proposal that I work in the field of science education in Kansas has been rejected by the University. There is a clear pattern of favoritism for religious expression, while a secular humanist like me is dismissed entirely." On his complaint to the U.S. Equal Employment Opportunity Commission, Whitehead listed his religion as "Freethinker." His religious belief not being accommodated is "academic freedom." Whitehead thus continues the American intellectual tradition of Thomas Paine and Robert Ingersoll. More than 150 letters of support have arrived at Kansas University from 34 States and 11 nations. Louis Proyect Marxism mailing list: http://www.marxmail.org/
Run on the Bank
Comrades, is this at all helpful? --- Forwarded Message Follows --- From: "Michael Albert" [EMAIL PROTECTED] Here is today's ZNet Commentary Delivery from Patrick Bond. If you pass this comment along to others, please include an explanation that Commentaries are a premium sent to Sustainer Donors of Z/ZNet and that to learn more about the project folks can consult ZNet (http://www.zmag.org) and specifically the Sustainer Pages (http://www.zmag.org/Commentaries/donorform.htm. Here then is today's ZNet Commentary... --- Run on the Bank by Patrick Bond "We can't REALLY aim to shut down the International Monetary Fund and World Bank, you know, Patrick. What would we do without them? What would take their place?" I hear this too much in the run-up to the mid-April Mobilization for Global Justice in Washington, DC. Are activists getting the detailed information needed to take on the IMF and Bank with the militancy that Seattle-East deserves? Even some well-intentioned, smart progressives involved in defining international movement strategy don't have the imagination to think of a world free of an enemy they have grown perhaps a bit too comfortable with, or alternatively too fearful of to consider life without. Worse, some in the Jubilee 2000 US movement view the current debate as an opportunity to lobby for a greater, not lesser role, for the IMF, Bank, their discredited "Highly Indebted Poor Countries" debt relief initiative, or the new IMF "poverty reduction" scam. The comradely criticism below is meant to bolster the folk who'll be on the streets of Washington and who may want, in contrast, a few good reasons to shut down the IMF and World Bank--not just for a couple of days, but for good. For the specter haunting the Bank was remarked upon by its president, James Wolfensohn, in a speech to Western Hemisphere finance officials in Mexico last month: "Let us not let radicals in Seattle scare us from the task of adjusting to globalization and giving greater opportunities to our people." _Fix it or nix it?_ Should we adjust the IMF/Bank, or instead seek to abolish these big, undemocratic, inefficient, corporate-oriented dinosaurs? While retaining unity in the upcoming mass protest, it's still useful to clarify strategic differences, so that lines of demarcation don't occur over trivia such as whether or where to break windows, but instead over the arguments we deploy, and the demands we make. The right is also mulling this over. A gaggle of conservative economists in the congressional Meltzer Commission pronounced, earlier this month, that the IMF, Bank and three regional development banks in Asia, Africa and Latin America are so badly warped that they must shrivel, quite dramatically, before being straightened out. On the left, the choices have been reduced-- crudely but helpfully, I'd say--to the slogans "fix- it" versus "nix it." Fixers correctly argue that the IMF and Bank have been pressured to adopt reforms over the past 15 or so years. Nixers rebut that these must be measured against the worsening scale of eco-socio-economic damage done by the terrible twins over the same period. In five areas--environmental protection, gender awareness, transparency, community participation and post-Washington Consensus economics--the reformers can claim victories, yes. But those very wins have allowed the Bank, especially, to whitewash itself, disguising a thorough-going commitment to hardcore neoliberalism with happy talk about sustainability, in the process dividing opponents and hiring famous ex-critics. Empowered by the Bank's plagiarism of NGO rhetoric, some inside-Beltway policy wonks are even suggesting that Wolfensohn switch the focus of lending to sectors like basic education. The slogan invoked from time to time--"Public funds for public good"--is fundamentally misguided, I will conclude below. How far can reform go? Reflecting the realpolitik of institutional constipation, it is now widely acknowledged that late last year, maverick Bank chief economist Joe Stiglitz--who during his 1997-99 term was roundly despised by IMF and US Treasury bigwigs-- got pushed overboard. (Stiglitz diplomatically claimed to have jumped ship, in order to have more freedom to launch his critiques.) According to a reliable Bank insider quoted in the February issue of Doug Henwood's Left Business Observer, "Summers made it clear that if Wolfensohn wanted a second term as World Bank president--to start on June 1, 2000--Stiglitz had to go." Serious campaigners acknowledge the point: reforms won to date are deeply unsatisfying. But matters get more complicated yet. _Inside-Beltway strategy_ Straddling the reform/abolition fence is a "fix-it or nix-it" faction, who make demands on the international institutions that are going to be awfully difficult, if not impossible, to meet--and if after a year they're not, pressure will be ratcheted up towards abolition. In a
