from:"Eubulides"

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



Yoshie, Doug is correct that fake questions implies that he is not
communicating in good faith.


=

But, but it is the non-defeasible self-determined privilege of some
Marxists to have incorrigible ascriptive knowledge of the mental content
and self-description of other Marxists and non-Marxists and thus the right
to assert that they must suffer from bad faith, erroneous self-description
and pathogenic epistemic capabilities! A form of knowing matched only by
the followers of Werner Erhard.


Ian

Re: corporations/More Side Issue

- Original Message -
From: Charles Brown [EMAIL PROTECTED]


How do you avoid touching during sex ?  Must be quite a trick.



Charles

===

Remember the condom scene in The Naked Gun?

Ian

undercover capitalism

[another iteration of  the corporation as externality machine..]

Undercover capitalism

Paul Foot
Wednesday March 17, 2004
The Guardian

The dynamic genius of private enterprise capitalism was on display in the
House of Commons on Monday last week, though surprisingly no one mentioned
it. Under discussion was the country's most notorious insurance company,
Equitable Life, and the way it ripped off its policyholders. The
government's reaction to the scandal came from the financial secretary to
the treasury, Ruth Kelly, who blamed most of it on the Tories. The Tories
were rather peeved, and the Liberal Democrats not very impressed. But the
nit-picking party argument was all about regulation and compensation.

No one remarked on the astonishing phenomenon of a big hierarchical
company seeking people's money with all sorts of extravagant promises
about bonuses that it couldn't keep. Everyone seemed to agree that no
regulator, however strong, could control unscrupulous executives such as
the gentlemen who ran Equitable Life. The only MP even remotely connected
to reality was Tony Wright, Labour MP for Cannock. A long time ago, Wright
wrote an interesting book about RH Tawney, who was described as the
patron saint of 20th-century British socialism.

I'm not sure whether Mr Wright is still interested in British socialism,
but it was probably some primeval Tawneyite instinct that prompted him to
ask Kelly: Is this not the story of a period when the country was in the
grip of an ideology that said that people would be more prosperous and
free to the extent that the state did not interfere with their lives? Are
not the Equitable Life policyholders now being asked to pay a terrible
price for that ideology? Unhappily, Wright rambled on to another question
about regulation, and let Kelly off the ideological hook.

So no one even asked why it is that companies like Equitable Life, with
such enormous power over people's incomes and pensions, not to say vast
investments in so many areas of British industry, are not in public
ownership, accountable to elected ministers. You have to go back half a
century to find anything like that proposition. In his famous best-selling
report in 1943, Lord Beveridge, a member of the Liberal party, argued that
the insurance companies played far too big a role in British public life
to be left in private ownership.

The Labour party national executive in 1948 and 1949 spent a lot of time
arguing over a proposal to nationalise insurance companies like the Pru
and Pearl. Aneurin Bevan and Will Griffiths were in favour; Herbert
Morrison, Stafford Cripps and Hugh Dalton against. The result was a
botched compromise known as mutualisation, which irritated both sides
but allowed big mutual (but private) companies like Equitable Life to
proceed on their own sweet entrepreneurial (and deceitful) way.

The argument for public ownership and democratic control is now so out of
date that it hardly gets a mention even when huge private companies go
down the drain, as they do all the time. And the real point about Wright's
question is that new Labour is every bit as much in the grip of free
market ideology as the Tories ever were. Proof of that is all round us,
most noticeably in Downing Street.

Ever since the 1997 election, Tony Blair has packed his policy-making
office with people who have little or nothing to do with the Labour party,
let alone socialism. The guru behind the great top-up fees fiasco for
instance, Andrew Adonis, is still there, driving his divisive ideas
through a reluctant House of Commons and, according to a delighted Mail on
Sunday, hatching new plots for privatising state secondary schools.

Adonis came to Downing Street from the Liberal Democrat party. Roger
Liddle, Blair's adviser on foreign affairs and Europe, came from the
Social Democratic party, which split from Labour in 1981, causing it
unprecedented electoral damage, and is now absorbed in the Liberal
Democrats. Another Social Democrat who answered the call from Downing
Street was Derek Scott. His electoral achievement in the 1980s was to
ensure the return of a Tory MP for poor old Swindon. Standing as a Social
Democrat in 1983, Scott got 13,000 votes. The sitting Labour MP was ousted
in favour of a Tory. So upset was Scott at this result that he stood again
in Swindon in 1987, getting the same number of votes and letting the
Tories in by an even bigger margin.

You could see Scott on the BBC's Panorama on Sunday, criticising
Chancellor Gordon Brown for threatening to levy too much tax. And where is
Scott plying his trade? Shortly before Christmas he left Downing Street
for better-paid work at KPMG, one of the country's big four accountancy
combines that makes a tremendous amount of money advising rich corporate
clients how to avoid tax.

[EMAIL PROTECTED]

Re: Observations on the Socialist Scholars Conference

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



Yes, yes, who was it who said that before they happen
revolutions seem impossible, afterwards they seem
inevitable. The fall of Communism was like that too.

Nonetheless there are certain obvious differences
between 1917 and now, like the existence of mass
working class radical movements of the left and the
far left, and a history of revolutionary struggle that
shook the government within living memory, and
socialist parties that were not mere infinitesmal
cults, and a whole lotta other stuff, including a weak
and hapless ruling class and a rigid and inflexible
state structure. None of that exists now.

Of course we may be surprised -- pleasantly, I mean.
But it would be a big surprise.


=

Meanwhile, there are yet other differences today's would be
revolutionaries have to deal with: a soft cage of computer surveillance
that grows ever more elaborate with each passing week; massive stockpiles
of nuclear and bio-chem weaponry alongside ever more effective non-lethal
forms of crowd control which can be mobilized at a large scale within an
hour or two; a propaganda complex that would have even Orwell doing bong
hits or shooting smack or taking Paxil to calm the nerves. All backed up
with legal codes that are virtually unintelligible to the majority of
citizens. Power flows out of one hell of a lot more than the barrel of a
gun. Thankfully, it also flows out of the smile on an infant's face, a
lover's face, a sibling's face, a comrade's face


Ian

WTO: the soda war

[I've filed for intellectual property protection on the subject line, so
don't get any ideas!]


U.S. Files WTO Case Over Soft Drinks
Wednesday March 17, 2004 4:16 AM
By IRA DREYFUSS
Associated Press Writer

WASHINGTON (AP) - The United States on Tuesday accused Mexico of violating
world trade rules by imposing a 20 percent tax on soft drinks using any
sweetener other than cane sugar grown in Mexico.

In a complaint to the World Trade Organization, U.S. Trade Representative
Robert Zoellick said the tax is a ``discriminatory and protectionist''
effort to lock out potentially hundreds of millions of dollars in U.S.
high fructose corn syrup.

In a separate dispute, a North American Free Trade Agreement panel sided
with the U.S. beef industry in its complaint that antidumping tariffs
Mexico imposed in 2000 on beef imports from north of the border are
unwarranted.

Mexico imposed its tax on non-sugar sweeteners in 2000 after the WTO ruled
that Mexican duties on imported corn syrup violated international trade
rules.

The Corn Refiners Association, a U.S. trade group, has said that reopening
the market could create annual syrup sales worth $620 million and more
than another $300 million in sales of corn to be processed into syrup.

Corn state senators have been calling on Mexican officials to stop
imposing barriers to the exports but Mexican lawmakers in December decided
to keep the taxes in place.

Senate Finance Committee Chairman Charles Grassley, R-Iowa, commended the
U.S. action but said he will continue trying to get Congress to impose
retaliatory tariffs on Mexican tequila and other products if the corn
syrup tax is not removed.

In a press release Tuesday, Mexico's Economy Department said it ``remains
open to reaching a negotiated solution on the subject'' and is ``analyzing
alternatives to resolve the sugar dispute'' while defending its laws.

Under WTO rules, a country filing a trade complaint must next take part in
informal consultations. If U.S-Mexican consultations fail to resolve the
issue in 60 days, the United States can request that a WTO panel hear the
dispute. The process, including time for appeals by the losing side in the
hearing, typically takes about 18 months.

In the beef case, a NAFTA panel gave Mexico 90 days to review tariffs of
up to 80 percent it imposed on U.S. beef in 2000 after complaining that
American producers were illegally selling it at below-market prices south
of the border.

The NAFTA panel said Tuesday that the Mexican government had not shown
Mexican businesses were hurt by the imports.

Richard Fritz, vice president for trade development at the U.S. Meat
Export Federation, a Denver-based trade group, said the next step is for
Mexico to review the legality of its tariffs. In the meantime, nothing
will change.

Eventually, the case might wind up before the WTO, said Gregg Doud, chief
economist for another trade group, the National Cattlemen's Beef
Association.

``This has been an unbelievable nightmare,'' Doud said, describing the
four years that the case has dragged on.

A Mexican government statement complained that the United States had
imposed barriers to imports of Mexican sugar, and said the Mexican tax on
sweeteners must be considered in that context. The statement said Mexico
has been trying to reach a negotiated settlement with the United States on
sweeteners in general.

Re: Observations on the Socialist Scholars Conference

2004-03-15 Thread Eubulides

- Original Message -
From: Yoshie Furuhashi [EMAIL PROTECTED]

i confess to not knowing what constitutes revolutionary socialism

Me either, and I wish someone would explain it to me. Armed takeover
of the White House and the New York Stock Exchange? Really, could
some self-identified RS clarify?

Doug

The first thing to do is to quit asking fake questions in which you
aren't really interested.
--
Yoshie




Who are you to unilaterally decide what a fake question is?

My guess is RS would have no truck with the tired and quaint
authoritarianisms and faux omniscience that some leftists have made into a
veritable secular faith over the last 170 or so years.

Ian

Re: Derivatives

- Original Message -
From: Marvin Gandall [EMAIL PROTECTED]



Thanks. This is more what I was looking for. I wouldn't discount efforts
towards some form of self-regulation in the overall self-interest of
investors, however, and especiially by the big banks who are forced to
take
a bath to take when heavily leveraged big players like LTCM bet wrong and
can't cover their trades. The systemic risk resulting from LTCM situations
is a real concern. But I think the real question is whether this huge
shadowy market can be effectively regulated.

Marv Gandall



Wouldn't the transparency issue run into intellectual property-firm
specific proprietary concerns?

Ian

Re: What is this thing called love?

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



Dennis Robertson. What Does the Economist Economize? in Economic
Commentaries. London: Staples Press, 1956, pp. 147-55.

He said that we economize love.


==

Doesn't Albert O. Hirschman suggest something similar? That it's good that
love is scarce?

Ian

US: water

http://www.latimes.com/news/local/la-me-desal14mar14,1,3121533.story?coll=la-home-local
CALIFORNIA
A Wave of Desalination Proposals
More than 20 projects to make seawater fit for the tap are being
considered in the state. Those from private firms stir debate over
public's interests.
By Bettina Boxall
Times Staff Writer

March 14, 2004

CARLSBAD, Calif. - A few hundred yards from the Pacific Ocean, at the end
of a labyrinth of blue pipes and filters, Peter MacLaggan fills a plastic
cup with water. This, he hopes, is his company's future.

