RE: Re: Huck Finn ref # 33551

[Max B. Sawicky]

Doyle --

You are criticizing the movie because it's not some
other movie you would rather see.  The movie is not
about two souls from different backgrounds striking
a bond in a hostile world.
The black gang member is a minor character in the
story.  In the story, a class movement is precisely
what is *not* built.  Whatever friendship there is
between black and white is swept aside.  You might
just as well criticize a movie about the Spanish
Civil War because the wrong side wins.  What's the
point of a movie about that?  Only that it was what
actually took place.

mbs



I agree with Yoshie,  the weakness of the movie is in not portraying the
'friendship' of a free black man to Amsterdam.  You minimize the meaning of
friendship here for no good reason.  Your comment about the intelligence of
the underlying film is not appropriate.  How could the truth of the movie be
destroyed by saying clearly what friendship meant then?  Not likely.  In
fact it is more likely it is hard in this time to understand a friendship
now.  And to see how in such a sucky culture of the period that people could
be friends is a real eye opener about the porous and plastic nature of human
cognition.  Which is what class movements are built upon.  The working class
to remind you is composed of various groups of workers finding unity over
time.  That often in that century it was the vehement passions of religious
cognitive methods (John Brown) that fused people into a single group.

The intelligence of a movie is the intelligibility (in contemporary
parlance, 'Usability') of the movie in respect to whoever sees the movie.
Not the unknowable of Scorsese's intentions behind the scenes.  More likely
the collaborative team that made the movie is who decided how to portray a
black man's emotional reality in the movie.  There must have been some
debate from the cast and so forth in making the movie about how to portray
people.  You get the sense that Scorsese uses historical documents (flashed
on the screen) to bolster his position that he is seeking to show what the
documentation during the period says.

Yoshie says that there may be elements that would contribute to a better
portrayal over time as the lessons of this movie sink in.  That may be.
Perhaps the reality is too much to expect of this document if it is opening
the doors to understanding the history of capitalism.   I think though it
better to succeed on levels that I think a red would naturally want than to
forgive the high capitalist like Scorsese for their failings.  There is no
good reason to think that minimizing understanding passionate relationships
between people is going to destroy meaning.   If you want to debate that
emotions are not part of 'meaning' you'll be on not very solid ground.
thanks,
Doyle Saylor

Climate catastrophe

[Eugene Coyle]

"In order to prevent devastating climate shifts world-wide, total global 
greenhouse gas emissions must soon drop to 60 to 80 percent below their 
1990 levels."

Can that be right?

That can't be right.

The sentence appears early in the book DEAD HEAT, by Tom Athanasiou and 
Paul Baer.  An important and compelling book.

(Disclosure:  the authors are  friends of mine.)

As I read it, I thought"That can't be right."  Queried by e-mail, 
the authors replied "Yes, that is correct."

60 to 80 percent BELOW the 1990 levels?  The necessary cuts in emissions 
are almost unimaginably deep.

It partly hinges on what one means by "soon."  It isn't tomorrow, or in 
the next few years.  But soon, nevertheless.

DEAD HEAT is very strong on explaining climate science and convincing in 
its support of the quoted statement that begins this post.  The authors 
assert that



	"The science shows, in mercilessly numeric terms, that even if 
we move quickly to cap the emission of greenhouse pollutants, the
consequences of global warming will soon become quite severe,and even 
murderous, particularly for the poor and the vulnerable.  And in the 
more likely case where we move slowly, the impacts will verge on the 
catastrophic."



The first part of the book makes that scientific case.

But the book is subtitled "Global Justice and Global Warming" and an 
even more compelling case is made for climate justice.  They argue that 
climate justice and climate realism are two sides of one coin.

Athanasiou and Baer write:



"Meanwhile, the "equity agenda" evolving in the climate negotiations and 
in all the chatter and research that underlies them, is reaching 
conclusions of terrific importance, conclusions that, strangely, are all 
but unknown by the larger global-justice movement.  Here's one: The 
Kyoto Protocol may turn out to be one of the most important economic 
treaties of all time."


