A real estate bubble?
COMMENT BLOWING BUBBLES New Yorker, Issue of 2004-07-12 and 19 Posted 2004-07-05 Next March, Alan Greenspan will turn seventy-nine. Sound health persistinghe plays tennis and golf regularlyhe will be well into his eighteenth year as chairman of the Federal Reserve Board and, depending on what happens in November, will be serving his fourth or his fifth President. Greenspans lugubrious face and nasal monotone are as familiar and as comforting to ordinary Americans as Prozac and The Simpsons, both of which dbuted in 1987, the same year President Reagan appointed him to office. Greenspans absence, like that of Lord Palmerston in Victorian Britain, has come to seem unthinkable. But, in our system of checks and balances, Greenspans position is an anomaly. The Fed is at once an independent institution and part of the government. Its chairman is Presidentially nominated and senatorially confirmed, but he takes orders from no one. The Feds decision last week to raise short-term interest rates by a quarter of a point cannot be appealednot to the White House, not to Capitol Hill, not to the Supreme Court. Although Congress obliges the Fed chairman to report to it twice a year on the conduct of monetary policy, politicians rarely challenge his authority. Last month, when the Senate Banking Committee endorsed Greenspans nomination for a fifth four-year term, Senator Jim Bunning, Republican of Kentucky, cast the only vote against him. (Bunning objected to Greenspans voicing opinions on subjects such as tax cuts and the budget deficit, which he believes are outside the Feds jurisdiction.) Given Greenspans role in promoting and prolonging the stock-market bubble that burst in 2000, the deference that surrounds him seems a little overdone. A few months ago, he argued that the unusually mild recession in 2001, and the subsequent recovery, however uncertain, had vindicated the Fed. There appears to be enough evidence, at least tentatively, to conclude that our strategy of addressing the bubbles consequences rather than the bubble itself has been successful, Greenspan told a meeting of economists. Perhaps. Its true that he has quashed fears that post-bubble, post-9/11 America would resemble post-bubble Japan, which experienced a decade of economic stagnation following the 1991 collapse of the Nikkei. He has also done his best to boost the election prospects of George W. Bush. With four months left until Election Day, employers are finally creating jobs in significant numbersmore than a million of them in the past four months, according to the Labor Department. The rise in business productivity that began in 1995 appears to have accelerated since 2001, with the annual growth rate approaching five per cent. Since productivity ultimately determines wages and living standards, this is an important development. Nevertheless, Greenspans claim of vindication is premature. Although the recovery looks genuine, there are serious questions about its sustainability. Between the start of 2001 and the middle of 2003, the Fed cut its target interest rate from 6.5 per cent to one per cent, the lowest level since the Eisenhower Administration. With the cost of borrowing lower than the rate of inflation, the Fed was essentially giving money away. At the same time, the Bush Administration cut taxes by trillions of dollars. This one-two dose of stimulus boosted spending throughout the economy, as such a stimulus usually does, but it left the nations finances chronically unbalanced, with consumers and the federal government both spending well beyond their means. The Presidents fiscal policy, most of which Greenspan publicly endorsed, has been widely criticized, but the consequences of the Feds cheap-money policy have largely escaped attention. Tempted by unprecedentedly low interest rates, Americans have taken on unprecedented levels of debt, particularly in the realestate market, which has replaced the stock market as the favored vehicle for get-rich-quick schemes. For many families, the soaring value of their home offset the slump in their stock portfolio, but, with one-bedroom apartments in Manhattan selling for more than half a million dollars, and with California banks being forced to introduce forty-year mortgages so that their customers can afford to buy a house, even some of Greenspans colleagues are concerned that one bubble has given way to another. In addition, over-all inflation is rising, albeit from a low base, with prices for some middle-class staples, such as gasoline and health-care premiums, increasing especially sharply. Most worrying of all is the prospect of a currency crisisa phenomenon practically unknown to Americans but familiar to citizens of many other countries whose governments have pursued irresponsible economic policies. For years, Americans lent more money to foreigners than they lent us. Now we owe the rest of the world about two and a half
July 5, 1811 (Venezuela's Independence Day)