It's purified seawater, stripped of its salts and ready for the tap.
MacLaggan's firm, Poseidon Resources, is one of a handful of private
companies that want to sell Californians tens of millions of gallons a day
of desalinated water just like it.

Their sea-to-tap schemes reflect the state's renewed interest in ocean
desalination, which planners say could provide more than 1.5 million
Californians with drinking water by 2030.

Though there remain financial and environmental obstacles to desalination,
more than 20 desalting proposals are now under consideration on the
California coast. Most are from public agencies, including the Los Angeles
Department of Water and Power, the city of Santa Cruz and the Municipal
Water District of Orange County.

But the most ambitious and potentially controversial are from the private
sector, which, with the help of public subsidies, wants to play a major
role in developing a new water supply for the state - a responsibility
borne largely by the government for the past century.

Poseidon, a small, privately held company based in Connecticut, proposes
to build the biggest ocean desalination plants in the Western Hemisphere
on the Southern California coast, one in Huntington Beach and one in
Carlsbad. Each would be capable of producing 50 million gallons of
drinking water a day.

To the north, California-American Water Co., a private utility owned by a
German conglomerate, is proposing a 9-million-gallon desalination facility
 at Moss Landing on Monterey Bay, while a consortium of private
engineering companies is floating plans for a 5-million-gallon
desalination plant on the shores of Morro Bay.

The private plans have stirred concerns among some public officials and
advocacy groups, who worry that a public resource, seawater, will be
exploited for private profit and sold to the highest bidder. They further
warn that multinational companies could try to use international trade
agreements to get around local and state environmental regulation.

Proponents say the public's interests would be protected by long-term
contracts with private water companies. They note that private water
utilities have operated in California since its infancy and today provide
about a fifth of the state's drinking water. And they argue that in an era
of government budget cuts and monster deficits, it makes sense for private
investors to shoulder the financial risks of getting new technology up and
running.

We need to get creative, said MacLaggan, a senior vice president of
Poseidon who joined the company three years ago and previously worked in
water supply planning for the San Diego County Water Authority. I don't
think you can say [that] because it's private, it's bad. If we're meeting
[quality and quantity] specifications for the life of a contract, it
doesn't matter how you get the water there.

Behind MacLaggan hummed the small reverse osmosis demonstration project
Poseidon has run in Carlsbad for the last year next to the Encina power
station.

A mini-version of what Poseidon proposes to do, the operation takes
seawater from the power plant's cooling stream and pumps it under high
pressure through a series of sand filters and synthetic membranes laced
with billions of holes a fraction of the width of a human hair. The holes
are big enough for a water molecule to slip through, but not salts or
contaminants. The whole process takes about 20 minutes. Then carbon
dioxide and minute amounts of lime are added to counter the water's
corrosiveness.

MacLaggan gives a visitor the plastic cup. The contents are clear and
flavorless, save for a mild mineral aftertaste.

Advances in desalting technology, pressure on Southern California to
reduce its take of Colorado River water and the demands of an ever
expanding population have turned the state's gaze to the sea.

This is a potentially limitless supply of water, observed Charles Keene,
executive officer of the state Water Desalination Task Force, which
concluded last year that desalination could play a meaningful, if limited,
role in meeting California's water needs. The task force acknowledged that
private desalination operations raised unique issues, but did not
discount private involvement.

You may be able to say that, philosophically, [seawater] is a public
resource and should not be exploited for profit, Keene said. But if you
want to look at it pragmatically, at water shortages in the future, and
say, 'I don't

Latin America: investment

http://www.latimes.com/business/la-fi-flan14mar14,1,12.column?coll=la-headlines-business
JAMES FLANIGAN
Latin America Turns Off the Investors It Needs
James Flanigan

March 14, 2004

Last week, after 15 years of trying to build a business in Latin America,
BellSouth Corp. disconnected from the region.

The Atlanta-based telecommunications giant agreed to sell its wireless
phone holdings in 10 Latin American countries to Telefonica Moviles Inc.
of Spain for about $6 billion. The price just about recovers BellSouth's
investment since 1988, including $600 million in losses it incurred last
year when it withdrew from Brazil.

Still, the money won't make up for the disappointment. And the dashed
dreams of this U.S. telephone company reflect a troubling distance between
the North and South American economies that could bode ill for both in the
years ahead.

BellSouth once had high hopes for Latin America, home to about half a
billion people. As recently as last year, it vowed to become the leading
wireless communications provider there, in part by creating walk-in phone
centers. These comfortable gathering spots - the Starbucks of Latin
America, one executive called them - were designed so that people who
didn't own phones could still make calls. Meanwhile, the company
commissioned a Taiwanese manufacturer to fashion an inexpensive cellphone
tailored to Latin America's vast low-income neighborhoods.

The company's efforts succeeded, to some extent. During the last decade,
phone ownership across Latin America has risen to more than 3 in 10 people
from fewer than 1 in 10.

But such robust growth was continually undermined, BellSouth officials
say, by bouts of political and currency instability. In the end, the
company believed it had little choice but to make an exit.

The problem with Latin America today isn't just that it's poor. It's that
the continent is failing to inspire confidence among the world's
investors.

Even as China and India are hailed - and feared - for climbing the ladder
of economic development, Latin America is characterized by uncertainty and
crisis.

The latest headlines tell of Argentina narrowly avoiding default on its
debt before getting more assistance from the International Monetary Fund.
Venezuela is being roiled by political unrest. Brazil is trying to get its
act together under President Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva. But Lula, who is
in a dispute with the U.S. over agricultural trade barriers, has lately
been criticizing America's predatory private sector and calling the U.S.
economy a perverse model that is not suited to his region.

He's entitled to his opinion, of course, but such rhetoric isn't helping
to attract what his country needs most: dollars. Brazil, which benefited
from $38 billion in foreign business investment in 1998, will be lucky to
attract $10 billion this year, experts say.

Brazil's economy should be growing 5% a year, but is not even expanding
1%, says Brazilian economist Raul de Gouvea, who teaches at the
University of New Mexico. Lula has yet to deliver on his promises.

Latin American economic growth has long suffered from other self-inflicted
wounds.

The quality of education ranks among the lowest of developing nations,
notes L. Ronald Scheman in a new book, Greater America: A New Partnership
for the Americas in the Twenty-First Century (New York University Press,
2003). Scheman, former head of the Inter-American Development Bank and now
director general of the Inter-American Agency for Cooperation and
Development, is a 40-year veteran of Latin American affairs.

The chief problem, Scheman says: Governmentbureaucracy is strangling
everything, from the schools to industry.

Such trouble comes at a crucial time, a crossroads in Scheman's words,
not only for Latin America but also for the U.S., which is struggling in
its own right to create jobs and ensure a sustained economic recovery.

Our country would benefit from the immense potential of a market of more
than 500 million people, Scheman says.

The never-ending controversy over border control aside, he adds, the U.S.
will need Latin America's young people later in this decade when baby
boomers retire and we face a severe labor shortage.

The Bush administration has at least recognized the nexus between North
and South in its proposed Free Trade Area of the Americas, which is
supposed to be signed this year.

Yet Scheman laments that, given rising protectionist sentiments in
Washington and tensions between the White House and Latin American leaders
such as Lula, we are likely to get at best a very pale trade agreement.

There are, to be sure, some positive signs. Latin America's long-neglected
infrastructure, for instance, is being better maintained. Specifically,
roads are being built to transport Brazil's soybeans to ports on the
Pacific Ocean, Scheman reports. Final destination: China.

What's more, investments in Latin American stock markets were up sharply
last year, says money manager Geoffrey

commodity trap redux

Deep-rooted commodity trap lies behind Africa's poverty

Kamran Kousari
Monday March 15, 2004
The Guardian

Gordon Brown and Jim Wolfensohn, writing in the Guardian on February 16 -
A new deal for the world's poor - provided a candid assessment of the
gulf between the promises and achievements of the international community
in meeting agreed goals on health, education, child and maternal
mortality, and poverty reduction. On their most optimistic calculations,
two more generations will be born into abject poverty in the developing
world before the UN's millennium development goals begin to be met.

On one level, this dismal outlook is not surprising, since good intentions
have not been backed by appropriate financial support from the
international community. The call for a doubling of aid through a new
international financing facility marks a welcome change of heart. It is no
secret, however, that better health and education, higher life expectancy
and poverty reduction are part and parcel of a larger development effort
that cannot be achieved without faster growth and better income
distribution.

On this level, sustainable development is about finding the right policy
blend. Here, opening up to global market forces bolstered by good
governance and modest gestures towards debt reduction are still expected
to do the trick.

In reality, the economic legacies of two decades of market-driven
adjustment packages are a weak investment climate, premature
de-industrialisation and erratic growth, in many cases at or below
population growth.

Faulty economic logic has had its most damaging impact on Africa, where
all these outcomes have been accompanied by a drop in the share of world
exports from 6% in 1980 to 2% in 2002. But far from reflecting a
reluctance to embrace globalisation, Africa has posted the highest trade
to GDP ratio of any region outside east Asia.

The problem is rather that growth depends on one or two primary
commodities whose prices have seen a secular and persistent decline,
placing a permanent pressure on foreign exchange earnings, frustrating
investment-led recoveries and adding to the debt overhang.

If terms of trade had remained at their 1980 levels, the share of the
sub-continent in world exports would have been double its present level,
its investment ratio would have been six percentage points higher and per
capita income would be as much as 50% higher. In short, behind the poverty
trap in Africa lies a deep-rooted commodity trap.

That trap has all too often been fastened tight by the policy actions of
the rich countries who have been extending a very visible hand to their
own farmers through huge subsidies and market barriers to deflect the
adverse impact of price movements, even as they have argued against
similar instruments to protect far harder-hit rural communities in the
developing world.

With the ascendancy of the Washington consensus, commodity agreements to
achieve price stability and compensatory financing mechanisms to deal with
short-term shocks have been discarded.

And at the national level, many African countries undergoing structural
adjustment and reforms have had to dismantle marketing boards that
provided extension services to farmers and guaranteed minimum prices,
leaving poor farmers alone to face increasingly concentrated markets and
frequent shocks, both natural and policy-made.

President Chirac of France recently called for an end to the conspiracy
of silence on commodity issues. A new study of Africa's trade performance
by the United Nations Commission for Trade and Development (Unctad) has
heeded this call and suggested a series of changes to the policy stance of
the international community towards commodity-dependent economies. This
should begin with a renewed commitment to an international commodity
policy to address not only price fluctuations but also the long-term
decline in prices. This commitment would entail significant new funding
targeted at improved supply management, economic diversification, as well
as the building of much neglected infrastructure.

In addition to new funding, a permanent exit solution to the debt overhang
of these countries is essential and should go far beyond the present
enhanced HIPCs initiative.

More immediately, African producers of such goods as cotton and ground
nuts should be compensated for loss of incomes arising from unfair
subsidies and support in Europe and the United States. All these measures
could be worked into the kind of new deal for the world's poor suggested
by Brown and Wolfensohn.

But in addition, developed country markets should be opened up through a
reduction or elimination of tariff peaks and subsidies and African
countries given the necessary policy space to design and implement trade,
industrial and financial policies adapted to their individual requirements
and circumstances.