I repeat that this is an important book.  Despite its brevity (149 pages 
plus notes and a section on resources) the science is made clearer than 
you'll find elsewhere.  Athanasiou and Baer never lose sight of the goal 
of global justice.  Whether their ideas, or some others, will deliver 
justice while saving the environment remains to be seen.  But they are 
surely right that catastrophic climate change cannot be stopped unless 
global justice is fully a part of the solution.

Read this book.  Seven Stories Press $9.95.  (www.sevenstories.com)

Gene Coyle

Re: Re: A feeling robot sensor for soldiers in thefield

[Doyle Saylor]

Greetings Economists,
Well Tom you certainly made a good point about whose ass gets worried about
first.  On the other hand, perhaps old fashioned technology is the best like
an enema tube snaking down out of the pack and into a special 'pocket in the
rear of the captains pants.  I could see the commanders going into the
field.  Kinda of like little piggies going to the market.

Can't say what is really in their scared little hearts (that having dropped
down out of their palpitating chests) but somewhere in Florida there is some
computer collecting rectum and weeny flow information to summarize to George
W about the state of his military morale.  Maybe there is a contract here
for depends?  Wasn't it the Civil War in the U.S. that got started the
lucrative market for military clothing.  The military is trying to extend
the life of Calvin Klein underwear?  I could see this being a new thing for
all those guys who like to wear camouflage outfits in the city street.  Wear
your pants down showing off your military depends terror diapers.  You could
have the tubes be a prominent badge of what you shared with your buddies in
combat.
thanks,
Doyle Saylor

Re: A feeling robot sensor for soldiers in the field

[Tom Walker]

Fucking incompetents. Why not stick a catheter up the commander's ass and
when he shits himself they'll know he's in trouble.

> "The human commander may get into trouble but be unable to ask for help,"
> said Nilanjan Sarkar, team member and assistant professor of Vanderbilt
> University's Department of Mechanical Engineering.
>
> "In cases like these his robot assistant will be able to detect his stress
> and either communicate the need for assistance or assist in some way
> itself."
>
> The robot's sensors consist of an electrocardiogram to record heartbeat, a
> skin sensor that can detect tiny changes in sweat production, an
> electromyography sensor that detects minute muscle activity in the jaw and
> brow, a blood-volume pressure sensor that measures the constriction on the
> arteries and a temperature sensor.
>
> "The robot uses algorithms to translate the information it gets from the
> sensors into a format it can understand," Sarkar said. "One of our most
> important claims is that the robot can process this information in real
> time."
>
> So far tests with the robot have proved promising. The machine responds on
> cue to signals of distress and approaches its human counterpart to ask if
> he's OK.

 Tom Walker
604 255 4812

A feeling robot sensor for soldiers in the field

[Doyle Saylor]

Greetings Economists,
The U.S. military is seeking to give soldiers various kinds of tools to
endure the terrors of battle.  The following technology review indicates how
the U.S. military is approaching the issue of emotion production and what to
do with such information.  Aside from the normal question about another
typical unrealistic technology boon doggle, does emotion production
technology have implications for working class structure?
thanks,
Doyle Saylor

Feeling Blue? This Robot Knows It  By Louise Knapp
Story location: http://www.wired.com/news/technology/0,1282,56921,00.html

02:00 AM Jan. 01, 2003 PT

Science fiction often depicts robots of the future as machines that look
like people and feel, or at least hanker after the ability to feel, human
emotions. 

A team at Vanderbilt University is turning this notion on its head by
developing a robotic assistant whose goal is not to develop emotions, but
rather respond to the moods of its human master.

By processing information sent from physiological sensors the human
counterpart wears, the Vanderbilt robot can detect when its master is having
a bad day and approach with the query: "I sense that you are anxious. Is
there anything I can do to help?"

