date:20021220

Title: RE: [PEN-L:33262] RE: Re: Re: Re: RE: Re: How Much Housing Credit Is Too Much?





Martin writes:
On a another topic, Jim Devine turned out to be wrong about Doonesbury
on Iraq. If you followed the episodes for a few more days it turns out
that the Iraqi plant manager is telling the truth, that the radioactivity in the yougurt (I think that's what it was) comes from milk from cows eating grass contaminated by radioactive contamination from the Gulf war.

it's the first time I've been wrong this year!
Jim

Re: The Economist considers Karl Marx

2002-12-20 Thread Tom Walker

Louis Proyect wrote,

 It is astonishing, for example, that the Economist can say:

 Class war is the sine qua non of Marx. But the class war, if it ever
 existed, is over. In western democracies today, who chooses who rules,
 and for how long? Who tells governments how companies will be regulated?
 Who in the end owns the companies? Workers for hire--the proletariat.

Oh those proles, the lucky duckies: they own the companies, they tell the
government what to do, they choose who rules... and they don't even have to
pay taxes!

http://www.salon.com/comics/boll/2002/12/19/boll/index.html?x

Could it be that the Wall Street Journal and the Economist have been
infiltrated by Onion satirists?

Tom Walker

Re: RE: Re: How Much Housing Credit Is Too Much?

2002-12-20 Thread Doug Henwood

Devine, James wrote:


but how much have mortgage payments risen as a percentage of 
personal disposable income? after all, interest rates have fallen 
and refinancing is the big trend these days.

The decline in the interest burden from refinanced mortgages is a 
surprisingly small number. Most refinancings these days involve 
taking cash out of appreciated equity, which adds to principal. 
Goldman Sachs estimates that cashouts are as high as 4% of DPI.

Doug

Re: Re: RE: Re: How Much Housing Credit Is Too Much?

2002-12-20 Thread Doug Henwood

Michael Perelman wrote:

We should ask Doug H., who is now on the radio.

http://www.federalreserve.gov/releases/housedebt/default.htm

Debt service % of DPI

 total   consumer mortgage

01q1 14.05 7.91 6.14
01q2 14.16 7.96 6.20
01q3 13.94 7.79 6.16
01q4 14.39 8.05 6.35
02q1 14.09 7.88 6.22
02q2 14.03 7.82 6.20
02q3 14.00 7.76 6.24

Re: Re: The Economist considers Karl Marx

2002-12-20 Thread Michael Perelman

Peter Drucker proclaimed the United States the first truly
'Socialist' country, because workers, through their pension funds
own at least 25% of its equity capital, which is more than enough
for control.  In Drucker's reckoning, socialism was introduced by
then head of General Motors Charles Wilson in 1950 to blunt union
militancy by making visible the workers' stake in company profits
and company success. Drucker, Peter F. 1976. The Unseen
Revolution: How Pension Fund Socialism Came to America (NY: Harper
and Row): p. 6.


On Fri, Dec 20, 2002 at 09:31:41AM -0800, Tom Walker wrote:
 Oh those proles, the lucky duckies: they own the companies, they tell the
 government what to do, they choose who rules... and they don't even have to
 pay taxes!
 

-- 
Michael Perelman
Economics Department
California State University
Chico, CA 95929

Tel. 530-898-5321
E-Mail [EMAIL PROTECTED]

Re: Re: Re: RE: Re: How Much Housing Credit Is TooMuch?

2002-12-20 Thread Doug Henwood

[EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote:


Mortgage debt-service burden for Q4 2001-Q3 2002 ties the burden recorded in
Q4 1990-Q3 1991 as the highest ever for four consecutive quarters


This just in from St Alan - don't worry about it!

http://www.federalreserve.gov/boarddocs/speeches/2002/20021219/


A full enumeration of the caveats surrounding the economic outlook 
would, as usual, be lengthy. But often-cited concerns about the 
levels of debt and debt-servicing costs of households and firms 
appear a bit stretched. The combination of household mortgage and 
consumer debt as a share of disposable income has moved up to a 
historically high level. But the upward trend in the series 
reflects, in part, financial innovations that have increased access 
to credit markets for many households. These innovations include the 
development of a deep secondary market for home mortgages, along 
with the advent of credit scoring and automated underwriting models 
that have enhanced the ability of loan officers and credit card 
companies to identify good credit risks. These innovations lower the 
risk level of any given amount of debt.

To be sure, the mortgage debt of homeowners relative to their income 
is high by historical norms. But, as a consequence of low interest 
rates, the servicing requirement for that debt relative to 
homeowners' income is roughly in line with the historical average. 
Moreover, owing to continued large gains in residential real estate 
values, equity in homes has continued to rise despite very large 
debt-financed extractions. Adding in the fixed costs associated with 
other financial obligations, such as rental payments of tenants, 
consumer installment credit, and auto leases, the total servicing 
costs faced by households relative to their income appears somewhat 
elevated compared with longer-run averages. But arguably they are 
not a significant cause for concern.

Some strain from corporate debt burdens became evident as rates of 
return on capital projects financed with debt fell short of 
expectations over the past several years. While overall debt has not 
been paid down, corporations have significantly increased holdings 
of cash and have reduced their near-term debt obligations by issuing 
bonds to pay down commercial paper and bank loans.

Re: Re: Re: The Economist considers Karl Marx

In that case, the Economist and Peter Drucker won't mind if we abolish the wage relationship and private appropriation of returns on capital, turning the factories and offices and farms over to the workers and farmers, who will manage them themselves and collective appropriate the entire fruits of their labor -- nothing left overfor the rentiers.. After all, we're already socialist, so that woukd be an inessential tweak on the fundamental underlying structure.
Sheesh. Do these guys believe that shit, or do they expect anyone else to believe it, or to believe that they believe it? Why do they say it then?
jks
Michael Perelman [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote:
Peter Drucker proclaimed the United States "the first truly'Socialist' country," because workers, through their pension funds"own at least 25% of its equity capital, which is more than enoughfor control." In Drucker's reckoning, socialism was introduced bythen head of General Motors Charles Wilson in 1950 to "blunt unionmilitancy by making visible the workers' stake in company profitsand company success." Drucker, Peter F. 1976. The UnseenRevolution: How Pension Fund Socialism Came to America (NY: Harperand Row): p. 6.On Fri, Dec 20, 2002 at 09:31:41AM -0800, Tom Walker wrote: Oh those proles, the lucky duckies: they own the companies, they tell the government what to do, they choose who rules... and they don't even have to pay taxes! -- Michael PerelmanEconomics DepartmentCalifornia State Univ!
ersityChico, CA 95929Tel. 530-898-5321E-Mail [EMAIL PROTECTED]Do you Yahoo!?
Yahoo! Mail Plus - Powerful. Affordable. Sign up now

U.S. Still Pushing for an Early Election in Venezuela

U.S. working for early elections in Venezuela
Reuters, 12.20.02, 1:26 PM ET

By Pablo Bachelet

WASHINGTON20 (Reuters) - The United States is still quietly pushing 
for an early election in Venezuela, beset by a power struggle and 
national strike, despite publicly backing off the idea, a source 
familiar with the talks told Reuters.

The United States is brokering a deal for an early election in 
Venezuela, the source said this week in a telephone interview. 
Behind the scenes we're still pushing for an early election.

The United States has rallied the Organization of American States and 
Latin American countries, most notably Brazil, to help pressure 
leftist Venezuelan president Hugo Chavez into accepting an election, 
according to the source

The White House issued a statement on Dec. 13 calling for an early 
election, as demanded by the opposition, but backtracked Monday, when 
a spokesman said Washington supported a referendum on Chavez's 
continued rule.