This would necessitate much lighter conditions attached to multilateral
and bilateral lending. And any multilateral

nanodirigisme redux

[New York Times]
March 15, 2004
Bashful vs. Brash in the New Field of Nanotech
By BARNABY J. FEDER

PALO ALTO, Calif. - When it came time to invite a representative company
to attend President Bush's signing of a bill last December authorizing
$3.7 billion in federal spending on nanotechnology over the next four
years, a three-year-old Silicon Valley company named Nanosys got the call.

It is easy to see why. Painstakingly assembled by experienced
entrepreneurs, famous academic researchers and big-name venture
capitalists who know how to dazzle Wall Street, Nanosys is the epitome of
a start-up shooting for business glory.

It brandishes a portfolio of impressive patents, covering processes like
ways to make wires one ten-thousandth the thickness of a human hair, and
is pursuing research projects that could affect consumer electronics,
energy and communications.

But for all its glamour and promise, Nanosys does not expect to sell
products commercially until 2006. For actual sales and profits, one needs
to look to a more prosaic company, Nanofilm, a developer of optical
coatings that is based in an industrial park in Valley View, Ohio, outside
of Cleveland. It has been profitable since 2001.

We're the quiet company, said Scott E. Rickert, a 51-year-old former
chemistry professor at Case Western University who has been president of
Nanofilm since he founded the company in 1983.

While Nanosys represents the aspirations of many of the 400 to 500
nanotechnology ventures that analysts say have sprung up in recent years,
Nanofilm's story may actually be more relevant to the start-ups in the
field struggling to survive. Together, the two companies show the
diversity of the nanotechnology business landscape and some of the
uncertainties it holds for investors.

Nanotechnology, a term based on the nanometer, which is one-billionth of a
meter, has attracted investment not only from privately held start-ups,
but also from giants like I.B.M., General Electric and DuPont, which are
eager to exploit the potentially valuable properties of materials so small
that their dimensions can be measured in molecules. The federal government
estimates that nanotechnology, a catch-all label for products and
processes that operate on the molecular scale, will have a $1 trillion
economic impact by 2015.

It may take that long to sort out the business models best suited to
thrive in the nascent field.

Nanosys, based in Palo Alto, Calif., offers a model that is particularly
compelling to Wall Street. Its neighborhood is home to Hewlett-Packard,
Stanford University and some of Silicon Valley's most prestigious law
firms and venture capitalists - the entrepreneur's equivalent of
beachfront property. Its scientific advisory board includes luminaries
like Dr. Charles M. Lieber of Harvard, a leader in research on how to
build nanoscale wires, and Dr. A. Paul Alivisatos, a chemist at the
University of California at Berkeley whose research helped found the
Quantum Dot Corporation, a start-up company that makes crystalline
nanoscale tags that are used in the study of cell behavior.

Nanosys's chief architect and chairman, Larry Bock, 45, was already well
known as a biotechnology entrepreneur and, by his description, was
semiretired when he became interested in nanotechnology in 2000. I had
done reasonably well in biotech, he said, summing up his track record
involving 14 start-ups, with 12 of them going public or sold to other
companies for a total of more than $1 billion.

Dr. Rickert of Nanofilm, by contrast, had no business experience and, he
soon discovered, no ability to attract investment from venture capitalists
when he formed his company. Instead of having wide-ranging patents from
leading university laboratories, he had only his own idea for a new,
unusually rapid way to make ultrathin, superrepellent coatings for glass,
plastic and metal surfaces.

When he changed his company's name to Nanofilm from Flexicrystal in 1985,
the nano prefix had none of the allure it had when Nanosys was started
in 2001. Outside molecular research circles, the name conjured up little
except nanu-nanu, the way Robin Williams's goofy alien on the television
show Mork and Mindy said goodbye.

I got a lot of grief, Dr. Rickert said in an interview at the company's
headquarters.

Mr. Bock's track record, the growing interest in nanotechnology in the
late 1990's, and his strategic approach produced a much different
reception for Nanosys. He tells visitors he spoke to 1,000 researchers
over an 18-month period before he and his co-founders, Calvin Y. H. Chow
and Steven Empedocles, settled on a name, business plan and financial
structure for Nanosys.

Nanosys's initial goal is to use its expertise in nanoscale silicon
structures and related inorganic materials to build sensors and other
simple products that its business partners would manufacture. In time, it
hopes those efforts can become the foundation for more complicated devices
like silicon solar panels,

Prabhat Patnaik on Paul Sweezy

2004-03-13 Thread Eubulides

http://www.flonnet.com/fl2106/stories/20040326004103000.htm


OBITUARY
A SAINT AND A SAGE
PRABHAT PATNAIK

Volume 21 - Issue 06, March 13 - March 26, 2004
India's National Magazine
from the publishers of THE HINDU


[snip]

The revival of interest in Marxism on the campuses in the late 1960s led
to Sweezy's visiting several universities to lecture on Marxism, until he
discovered that university administrations were using his visits as an
excuse for denying tenure to young Marxist scholars. Their argument was
that a tenured faculty of Marxist scholars was unnecessary in view of the
availability of distinguished Marxists from outside. Upon learning this,
Sweezy discontinued these visits.

[snip]

economists behaving badly

2004-03-13 Thread Eubulides

Missteps on Economy Worry Bush Supporters
By Jonathan Weisman and Mike Allen
Washington Post Staff Writers
Saturday, March 13, 2004; Page A01


A string of glaring missteps by President Bush's economic team has raised
alarm among the president's supporters that his economic policymakers may
have lost the most basic ability to formulate a persuasive message or
anticipate the political consequences of their actions.

In recent weeks, the White House has had to endure its chief economist's
positive comments about job outsourcing, or sending work overseas;
controversial passages in the annual Economic Report of the President;
questions over the legitimacy of Bush's 2005 budget; a California swing in
which Bush bragged about the possible addition of two or three jobs to a
14-person business in Bakersfield and a flap over a job-creation forecast
that not even the president could stand by.

On March 1, a host of U.S. industries began paying trade sanctions to
Europe because Congress and the White House have not replaced illegal
export subsidies with new aid for ailing manufacturers.

But the non-naming of Anthony F. Raimondo on Thursday as assistant
commerce secretary for manufacturing and services has brought the concerns
to a boil.

The long-anticipated announcement of a manufacturing czar was supposed to
be a good-news day for a White House struggling with its economic message.
Instead the planned, smiling photo op fizzled when it came to light that a
year ago Bush's choice had opened a major plant in Beijing.

Clearly, the machinery's not working very well, said Bruce Bartlett, an
economist with the conservative National Center for Policy Analysis, who
noted that this White House has been known for its discipline on message.

Republicans on Capitol Hill and in the lobbying world of K Street say that
the incidents may be minor, but they are many, each amplified by the last.
And they are supplying a steady, nourishing diet for Sen. John F. Kerry
(D-Mass.), who has made jobs and Bush's economic policies a centerpiece of
his campaign to capture the White House.

Several former administration officials said the debacle over Raimondo
illustrated broader weaknesses in Bush's White House as he gears up his
reelection campaign. Some Republicans said the situation crystallized
their concerns about his weakened political position. These Republicans
refused to speak on the record because they said that if they did, they
could not be candid about the problems without infuriating Bush and his
most powerful aides.

These Republicans noted that several key officials who were steeped in
Bush's first campaign have moved out of the West Wing or out of the
government, and their replacements -- especially in the economic arena --
have weaker political antennae.

People are doing their jobs, but most of them don't have the authority to
do something once they find a mistake, said a former official who stays
in frequent touch with the West Wing. Somebody over there has to take
complete and utter responsibility for everything that is publicly released
from that White House. And no one is doing that.

They also noted that Democrats are drawing scrutiny to errors and
inconsistencies that might have passed unnoticed a few months ago. This
is a hyper-charged political environment, and they have not adapted, the
former official said.

And Karl Rove, who is on the government payroll as the White House senior
adviser, is stretched thin between trying to watch what the administration
is doing and overseeing the ramping up of a campaign that has accelerated
its plans in response to Kerry's early lock on the Democratic nomination.

There's a trade-off, said a Republican who advises both the
administration and the campaign. It means you end up talking through
get-out-the-vote activities instead of looking at every single element of
the economic report before it is released.

A former White House official pointed to other personnel issues. Bush
loaded his first economic team with brash, outspoken officials full of
ideas, such as Treasury Secretary Paul H. O'Neill, National Economic
Council Director Lawrence B. Lindsey and economic adviser R. Glenn
Hubbard, he said.

But those ideas often clashed, and the officials proved too outspoken. So
Bush swung the team in the opposite direction, filling it with
replacements who would stick to the White House message and keep out of
the news. But those officials have not generated fresh policies.

They've populated the place with an absence of ideas guys, which is fine
if you think you can put it on autopilot and win, he said. But it
doesn't look like it's working.

Others say the economic team was kept straight in the first two years by
Joshua B. Bolten, the deputy chief of staff for policy. When Bolten left
last year to head the White House budget office, the wheels started coming
off the operation, one Senate Republican aide said.

Administration officials contend that as the economic recovery takes

Japan-Mexico: trade agreement

2004-03-12 Thread Eubulides

Japan and Mexico reach final FTA agreement

The Japan Times: March 13, 2004
By MAYUMI NEGISHI
Staff writer

Japan and Mexico reached a final agreement Friday on a bilateral
free-trade agreement, but postponed a decision on tariffs for some Mexican
farm products.

Ending nearly 16 months of bitter negotiations, the two countries will aim
to put the pact into effect in January, Japanese government officials
said.

I am positive that (the pact) will serve Japan's national interest,
trade minister Shoichi Nakagawa told reporters after the agreement was
made via a ministerial teleconference late Friday.

The conference included farm minister Yoshiyuki Kamei and Foreign Minister
Yoriko Kawaguchi, and Mexico's agriculture secretary Javier Usabiaga and
economy secretary Fernando Canales.

The deal would phase out barriers on certain Japanese exports to Mexico,
and lower those on Mexican pork, chicken, beef, oranges and orange juice
imports.

Japanese tariffs on three Mexican products -- chicken, beef and oranges --
will remain at zero for the first year or two within the annual low-tariff
quota of 10 tons each. The quotas will be expanded after the transitional
period. But the two sides postponed deciding on what the tariffs will be
until after the transitional periods.

The tariffs on about 380 Mexican agricultural products will be eliminated.

The delay on the three Mexican items stems from Japanese officials' fear
that they might antagonize farm groups ahead of ongoing trade talks with
Asian nations, a senior farm ministry official said.

Lowering trade barriers even a notch is loaded with symbolic
implications, he said. We do not know how many Mexican farm products
will come into Japan, so we want to be careful before deciding on a rate.

The sensitivity of even reform-minded government officials to farmers'
interests points to the long road still ahead before Japan's farm market
is opened.

Japan is currently in talks with Malaysia, Thailand, the Philippines and
South Korea.