But do people really want a machine sensing their anxiety and offering
assistance? 

If that's all the Vanderbilt robot was intended to do, it wouldn't have much
shelf life. But the research team has a specific kind of service in mind for
its mechanical assistant.

Researchers envision the emotion-sensing robot serving military personnel on
the battlefield. 

"The human commander may get into trouble but be unable to ask for help,"
said Nilanjan Sarkar, team member and assistant professor of Vanderbilt
University's Department of Mechanical Engineering.

"In cases like these his robot assistant will be able to detect his stress
and either communicate the need for assistance or assist in some way
itself." 

The robot's sensors consist of an electrocardiogram to record heartbeat, a
skin sensor that can detect tiny changes in sweat production, an
electromyography sensor that detects minute muscle activity in the jaw and
brow, a blood-volume pressure sensor that measures the constriction on the
arteries and a temperature sensor.

"The robot uses algorithms to translate the information it gets from the
sensors into a format it can understand," Sarkar said. "One of our most
important claims is that the robot can process this information in real
time." 

So far tests with the robot have proved promising. The machine responds on
cue to signals of distress and approaches its human counterpart to ask if
he's OK. 

The robot's biggest hurdle may not be its design but rather its human
counterpart accepting it as a trusted assistant.

"Speaking as a former soldier, the last thing I would want is an artificial
girlfriend by my side to nag me about how I am feeling while out in the
battlefield," said John Petrik, corporate communications officer at the
Office of Naval Research.

But, Petrik added, as one of the project's sponsors, the ONR believes the
research has potential to develop smarter robotic aids for military use.

Other robotics researchers agree that the Vanderbilt robot has potential but
needs fine-tuning. 

"Taking these (physiological) signals is certainly a good indication of the
human state, but we are at a very primitive stage of understanding the
relation between the internal states -- what is observable -- and human
emotion," said Takeo Kanade, director of the Robotics Institute at Carnegie
Mellon University. 

The Vanderbilt team has time to work the kinks out of its robot's
emotion-detecting abilities. Sarkar admits that it will be a few more years
before the robot makes it onto the battlefield.

Turkish leader criticises Denktash

[Chris Burford]

Remarkable statement by leader of the new ruling  party of Turkey:

http://www.guardian.co.uk/worldlatest/story/0,1280,-2289953,00.html

This is a sign that the repective national bourgeois circles that backed 
Greek fascism, and the Turkish invasion of Cyprus, 30 years ago have waned 
in influence even in a Turkish party with islamic leanings that one might 
expect to have some national tendencies, linked to islamic credit cooperatives.

The magnetic power of the European Union, as a large markets favouring 
formal bourgeois civil rights, is sucking in not only the prosperous Greek 
speaking southern part of Cyprus, but also the large country of Turkey, 
just as China is sucking Japan into its economic orbit.

30 years ago contradictions between their different bourgeoisies would have 
led to war. Now they are being dragged towards the same mega market 
dominated by finance capital.

 The power of global monopoly capitalism is increasing. It is a matter of 
time before we are all swept into a black hole of neo-liberalism with an 
irresistible gravitational force.

Chris Burford

London

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

[Ralph Johansen]

Brings to mind marathon dancing in the 30's depression [way out thought],
and the phenomenon of Michael Moore's documentary, and limited introductory
showings, word of mouth and mass marketing. Bowling even showed for a week
here on Maui. It's not maybe too far-fetched for a try. There was also
Tarkovsky's Gorky Trilogy [300 minutes] and Eisenstein's Ivan the Terrible
[200 minutes]. It would be great to discuss such a script. What a waste that
this medium is not being put to good use.
Ralph

- Original Message -
From: "Yoshie Furuhashi" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
To: <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
Sent: Wednesday, January 01, 2003 10:48 PM
Subject: [PEN-L:33562] Re: The ideological implications of Scorcese's latest
film