The opposition is calling for Chavez to resign and hold early 
elections. He has refused and told his foes to wait until August, 
halfway through his term, when the constitution allows for a binding 
referendum on his rule.

Observers say the U.S. endorsement of an early election in effect 
violated the Venezuelan constitution which allows for a referendum on 
Chavez no sooner than August 2003

OLD, UNDEMOCRATIC WAYS?

In April, when it looked like Chavez had been ousted in a coup, the 
White House appeared pleased that he had been toppled and was 
embarrassed when he was reinstated by loyalist officers.

The coup alarmed Latin American countries that saw a return to old 
undemocratic ways

This week a State Department official confirmed that the United 
States is actively mediating talks in Caracas, together with OAS 
Secretary General Cesar Gaviria, to broker a deal.

On Thursday, Powell also hinted at the U.S. involvement, although he 
did not mention elections directly.

We have presented some ideas to the secretary general (of the OAS) 
for his consideration, Powell told reporters. There have been some 
efforts in the last day or two to put forward ideas from both sides 
that might be a basis of discussion.

One source familiar with the talks said that Chavez wants guarantees 
that he would be allowed to run in an election -- some opponents want 
him barred from the ballot -- and that a mechanism be put in place 
that guarantee impartiality from the opposition-controlled media.

http://www.forbes.com/business/newswire/2002/12/20/rtr830494.html
--
Yoshie

* Calendar of Events in Columbus: 
http://www.osu.edu/students/sif/calendar.html
* Anti-War Activist Resources: http://www.osu.edu/students/sif/activist.html
* Student International Forum: http://www.osu.edu/students/sif/
* Committee for Justice in Palestine: http://www.osu.edu/students/CJP/

Re: Re: Re: Re: The Economist considers Karl Marx


- Original Message -
From: andie nachgeborenen [EMAIL PROTECTED]




 In that case, the Economist and Peter Drucker won't mind if we abolish
the wage relationship and private appropriation of returns on capital,
turning the factories and offices and farms over to the workers and
farmers, who will manage them themselves and collective appropriate the
entire fruits of their labor -- nothing left over for the rentiers..
After all, we're already socialist, so that woukd be an inessential
tweak on the fundamental underlying structure.

 Sheesh. Do these guys believe that shit, or do they expect anyone else
to believe it, or to believe that they believe it? Why do they say it
then?
 jks

==

They lurk on this list to see if we still read their drivel.


Ian

RE: Re: Re: Re: The Economist considers Karl Marx

Title: RE: [PEN-L:33272] Re: Re: Re: The Economist considers Karl Marx

in common parlance, even among many economists, socialism refers to any government interference in the so-called free market. (For example, the economic historian Peter Temin referred to the rise of state intervention during the 1930s as socialism in many countries.) Even some socialists see socialism as merely referring to state ownership of the means of production, not caring who or what owns the state.

Jim Devine [EMAIL PROTECTED] http://bellarmine.lmu.edu/~jdevine

JKS wrote:
In that case, the Economist and Peter Drucker won't mind if we abolish the wage relationship and private appropriation of returns on capital, turning the factories and offices and farms over to the workers and farmers, who will manage them themselves and collective appropriate the entire fruits of their labor -- nothing left over for the rentiers.. After all, we're already socialist, so that woukd be an inessential tweak on the fundamental underlying structure.

Sheesh. Do these guys believe that shit, or do they expect anyone else to believe it, or to believe that they believe it? Why do they say it then?

jks

Michael Perelman [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote:
Peter Drucker proclaimed the United States the first truly
'Socialist' country, because workers, through their pension funds
own at least 25% of its equity capital, which is more than enough
for control. In Drucker's reckoning, socialism was introduced by
then head of General Motors Charles Wilson in 1950 to blunt union
militancy by making visible the workers' stake in company profits
and company success. Drucker, Peter F. 1976. The Unseen
Revolution: How Pension Fund Socialism Came to America (NY: Harper
and Row): p. 6.

On Fri, Dec 20, 2002 at 09:31:41AM -0800, Tom Walker wrote:
Oh those proles, the lucky duckies: they own the companies, they tell the
government what to do, they choose who rules... and they don't even have to
pay taxes!

The Economist considers Karl Marx

"Devine, James" [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote:

in common parlance, even among many economists, "socialism" refers to any government "interference" in the so-called "free market."
Well, there's no helping the economists, they're dunderheads anyway, but that's not common parlance outside the loony right wing. The judges I clerked for were all New Deal liberals (even though one of them was/is a Repug), and all of them believe in extensive govt regulation of the economy, and would say so, and all of them would have a heart attack if you called them a socialist.
Even some socialists see "socialism" as merely referring to state ownership of the means of production, not caring who or what owns the state.
There's a big diff between interference so called and ownership, even if the ownership is merely public and not democratic.
jks
Jim Devine [EMAIL PROTECTED] http://bellarmine.lmu.edu/~jdevine
JKS wrote: In that case, the Economist and Peter Drucker won't mind if we abolish the wage relationship and private appropriation of returns on capital, turning the factories and offices and farms over to the workers and farmers, who will manage them themselves and collective appropriate the entire fruits of their labor -- nothing left over for the rentiers.. After all, we're already socialist, so that woukd be an inessential tweak on the fundamental underlying structure.
Sheesh. Do these guys believe that shit, or do they expect anyone else to believe it, or to believe that they believe it? Why do they say it then?
jks
Michael Perelman [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: Peter Drucker proclaimed the United States "the first truly 'Socialist' country," because workers, through their pension funds "own at least 25% of its equity capital, which is more than enough for control." In Drucker's reckoning, socialism was introduced by then head of General Motors Charles Wilson in 1950 to "blunt union militancy by making visible the workers' stake in company profits and company success." Drucker, Peter F. 1976. The Unseen Revolution: How Pension Fund Socialism Came to America (NY: Harper and Row): p. 6.
On Fri, Dec 20, 2002 at 09:31:41AM -0800, Tom Walker wrote: Oh those proles, the lucky duckies: they own the companies, they tell the government what to do, they choose who rules... and they don't even have to pay taxes! Do you Yahoo!?
Yahoo! Mail Plus - Powerful. Affordable. Sign up now

RE: The Economist considers Karl Marx

Title: RE: [PEN-L:33277] The Economist considers Karl Marx





I wrote: in common parlance, even among many economists, socialism refers to any government interference in the so-called free market.

JKS writes:Well, there's no helping the economists, they're dunderheads anyway, but that's not common parlance outside the loony right wing. The judges I clerked for were all New Deal liberals (even though one of them was/is a Repug), and all of them believe in extensive govt regulation of the economy, and would say so, and all of them would have a heart attack if you called them a socialist. 

but just as the lunatics have taken over the asylum, the looney right wing has taken over the conciousness of much of the US citizenry (at least here in SoCal), along with taking over more and more of the judiciary every day. 

Of course, in _practice_, there's an amendment that should be made: if the government intervention directly and materially helps businesses, it's not socialism but is part of laissez-faire. This amendment reflects the common contrast between laissez-faire theory (no guvmint!) and laizzez-faire practice (guvmint should help biz, in public/private partnerships). 

 Even some socialists see socialism as merely referring to state ownership of the means of production, not caring who or what owns the state. 

There's a big diff between interference so called and ownership, even if the ownership is merely public and not democratic.

yes, but in much of popular consciousness, state ownership is simply further down the spectrum from state intervention in the free market. It's a matter of quantitative change becoming qualitative. 