Re: Corporations

2004-03-12 Thread Eubulides

[A few months ago Business Week ran an article asserting that South Korea
had the biggest anti-corporate social movement of any country in the
world. Given the recent upheaval there and the issues raised in the
thread, I thought pen-ler's might find the following link on corporate
governance in Korea and the global connections interesting. The current
scandal[s] there raise serious issues for the strengths/limitations of the
Poulantzasian/Milibandian theories of the State/Capital nexus]

http://mba.tuck.dartmouth.edu/pdf/2002-1-0033.pdf



Parliament votes to impeach president

Justin McCurry in Tokyo
Saturday March 13, 2004
The Guardian

Roh Moo-hyun yesterday became the first South Korean president to be
impeached, plunging the country into uncertainty weeks before
parliamentary elections.

Amid chaotic scenes, 193 members of the 273-seat national assembly - more
than the two-thirds majority required - voted to support the impeachment
bill after the president was accused of unfairly attempting to influence
the outcome of the April polls.

Mr Roh will be suspended and replaced by the prime minister, Goh Kun,
while the constitutional court decides whether to accept the vote, a
process that could take up to six months. If it does, South Korea will
have to hold new presidential elections.

Assembly members, who have a reputation for boisterousness, exchanged
shoves, yelled and wept during the historic vote.

We won a victory, said Choe Byung-yul, leader of the Grand National
party, one of the sponsors of the bill. But today is not a happy day
because the president elected by the people had to be impeached.

Mr Roh's supporters were incensed. This is the day our nation's democracy
died, said a statement by the Uri party, whose 47 MPs say they will
resign.

It was Mr Roh's support for the Uri party that prompted his opponents to
begin impeachment proceedings. The president, who is required by law to
remain impartial in elections, had called for an overwhelming show of
support for the party.

The impeachment bill claimed his credibility had been shattered by a
series of political funding scandals involving his aides in the run-up to
the December 2002 presidential election. It also charged him with failing
to revive the Korean economy, which grew by just 2.9% last year, compared
with 6.3% in 2002.

Mr Roh, a strong-willed former democracy activist who made his name as a
human rights lawyer, refused to apologise, saying the impeachment bill was
politically motivated revenge for his unexpected election victory over the
Grand National party candidate, Lee Hoi-chang.

Mr Roh relented early yesterday and apologised for the political crisis,
but opponent said it did not go far enough. After he took refuge at his
presidential Blue House residence, his office said it hoped the
constitutional court would make a quick decision to minimise confusion in
state affairs.

His temporary replacement's first task will be to reassure the rest of the
world that Mr Roh's absence has not created a political vacuum at a
crucial time for the economy and as South Korea and its allies attempt to
resolve fears surrounding North Korea's nuclear weapons programme.

South Korea's financial markets were left reeling, with the Kospi
benchmark stock index falling 5.5% before recovering to close 2.4 % down.
The won fell by 1% against the dollar.

The interim president, whose new powers include responsibility for South
Korea's 650,000-strong military, vowed to keep the country stable.

The people feel unease because the impeachment bill was passed at a time
when the economy faces difficulties, he said, adding that the government
had to do all it could to ensure that the country's international
credibility will not be damaged.

Re: Corporations

- Original Message -
From: David B. Shemano [EMAIL PROTECTED]


You wish me well with my liberty, but what about my liberty to enter into
a series of contracts with other real persons, and calling those
interlocking series of contracts a corporation?  What is a corporation,
but an interlocking series of contracts between real persons?

David B. Shemano

===

An institution where state sanctioned authoritarian behavior is allowed to
flourish and undermine democratic norms.

Ian

Re: Corporations

- Original Message -
From: Eugene Coyle [EMAIL PROTECTED]



This interlocking series of contracts has the right of free speech?

I think the series of responses Shemano gives in this thread is sillier
than neo-classical micro.  He describes a total phantasy world, just as
the micro theorists do.  But the world both try to hide is terribly real.

 This stuff is much worse than people have been asked to leave the list
over.  Disgusting stuff.  I'd say beneath contempt, but I don't know
what is lower.

Gene Coyle


===

I'd say the legal world he describes is all too real and we must learn to
think about it a lot harder than we've done. Contractarianism is very
powerful ideology; contract law is the performative core of capitalism.

Legal fiction is an oxymoron.

Ian

Re: Corporations

- Original Message -
From: David B. Shemano [EMAIL PROTECTED]

What is that word Marxists like to use to describe unreal objects that
people think are real?  Fetish?  You see a bogeyman called a
corporation.  You are fetishing the corporation.  I see tens, hundreds,
thousands of contracts between real people intended to actualize a real
end.  The entity is an acknowledged legal fiction that minimizes
transaction costs.  That is all.  Exxon is simply a shorthand way to
describe thousands of real people acting in a united way, and the
corporate form provides an expedient way of organizing those real people.

...What is the fantasy?

David Shemano

=

Ontological-methodological individualism...


Ian

Russia-China: Putin's next term

 http://www.atimes.com/atimes/Central_Asia/FC12Ag01.html
Putin to expand strategic partnership with China
By Sergei Blagov
Mar 12, 2004

MOSCOW - President Vladimir Putin, certain of re-election to a second
term, evidently intends to expand Russia's strategic ties with China in
military sales and economic cooperation between the two Asian giants.
Still, some divisive issues remain, such as the likely awarding of a major
Siberian oil pipeline to Tokyo, not Beijing. The United States is watching
closely and warily as the former communist allies forge powerful new ties
in Asia and view Washington as a potential menace.

In Sunday's election, Putin is expected to sweep to a second four-year
term and move ahead briskly with improving ties between Moscow and
Beijing.

Once China and Russia were closely allied, but later the Sino-Soviet split
opened and the United States took advantage of the bitter division to
forge new diplomatic relations with China, sidelining the Soviets. Now the
situation is very different, as both Russia and China espouse capitalism
and have resolved many of their differences in the face of what they
perceive to be a common rival - the US.

Last month, the US Defense Intelligence Agency (DIA) said the United
States might anticipate potential problems with both China and Russia,
although the US currently has good relations with the two countries. The
US effort to seek bases in Central Asia - strategically important to both
Moscow and Beijing - is one of many causes of concern, as well as US
unilateralism in its foreign policy.

Testifying before the Senate Select Committee on Intelligence on February
25, Vice Admiral Lowell E Jacoby, director of the DIA, said Beijing
likely fears a long-term US presence on its borders, while Russia is
improving its relations with some countries, most notably China, in
pursuit of a multipolar world and to enhance its arms sales.

China the top customer for Russian arms
During Putin's first term, China consolidated its position as the top
customer for Russia's arms industry, purchasing billions of dollars' worth
of jet aircraft, missiles, submarines and other military hardware.

Russia and China were both disturbed by the Iraq war - especially the US
decision to attack without broad international support - and Moscow and
Beijing protested what they viewed as a rejection of the rules of the
international game. They still back the primacy of the United Nations
Security Council in resolving international crises, and they support the
principle of non-interference in the internal affairs of sovereign states.

Apart from shared concerns about US dominance in the Middle East, Asia and
elsewhere, the two nations have other common interests and mutually
reinforcing needs. They are weary of - and alarmed by - militant Islamic
groups in their border regions, and want stability in Central Asia.

Russia and China have said they hope to increase bilateral trade to US$20
billion a year, from the current $12 billion.

Last June, Chinese President Hu Jintao, leader of the world's most
populous nation, visited Russia on his first trip abroad and signed a
strategic energy pact with President Putin. Hu's speeches in Moscow
emphasized the importance of a multipolar world and the need for the UN to
play a central role in Iraq.

China, Russia now pledge eternal friendship
Last week, Chinese Foreign Minister Li Zhaoxing announced that presidents
Hu and Putin would meet in Beijing in the second half of this year. Li
also noted that the two nations share a 4,300-kilometer border - once the
site of major troop deployments and occasional skirmishes - and pledge to
be eternal friends. He also announced that chairman Wu Bangguo of China's
National People's Congress as well as Premier Wen Jiabao would visit
Russia this year to discuss enhancing their strategic partnership based on
common political, economic and military interests.

Russia's ongoing government reshuffle has sent some positive signals to
China. In an apparent reiteration of their shared belief in the primacy of
the UN in conflict resolution, Putin appointed UN Ambassador Sergei Lavrov
to be Moscow's new foreign minister. Putin also retained Defense Minister
Sergei Ivanov, a close ally who also has been mentioned as a possible heir
to the Kremlin leader in 2008. Ivanov has considerable China experience;
last year he and his Chinese counterpart, General Cao Gangchuan, agreed to
strengthen their defense cooperation. That will continue.

When Putin sacked the government of Mikhail Kasyanov on February 24, the
new prime minister, Mikhail Fradkov, pledged to pledged to develop the oil
sector and boost Russia's crude-oil output to ports in Asia.

However, some bilateral economic issues could prove divisive. Putin's
cabinet reshuffle eclipsed - but not in Beijing - the announcement this
month that Moscow would probably exclude China and accept a
Japanese-backed plan to build a new oil pipeline to Nakhodka. A formal
decision has not

Re: Corporations

- Original Message -
From: k hanly [EMAIL PROTECTED]



But then with respect to coporations contracts are themselves often
between
what are persons only qua legal fictions,  or between them and individuals
rather than anything that could be explained in terms of contracts between
individual persons. I have no idea what you mean when you say that a legal
fiction is an oxymoron.

===

I mean the law *makes* it -the corporation- real, with real causal powers
in the political economy. The law is not a representation of a set of
contractual relations prior to it, that is, it's not primarily a
descriptive endeavor, but a performative one. John Austin [the 20th cent.
guy How to do Things with Words] and John Searle are great on that issue.


Ian

Britain: the greening of prices

Green policies blamed for jump in bills

Power and water sectors warn of steep rises for homes and business may
force industry to raise prices

David Gow
Friday March 12, 2004
The Guardian

British households and industry face hefty increases in their water and
electricity bills in 2005, the likely date of the next election, to pay
for the government's green policies, it emerged yesterday.

Water and sewerage customers in England and Wales could be forced to pay
more than the 30% extra in real terms over the five years from April 2005,
originally foreseen by regulator Ofwat. It follows tough new environmental
guidelines from ministers.

Business bodies warned that industry could see their power bills rise by
up to 30% - with a knock-on effect on domestic consumers - if the
government sticks to its plans to enforce a 16.3% cut in greenhouse gases
under an EU carbon emissions trading scheme that takes effect on January
1, 2005.

After a serious cabinet row on electorally-sensitive price increases with
Gordon Brown, environment secretary Margaret Beckett yesterday issued
long-delayed guidance on environmental improvements in water quality.

The guidance came six weeks late, prompting Ofwat to warn that it could
bring delays to the tight timetable for the five-year price review.

Companies have pointed to investor fears over the resultant uncertainty.

The guidance, industry sources said, would increase the five-year
investment ear-marked by water and sewerage companies above the £19.5bn
originally planned -and far above the £15bn suggested to Ms Beckett by
Philip Fletcher, Ofwat director-general, which would have cut the price
increases to 25%.

Both industry and Ofwat said it was too early to assess the impact on
bills but Mr Fletcher said: Given the cost pressures faced by the
companies, customers in general should expect bill increases.