Diamonds and colonialism
From NY Times, April 6, 2000 "Africa's Diamond Wars" Full article at: http://www.nytimes.com/library/world/africa/040600africa-diamonds.html Exploiting a Continent The miseries of modern Africa are, in many ways, a legacy of its history. In the case of both Angola and Congo, colonialism obliterated whatever political culture may have predated the arrival of Europeans. It invented huge, largely fictive nations - Angola is the size of Texas, Congo of the United States east of the Mississippi - roping together people who regarded one other as foreigners. To make their nation-building pay, colonialists used force to haul off everything from ivory to rubber to human beings. In Congo, the Belgian colonial state was famously greedy and cruel. Its agents set impossible quotas for production of rubber and ivory, killing or chopping off the hands of villagers who failed to meet them. The novelist Joseph Conrad called it "the vilest scramble for loot that ever disfigured the history of human conscience." In Angola, the Portuguese were less brutal, but no less toxic. At independence in 1975, several hundred thousand Portuguese residents, virtually the entire educated population, abandoned the country. Some took even their doorknobs with them. They left behind a place where almost no Angolans had any training in statecraft, business or agriculture. Then for the better part of the last 50 years, the cold war and the white-minority governments of southern Africa injected cash and arms into regional wars. The Central Intelligence Agency, for instance, supported Unita in the early 1970's and again in the late 1980's. The Marxist government of Angola received military assistance from the Soviet Union and up to 50,000 troops from Cuba. When the C.I.A. was not helping Unita, the rebels got military backup from white-ruled South Africa. Sierra Leone, a small country in West Africa, had a more benign colonial history under British rule. But since the 1940's, predators who smuggle diamonds have warped every aspect of the nation's economic and political life. The meddling of colonialists, superpowers and white governments all but stopped at the start of the 1990's, leaving diamonds, oil and other natural resources as the primary forage for rebels and governments. In those countries where there was nothing to trade for weapons - as in Mozambique, where post-apartheid South Africa stopped financing rebellion and post-Communist Eastern Europe stopped financing the government - war simply fizzled out. But Angola, Congo and Sierra Leone had plenty of diamonds left over to excite greed, fuel war and to buy favors. The United Nations report on the embargo against Unita described how Mr. Savimbi gave a "passport sized" packet of diamonds to the president of Togo, Gnassingbe Éyadéma, as payment for allowing his children to live in Togo and go to school there. Togo has denied it. Mr. Savimbi "sealed" his friendship with the president of Burkina Faso, Blaise Compaoré, by giving him a number of envelopes full of diamonds, as well as contributing to his political campaign and helping his government pay debts, according to the report. In return, it said, Burkina Faso sent Mr. Savimbi three flights of diesel fuel. The government of Burkina Faso denies that. "Oh, the diamonds, diamonds, diamonds," said a character in Graham Greene's "The Heart of the Matter," a 1948 novel set in Sierra Leone. "You cannot understand how many bribes are necessary." Manipulating Scarcity De Beers created its cartel 110 years ago when the company's founder, Cecil Rhodes, realized that the sheer abundance of diamonds in southern Africa would make them virtually worthless. By carefully manipulating scarcity, De Beers prospered as perhaps the most powerful cartel in the annals of modern commerce. In the process, however, De Beers has run afoul of antitrust laws in the United States. The company's senior executives dare not enter this country because of an outstanding antitrust indictment that charges De Beers with fixing the prices of industrial diamonds. The company's grip on the diamond market has slipped a bit from near-total dominance at mid-century, but it has continued to keep the price of gem-quality diamonds high by being both aggressive and flexible. Through the years, it has sponged up periodic floods of diamonds from Russia, Australia and, until recently, across parts of war-ravaged Africa where it does not own all the mines. Together with the artificial perception of rarity, what makes diamonds profitable to more than 2.5 million miners, traders, cutters and wholesalers around the world - and what energizes the $50-billion-a-year retail diamond jewelry industry - is romance. That, for the most part, is also an invention of De Beers. In 1938, De Beers hired a New York advertising company to convince millions of couples that the larger the diamond on an engagement ring, the greater their love. In the 1960's, a similar