Jim

Re: The Economist considers Karl Marx


- Original Message -
From: andie nachgeborenen [EMAIL PROTECTED]

  Even some socialists see socialism as merely referring to state
ownership of the means of production, not caring who or what owns the
state.

 There's a big diff between interference so called and ownership, even
if the ownership is merely public and not democratic.

 jks

===
Aren't governments unownable by definition? Sure some factions/classes
may think the government their personal property, but don't we deride
that as delusional? Non-interference in the market is a legal
impossibility, no?


Ian

RE: Re: The Economist considers Karl Marx

Title: RE: [PEN-L:33279] Re: The Economist considers Karl Marx





 Aren't governments unownable by definition? Sure some factions/classes
 may think the government their personal property, but don't we deride
 that as delusional?


officially, the Absolutist kings owned their states (l'état c'est moi!) and appointed the boards of directors (i.e., governments). The equivalents of today's left existing at the time might have seen this claim as delusional, but it was backed by the force of arms. Might may not make right in the moral sense of the word, but it often does so in practice. 

 Non-interference in the market is a legal
 impossibility, no?


Markets couldn't exist without the state, but common mythology (shared by many econo-dunderheads) has it that markets are natural.

Jim

Re: RE: Re: The Economist considers Karl Marx


- Original Message -
From: Devine, James [EMAIL PROTECTED]

 Aren't governments unownable by definition? Sure some factions/classes
 may think the government their personal property, but don't we deride
 that as delusional?

officially, the Absolutist kings owned their states (l'état c'est moi!)
and
appointed the boards of directors (i.e., governments). The equivalents
of
today's left existing at the time might have seen this claim as
delusional,
but it was backed by the force of arms. Might may not make right in the
moral sense of the word, but it often does so in practice.

=

And how many absolute monarchies still exist today? Isn't that an
example of a modicum of progress, a gift from the struggles of the past?





 Non-interference in the market is a legal
 impossibility, no?

Markets couldn't exist without the state, but common mythology (shared
by
many econo-dunderheads) has it that markets are natural.

Jim

===

Well, since we have no idea as to what is non-natural, we can chalk that
up to insufficient attention to language.


Ian

Re: Re: RE: Re: The Economist considers Karl Marx

2002-12-20 Thread Carrol Cox



Ian Murray wrote:
 
 - Original Message -
 From: Devine, James [EMAIL PROTECTED]
 
 [clip] 
 Markets couldn't exist without the state, but common mythology (shared
 by many econo-dunderheads) has it that markets are natural.
 
 Jim
 
 ===
 
 Well, since we have no idea as to what is non-natural, we can chalk that
 up to insufficient attention to language.

Natural takes up about 14 columns in the OED. I don't think we can
ground ths argument in linguistics or semantics.

I didn't pry into those 14 columns, but I bet they contain abundant
(respectable) sanction for the linguistic acceptability of the
proposition that Markets are natural.

Carrol

RE: Re: RE: Re: The Economist considers Karl Marx

Title: RE: [PEN-L:33281] Re: RE: Re: The Economist considers Karl Marx





  Aren't governments unownable by definition? Sure some factions/classes
  may think the government their personal property, but don't we deride
  that as delusional?


I wrote: 
 officially, the Absolutist kings owned their states (l'état c'est moi!)
 and appointed the boards of directors (i.e., governments). The equivalents
 of today's left existing at the time might have seen this claim as delusional,
 but it was backed by the force of arms. Might may not make right in the
 moral sense of the word, but it often does so in practice.


Ian writes:
 And how many absolute monarchies still exist today? Isn't that an
 example of a modicum of progress, a gift from the struggles 
 of the past?


It's possible we could have Absolutism again. That's where the Bush admin. is heading. 


  Non-interference in the market is a legal
  impossibility, no?


said I:
 Markets couldn't exist without the state, but common mythology (shared
 by many econo-dunderheads) has it that markets are natural.

Ian:
 Well, since we have no idea as to what is non-natural, we can 
 chalk that up to insufficient attention to language.


I'm only reporting the common myth. Astrology doesn't make sense either, but it's quite popular.
Jim

Re: Re: Re: RE: Re: The Economist considers Karl Marx


- Original Message -
From: Carrol Cox [EMAIL PROTECTED]

  Well, since we have no idea as to what is non-natural, we can chalk
that
  up to insufficient attention to language.

 Natural takes up about 14 columns in the OED. I don't think we can
 ground ths argument in linguistics or semantics.

 I didn't pry into those 14 columns, but I bet they contain abundant
 (respectable) sanction for the linguistic acceptability of the
 proposition that Markets are natural.

 Carrol
===

Which renders such statements totally innocuous and beside the point.
Government is natural. Space flight is natural. Bowling is
natural.


Ian

Re: Re: Re: RE: Re: The Economist considers Karl Marx

2002-12-20 Thread joanna bujes

At 03:59 PM 12/20/2002 -0600, you wrote:

I didn't pry into those 14 columns, but I bet they contain abundant
(respectable) sanction for the linguistic acceptability of the
proposition that Markets are natural.


The question is though Markets are natural to what?

Joanna

New Brazilian Ministers

2002-12-20 Thread topp8564

More news from the land of samba, smoking inside restaurants and cooption...

*Big news is that the PMDB (a Social Democrat party with cosmetic distinctions 
from the ruling PSDB) will not be forming a coalition with the PT. This is the 
best news I have heard out of Brazil all week. This has been blamed for a halt 
in the reversal of the Real's fortunes. (The dollar hit a three month low 
against the real earlier this week.)

*New ministers confirmed today.  (I summarized these from the Folha de Sao 
Paulo and the PT web site):

Cristovam Buarque goes into the Ministry of Education. Recently elected as PT 
senator for the Federal District of Brasilia. Doctorate in economics from the 
Univesity of Paris, worked forthe IADB in the 70s; has published 18 books about 
childhood education.

Jaques Wagner, Minister for Work. Founder of the CUT in Bahia state; president 
of the union of chemical workers in that state. Opposes GM foods.

Humberto Costa, Minister of Health. Psychiatrist and journalists, been with the 
PT since the beginning. 

Dilma Rousseff - Minister of Mines and Energy. Doctorate in theoretical 
economics from the University of Campinas; worked as treasurer in Porto Alegre 
1986-88. Occupied the Secretary of Mines and Enegry in the Dutra governemnt in 
Rio Grande do Sul state.

Nilmário Miranda - National Secretary for Human Rights. One of the founders of 
the PT, postgraduate in Political Sicence. In 1995 he headed the Commission 
into Political Deaths and Disappearings.

These folks look like proper middle of the road PT guys, instead of the 
neoliberal trash Lula served up last week.

*Lula has created a Ministry of Cities, which will link the Federal Government 
directly to the cities. Olivio Dutra, the ex-governor of Rio Grande do Sul, 
will take charge of it. It seems that this new organ is a federal counterpart 
to the grass-roots PT strategy of focusing on mayoral and local politics. A 
sure hit with the NGOs, could be a mixed blessing if it brings the often very 
radical local PT groupings under the control of the very unradical federal PT.

*The Brazilian Institute of Geography and Economics estimates current 
unemployment at 11% (I'd say this is a wacky understatement). GDP grew by 0.94% 
in the last three months of 2002.


Thiago Oppermann
 

-
This mail sent through IMP: www-mail.usyd.edu.au

SF IMC Interviews Al Giordano on Venezuela, Etc.