Ms Beckett, accused earlier of being a captive of the green lobby, said
in her guidance: It is already clear from representations from customers
and companies and from the advice that I have received... that there is
every prospect of significant real price increases in 2005 to 2010.

But with average bills already set to rise from £234 this year to £306 in
2009, she added: I am concerned about the effect of water bills,
especially on those least able to pay.

Changes to our policies on drinking water and the environment cannot
avert increases but, in a climate of rising water bills, I have closely
scrutinised the need for and benefits of further policies to improve water
companies' standards.

The Environment Agency originally urged Ms Beckett to approve a £26.5bn,
fall-back investment programme driven by new EU regulations on drinking
and bathing water.

Chairman Sir John Harman welcomed measures to stop pollution from storm
sewerage overflows, protect wetland wildlife sites and control leaks but
regretted the government's failure to adopt more rigorous environmental
standards elsewhere.

These costs are being deferred, not avoided, he said. But he insisted
that while bills would have to rise to an extent to reverse damage
caused by the industry, this was also prompted by rising overheads and
improved drinking water.

Industry body Water UK said it was pleased that Ms Beckett had made
capital spending on replacing and repairing ageing pipes and sewers her
top priority.

But ministers came under fire from both the CBI and EEF, the
manufacturers' organisation, over their ambitious plans for CO2 trading
which, the government says, should increase power bills by no more than
6%.

Industrial and retail customers, who already face a combined £1.5bn bill
over 10 years to rebuild the grid system and hefty increases to meet the
switch to renewables, will pay considerably more - 10% to 30% - than
government forecasts, the two bodies said.

The EEF said UK power prices would surge faster than in Europe unless
ministers persuaded other EU states to adopt its more stringent standards
and urged a delay to the new scheme.

While the rest of Europe drags its heels, Britain's manufacturers are
going to have to run much faster to meet the UK's ambitious target, said
Martin Temple, EEF director-general.

US-Australia FTA: drug prices...........

2004-03-10 Thread Eubulides

Drug costs will rise with deal: US official

http://www.smh.com.au/text/articles/2004/03/10/1078594434762.html

Date: March 11 2004

By John Garnaut, Sydney Morning Herald

The US trade deal is the first step in a campaign to raise global
pharmaceutical prices, a US Senate finance committee heard yesterday.

Contradicting the Prime Minister, John Howard, America's top trade official
told the committee that the cost of Australian drugs would be changed under
the agreement.

It would change the distribution of prices in Australia and the relative
prices of generic and patented drugs, the US Trade Representative, Bob
Zoellick, said.

Under intense pressure on rising drug costs at home, an influential
Republican senator told the committee that the Australian deal was a
breakthrough that began the process of getting other countries to bear a
greater share of drug company research and development costs.

One of the ways of addressing the causes [of high US prices] is to get the
other countries of the world to help bear part of the burden of the RD,
said Senator Jon Kyl, who lobbied Australian ministers on the Pharmaceutical
Benefits Scheme last year. So, my hat's off to your [Mr Zoellick's] team
and the work that you did in at least beginning to address this with
Australia.

Senator Kyl said the final agreement, released last week, was only the
beginning of negotiations over Australia's pharmaceuticals system.

We don't need to discuss it here, but I know that there is much more work
that needs to be done in further discussions with the Australians.

Labor's health spokeswoman, Julia Gillard, said the deal had set in train a
process that could threaten the PBS. This is the thin end of the wedge in
an American drug company campaign to impose global drug prices on Australian
patients and taxpayers.

Mr Howard said recently there would be certainly no direct or indirect
effect on price and the Health Minister, Tony Abbott, and Trade Minister,
Mark Vaile, have made similar claims.

Who's lying here, Ambassador Zoellick or John Howard and Tony Abbott? Ms
Gillard said.

A spokesman for Mr Vaile rejected the US suggestion that Australia did not
carry its share of research and development costs and reiterated that
nothing in the agreement would affect pharmaceutical prices. Regardless of
the language used by officials in the US it won't change what's been agreed
in this free trade agreement, the full text of which is available for all to
see.

Mr Zoellick told the committee he had protected American beef and dairy
interests from Australian competition.In beef, we had a very long phase-out
with various safeguards, slow quota increase. We tried to take care of the
dairy industry as well because we didn't touch the tariff and we just
increased the quota basically about $40-$50 million of imports a year.

US Democrat Senator Max Baucus said that Mr Zoellick's trade agenda had been
hijacked by foreign policy objectives.

IMF-Argentina: from bully to weakling

2004-03-10 Thread Eubulides

Argentina helps keep up facade

By coming to a last-minute deal with Buenos Aires, the International
Monetary Fund has avoided showing how powerless it really is

Charlotte Denny and Larry Elliott
Thursday March 11, 2004
The Guardian

It was like a boxing match which goes to the final bell on Tuesday evening
in Washington as the two sides in the long drawn-out battle between
Argentina and the International Monetary Fund withdrew to their corners,
punchdrunk.

Both were telling the judges, the world's media, that they had won on
points. At almost the last moment, Argentina had stumped up the $3.1bn
(£1.7bn) it owed the Fund - on the face of it a victory for the
Washington-based lender, the country's last remaining financial lifeline.
But Buenos Aires said it had only signed the cheque after securing a
promise from the Fund of further lending without new and more stringent
conditions.

The strings the Fund was hoping to attach involved the $90bn Argentina
owes to private-sector creditors. The country has been offering to repay
just 25 cents in every dollar borrowed, an offer seen as unacceptable by
the IMF. Further lending, the Fund said, was conditional on Argentina
negotiating in good faith with its private-sector creditors.

Having slugged it out for days, at the post-match press conferences
yesterday it was time to kiss and make up. The last minute telephone call
from the IMF's acting director, Anne Krueger, to Argentina's president,
Nestor Kirchner which clinched the deal with just hours to go before the
deadline was cordial and respectful, a presidential spokesman said.

Both sides have made face-saving concessions. Argentina yesterday signed a
new agreement with the Fund, conceding to several of its demands over the
treatment of private creditors. The IMF said its agreement with Argentina
included a specific course of action for negotiations with creditor groups
and a tentative timetable for the talks.

Argentina's economy minister Roberto Lavagna made it clear however that
Argentina's September offer to repay private creditors 25 cents in the
dollar still stood. Tellingly, groups representing investors in
Argentinian debt were less impressed with the commitments the IMF has
secured on their behalf.

Argentina and the Fund are making the best fist of what is a situation
fraught with danger for both. Mr Kirchner has staked his reputation on
standing up to the IMF and had to take the fight to the wire in order to
maintain his populist credentials. But he had to weigh up the risks of
triggering the largest ever default to the Fund.

Failing to make its IMF payment would have relegated Argentina to the
bottom league of creditworthy countries, alongside Sudan, Zimbabwe and
Somalia, putting at risk future borrowing on world capital markets. When
Argentina defaulted to its private creditors in December 2001 it triggered
a financial crash during which the country's economy shrunk by a fifth.
The resulting political and social chaos saw four occupants of the
presidential palace in a month, unemployment of more than 20% and half of
Argentinians falling below the poverty line.

While the short-term impact would undoubtedly be painful, Mr Kirchner
could have gambled that the capital markets would eventually open their
lending books again to one of the world's most important developing
economies. The lesson from the Russian debt default in September 1998 is
that if a country is big enough, investors will come back. Capital
markets have short memories, admits one IMF official.

The Fund is usually portrayed as having the upper hand in negotiations.
Argentina's debts are, however, so big that a default would have a
damaging effect on the Fund's balance sheet. Of the $95bn in outstanding
loans to the Fund, Argentina accounts for 15%. The Fund says it would be
forced to charge other borrowers higher rates to make good its losses.
That threat seems unlikely to be realised, given that two other countries,
Brazil and Turkey, account for a further 57% of its loans portfolio.
Higher borrowing charges would risk tipping two more countries into
default. More likely the Fund would have to turn to its major
shareholders, the rich countries of the west, for a cash injection.

For the Fund, the confrontation with Argentina risked exposing the
confidence trick on which its role as the world's financial fireman has
been built. In reality, there is not enough money in its coffers to rescue
a country facing imminent bankruptcy, which is why the Asian countries
burnt by the series of financial crises of the late 1990s have decided to
build up their own foreign exchange reserves instead. Argentina did the
Fund a favour by not unmasking the illusion.

But in the long term, the only solution is a proper mechanism for sharing
the burden of dealing with sovereign bankruptcies more equally between the
stakeholders, as Ms Krueger has argued. When she first advanced the plan,
just months before Argentina spiralled into crisis in late 2001,

Japan: frontiers of 'privatization'

2004-03-10 Thread Eubulides

Cabinet OKs highway privatization plan

The Japan Times: March 10, 2004
By TETSUSHI KAJIMOTO
Staff writer

The Cabinet endorsed contentious legislation Tuesday aimed at privatizing
the nation's four expressway corporations.
The move paves the way for the new entities to repay combined debts worth
40 trillion yen over a period of 45 years, while pursuing planned road
construction projects with borrowing backed by government guarantees.

The privatization of the expressway firms is a pillar of Prime Minister
Junichiro Koizumi's structural reform drive.

The legislation advocates establishment of six privatized entities via the
regrouping of Japan Highway Public Corp., Metropolitan Expressway Public
Corp., Hanshin Expressway Public Corp. and the Honshu-Shikoku Bridge
Authority, as well as a separate asset-holding and debt-servicing
administrative organization.

The privatized companies will be given special status and undertake
expressway construction, maintenance and toll-collection while leasing
expressways from the administrative organ.

The latter will concentrate on debt repayment by using road lease fees
from the expressway operators.

The central and local governments will own more than one-third of shares
with voting rights that will be issued by the privatized companies.

The process will therefore follow the same format used to privatize the
former state-owned corporations that resulted in the creation of NTT Corp.

If the legislation is approved by the Diet during the current session,
which runs through mid-June, the expressway corporations will be
privatized by the end of fiscal 2005, according to officials at the Land,
Transport and Infrastructure Ministry.

Although the privatization scheme was initially expected to prioritize
debt repayment and halt the construction of unprofitable routes, some
experts charge that the plan will have little impact other than reducing
the cost of completing the planned 9,342 km expressway network.

Under the current system, Japan Highway, the largest of the four
expressway firms, undertakes expressway construction when issued
administrative orders by the land, infrastructure and transport minister.

Upon privatization, this administrative order system will be abolished and
the privatized entities are expected to act at their own discretion.

They will apply to the land minister for new road construction projects
after concluding agreements with the administrative organ.

Critics doubt whether the privatized entities will be given real autonomy,
as the companies will be able to raise construction funds by issuing bonds
backed by government guarantees.

All of these debts and completed expressways will be taken over by the
administrative organ -- and eventually by either the central or local
governments.

The legislation stipulates that the administrative organ will be disbanded
after debt repayment is completed 45 years after privatization.

The expressways will be toll-free thereafter.