> At 2:44 PM -1000 1/1/03, Ralph Johansen wrote:
> >with a break for lunch, yes, at the York Theater in SF about 15 or
> >20 years ago. And btw not a bad format as precedent, for a film that
> >has it all
>
> I would enjoy watching it, and it would have a guaranteed spot in
> film history and perhaps find a devoted following in the film
> festival/art house/cinematheque circuit.  It wouldn't find a
> distributor that would mass market it to multiplexes with their
> masses of movie-goers, though.  One of the strengths of _Gangs of New
> York_ is that it is a mass-market film, though mass marketing imposes
> the limits of Hollywood conventions on it (e.g., the difficulty of
> dispensing with a point-of-view character with whom the audience is
> invited to identify).
> --
> Yoshie
>
> * Calendar of Events in Columbus:
> 
> * Anti-War Activist Resources:

> * Student International Forum: 
> * Committee for Justice in Palestine: 
>
>
>

Re: Rogoff: We're Not the Problem

[Chris Burford]

At 02/01/03 12:23 -0800, Peter wrote:

You would be completely right if Rogoff thought that unemployment and 
falling incomes were the problem.  For him (and the IMF), however, a 
shortage of foreign exchange for debt service is the problem (just like 
his brother's inability to pay his loans was a problem).  Here the fallacy 
is not the Keynesian one, but the bogus collectivism by which an 
individual's debt is equated with the external debt of a country.  As we 
all know, a few ultra-rich folks can engage in capital flight, and this 
becomes a problem to be solved on the backs of the majority of working 
people who have never had the wherewithal to be profligate in the first place.

I take the point that only the ultra-rich can take advantage of short term 
capital flight, but there is a longer term question of why it is the 
developing countries whose economies are subject to periodic instability. 
There is a longer term unequal exchange and unequal accumulation of capital 
on a global scale.

Chris Burford

Re: Re: Re: Re: Rogoff: We're Not the Problem

[Carrol Cox]

Peter Dorman wrote:
> 
> 
. 
> I've always found it interesting that, in international trade and
> finance, the "nation" is used as a unit of analysis by a profession
>

Back in the late '60s the late columnist Joseph Kraft offered defintions
of "nation," "public," and "people." "Nation" was the ruling class.
"Public" was that part of the population that "kept up on their reading"
(he had a much better way of putting it, but I can't remember it
accurately). And The People were the working class. Kraft was not a
marxist or even a mild leftist, but I wish I could find out this
passage.

Carrol

Re: Re: Re: Rogoff: We're Not the Problem

[Peter Dorman]

You would be completely right if Rogoff thought that unemployment and falling
incomes were the problem.  For him (and the IMF), however, a shortage of
foreign exchange for debt service is the problem (just like his brother's
inability to pay his loans was a problem).  Here the fallacy is not the Keynesian
one, but the bogus collectivism by which an individual's debt is equated
with the external debt of a country.  As we all know, a few ultra-rich folks
can engage in capital flight, and this becomes a problem to be solved on
the backs of the majority of working people who have never had the wherewithal
to be profligate in the first place.

I've always found it interesting that, in international trade and finance,
the "nation" is used as a unit of analysis by a profession that is so dogmatically
individualistic in the rest of its thinking...

Peter

Michael Pollak wrote:

  On Wed, 1 Jan 2003, Peter Dorman wrote:

  
  
Michael,

I don't think Rogoff is making the econ 101 mistake you attribute to
him. He is arguing against the post hoc ergo propter hoc fallacy that,
because austerity follows IMF intervention the IMF is necessarily
responsible for it.

  
  
Yes he tacks that on at the end.  But most of the article is taken up with
saying that austerity at his brother's house is like austerity in a
national budget -- missing the obvious difference that, unlike his
brother's baking business, if a government cuts down on its spending in
bad times, it doesn't save, it worsens the bad times.