July 5, 1811 (Venezuela's Independence and the Battle of Santa Inés): http://montages.blogspot.com/2004/07/july-5-1811.html -- Yoshie * Critical Montages: http://montages.blogspot.com/ * Bring Them Home Now! http://www.bringthemhomenow.org/ * Calendars of Events in Columbus: http://sif.org.ohio-state.edu/calendar.html, http://www.freepress.org/calendar.php, http://www.cpanews.org/ * Student International Forum: http://sif.org.ohio-state.edu/ * Committee for Justice in Palestine: http://www.osudivest.org/ * Al-Awda-Ohio: http://groups.yahoo.com/group/Al-Awda-Ohio * Solidarity: http://www.solidarity-us.org/
Re: China and the American consumer
In a message dated 7/4/2004 1:13:56 PM Central Standard Time, [EMAIL PROTECTED] writes: The article itself, like those articles about 20 years ago, have a lot ofthe old "yellow peril" theme.The Chinese economy is about as uneven, ragged, stumbling as you can get and still be upright. Agriculture has been decimated-- and there is no contradiction between internal decimation and increased exports, in fact as the same past 20 years have shown, the two go hand in hand. Comment Your comments on China are very considerate and takes into account the configuration of the on going revolutionary process in that country. Those of us in the most imperial of all imperial countries must always be careful and if we error it is better to error on the side of caution. What is called the "Chinese Revolution" is in my opinion, actually the revolutionary process in China. I am prohibited from criticizing the "Chinese Revolution" but can comment on the revolutionary process in China. The modern revolution in China began around 1811 and has gone through extraordinary twists and turns that would baffle any economist or so-called political Marxists. What is not baffling is the current generation of China produced automobiles and vehicles poised to hit the American market with a price range between $9,000 and $15,000. (USA Today June 1, 2004 - Inexpensive Chinese Cars On Way Soon). We are talking not just about foreign investment as an abstraction but the value system and making profits the old bourgeois way or the China connection and material action in the world market. If you are behind the curve of industrial development then you must trade to realize a technological transfer and adhere to the world historic transition from agricultural relations to industrial relations of production - with the property relations within. I'll buy one of these vehicles in 36 months after I pay off the two vehicles the banks and finance companies allow me to drive. I believe you are correct to point out the enormous difference in economic development in the various regions of China. Back when I was still employed with Chrysler and later after its acquisition by Daimler Benz, it was rather simple to keep up with certain events in economic China. Chrysler was one of the first large industrial American companies to go into China building Jeep. Then . . . later . . . with Daimler at the helm I was informed through their excellent quarterly magazine - and I mean excellent, that Guzodong Province, had the largest concentration of Mercedes Benz buyers and owners on earth. Sidenote: It is not generally understood about the role Jergen Schempp played in the freeing of Nelson Mandela and why several years ago DamilerChrysler erected a new public school in the areas of Nelson's birth. Or the special relationship DaimlerChrysler has with the South African government to this very day. The quarterly journal of DaimlerChrysler is really excellent and I tossed them before moving to Texas. (There were always the stories of the smuggle of Mercedes by the PLA - Peoples Liberation Army apparatus and dragging vehicles through the water in large condom like sacks . . . and the backdoor building of Jeeps would be spoken about by the upper echelon of the corporation. Reminds me of a young American Republic stealing British technology). What is complicated about the revolution in China is not the existence of the bourgeois property relations and old fashion bourgeois profits, but the political basis of the so-called Chinese Revolution. China has the oldest existing continuous culture on earth - the third planet from the sun. Intensely proud and patriotic, they have been humiliated for at least 150 years by "foreign barbarians." The communists, to succeed had to take serious account of the national pride and striving of the people of China for independence, in a way not UN-similar to how we should understand the vision of 1776 and why it continues to inspire a vast segment of the American people. The communists in China were ideological communist or people who believed in communism because you cannot build communism on the basis of an agricultural society. Taking into account where they where in history, Chairman Mao summed up his victory in the war for national liberation by simple stating "China has stood up." Now the communist were successful for a combination of reasons and results of the Second World Imperial War . . . but their slogans was for a "New Democracy," redistribution of the land, a guarantee of food for all or food for no one - and most importantly, the rebirth of China. China began industrialization of her could - after 1949, based on the strength of the USSR and this was short lived due to what became called the Sino-Soviet split. Newly independent China could not accept what it considered appeasement with US imperialism by the regime of Nikita