Toll-free expressways have been promised by the government for decades,
though they have never been realized because of the so-called pool system,
in which users of expressways whose construction costs have been paid off
must continue paying tolls to cover the construction costs of unprofitable
expressways in rural areas.

faith based labor markets

2004-03-09 Thread Eubulides

Federal Register: March 9, 2004 (Volume 69, Number 46)]
[Proposed Rule]
[Page 11233-11241]
From the Federal Register Online via GPO Access [wais.access.gpo.gov]
[DOCID:fr09mr04-22]


[[Page 11233]]

---
Part V

Department of Labor
---
Employment and Training Administration
---

20 CFR Parts 667 and 670

29 CFR Parts 2 and 37



Equal Treatment in Department of Labor Programs for Faith-Based and
Community Organizations; Protection of Religious Liberty of Department
of Labor Social Service Providers and Beneficiaries; Proposed Rule


[[Page 11234]]


---

DEPARTMENT OF LABOR

Employment and Training Administration

20 CFR Part 667

20 CFR Part 670

Office of the Secretary

29 CFR Part 2

29 CFR Part 37

RIN 1290-AA21


Equal Treatment in Department of Labor Programs for Faith-Based
and Community Organizations; Protection of Religious Liberty of
Department of Labor Social Service Providers and Beneficiaries

AGENCY: Employment and Training Administration and the Office of the
Secretary, Labor.

ACTION: Proposed rule; request for comments.

---

SUMMARY: The United States Department of Labor (DOL or the Department)
is proposing to revise its general regulations. This proposed rule
would clarify, within the framework of constitutional guidelines, that
faith-based and community organizations are able to participate in DOL
social service programs without regard to their religious character or
affiliation, and are able to apply for and compete on an equal footing
with other eligible organizations to receive DOL support. In addition,
in order to consolidate in one place the Department's regulations on
religious activities, this proposed rule would revise both the
Employment and Training Administration (ETA) regulation on religious
services at Job Corps centers and the Workforce Investment Act of 1998
(WIA) regulations relating to the use of WIA Title I financial
assistance to support employment and training in religious activities.
DOL supports the participation of faith-based and community
organizations in its programs.

DATES: Comments must be submitted by May 10, 2004.

ADDRESSES: You may submit comments, identified by Regulatory
Information Number (RIN) 1290-AA21, by any of the following methods:
 Federal eRulemaking Portal: http://www.regulations.gov.
 Follow the instructions for submitting comments.

 E-mail: Comments may be submitted by e-mail to
[EMAIL PROTECTED] Include RIN 1290-AA21 in the subject line of the

message.
 Fax: As a convenience to commenters, comments of
five pages or less may be submitted by facsimile (``FAX'') machine to
(202) 693-6146, which is not a toll-free number.
 Mail: Brent Orrell, Director, Center for Faith-
Based and Community Initiatives (CFBCI), U.S. Department of Labor,
Frances Perkins Building, 200 Constitution Ave., NW., Room S-2235,
Washington, DC 20210.

LOTS MORE AT:
http://a257.g.akamaitech.net/7/257/2422/14mar20010800/edocket.access.gpo.gov/2004/04-5133.htm

Re: Black's efficient market

2004-03-09 Thread Eubulides

- Original Message -
From: Doug Henwood [EMAIL PROTECTED]

It also suggests a notion of efficiency that reflects very short-term
changes. Of course, investors can't see into the future, but their
expectations are formed on the basis of extremely volatile and
temporary bits of news. What has really changed in the long-term
prospects for oil to justify price swings of 300-400%? Not much,
really. We've got a pretty good idea of reserves, consumption, and
the atmosphere's absorptive powers, and all those crazy price swings
really hamper the social capacity to plan rationally.

Doug



Makes a mockery of the fetish of price stability, no?


http://www.blackmask.com/books34c/enprice.htm#1_0_3
The Engineers and The Price System
Thorstein Veblen

In point of material welfare, all the civilized peoples have been drawn together by 
the state of the
industrial arts into a single going concern. And for the due working of this inclusive 
going concern
it is essential that that corps of technological specialists who by training, insight, 
and interest
make up the general staff of industry must have a free hand in the disposal of its 
available
resources, in materials, equipment, and man power, regardless of any national 
pretensions or any
vested interests. Any degree of obstruction, diversion, or withholding of any of the 
available
industrial forces, with a view to the special gain of any nation or any investor, 
unavoidably brings
on a dislocation of the system; which involves a disproportionate lowering of its 
working efficiency
and therefore a disproportionate loss to the whole, and therefore a net loss to all 
its parts.

And all the while the statesmen are at work to divert and obstruct the working forces 
of this
industrial system, here and there, for the special advantage of one nation and another 
at the cost
of the rest; and the captains of finance are working, at cross purposes and in 
collusion, to divert
whatever they can to the special gain of one vested interest and another, at any cost 
to the rest.
So it happens that the industrial system is deliberately handicapped with dissension, 
misdirection,
and unemployment of material resources, equipment, and man power, at every turn where 
the statesmen
or the captains of finance can touch its mechanism; and all the civilized peoples are 
suffering
privation together because their general staff of industrial experts are in this way 
required to
take orders a'nd submit to sabotage at the hands of the statesmen and the vested 
interests. Politics
and investment are still allowed to decide matters of industrial policy which should 
plainly be left
to the discretion of the general staff of production engineers driven by no commercial 
bias.

[snip]

scientists and the price system........

2004-03-09 Thread Eubulides

Scientists begin wave of protests by taking to streets

French researchers march in Paris and health and education workers prepare
their own challenges to the government as key polls approach

Jon Henley in Paris
Wednesday March 10, 2004
The Guardian

More than 2,000 leading French scientists and researchers resigned from
their administrative duties yesterday in protest at what they say are
crippling funding shortages, dealing the government a huge PR blow less
than two weeks beforeimportant regional elections.

Alain Trautmann, one of the organisers of the Let's Save Research
campaign, said 976 laboratory directors and more than 1,100 specialist
team leaders had resigned from their management roles, threatening to
paralyse such prestigious institutes as the Curie and Pasteur laboratories
and the national medical research centre, Inserm.

From today, we declare that laboratories are taking up the struggle, Mr
Trautmann said.

The scientists, who marched through Paris yesterday afternoon, will keep
their research posts but refuse the administrative tasks that allow labs
to function, including running budgets, signing documents and evaluating
staff.

The researchers are staging the first of a series of public-sector
challenges to the centre-right government of the prime minister,
Jean-Pierre Raffarin, in the run-up to regional elections on March 21 and
28.

The polls are seen as a crucial test both of the government's popularity
and of the electoral sustainability of its reforms designed to boost
economic growth.

We have not had satisfactory answers to our questions. We will keep
putting our questions and increasing our pressure, Mr Trautmann told a
crowd of cheering scientists outside Paris town hall.

Other anti-government protests planned this week include a demonstration
by hospital staff tomorrow over reforms to healthcare funding, and a
national strike by teachers on Friday over budget measures they say will
inevitably lead to staff cuts.

Arts workers plan to demonstrate outside Mr Raffarin's office on Saturday
in protest at changes to their unemployment benefit scheme.

A poor government showing in the regional polls could force a premature
cabinet reshuffle and undermine Mr Raffarin's resolve to push through far
tougher - and sorely needed - reforms such as potentially unpopular
cutbacks in the health service.

Opinion polls suggest many voters are undecided, with up to 65% saying the
elections do not interest them. The abstention rate could reach an
all-time high, analysts fear, with a correspondingly strong turnout for
the far right and left, whose voters are traditionally more motivated.

Mr Raffarin criticised the researchers yesterday, saying he had made
significant gestures to them last week by offering a further 3bn (2bn)
in research grants by 2007 and un blocking credits worth 300m. He told
the left-leaning daily Libration he would not give in to petty
week-by-week blackmail attempts by other public sector workers.

France's 160,000 scientific and technological researchers insist that over
the past two years, more government funds have been cut, frozen or simply
not paid than ever before. Even the CNRS, France's national scientific
research centre, is still owed half its funding for 2002.

At the same time, the researchers say, the employment situation for
postgraduates has become desperate: 550 permanent entry-level jobs at some
of the most respected scientific institutes in the world have been
scrapped, with just a small fraction of them replaced by short-term
contracts.

The researchers, 70,000 of whom signed the campaign's petition, say gifted
French scientists are increasingly being drawn to better-paid jobs in the
US and elsewhere, a brain drain that threatens the future of scientific
research in a nation that produced such celebrated names as Louis Pasteur
and Marie Curie.

I'm glad the laboratory heads did this. It's a symbolic act, but we're
very disappointed with the government and we're really worried that all
the young French researchers will go abroad, an engineering researcher,
Marc Tramier, said at yesterday's rally.

Argentina v IMF: another round of the game of chicken

2004-03-08 Thread Eubulides

Argentina and IMF in duel over $3.1bn loan

Larry Elliott and Charlotte Denny
Tuesday March 9, 2004
The Guardian

Argentina was last night on a collision course with the International
Monetary Fund after the heavily indebted Latin American country signalled
it was preparing to default on a $3.1bn (£1.7bn) payment to the
Washington-based lender.

In the biggest trial of strength between the fund and a debtor country in
the fifty-year history of the global lender, the crisis will come to a
head today when Buenos Aires must decide whether to pay the fund.

The dispute is not really over the $3.1bn - the fund promised last October
to rollover its outstanding loans to the country, so Argentina does not
have to make any net repayments this year to Washington.

Argentina also owes $90bn to banks and private investors in Europe and
North America. It has made no payments on these debts since December 2001,
and the fund is insisting the country negotiates a fair deal with its
private creditors before extending its credit line.

I don't think Argentina is going to pay us without there being a
commitment from us and the board will not give it that, an IMF source
told Reuters last week.

So, Argentina has a choice: to pay us and take their chances or continue
playing hardball. Latin America's second largest economy is only just
recovering from a slump caused by following the fund's advice throughout
the 1990s, but is now being pressed by its private sector creditors to
start making repayments on its enormous debt.

So seriously is Buenos Aires taking these threats that President Nestor
Kirchner cancelled a trip to Europe earlier this year on his official jet,
Tango One, afraid it could be seized as collateral by aggrieved
bondholders.

Mr Kirchner is taking a huge gamble. His stance is winning applause from
Argentina's hardpressed population, but the confrontation with the fund
could end in the country becoming a financial pariah. Argentina has been
living in a false honeymoon, paying no interest, but the creditors are
banging on the door, said Professor Marcus Miller of Warwick University.

Mr Kirchner and economy minister Roberto Lavagna have offered creditors
25¢ in the dollar. Any more, they argue, would force them to cut spending
on schools and hospitals. The creditors are demanding 65¢ in the dollar
and say Argentina can afford to pay them, now the country is enjoying
healthy growth.

Discussions between the two sides have been deep frozen for months, but
the departure last week of the IMF's managing director Horst Köhler is
likely to bring the crisis to a head. Standing in as acting chief is Anne
Krueger, the fund's deputy director, who is likely to take an
uncompromising line over how much Argentina can afford to pay.

Ms Krueger's tough love stance is receiving backing from some of the
fund's leading shareholders, the rich countries of the West. The issue has
already split the group of seven industrialised countries: in a rare
revolt against the rest of the G7, Britain, Italy and Japan all abstained
from rolling over Argentina's lending programme last January.