SF IMC Interviews Al Giordano on Venezuela, the media, and anarchism
by nessie * Friday December 20, 2002 at 12:10 PM

...nessie: So Al. You're the closest thing we have to a guy on the 
ground there. We need your input. Care to enlighten us as to what's 
really happening?

Al Giordano: In fact, we (and that we includes IndyMedia) have an 
enormous network of friends and allies on the ground there who are 
the ones Venezuelans proudly call Community Journalists. The 
independent media movement in Venezuela is the most advanced in the 
hemisphere, probably in the world. There are 25 Community TV and 
Radio stations in Venezuela, many of which began as pirate 
stations, one dating back to the 1960s, that were legalized under 
the Bolivarian Constitution of 1999. There are movement also includes 
important print and Internet publications.

The Popular Revolutionary Assembly has one of the best online centers 
of information I've ever seen at: http://www.aporrea.org It updates 
every hour or more often for 24 hours a day. In recent days it has 
been invaluable. Anyone who has been reading the Aporrea site for the 
past two weeks has witnessed, time and time again, how the people 
from the grassroots are leading and pushing Chávez to resist the 
coup, not vice versa.

nessie: How does their work compare to the corporate media?

Al Giordano: There's something very racist in the reporting of 
simulators like the British journalist Phil Gunson, a freelance 
mercenary who has published knowingly false stories recently in 
Newsweek/MSNBC, the Christian Science Monitor and the daily newspaper 
of coup-plotters everywhere, the Miami Herald. There's something 
positively sleazy about this guy and his work. I observed him in 
action down in Venezuela during a presidential press conference - him 
and this little clique of boy reporters from England and the U.S., 
and their snobby superiority complex, who would be more comfortable 
with Chávez as their gardener than as president of an oil-rich nation 
of 24 million people.

You can see the frustration on their faces of having to report on 
this dark-skinned hawk-nosed soldier who is smarter and more popular 
than they are, and who during a five hour press conference answers 
all their snotty questions in great detail - Imagine Bush or Gore or 
Clinton ever doing that! - and he beats them on the facts and they 
have to call him president in their reports. And the press 
conference itself is broadcast on national TV, and the Venezuelan 
people get to see just how snotty and clueless the U.S. and European 
press corps, as a group (because there is always the occasional good 
one or two in their midst; they know who they are), get completely 
beaten at their own game by Chávez.

If your sympathies are with the working class, and you distrust the 
commercial media correspondents as I do, it's great entertainment, 
and it's part of the educational process underway there. You can see 
them, these divine caste reporters, wince as it happens because 
they know that Chávez is not the buffoon they try to portray him to 
be. He's smarter than they are. In fact, if anything, he's very suave 
and smooth, which is why his five-hour live TV shows every Sunday - 
Alo Presidente! - are the most popular or at least one of the most 
popular programs in the country. Whole families gather every Sunday 
to watch the show, on which he takes live phone calls.

I could just see the Gunsons and others like him sitting there, 
thinking to them selves, if this guy were my gardener or chauffeur, 
he'd be a lot of fun. Oh, it's a sad thing, what happens to U.S. and 
British and Spaniard correspondents when they enter lands with 
oligarchies, because they start to think of themselves as landed 
gentry. They move into the wealthy neighborhoods and live behind 
walls, they send their kids to private schools with the other 
oligarchs, and from that perspective flows their reporting. They also 
develop very unhealthy parasitic relationships with US and European 
Embassy, and multinational corporate, spin-doctors. But back to 
Gunson, because he's got this coming.

Gunson, interviewed last week on NPR, gave an example of this 
inherent racism and snobbery when he said, and I quote: I think it's 
important to point out that last night what we saw was perhaps the 
worst example so far of something, a phenomenon that we've seen 
before, which is concerted attacks on different media organizations 
by mobs that are clearly organized by the government. For example, 
the mobs in most places were led by deputies, by congresspeople, 
belonging to the ruling party. Gunson said that, not me. The idea 
that the people - who Gunson calls mobs - would only protest at 
Commercial TV stations if organized by the government has a racist 
ring to it. He suggests that the people aren't smart enough or 
organized enough to think of it or do it themselves.

But anyone who has been reading the Aporrea website and following the

Re: Re: Re: Re: RE: Re: How Much Housing Credit Is Too Much?

2002-12-20 Thread Finmktctr

Very soothing.  AG's 12/19 speech actually contains several rounds of 
Greenspan-D'Arista Smackdown, including his response to the idea of using 
regulatory tools to slow the credit expansions that breed bubbles.  I can't 
remember any time in recent years when Father Greenspan has been quite so 
defensive in public (first the Jax Hole speech, now this) -- or when the Fed 
has seemed so Out There in its reassurances (in announcing its 50 bp cut last 
month, the FOMC claimed that with this action...the risks are balanced).
TS

In a message dated 12/20/2002 12:55:25 PM Eastern Standard Time, 
[EMAIL PROTECTED] writes:

 [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote:
 
 Mortgage debt-service burden for Q4 2001-Q3 2002 ties the burden recorded in
 Q4 1990-Q3 1991 as the highest ever for four consecutive quarters
 
 This just in from St Alan - don't worry about it!
 
 http://www.federalreserve.gov/boarddocs/speeches/2002/20021219/
 
 A full enumeration of the caveats surrounding the economic outlook 
 would, as usual, be lengthy. But often-cited concerns about the 
 levels of debt and debt-servicing costs of households and firms 
 appear a bit stretched. The combination of household mortgage and 
 consumer debt as a share of disposable income has moved up to a 
 historically high level. But the upward trend in the series 
 reflects, in part, financial innovations that have increased access 
 to credit markets for many households. These innovations include the 
 development of a deep secondary market for home mortgages, along 
 with the advent of credit scoring and automated underwriting models 
 that have enhanced the ability of loan officers and credit card 
 companies to identify good credit risks. These innovations lower the 
 risk level of any given amount of debt.
 
 To be sure, the mortgage debt of homeowners relative to their income 
 is high by historical norms. But, as a consequence of low interest 
 rates, the servicing requirement for that debt relative to 
 homeowners' income is roughly in line with the historical average. 
 Moreover, owing to continued large gains in residential real estate 
 values, equity in homes has continued to rise despite very large 
 debt-financed extractions. Adding in the fixed costs associated with 
 other financial obligations, such as rental payments of tenants, 
 consumer installment credit, and auto leases, the total servicing 
 costs faced by households relative to their income appears somewhat 
 elevated compared with longer-run averages. But arguably they are 
 not a significant cause for concern.
 
 Some strain from corporate debt burdens became evident as rates of 
 return on capital projects financed with debt fell short of 
 expectations over the past several years. While overall debt has not 
 been paid down, corporations have significantly increased holdings 
 of cash and have reduced their near-term debt obligations by issuing 
 bonds to pay down commercial paper and bank loans.

The choreography of war

2002-12-20 Thread Chris Burford

What is chilling is how coherent the move to war against Iraq, and the 
process of regional change in the Middle East, has become.

While Bush makes a show of letting the determinations of war take place 
through the United Nations, and while, yes, there may be arguments within 
the Defense Department about what size of force is needed for success, the 
overwhelming picture is of a coordinated process, political, military and 
economic. This includes variations in the stances of the different 
imperialist/capitalist states. The fact that the position of the UK and the 
USA is not identical just adds to the system being more coordinated. 
Britain is prepared to play soft cop to Syria, and Iran.

Powell is prepared to be the judicious voice commenting on the procedure by 
with the Security Counsel will go through a show of a due process, before 
punishment is imposed by the executive arm of the United Nations, the 
United States of America.