neocons and the missle gap
I am reading Amadae, Sonja Michelle. 2003. Rationalizing Capitalist Democracy: The Cold War Origins of Rational Choice Liberalism. So far it is very interesting. One unexpected piece of information concerned the intellectual origins of the neocons, although she does not even mention that movement by name. What she does do is to trace the missile gap, which became a centerpiece of the Kennedy campaign to Albert Wohlstetter, who inspired Richard Perle and many of the people around Scoop Jackson. It seems that the shenanigans of this group disgusted Eisenhower and led to his warning in his farewell address against the military industrial complex. Wohlstetter, it seems, was not highly respected within RAND, but he won a small group of energetic supporters by claiming that the Soviet Union could successfully attack simultaneously every American base thereby leaving the US vulnerable. Just as today, the military regarded as possibility as ridiculous and the proto-neocons has seriously out of touch with reality. Like today, this group was very successful in waging a propaganda war to make the country fearful about the nonexistent missile gap. -- Michael Perelman Economics Department California State University michael at ecst.csuchico.edu Chico, CA 95929 530-898-5321 fax 530-898-5901
new radio product
Just added to my radio archive http://www.leftbusinessobserver.com/Radio.html: July 1, 2004 Phyllis Bennis, lead author of Paying the Price, on the human, economic, and environmental costs of the war on Iraq * Joe Garden, Mike Loew (both of The Onion), and Randy Ostrow, authors of Citizen You!, a manual of patriotic duty (some of the original audio was lost - details at the top of the show) June 24, 2004 Michael Hardt, co-author of Empire, on the state of the empire in the light of the Iraq war * Stonewall segment: Julie Abraham, professor of LGBT studies at Sarah Lawrence, on why she's no fan of same-sex marriage June 17, 2004 Jomo, the Malaysian economist, on the Asian economies and their recoveries from the 1997 crisis * Seth Kleinman of PFC Energy on the state of the oil market they join - June 10, 2004 DH on the demise of Reagan * Rick Perlstein, historian of conservatism and author of a bio of Goldwater, on the emergence of the right the role of Ronnie * Ralph Nader, talking to the ruling class at the Council on Foreign Relations (20 minutes out of a one-hour appearance), about foreign policy, globalization, and his contribution to electing George Bush May 20, 2004 Marathon Special: State of the Empire Gary Younge, New York correspondent of The Guardian, on U.S. reactions to the torture photos, comparisons with British and other European imperialisms, and race in the U.S. vs. the UK * Cynthia Enloe of Clark University, famous for her feminist analyses of the military, talks about masculinity in the Bush administration, the oil industry, and military prisons * George Monbiot, author of Manifesto for a New World Order, on offshoring as reparations, the WTO, the limits of localism, and the democratization of global governance May 6, 2004 Heather Boushey talks about child care, in anticipation of Mother's Day * Merrill Goozner, author of The $800 Million Pill, talks about drug development, and why medicines are so damned expensive along with -- * Chalmers Johnson on the U.S. empire * Jagdish Bhatwati on globalization * Bill Fletcher on war and peace * Slavoj Zizek on war, imperialism, and fantasy * Naomi Klein on Argentina and the arrested political development of the global justice movement * Keith Bradsher on the SUVs * Susie Bright on sex and politics * Richard Burkholder of Gallup on that firm's Iraq polls * Anatol Lieven on Iraq * Laura Flanders on Bushwomen * Carlos Mejia, deserter from Iraq * Joseph Stiglitz on the IMF and the Wall St-Treasury axis * Lisa Jervis on feminism pop culture * Nina Revoyr on the history of Los Angeles, real and fictional * Joel Schalit on anti-Semitism * Robert Fatton on Haiti * Ursula Huws on work and why capitalism has avoided crisis * Simon Head on working in the era of surveillance and speedup * Michael Albert on participatory economics (parecon) * Marta Russell on the UN conference on disability * Corey Robin on the neocons * Sara Roy on the Palestinian economy * Christian Parenti on Iraq and surveillance * Tariq Ali, Noam Chomsky, and Cynthia Enloe on the then-impending war with Iraq * Michael Hardt on Empire * Judith Levine on kids sex * Walden Bello on the World Social Forum and alternative development models * Christopher Hitchens on Orwell and his new political affiliations -- Doug Henwood Left Business Observer 38 Greene St - 4th fl. New York NY 10013-2505 USA voice +1-212-219-0010 fax+1-212-219-0098 cell +1-917-865-2813 email mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED] webhttp://www.leftbusinessobserver.com
Arar inquiry. Government stonewalls on providing info.