There are three possible ways out of the current impasse: either Argentina
capitulates and offers creditors a better deal; the fund backs down and
continues its lending programme despite Buenos Aires's intransigence or a
compromise is agreed.

Prof Miller says the impasse could be resolved without harming Argentina's
recovery. Buenos Aires should float new bonds with returns linked to the
performance of its economy to repay its creditors. If the economy grows
strongly over the next few years, creditors will get a slice of the action
without starving other parts of the economy.

Argentina likes the idea of growth linked bonds but Mr Kirchner has
ratcheted up the rhetoric so it will be difficult give creditors a break.
For the fund, however, Argentina's defiance raises the ultimate spectre: a
domino effect of defaulters that could bankrupt it.

ketchup, buns and manufacturing

Leahy Hits Administration's Credibility On The Loss Of U.S.
Manufacturing Jobs Redefining Taco Bells As Manufacturers Is
Administration's Poor Idea Of 'Thinking Outside The Bun'

http://leahy.senate.gov/press/200403/030204.html

---
Two decades ago, another administration wanted to start calling ketchup
a vegetable for the purposes of the school lunch program. Redefining
ketchup as a vegetable did nothing for the nutrition of our kids, and
redefining every Taco Bell as a manufacturing factory would do nothing
for American workers and real American manufacturers. If that is this
Administration's idea of thinking outside the bun, then this
Administration has a lot more thinking to do.

http://leahy.senate.gov/press/200403/0302a.html

globalizing tax cuts

JAPANESE PERSPECTIVES
Speed key to making most of new tax pact
By YOSHIO NAKAMURA
The Japan Times: March 8, 2004

On Feb. 27, a new Japanese-U.S. treaty on taxation was finally submitted to the Diet 
for
ratification by the legislature. The treaty, if approved, will make dividends and
royalties earned by U.S. subsidiaries in which the Japanese parent firm has a stake of
more than 50 percent tax-free, doing away with the current 10-percent tax imposed on 
such
payments.

More than 30 years have passed since the current treaty underwent a full-scale 
revision in
1971, and the business community has been calling for a new overhaul for quite some 
time.

In November 1999, Minoru Makihara, chairman of the Japan-U.S. Business Council, and his
U.S. counterpart Michael Armstrong submitted a joint petition to Tokyo and Washington
calling for its revision. Such efforts prompted the two governments to start 
negotiating a
new treaty in October 2001. After a basic agreement was reached in June 2003, the new
treaty was officially signed by the two governments in November and is now awaiting
ratification by the legislatures of both countries.

The new treaty will have a significant impact. For example, Japan's direct investment 
in
the United States far exceeds any such investment that has been made in the opposite
direction, and Japan now has a large surplus in its net balance of dividend receipts,
which reached 480.4 billion yen in 2002.

The pending revision will render a large portion of those dividends tax-free, since 
more
than 80 percent of Japanese companies' roughly 3,600 American subsidiaries are held by
stakes of 50 percent or more by the parent firms.

Unlike the dividends, however, Japan has a deficit in terms of royalty receipts.

For example, Japan had a deficit of 253.2 billion yen vis-a-vis the United States and 
only
73.2 billion yen with the rest of the world in 2000. But these figures represent a 
sharp
reduction from the deficits of 485.4 billion yen and 279.5 billion yen, respectively, 
in
1997. If, in the future, Japan starts to run a surplus in royalty receipts, the new 
treaty
will have a beneficial impact on Japanese firms.

One problem is that the date at which the new treaty can take effect will depend on 
when
it is ratified.

The new treaty will take effect on July 1 this year if it is ratified by the end of the
current fiscal year (March 31), but if ratification is delayed until next fiscal year 
the
earliest date at which the treaty can take effect will be Jan. 1, 2005.

Congress is preparing to enter the treaty into force on July 1, and we would strongly 
like
to see it ratified by the Diet during the current fiscal year.

Yoshio Nakamura is a senior managing director of the Japan Business Federation (Nippon
Keidanren).

Re: Warren Buffett on class warfare

Warren Buffett keeps out of the depreciating dollar

David Teather in New York
Monday March 8, 2004
The Guardian

Warren Buffett, the second wealthiest man in the world, continued to bet
against the dollar last year, increasing his company's ownership of
foreign currencies to $12bn.

The figure was disclosed in the eagerly anticipated annual letter from the
Oracle of Omaha to shareholders in his Berkshire Hathaway company, in
which he routinely delivers nuggets of his own peculiar brand of homespun
wisdom.

In the 24-page letter, sent out on Saturday, the 73-year-old, returned to
many of his favourite themes. He attacked the Bush administration's tax
cuts and railed against greedy chief executives, corrupt mutual fund
managers and ineffective independent directors.

Thousands will be making the pilgrimage to the company's annual meeting in
Omaha on May 1, known as Woodstock for capitalists.

Berkshire Hathaway reluctantly entered the foreign currency for the first
time in 2002 and Mr Buffett said it had enlarged its position last year,
increasing its holdings in five unnamed currencies. He put the blame on
the ballooning US trade deficit. He said that in late 2002 foreign
investors began choking on the flood of dollars.

As an American, I hope there is a benign ending to this problem, he
said, though he warned that the situation was unlikely to improve.
Whether foreign investors like it or not, they will continue to be
flooded with dollars. The consequences of this are anybody's guess. They
could, however, be troublesome - and reach, in fact, well beyond currency
markets.

Mr Buffett, whose commonsense strategy has earned him a legion of fans,
built the company's fortune by canny investments in companies including
American Express, Coca-Cola and Gillette. More recently he has taken to
buying businesses outright as it became more difficult to find undervalued
stocks. Equity holdings are now down to 50% of Berkshire Hathaway's net
worth.

Last year, the company again stayed away from the equities market. Mr
Buffett said Berkshire had bought some shares in the bank Wells Fargo but
otherwise had not changed its position in its top six holdings. Brokers
don't love us, he said. We own pieces of excellent businesses but their
current prices reflect their value.

The company, which owns several insurance businesses as well as house
builders, clothing and confectionary firms, reported $8.1bn in profits,
compared with $4.3bn in 2002. The company has $36bn in cash and Mr Buffett
remains on the hunt for further acquisitions. An $8bn investment in junk
bonds during 2002 paid off but he stopped buying last year as prices rose.

He offered stinging criticism of the mutual fund industry, which has
become the latest Wall Street business to find itself under scrutiny for
improper practices. Mr Buffett said the industry had betrayed the trust
of millions of shareholders. Hundreds of industry insiders had to know
what was going on, yet none publicly said a word.

a mild case of imperial overstretch

Foreign Crises Stretch U.S. In Election Year
By Robin Wright and Glenn Kessler
Washington Post Staff Writers
Monday, March 8, 2004; Page A01


With Haiti's drama and the flare-up of violence in Iraq, the United States
faces an overload of crises that Republicans and Democrats agree will be
even more difficult to deal with now that the presidential campaign is in
full swing.

Rarely has Washington had such a large and diverse array of foreign policy
problems to juggle as leaders of both parties hit the campaign trail. And
rarely have those crises been so central to an election, evident in the
scathing volleys between President Bush and Sen. John F. Kerry (D-Mass.)
over the past week.

In the first presidential election since the attacks of Sept. 11, 2001,
the Bush administration finds its foreign policy initiatives to defend the
United States from the new threats becoming hot election issues -- and
liabilities. It's fighting three wars: Iraq, Afghanistan and the global
war on terror. It has to deal with everything from Colombia to Haiti, the
Palestinians to North Korea, the World Trade Organization. If someone is
arguing the administration has a lot on its plate and it is stretched,
they've got a point, said Richard N. Haass, president of the Council on
Foreign Relations and a top foreign policy planning official in both Bush
administrations.

But the broader question is whether the confluence of crises -- and the
intense election debate they have spawned -- will crimp U.S. willingness
or ability to focus on new problems or opportunities, leaving Washington
instead reacting and on the defensive. Some Republican insiders have
adopted a crisis-avoidance mantra for the election season: No war in
'04.

It's a very challenging time, said James B. Steinberg, Brookings
Institution director of foreign policy studies and deputy national
security adviser for the Clinton administration. There's a real
temptation to play defense rather than to take these things on. But when
you do that, you risk becoming a hostage of current fortunes and, rather
than shaping the environment, you allow other people to drive the agenda
and set the pace.

There are already signs that the Bush administration may be reluctant to
tackle new hot spots, which Republicans and Democrats say is what happened
during the uprising against President Jean-Bertrand Aristide, Haiti's
controversial but democratically elected leader.

Washington resisted getting embroiled until the final days of the
confrontation, despite long-brewing signs of trouble, because of time and
resources and focus and energy, said Sen. Chuck Hagel (R-Neb.). With so
many troops tied down in Iraq and elsewhere, the last thing we need is
another problem. So we try to get out on the cheap, he said.

The United States is guilty of outright neglect for its failure to act
earlier, Rep. Jose E. Serrano (D-N.Y.) told Secretary of State Colin L.
Powell at a House Appropriations Committee hearing last week. This was
not an overnight crisis, and could we not have better supported the
democracy in Haiti if we had been more generous with our assistance?
Serrano said.

Haiti is symptomatic of the dilemmas during an election season after 21/2
years of ambitious but controversial interventions in Afghanistan and
Iraq. The next eight months is not a time for discretionary commitments
that are politically ambitious and costly entanglements, Haass said.
Iraq is a war of choice. It is hard to imagine more wars of choice in the
foreseeable future.

White House officials deny that the administration is stretched thin or
overburdened.

This White House is the most calm that I've worked in. I was struck by
this [at the end of February] as we were wrapping up six-party talks on
North Korea and had Haiti and Iraq's Transitional Administrative Law. The
phones were ringing off the hook, but there was no sense of crisis in the
White House. No one starts running a fever if there's a crisis, said a
senior administration official who has worked in top positions for several
 administrations.

Political strategist Karl Rove is not urging Bush to kick problems down
the road to avoid tough choices, said William Kristol, editor of the
Weekly Standard and Vice President Dan Quayle's chief of staff.

Bush understands that it's riskier in many cases to endlessly put off
dealing with problems -- and that they'll come back to bite you at a time
not of your choosing, Kristol said. Bush needs to go to the country on
the basis of his foreign policy. That's risky and some won't like it. But
he can't say, 'Elect me because of my foreign policy,' but then, this
year, put everything on hold.

This White House also remembers the recent past. The first Bush
administration adopted a keep things calm strategy in the 1992
campaign -- and voters decided it wasn't needed to keep around to handle
foreign policy, Kristol added.

Yet Republicans and Democrats note signs that crisis overload and campaign
realities have already weakened

Japan

2004-03-05 Thread Eubulides

BIGGEST JUMP IN 2 1/2 YEARS
Manufacturers' capital spending up 15%
The Japan Times: March 5, 2004


Capital spending by manufacturers jumped 15 percent in the
October-December quarter from a year earlier for the biggest rise in 2 1/2
years, underscoring the strong capital investment fueling the recent
economic recovery, the Finance Ministry said Thursday.

Helped by the brisk spending on plants and equipment by manufacturers,
capital spending on an all-industry basis rose 5.1 percent from a year
earlier for the third quarterly expansion, the ministry said.