They have choreographed the presentation of a complex, but inevitable 
process, shaping consensus for war. Even those opposed to war are coopted 
into the same scenario by trying to modify it or mitigate it.

Look at how FYR of Macedonia has been quietly pacified and has slipped out 
of the headlines.

Chris Burford

London

The Economist considers Karl Marx

Marx's intellectual legacy

Marx after communism

Dec 19th 2002  From The Economist print edition

As a system of government, communism is dead or dying. As a system of 
ideas, its future looks secure.

WHEN Soviet communism fell apart towards the end of the 20th century, 
nobody could say that it had failed on a technicality. A more 
comprehensive or ignominious collapsemoral, material and 
intellectualwould be difficult to imagine. Communism had tyrannised and 
impoverished its subjects, and slaughtered them in the tens of millions. 
For decades past, in the Soviet Union and its satellite countries, any 
allusion to the avowed aims of communist doctrineequality, freedom from 
exploitation, true justicehad provoked only bitter laughter. Finally, 
when the monuments were torn down, statues of Karl Marx were defaced as 
contemptuously as those of Lenin and Stalin. Communism was repudiated as 
theory and as practice; its champions were cast aside, intellectual 
founders and sociopathic rulers alike.

People in the West, their judgment not impaired by having lived in the 
system Marx inspired, mostly came to a more dispassionate view. Marx had 
been misunderstood, they tended to feel. The communism of Eastern Europe 
and the Soviet Union was a perversion of his thought. What happened in 
those benighted lands would have appalled Marx as much as it appals us. 
It has no bearing on the validity of his ideas.

full: http://economist.com/printedition/displayStory.cfm?Story_ID=1489165



This article is interesting not just because it finds Marxism relevant. 
It also repeats some classic misunderstandings of what it is about.

It is astonishing, for example, that the Economist can say:

Class war is the sine qua non of Marx. But the class war, if it ever 
existed, is over. In western democracies today, who chooses who rules, 
and for how long? Who tells governments how companies will be regulated? 
Who in the end owns the companies? Workers for hire--the proletariat.

The notion that the proletariat can dictate to General Electric, Exxon 
or IBM is laughable at best. The article seems stuck in the 1950s, when 
credulity about shareholder capitalism was at its highest.

It also faults Marx for not being more specific about how communism will 
operate:

He did once say this much: In communist society, where nobody has 
one exclusive sphere of activity...society regulates the general 
production and thus makes it possible for me to do one thing today and 
another tomorrow, to hunt in the morning, fish in the afternoon, rear 
cattle in the evening, criticise after dinner, just as I have in mind, 
without ever becoming hunter, herdsman or critic. Whether cattle would 
be content to be reared only in the evening, or just as people had in 
mind, is one of many questions one would wish to see treated at greater 
length. But this cartoon is almost all Marx ever said about communism in 
practice. The rest has to be deduced, as an absence of things he 
deplored about capitalism: inequality, exploitation, alienation, private 
property and so forth.

In reality Marx was far more interested in how workers could constitute 
themselves as a ruling class in a revolutionary society. His sympathy 
for and explanations about the Paris Commune are a cornerstone of this 
thought. Marx's ideas about the organization of society are rooted in 
historical materialism, not crystal-ball gazing so it is not surprising 
that he failed to spell out his plans for the far future.




--

The Marxism list: www.marxmail.org

Disacknowledgements

(From http://www.disacknowledged.org, the website of Chris Brown, a U. 
Cal-Santa Barbara who unsuccessfully sued to be able to include the 
following 'disacknowledgement' in his Masters Thesis.)

Disacknowledgements

I would like to offer special Disacknowledgements to the following 
degenerates for being an ever-present hindrance during my graduate career

To the Dean and staff of the Graduate Division,

You fascists are the largest argument against higher 
education there has ever been. Any claims you make as an ally and 
resource for students is an utter sham. All dealings with you have ended 
in sheer frustration. I'd rather take a hot stick in the eye then deal 
with your bureaucratic nonsense. An especial disacknowledgement to David 
Fishman whose officious, blind devotion to absurd rules provides 
disservice to both education and the university.

To the entire management of the Davidson Library,

Your strict adherence to self-serving draconian policy has 
made it a supreme displeasure to work in your vicinity. Incomprehensible 
fines, unwillingness to help and general poor attitude has made most 
library visits an ogre. I trust your incompetence will preside over the 
continued decline in library quality.

To Professor Fred Wudl (formerly of UCSB, tenured at UCLA),

For failing to realize that your professorship and tenure 
doesn't give you the privilege of disrespectful and cruel treatment of 
your students and employees. Further, it has surprised me that your 
arrogance and proclivity at being an ass can affect even those isolated 
from your presence. It is my supreme pleasure to never have associations 
with you again.

To Former Governor Pete Wilson,

A supreme government jerk who has personally overseen the demise of the 
university. You policies have 1) raised tuition and fees fourfold since 
my first association with the university, 2) dismantled and traded some 
of the most competent senior faculty, and 3) generally hurt as many 
people as possible. For these, I wish you to never wield any 
governmental power again as you have surely proved your ineptitude.

To the UC Regents,

Whose continued suppression of graduate students, your most 
loyal employees, serves as a paragon of corrupt management. May your 
continually biased and corrupt practices be fraught with continued 
controversies brought upon by the students who you offer a fatuous 
disservice.

And

To Science,

For being a hollow specter of what you should be. Your 
vapid conceits have rendered those in your pursuit lifeless, unfeeling 
zombies. If I can forever escape you, the better I will be.


--

The Marxism list: www.marxmail.org

The ideological implications of Scorcese's latest film

Blood on His Hands

Gangs of New York

Directed by
Martin Scorsese

By Jonathan Rosenbaum, Chicago Reader

For almost the first two-thirds of Martin Scorsese's 168-minute Gangs of 
New York, I was entranced. I felt like I was watching a boys' 
bloodthirsty adventure story -- a blend of pirate saga, 19th-century 
revenge tale (three parts Dumas to one part Hugo), sword-and-sandal 
romp, and Viking epic poem, all laced with references to works ranging 
from Orson Welles's claustrophobic Macbeth (the beginning of the 
prologue) to Pieter Brueghel's spacious Slaughter of the Innocents (at 
the end of the prologue) and incorporating romantic touchstones from 
Potemkin (a stone lion), The Lusty Men (hidden possessions), Chimes at 
Midnight (thrusts and counterthrusts), and The Shanghai Gesture 
(prostitutes in hanging cages).

Scorsese once described his concept of the film as a western set on 
Mars, which adds two more playgrounds to the above list and helps 
explain the kind of historical fantasy he had in mind. I know little 
about New York's early history, yet I was impressed by how thoroughly he 
wanted to steep me in its otherness. This is undoubtedly why the title 
New York City 1846 doesn't appear until the end of the prologue, after 
we've spent a good quarter of an hour watching massive crowds of Irish 
Catholics and American nativists hack one another to pieces on a huge 
foreign-looking turf identified as Manhattan's Lower East Side, each 
group trying to eliminate the other.