Michael
  

Re: Inside the stock market bubble

[Nomiprins]

In a message dated 1/2/2003 9:09:24 AM Eastern Standard Time, [EMAIL PROTECTED] writes:
> Comments? 
"Yet for all that increased attention, it's difficult to say that the enlarged business media played a decisive role in exposing the shortcomings of American corporate practices."

Not that difficult to say. They weren't. Both the enlarged and established media were extolling the virtues of all the rags to riches senior executive stories via cover stories and mug shots. Every so often, a negative viewpoint was reported - Business week had a great article in mid 1999 warning that the telecom industry was piling on too much debt, but these views were not the norm.

"I'd like to believe that those of us who witnessed the tech bubble will be smart enough to prick the next bubble that comes along before too many investors get duped. Encouragingly, some improvements have been made; CNBC now usually identifies whether a banker it is interviewing owns stock in or does business with the companies being discussed on the air."

This is a pet peeve of mine- but - it just doesn't matter whether a banker owns stock or his or her bank does business with the company being analyzed. It's obvious that if a bank analyst covers a company, the bank either does business, did business or wants to do business with it. Until disclosure gets meaningful and quantifiable - like how much business does the company do? how many fees does it pay? does someone at the bank sit on the company's board or visa versa? - these type of vacuous disclaimers are useless.

"But in more skeptical moments, I fear that the rise of any boom sector in the American markets will bring with it an attending press that is at least compliant, if not out-and-out boosterish. Editors and reporters need to be able to resist the notion that any single development in technology or business creates a new economy that defies traditional laws of business. That's not a problem that the Securities and Exchange Commission and Congress can solve."

No, it's not a problem the SEC or Congress can solve, though that's another story.
But, Editors seem to be finding it hard to resist already. The NY Times and other major business publications have already gone looking for the hot new telecom thing - the Times wrote 4 articles last month about why the wireless sector 'wi-fi' is poised for growth. These publications have not pointed out that ANY business model predicated on Internet growth and access, whether it be through wireless, cable, DSL or dial-up can never produce the type of profitability it takes to service the debt the matching hype can bring in without extreme modifications to the industry. 

Today, in the same NY Times, there's a story about what five analysts think of various industry sectors for 2003. All five work at major investment banks - Merrill Lynch, Goldman Sachs, Morgan Stanley, Salomon Brothers, Bear Stearns. The Times did not ask an independent analyst for thoughts. Not a lot of change there - except - they do now include the 'disclaimer' and tell us that Goldman, Salomon and Morgan Stanley do business with the companies their analysts are discussing.

CNN, CNBC, MSNBC etc. still comment on business and market stories with - 'analysts think... or analysts say'. They haven't adopted the use of alternative voices, even ones that were right in their past skepticism (the CWA, for example, wrote a brilliant report in early 1998 about why the WorldCom / MCI merger would fail with sound financial reasoning (directly related to the fraud that was uncovered) gleaned from the same SEC filings that the SEC was supposed to be reviewing). 
I don't see stories opening with 'the CWA says, or the Consumer Union says, or one of the PEN-L economists says..."

Anyway, Happy New Year everybody!
Nomi

EPI/IWPR Reception at ASSA

[Max B. Sawicky]

Economic Policy Institute & Institute for Women's Policy Research

In conjunction with this year's Allied Social Science Association's annual
Conference, attendees are invited to attend a reception hosted jointly by
the Economic Policy Institute and the Institute for Women's Policy Research.

WHERE

Grand Hyatt Washington
1000 H Street N.W
The Latrobe Room

WHEN

Saturday
January 4th 2003
6.00 - 8.00 pm

The Economic Policy Institute is a non-partisan, nonprofit public policy
research organization that seeks to broaden the public debate about
strategies to achieve a prosperous and fair economy.