So that every word of an 89 page report on Arar/s detention is blacked out is not evidence that the government is trying to hide anything from the inquiry. Huh? Cheers, Ken Hanly Ottawa pressed to make Arar files public By COLIN FREEZE From Monday's Globe and Mail Ottawa A legal showdown will begin playing out Monday in Ottawa, as one man's quest for justice and the public's right to know will be pitted against state secrecy invoked to protect the public from terrorist threats. Maher Arar, a Canadian jailed in Syria as a suspected al-Qaeda member, has filed a motion for a vast public disclosure of government documents related to his ordeal. The motion will be heard by Mr. Justice Dennis O'Connor as he begins his third week of presiding over the fact-finding inquiry into Mr. Arar's detention. Only contextual evidence has been heard until this point, and now Mr. Arar's lawyers are trying to get down to the nitty-gritty. They argue Ottawa officials must finally come clean about what they know and cough up documents involving Mr. Arar's coerced confessions in Syria, and his previous interviews with U.S. border guards. Mr. Arar's lawyers say their client falsely incriminated himself under torture in Syria after being deported there by the United States in 2002. They say that Canada has documents stemming from the torture sessions and that standard national-security secrecy clauses typically used by the state to keep such information secret no longer hold leaks and media reports have established that RCMP officers were investigating the possibility of an al-Qaeda cell in Ottawa, that these Mounties became suspicious of Mr. Arar before the U.S. sent him to Syria. But lawyers acting for the Attorney General continue to push for secrecy saying Mr. Arar's request for disclosure should be tossed out entirely as it relies on an incomplete record, without a proper context and is being made without regard to ongoing investigations. In a rebuttal released this weekend, the government argues that the premature and unfounded conclusion that the government has acted in bad faith can't be used to justify disclosing information which for legitimate reason must be protected. While a roomful of government documents on the Arar affair already exists and may be easily perused by Mr. O'Connor as he seeks to find the facts, it's unknown whether the public or even Mr. Arar will ever get to see them. That's because even though the broader public may want to get at the truth, the state fears the public may not be able to handle it. The position is that Canadian officials must be allowed to closely guard their methods of investigation, their confidential sources, their secret swapping with other countries, and their ongoing investigations. Otherwise, much is risked including the country's security and its relationship with other states. [Any] perceptions of a relative weakening in Canada's ability to ensure protection of information could create a lessening of sensitive information and/or a downgrading, argues the Attorney General. Atop fears that international community could get jittery about Canada becoming an intelligence blabbermouth, there are also insinuations that sinister forces are watching the Arar inquiry, ever ready to inductively reason big pictures from benign tidbits. Seemingly innocuous information...in the hands of an informed reader, can disclose more about an investigation than would otherwise be obvious, argues the government. It says that Mr. Arar's motion is unreliable because it is based largely on media reports, which may not be accurate, cannot properly be considered as evidence...and are nothing more than conjecture and generalizations. Finally, the government, which last week blacked out every word of an 89-page report about Mr. Arar's detention, says it is being as accommodating as it can be under the circumstances. There is no basis for the suggestion...that the government is trying to cover up' or hide' information from any kind or type from the inquiry, it says.