The same overarching exoticism carried me through most of the film's 
long middle section, which begins 16 years later. The Irish Amsterdam 
Vallon (Leonardo DiCaprio) emerges from 16 years in the Hellgate House 
of Reform and ingratiates himself with nativist William Bill the 
Butcher Cutting (Daniel Day-Lewis). Years earlier Cutting killed 
Vallon's father, a priest (Liam Neeson), and now he rules the 
neighborhood. The last section of the movie is set during the 1863 draft 
riots, and here the personal, oedipal revenge story and the wider 
historical epic finally come together in a fusion that seems straight 
out of D.W. Griffith -- complete with black bashing. Yet the intended 
dramatic peak feels like a pit -- one filled with corpses we haven't 
been persuaded to mourn. And instead of adding up to something 
meaningful, the movie seems hollow and affectless -- as if all the 
spectacular bloodletting has drained the story of its raison d'etre.

The film becomes downright offensive during the final credits, over 
which the U2 anthem The Hands That Built America plays. If these are 
the hands that built this country, as the song triumphantly claims, why 
don't we ever see them building something instead of slashing, smashing, 
severing, gutting, burning, and mauling everyone and everything in 
sight? Is it possible that Scorsese, without meaning to -- he does, 
after all, include some ironic disclaimers -- is actually celebrating 
ethnic cleansing, as Griffith did in The Birth of a Nation? And is it 
churlish to ask why, after making so many allusions to nativists, 
Scorsese couldn't allude even once to Native Americans to throw some 
ironic backlighting on the label? But who knows? Maybe some real Native 
Americans got lost in the final edit. After all, when you're playing 
big-money games of this kind, the thoughtful footnotes often get lost.

full: http://www.chireader.com/movies/archives/2002/1202/021220.html

--

The Marxism list: www.marxmail.org

Iraq was made for oil...

Video Forum / Lecture

Iraq Was Made For Oil, By Oil, and May Be Undone By Oil, Says Oystein Noreng

Iraq was made for oil, it was made by oil, and it may be undone by oil, 
says Oystein Noreng, FINA Chair for Petroleum Economics and Management at 
the Norwegian School of Management. According to Noreng, the outcome of 
cleavages in Iraq's economic, social, and religious positions could 
determine whether the country becomes the key player in the oil market. 
Columbia's Center for Energy, Marine Transportation and Public Policy 
sponsored the lecture.

http://www.columbia.edu/cu/news/index.html#feature03



PROFESSOR OYSTEIN NORENG

NORWEGIAN SCHOOL OF MANAGEMENT, OSLO

OIL AND ISLAM: MISUSE OF MONEY CAUSING SOCIAL AND POLITICAL TENSIONS

The purpose of this paper is to explore the possible links between the 
region's oil experience over the past decades and the surge of politically 
radical movements referring to Islam in the Middle East and North Africa. 
The critical factors are the sudden rise and the subsequent decline of the 
oil revenues. In the 1970s, and early 1980s, the Middle East and North 
Africa appeared as exceptionally successful in
economic and social matters. Revenues soared and social conditions improved 
rapidly. In the 1990s,.
with some exceptions, the region appears as a resounding economic and 
social failure. Per capita income is falling and social conditions are 
deteriorating quickly. There are too few jobs for the increasing young 
population, so that unemployment is rising quickly. The Middle East and 
North Africa make up the only one of the world's major regions unable to 
feed its population, which is growing rapidly. Hence food supplies and 
nutrition standards are under a stronger economic threat than elsewhere. 
This has onerous political implications.

http://www.worlddialogue.org/pdf/speech9.pdf


Louis Proyect, Marxism mailing list: http://www.marxmail.org

Re: The ideological implications of Scorcese's latest film

2002-12-20 Thread Rob Schaap

I dare guess you don't agree with Rosenbaum, Louis.  I've not seen the
film yet, although see it I shall.  But I'd not be surprised if
Rosenbaum has a point when he writes the film's 'blockbuster dimensions
... tend to overwhelm ironic subtexts and morose afterthoughts'. 
Producers can do that to a film, after all.  Indeed, a significant slice
of the history of US film might be characterised as that of writers and
or directors necessarily taking the curse off hopefully durable subtexts
and morose afterthoughts with seat-filling spectacle.  After all,
Spartacus could conceivably have pleased the socialists and homosexuals
of the time as much as it did a McCarthy-infected and typically
homophobic 'mainstream'.  

Anyway, taking advantage of the notoriously tendentious and superficial
'history' to which so many Americans are subjected (virtuously heroic
history-changing statesmen, frontiersman and entrepreneurs) to offer a
gap-filling narrative that effectively transforms the whole picture has
got to be the stuff of art, no?  To explain the birth of the American
Dream in terms of marginalised and objectified women, eloquently absent
Amerindians, sectarian hatreds uncomfortably redolent of the very Old
World in opposition to which the US defines, nay glorifies,  itself, and
the material dependence of propertyless young men on the predeccessors
of Veblenian Robber-Barons (The Hands That Built America') - well, it
all sounds like a potent counter-hegemonic tour de force to me.

It's all about balance, of course, and Rosenbaum may have hit that
particular nail on the head for all I know, but I'm even keener to see
the film now than I was half an hour ago.

What's your take?

Cheers,
Rob.

Louis Proyect wrote:
 
 Blood on His Hands
 
 Gangs of New York
 
 Directed by
 Martin Scorsese
 
 By Jonathan Rosenbaum, Chicago Reader
 
 For almost the first two-thirds of Martin Scorsese's 168-minute Gangs of
 New York, I was entranced. I felt like I was watching a boys'
 bloodthirsty adventure story  ...  after
 we've spent a good quarter of an hour watching massive crowds of Irish
 Catholics and American nativists hack one another to pieces on a huge
 foreign-looking turf identified as Manhattan's Lower East Side, each
 group trying to eliminate the other ... The Irish Amsterdam
 Vallon (Leonardo DiCaprio) emerges from 16 years in the Hellgate House
 of Reform and ingratiates himself with nativist William Bill the
 Butcher Cutting (Daniel Day-Lewis) ... the movie seems hollow and affectless -- as 
if all the
 spectacular bloodletting has drained the story of its raison d'etre ... The film 
becomes downright  offensive during the final credits, over
 which the U2 anthem The Hands That Built America plays. If these are
 the hands that built this country, as the song triumphantly claims, why
 don't we ever see them building something instead of slashing, smashing,
 severing, gutting, burning, and mauling everyone and everything in
 sight? ... Scorsese couldn't allude even once to Native Americans to throw some
 ironic backlighting on the label? But who knows? Maybe some real Native
 Americans got lost in the final edit. After all, when you're playing
 big-money games of this kind, the thoughtful footnotes often get lost ...w

progressive taxation

Wednesday night from Governor Davis:  Fifty-one percent ($17.7 billion)
of this [deficit] problem is a reduction in revenues based on
predictions in our current budget.  Thirty-six percent ($12.6 billion)
of the problem are the one-time reductions that we used last year to
solve that problem.  Twelve-point-five percent ($4.5 billion) are
increased expenditures.



As you well know, we have a very progressive system in this state - 80%
of our revenues come from 10% of the tax earners.  So, we depend heavily
on the well-being of highly compensated Californians.  .From 1995 to
2000 these taxpayers experienced an increase in what they were providing
state government on the order of about 18% in '95, '96, '97, and '98,
and then it shot up in '99 to about 25%, and a little higher in 2000.
In 2001, they actually dropped down to zero - so there was a dramatic
falloff in 2001.  And 2002 they are down about 3%...



But when you have a very progressive tax system - which basically
exempts everyone from taxes making up to $45,000 a year - and depend
heavily on the performance of the top ten percent of your wage earners,
then you run the risk that, if they do badly, services have to be
reduced and there's not the revenue for other things we'd like to do in
government.  So, if there is one single problem that has caused this
problem, this is it.

http://www.prudentbear.com/creditbubblebulletin.asp

Re: Re: The ideological implications of Scorcese's latest film



It's all about balance, of course, and Rosenbaum may have hit that
particular nail on the head for all I know, but I'm even keener to see
the film now than I was half an hour ago.