The Institute for Women's Policy Research is a research organization
dedicated to informing and stimulating debate on public policy issues of
critical importance to women and their families.

Re: Re: The ideological implications of Scorcese'slatest film

[Doug Henwood]

Yoshie Furuhashi wrote:


Peter, I'd love to see a film that does all of the above, but the 
film might then become longer than _Berlin Alexanderplatz_ (Dir. 
Rainer Werner Fassbinder, 1980, 933 minutes!!!).  _Berlin 
Alexanderplatz_ was originally aired as a 14-part TV miniseries. 
Anyone has watched it at one sitting?

It's maybe my favorite movie, but I've never been able to watch more 
than three episodes at one sitting. And if you're not a Germanophile, 
one is probably the max.

Doug

words to banish

[ken hanly]

http://www.lssu.edu/banished/current/default.html

Inside the stock market bubble

[Seth Sandronsky]

Jan. 2, 2003

Hi PEN-L:


From today's New York Times, one insider's view of the stock market bubble.  
Comments?

Regards,
Seth Sandronsky



The Boys in the Bubble

January 2, 2003
By JAMES LEDBETTER

LONDON
The year that just ended will be remembered as a year when
the failures of America's corporate governance and
accounting procedures became widely apparent. But a full
reckoning of the Enron-WorldCom era must also take into
consideration the ways in which the business press failed,
too.

The late 1990's witnessed an explosion of business media.
CNBC became the most profitable cable channel in America.
New magazines and Web sites sprang up: Business 2.0, Red
Herring, The Street.com and the publication I worked for,
The Industry Standard. All purported to untangle the
mysteries of the burgeoning Internet economy.

Yet for all that increased attention, it's difficult to say
that the enlarged business media played a decisive role in
exposing the shortcomings of American corporate practices.
Indeed, too often the new magazines and Web sites acted as
incurious cheerleaders, championing executives and
innovative companies without questioning their books. Do a
search, for example, of the word "Enron" in the databases
of those publications prior to 2000 and you'll find little
but praise for its market innovations.

(clip)

James Ledbetter, business editor of Time Europe, is
author of the forthcoming "Starving to Death on $200
Million: The Short, Absurd Life of The Industry Standard."

Full article: 
http://www.nytimes.com/2003/01/02/opinion/02LEDB.html?ex=1042515297&ei=1&en=492b8011443212cb






_
The new MSN 8 is here: Try it free* for 2 months 
http://join.msn.com/?page=dept/dialup

Re: The ideological implications of Scorcese's latest film

[Yoshie Furuhashi]

At 2:44 PM -1000 1/1/03, Ralph Johansen wrote:

with a break for lunch, yes, at the York Theater in SF about 15 or 
20 years ago. And btw not a bad format as precedent, for a film that 
has it all

I would enjoy watching it, and it would have a guaranteed spot in 
film history and perhaps find a devoted following in the film 
festival/art house/cinematheque circuit.  It wouldn't find a 
distributor that would mass market it to multiplexes with their 
masses of movie-goers, though.  One of the strengths of _Gangs of New 
York_ is that it is a mass-market film, though mass marketing imposes 
the limits of Hollywood conventions on it (e.g., the difficulty of 
dispensing with a point-of-view character with whom the audience is 
invited to identify).
--
Yoshie

* Calendar of Events in Columbus: 

* Anti-War Activist Resources: 
* Student International Forum: 
* Committee for Justice in Palestine: 

Re: Rogoff: We're Not the Problem

[Chris Burford]

At 02/01/03 00:36 -0500, Michael Pollak wrote:


[This seems kind of unbelievable.  Isn't the first fallacy that economics
101 sets out to refute the idea that a household budget is analogous to a
set of national accounts?  I thought it was regarded not only as a fallacy
but as the shibboleth of economic ignorance.  Has something changed that a
Harvard economics professor can base his whole case on it?  Or is Rogoff
just that completely disingenuous?]