What's your take?

Cheers,
Rob.



I haven't seen it yet, but plan to. In any case, here's something that John 
Cox posted to Marxmail in response to Rosenbaum's review:

Two somewhat conflicting appraisals of Scorcese's new film -- the first is 
from today's NYTimes, and is the most favorable review I've seen yet; the 
second is from the latest New Yorker, and directly takes up the question 
Louis raised about Scorcese's treatment of the 1863 Draft Riots. Like 
everyone else, other than professional reviewers, I haven't seen it yet -

---

Gangs of New York is an important film as well as an entertaining one. 
With this project, Mr. Scorsese has made his passionate ethnographic 
sensibility the vehicle of an especially grand ambition. He wants not only 
to reconstruct the details of life in a distant era but to construct, from 
the ground up, a narrative of historical change, to explain how we - New 
Yorkers, Americans, modern folk who disdain hand-to-hand bloodletting and 
overt displays of corruption - got from there to here, how the ancient laws 
gave way to modern ones.

Such an ambition is rare in American movies, and rarer still is the sense 
of tragedy and contradiction that Mr. Scorsese brings to his saga. There is 
very little in the history of American cinema to prepare us for the version 
of American history Mr. Scorsese presents here. It is not the usual 
triumphalist story of moral progress and enlightenment, but rather a 
blood-soaked revenger's tale, in which the modern world arrives in the form 
of a line of soldiers firing into a crowd.

The director's great accomplishment, the result of three decades of mulling 
and research inspired by Herbert Asbury's Gangs of New York - a 1928 book 
nearly as legendary as the world it illuminates - has been to bring to life 
not only the texture of the past but its force and velocity as well. For 
all its meticulously imagined costumes and sets (for which the production 
designer, Dante Ferretti, surely deserves an Oscar), this is no costume drama.

It is informed not by the polite antiquarianism of Merchant and Ivory but 
by the political ardor of someone like Luchino Visconti, one of Mr. 
Scorsese's heroes. Senso, Visconti's lavish 1953 melodrama set during the 
Italian Risorgimento (and his first color film), is one of the touchstones 
of My Voyage to Italy, Mr. Scorsese's fascinating, quasi-autobiographical 
documuntaby on postwar Italian cinema.

Though Gangs of New York throws in its lot with the rabble rather than 
the aristocracy, it shares with Senso (and also with The Leopard, 
Visconti's 1965 masterpiece) a feeling that the past, so full of ambiguity 
and complexity, of barbarism and nobility, continues to send its 
aftershocks into the present. It shows us a world on the brink of vanishing 
and manages to mourn that world without doubting the inevitability or the 
justice of its fate.

America was born in the streets, the posters for Gangs proclaim. Later, 
Amsterdam Vallon, in the aftermath of the draft riots, muses that our 
great city was born in blood and tribulation. Nobody as steeped in film 
history as Mr. Scorsese could offer such a metaphor without conjuring the 
memory of D. W. Griffith's Birth of a Nation, and Griffith, along with 
John Ford and others, is one of the targets of Mr. Scorsese's revisionism.

In Griffith's film, adapted from The Clansman, a best-selling novel by 
Thomas Dixon, the American republic was reborn after Reconstruction, when 
the native-born whites of the North and South overcame their sectional 
differences in the name of racial supremacy. Ford's myth of American 
origins - which involved the subjugation of the frontier and the equivocal 
replacement of antique honor by modern justice - also typically took place 
after the Civil War.

In Gangs, which opens nationwide today, the pivotal event in our history 
is the riot that convulsed New York in July of 1863. While this emphasis 
places the immigrant urban working class at the center of the American 
story - a fairly radical notion in itself - the film hardly sentimentalizes 
the insurrection, which was both a revolt against local and federal 
authority and a vicious massacre of the black citizens of New York.

The rioters are seen as exploited, oppressed and destined to be cannon 
fodder in a war they barely understand, but they are far from heroic, and 
the violence of the riots makes the film's opening gang battle seem quaint 
and decorous. What we are witnessing is the eclipse of warlordism and the 
catastrophic birth of a modern society. Like the old order, the new one is 
riven by class resentment, racism and political hypocrisy, attributes that 
change their form at every stage of history but that seem to be as embedded 
in human nature as the capacity for decency,

muscular economics

2002-12-20 Thread Michael Perelman

Krugman's latest says: The Washington Post reports that one of Mr. Bush's
frequent complaints about Larry Lindsey was that he didn't get enough
physical exercise. 

 -- 
Michael Perelman
Economics Department
California State University
Chico, CA 95929

Tel. 530-898-5321
E-Mail [EMAIL PROTECTED]

Re: muscular economics


- Original Message -
From: Michael Perelman [EMAIL PROTECTED]



 Krugman's latest says: The Washington Post reports that one of Mr.
Bush's
 frequent complaints about Larry Lindsey was that he didn't get enough
 physical exercise.

=

In the future, economists serving the emperor -I mean president- will
have to pass a cholesterol test...

Ian

Re: Re: The Economist considers Karl Marx

 
 Ian Murray Aren't governments unownable by definition? Sure some factions/classesmay think the government their personal property, but don't we deridethat as delusional? 
W once referred --as Dave Barry said, i am not making this up -- to his "investorsm er I mean my contributors." 
 Non-interference in "the market" is a legalimpossibility, no?
It's a logical impossibility. If there's no state, there's no property or contract law, so no title to anything, and no sanctioned and enforceable exchanges, so no markets. This is a point Cass Sunstein has usefully insisted on over the years.jksDo you Yahoo!?
Yahoo! Mail Plus - Powerful. Affordable. Sign up now

Re: RE: The Economist considers Karl Marx

Jim D: but just as the lunatics have taken over the asylum, the looney right wing has taken over the conciousness of much of the US citizenry (at least here in SoCal), along with taking over more and more of the judiciary every day. 
Well, Southern Cal, that's where all the loose marbles go anyway . . . . Haven't you read Nathaniel West's Day of the Lucust?

Of course, in _practice_, there's an amendment that should be made: if the government intervention directly and materially helps businesses, it's not "socialism" but is part of "laissez-faire." This amendment reflects the common contrast between laissez-faire theory (no guvmint!) and laizzez-faire practice (guvmint should help biz, in public/private partnerships). 
But in common parlance in places where I've lived, ordinary folk may disagree about how much the govt should regulate, etc., without starting to use the S-word. 
yes, but in much of popular consciousness, state ownership is simply further down the spectrum from state intervention in the "free" market. It's a matter of quantitative change becoming qualitative. 
There's something to that, no? If the state nationalizes the commanding heights, you might not have a worker's democracy, but you won't have capitalism anymore.
jksDo you Yahoo!?
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Golpistas Offer Bribes to Venezuelan Military Officers

New York Times  December 21, 2002

A Top General Still Stands Behind Chávez
By JUAN FORERO

CARACAS, Venezuela, Dec. 20 - The telephone calls have come by the 
dozens, from leaders of the antigovernment movement, ordinary 
Venezuelans and even a couple of military officers, all pleading with 
Gen. Raúl Baduel for his help in removing President Hugo Chávez from 
power.

But General Baduel, commander of Venezuela's most important division 
and the general most responsible for ensuring Mr. Chávez's hold on 
the presidency, has rejected the requests.

There have been calls and propositions, even from high levels, of an 
economic nature that at this point have reached hundreds of thousands 
of dollars, General Baduel, a 26-year army veteran, told a group of 
foreign reporters on Thursday at his office in the city of Maracay.

The general said government foes wanted him to put pressure on the 
president so that he understands that he has to resolve this 
situation by resigning.

As a punishing national strike continues into its 19th day, rumors of 
a possible coup against the left-leaning president abound. After all, 
he was briefly deposed in April when high-ranking military officers - 
who had been holding secret meetings with opposition figures - 
withdrew their support for the government in the wake of street 
violence.

Military officers and experts said Mr. Chávez, a former army 
paratrooper with close ties to the military, has taken steps since 
April to ensure that important commands are in the hands of trusted 
allies - even if he cannot account for the loyalty of all 
middle-grade officers. He has also spent much of his time visiting 
bases and talking with soldiers, building ties that could prove 
useful if some officers grow restless.

Eight months of reshuffling of commands and pressing of the flesh may 
be paying off now, military experts say, as the government continues 
to weather the strike. Today, hundreds of thousands of anti-Chávez 
marchers took to the streets, while oil workers defied a Supreme 
Court ruling issued on Friday that ordered the reactivation of the 
state oil company, the lifeblood of the country's economy.

To this point, the military experts said, there is little sign of 
unrest in the ranks. The government can feel secure, said Antonio 
Berarducci, who teaches military strategy to majors and lieutenant 
colonels at the air force's war school. As long as Chávez is 
president of the republic, the armed forces are going to support him.

The president is counting on generals like General Baduel, 47, who 
has been his friend since the early 1970's and was the most visible 
officer to remain loyal to him when he was removed from power on 
April 12.

General Baduel, then a brigadier general and commander of a 
paratrooper brigade, has since been promoted to head the 12,000-man 
Fourth Armored Division, which has troops in seven states. Five of 
seven other high-ranking officers who joined him in supporting the 
president in April were also promoted to important posts, including 
commands of the army and navy.

At Plaza Altamira, a public square in an affluent section of Caracas 
that has become the center of antigovernment activity, generals and 
admirals who withdrew support for Mr. Chávez in April rail against 
him daily. Privately, they urge their former colleagues to join them, 
hoping to split the military and weaken the government. But they also 
acknowledge that the president has strengthened his hold.

He took us out of our key jobs in the armed forces, and he put in 
people close to his ideology, lamented Gen. Carlos Alfonzo, the 
former second in command of the National Guard. Every day that 
passes, he is gaining more space in the armed forces.

Still, some military experts say there are occasional rumblings of 
dissent in the barracks.

Col. Joseph Nunez, who teaches at the United States Army War College 
and has close contacts with the Venezuelan military, said there were 
officers in the forces with divided loyalties. They are subjected to 
heavy pressure from both sides, he said, with the government urging 
officers to speak out for Mr. Chávez and the opposition pleading for 
support.

There are lot of retired senior officers who are working very 
aggressively to get active duty officers to turn, and to get them to 
take a stand publicly against the president, Colonel Nunez said.

The president, in an interview on Sunday, said he was well aware that 
military officers had been approached by opposition leaders. But he 
was confident about the military's support, and described how he met 
regularly with soldiers and officers. I have to permanently be 
sending messages to them, clarifying things, he said with a smile.

http://www.nytimes.com/2002/12/21/international/americas/21VENE.html
--
Yoshie

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Discontent Boils Over in East Timor

*   Social discontent boils over in East Timor protests
By John Ward and Peter Symonds
6 December 2002

At least two people have been killed and more than 20 injured in 
clashes with police and soldiers during two days of protests and 
rioting by students and unemployed youth in the East Timorese capital 
of Dili. The situation remains tense after the government imposed an 
overnight curfew on Wednesday and called for UN troops to help police 
guard key buildings and patrol the city's streets. Most shops and 
businesses, as well as the university and high schools, were closed 
yesterday.

A protest by students erupted on Tuesday after police entered a high 
school to arrest a student for alleged involvement in gang violence. 
On Wednesday morning, at least 500 students and others gathered 
outside police headquarters in Dili to protest the arrest. President 
Xanana Gusmao came to the police station to appeal for calm but was 
ignored and had to be escorted inside as stones began to fly.

Police responded to the stone-throwing by firing warning shots then 
shooting into the crowd, killing at least one student, and then 
stirred even more resentment when they tried to grab the body. 
Enraged students were joined by others in a rampage directed at the 
government, the UN and foreign-owned businesses. Protestors looted 
and burned shops, vehicles and other buildings, including the 
residence of Prime Minister Mari Alkatiri, the parliament building 
and the Dili mosque.

East Timorese officials have announced that two people were 
killed-one of them a 14-year-old student, Honorio Ximenes-but the 
death toll could be higher. Eyewitnesses claim that the police shot 
and killed up to five people. Saturnino Saldaha, a doctor at the Dili 
hospital, said the facility had been swamped by seriously injured 
young people and created an urgent need for blood. About 80 people 
have been arrested on looting and other charges and are being 
detained at a UN facility at Tasieolo outside Dili

Interior Affairs Minister Rogerio Lobato baldly asserted that the 
protests were an orchestrated manoeuvre to topple the government. 
He and other officials alleged that the CDP-RDTL (Popular Defence 
Committee-Democratic Republic of East Timor) was behind the rioting. 
The group, which opposes the UN presence and calls for full 
independence for East Timor, has organised a number of 
anti-government protests.

The government is clearly looking for a scapegoat to deflect 
attention from the failure of their own policies. There is a huge 
social divide between a tiny elite of government officials, 
businessmen, foreign officials, aid workers and troops and the vast 
majority of the population, most of whom are unemployed and living 
below the poverty line.

Young people, in particular, are angry that their prospects for an 
education and a job are extremely small. Among the businesses 
ransacked on Wednesday was the Australian-owned Hello Mister 
supermarket, which specialises in supplying imported goods to UN and 
other foreign workers. While UN troops and officials are paid hefty 
living allowances of $US100 a day, most East Timorese are struggling 
to survive from day to day. The few who have jobs earn an average of 
about $6 a week.

Estimates of the jobless rate vary between 70 and 80 percent. 
Moreover, it has worsened since East Timor formally declared 
independence on May 20, as the number of UN personnel has been 
reduced. The difficulties facing villagers in rural areas have been 
compounded by a severe drought. Even with the official poverty rate 
set at just US 50 cents a day, a UN survey last year found that 60 
percent of people in rural areas were living in poverty. Education 
and health services are rudimentary.

Many East Timorese have begun to feel betrayed as the promises that 
accompanied the Australian-led UN military intervention into East 
Timor have failed to materialise. Clearly nervous about the 
situation, Australian Prime Minister John Howard phoned his 
counterpart in Dili to pledge financial assistance-to bolster the 
police and judiciary, not to alleviate the underlying social crisis.

The view that the Alkatiri administration governs for a small elite 
has been reinforced by its decision to impose Portuguese, the 
language of the former colonial power, as the country's official 
language. Most of the population-around 90 percent-speak only Bahasa 
Indonesia or Tetum and other local languages and are thus excluded 
from government jobs and alienated from parliament, the courts and 
other official institutions.

...Unable to address the social and economic problems facing the 
majority of the population, the government is signalling its 
intention of cracking down on any political opposition. In doing so, 
it rests almost exclusively on 4,700 foreign troops and police still 
in East Timor under the UN flag. Significantly, Foreign Minister Jose 
Ramos Horta, speaking from Madrid, called on the UN to

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