[If something has changed, if some economists feel they've disproved this
fallacy in some subtle way, that would explain a lot -- like why the
Hooverism that was based on the fallacy now seems to be everywhere
respectable again.]

The IMF is Not the Problem
By Kenneth Rogoff
Economic Counselor and Director, Research Department
International Monetary Fund

Syndicated and Published in the following:
The Nation (Thailand) on October 30, 2002
L'Avenir (Congo), Business Day (South Africa),
Business World (Philippines), Taipei Times (Taiwan),
Aripaev (Estonia), Logos Press (Moldova)
Delovoy Peterburg (Russia), Finance (Slovenia),
El Cronista (Argentina), El Diario (Chile),
El Observador (Uruguay), Financial Mirror (Cyprus)
Independent (Bangladesh).



The skilled but rather desperate appeal to the imagery of the family (the 
IMF is part of the UN family) omits the fact that the head of the family is 
suspected by some of being a serial abuser. Certainly he has what he 
believes is a healthy interest in his macho needs, and an absence of 
inhibitions about how lustily he indulges them. The odd rape may after all 
have been semi-consensual.

It is interesting that the crisis of the international economy, which is 
political as much as it is economic, has to be addressed by a return to 
such homely examples as Rogoff gives. Is this just metaphor? Yes it is true 
that in any social system, people may project persecutory feelings onto an 
appropriate candidate, just as they may project beneficent feelings. Roggof 
wants to dodge the persecutory projections.

Yes it is true that the IMF has 184 shareholders, but some are more equal 
than others, and one just happens always to nominate the fund's chief 
executive. I wonder if other family members have noticed this, or whether 
they think it is part of a deal that allows a group of other somewhat less 
powerful shareholders to nominate the chief executive of the World Bank.

But since the word "economy" came from the Greek for the household hearth, 
is the connection between the world and Hal's apartment so far fetched in 
scientific terms? Here I would suggest that both marxists and the elite 
echelons of world economists suffer from some degree of mystification about 
what social process is actually going on in front of our eyes.

Yes, because his method was one of abstraction, Marx did not emphasise much 
that the capitalist mode of production exists always side by side with 
other, including non-commodity, modes of social reproduction. True he wrote 
in detail about the lengthening of the working day, which eats into the 
working people's time for personal and social recuperation.

Kenneth was much too nice to ask Hal too many arkward questions but perhaps 
he knew many of the answers because they had had meals together and he was 
returning favours without any sense of corruption, (so widespread in the 
unfortunate rest of the world unlike the USA and the UK). Did he need to 
ask whether Hal would just possibly going to spend a bit of spare money on 
cocaine, or whether Hal's wife was malingering in claiming that her 
pregancy prevented her doing the home improvements in the apartment while 
Hal concentrated on sorting out the business? Or did he need to ask why 
they did not call in a business consultant to find out whether Hal was 
having to cream off money to a protection racket to prevent the bakery 
closing, or why Hal's wife, if she could not climb up ladders, could do 
more bookwork and could organise a leafleting publicity campaign in the 
neighbourhood to increase turnover at the bakery, while Hal went up the 
ladder for six hours a week?

In the event the pleasant tale reveals that the flat did not get 
redecorated, until the nephew had been born in a relative squalor that most 
of the children of the world are born into in a more inescapable sense. 
Really the purpose of the loan was to stop Hal going bankrupt just when he 
and his wife were having their first baby. Calling it a loan to improve the 
apartment was one of those nice clean positive presentational devices that 
are the stuff of elite modern accounting on the macro scale.

What Rogoff and his colleagues, and Marxistic economists, all fail to do, 
is to analyse the world economy on the most global scale. Yes there is an 
interplay with the non-commodity sphere in every family's domestic life, 
whether they are a young couple in New York or an Indonesian peasant 
working 16 hours a day to give his son a chance of a middle class 
education, only t