Combined sales at companies increased 3.1 percent in the October-December
quarter for the third straight quarterly gain. Combined corporate pretax
profits rose 16.9 percent, the sixth successive quarterly increase.

The figures are based on a survey of capital spending, excluding
investment for software, by companies capitalized at 10 million yen or
more. The survey covered 23,997 randomly selected companies, excluding
financial institutions, and had a response rate of 79.6 percent.

The increase in capital investment was in line with the capital outlay
figure for the quarter in Japan's gross domestic product data.

The government said last month that October-December GDP expanded an
annualized 7.0 percent, spurred by brisk exports and capital spending. A
revised figure is scheduled to be released Wednesday.

Given such factors as the recent weakening of the yen and strong demand
in China, we can expect capital spending at Japanese manufacturers to
maintain its strength, said Shinichiro Kawasaki, an economist at Dai-ichi
Life Research Institute Inc.

But Kawasaki said that whether that will lead to broad-based strength in
the economy is far from certain.

The focus at the moment is whether a recovery in the corporate sector
will spread to employment, he said. That part is still unclear.

The big jump in capital spending for manufacturers, which marked the third
straight month of increase, was led by a 178.8 percent expansion in the
publishing and printing industries and 37.4 percent growth in the
transport machinery sector, which includes automobiles.

Nonmanufacturers' capital spending rose for the first time in two
quarters, up 1.1 percent, led by a 39 percent increase in the transport
and communications sector.

On a seasonally adjusted basis, capital investment covering all industries
rose 4.5 percent. That for manufacturers grew 7.5 percent, while it
increased 3.1 percent for nonmanufacturers.

Sales by manufacturers rose for the fifth straight quarter, up 2.9
percent, while those by nonmanufacturers increased 3.2 percent, up for the
third quarter in a row.

Manufacturers' pretax profits grew 2.4 percent for the sixth straight
rise. But the pace of expansion fell from the 16.3 percent in the
July-September quarter.

Pretax profits of nonmanufacturers soared 29.4 percent, up for the third
straight quarter.

The increase in profits slowed at major manufacturers, which had led the
rise in profits in the recent past, the ministry official said. But
those for nonmanufacturers showed strong growth in almost all fields,
indicating that brightness is spreading in the sector.

Re: The Teixeira thesis

2004-03-05 Thread Eubulides

- Original Message -
From: Doug Henwood [EMAIL PROTECTED]



Max B. Sawicky wrote:

Oh.  They like to define things with numbers.

So do I, but you've got to have some conceptual scheme if you're
classifying workers into working class and not working-class.



Damn, Quine and Donald Davidson on pen-l in one day

http://spruce.flint.umich.edu/~simoncu/225/davidson.htm

Ian

Re: The Teixeira thesis

2004-03-05 Thread Eubulides

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

This finally sank through to me only a couple days ago while reading
some material on class. I haven't got it clear yet, but this is a start.
Why do we _want_ to classify people into classes? Answer: No reason at
all.


=

http://www.sup.org/cgi-bin/search/book_desc.cgi?book_id=3804%203806
The Classless Society

Paul W. Kingston

Are there classes in America? In The Classless Society Paul Kingston
forcefully answers no. Challenging a long-standing intellectual tradition
of class analysis recently revitalized by Erik Olin Wright and John
Goldthorpe, and insisting on a realist conception of class, Kingston
argues that presumed classes do not significantly share distinct,
life-defining experiences.

280 pages, 23 tables, 1 figure, 2000.
ISBN 0804738068 paper ISBN 0804738041 cloth

new mercenarism redux

2004-03-04 Thread Eubulides

[sorry about the earlier typo]



US contractor recruits guards for Iraq in Chile

Forces say experienced soldiers are quitting for private companies which
pay more for similar work

Jonathan Franklin in Santiago
Friday March 5, 2004
The Guardian

The US is hiring mercenaries in Chile to replace its soldiers on security
duty in Iraq. A Pentagon contractor has begun recruiting former commandos,
other soldiers and seamen, paying them up to $4,000 (£2,193) a month to
guard oil wells against attack by insurgents.

Last month Blackwater USA flew a first group of about 60 former commandos,
many of who had trained under the military government of Augusto Pinochet,
from Santiago to a 2,400-acre (970-hectare) training camp in North
Carolina.

From there they will be taken to Iraq, where they are expected to stay
between six months and a year, the president of Blackwater USA, Gary
Jackson, told the Guardian by telephone.

We scour the ends of the earth to find professionals - the Chilean
commandos are very, very professional and they fit within the Blackwater
system, he said.

Chile was the only Latin American country where his firm had hired
commandos for Iraq. He estimated that about 95% of his work came from
government contracts and said his business was booming.

We have grown 300% over each of the past three years and we are small
compared to the big ones.

We have a very small niche market, we work towards putting out the cream
of the crop, the best.

The privatisation of security in Iraq is growing as the US seeks to reduce
its commitment of troops.

At the end of last year there were 10,000 hired security personnel in
Iraq.

Recruitment in Chile began six months ago and brought immediate criticism
from MPs and officers, who fear that it will encourage serving personnel
to leave.

Michelle Bachelet, the defence minister, ordered an investigation into
whether paramilitary training by Blackwater violated Chilean laws on the
use of weapons by private citizens.

She asked for its recruiting effort to be investigated after it was
alleged that people on active duty were involved.

Many soldiers are said to be leaving the army to join the private
companies.

Mr Jackson said that similar issues were bedevilling the US forces.

The private sector paid experienced special forces personnel far more than
the armed services.

The US military has the same problems, he said. If they are going to
outsource tasks that were once held by active-duty military and are now
using private contractors, those guys [on active duty] are looking and
asking, 'Where is the money?'

The number of hired soldiers in Iraq is estimated to be in the thousands.

Squads of Bosnians, Filipinos and Americans with special forces experience
have been hired for tasks ranging from airport security to protecting Paul
Bremer, the head of the Coalition Provisional Authority.

Their salaries can be as high as $1,000 a day, the news agency AFP
recently reported. Erwin, a 28-year-old former US army sergeant working in
Iraq, told AFP: This place is a goldmine. All you need is five years in
the military and you come here and make a good bundle.

Responding to a fear that any of its recruits who might suffer traumatic
battlefield stress might be simply dumped back into Chilean society
without mental health schemes, Mr Jackson said Blackwater USA had
extensive psychological counselling programmes.

We have clinical psychologists on staff and we do a battery of tests
during the assessment phase.

I personally come from a special operations background and I feel
comfortable that we have the procedures in place that will allow them to
handle the stress.

We didn't just come down and say, 'You and you and you, come work for
us.' They were all vetted in Chile and all of them have military
backgrounds. This is not the Boy Scouts.

In an interview with the Chilean newspaper La Tercera, a former Chilean
army officer, Carlos Wamgnet, 30, who was going to Iraq, said: We are
calm. This mission is nothing new for us.

In the end, this is an extension of our military career.

John Rivas, 27, a former Chilean marine, said the work in Iraq would
provide a very good income that would allow him to support his family.

I don't feel like a mercenary, he added.

US-Australia FTA text

2004-03-03 Thread Eubulides

USTR released the text of the US-Australia FTA today.  The page with a
link to each chapter is here:
http://www.ustr.gov/new/fta/Australia/text/index.htm

Re: any comments?

2004-03-02 Thread Eubulides

--- Devine, James [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote:
 March 2, 2004/New York TIMES
 NEWS ANALYSIS
 Medicare and Social Security Challenge
 By EDMUND L. ANDREWS



Doug Orr was on the local NPR affiliate with some other people giving an
excellent take on Greenspan's, uh, strategic ambiguity on the future of
SS..You can listen to him speak [a model of clarity] at:

http://kuow.org/TheConversation.asp

DeLong on Paul Sweezy

2004-02-29 Thread Eubulides

http://www.j-bradford-delong.net/movable_type/Index.html/


Have fun

pass the bubble

2004-02-29 Thread Eubulides

Unsustainable debt

Leader
Monday March 1, 2004
The Guardian

The world economic revival seems to be picking up speed practically
everywhere - except, of course, on the continent of Europe, which is still
stagnating. The trouble is that recovery is disconcertingly dependent on
America's pre-electoral boom. Nothing else seems to matter over there.
Forget the unprecedented trade and budget deficits, ignore the free-fall
in the dollar and turn a blind eye to growing protectionism. They can all
be cleared up after the next election, as long as it is President Bush and
not one of those resurgent Democrats that is doing the cleaning up. Unlike
previous US booms, this one is not being oiled by rises in take-home pay.
Wages, after allowing for inflation, are hardly expanding at all. The
long-running spending boom is being sustained by consumers taking on extra
debt (financed by what may turn out to be only a temporary increase in
assets, like shares and houses), plus tax cuts. Consumers, particularly
richer ones, will be drip-fed with more tax refunds in the coming months
in one of the most carefully orchestrated pre-election booms on record.

Even the normally cautious chairman of the Federal Reserve, Alan
Greenspan, is being caught up in this dangerous game of pass the bubble.
He sees hardly any problems in the short-term thanks, he says, to what he
regards as amazing US productivity growth, spare capacity and low
inflation. But he sees mega problems in 10 to 15 years' time when the
rocketing US federal deficit reaches the stratosphere as the baby boom
generation becomes eligible for increased entitlements. If his short-term
solution is complacent, his long-term one is downright irresponsible. He
urges the administration to maintain the tax cuts - which
disproportionately benefit the rich - while cutting benefits; a move that
inevitably will hit the poor. Robin Hood has gone into reverse thrust.

The US administration should act now to bring the deficit down in order to
avoid the danger of a meltdown in later years that would inevitably send
shockwaves across the rest of the world. It could easily do several
things: rescind the worst of the recent regressive tax cuts; allow people
who want to work after their normal retirement date (like the 78-year-old
Alan Greenspan) to do so; rescind the $180bn of extra agricultural
subsidies (mainly credits) that President Bush unexpectedly introduced
soon after gaining office; and start looking at how fiscal policy in the
form of tax increases can be used to reduce America's dependence on Middle
East oil reserves.

An election year is not a good time to be deciding long-term economic
policy. But it is sad to watch how the main political parties find it
difficult to call for tax increases - or even for an end to reductions
that have not yet come into effect - and it is very depressing to see
Democratic candidates lurching towards protectionism, even if only as a
temporary political manoeuvre. On the brighter side, there are encouraging
signs that the US, as well as Europe, wants to re-start the international
trade talks which stalled in Cancun over the demands of developing
countries to end agricultural subsidies. This is probably because the US
negotiators presume nothing of any consequence will happen this side of an
election.

Meanwhile, the rest of the world, including Britain, will profit from the
burgeoning US trade deficit. And for the rest of this year at least,
everything is likely to be all right. But something will have to be done
when the US election is out of the way. This gives European countries a
breathing space to rediscover the lost art of generating economic growth
on their own. Recent forecasts for the eurozone economy suggest growth of
barely 0.5% this year, even with the benefit of a US recovery. Goodness
knows what it would like be without it.

the political ecology of coal

2004-02-28 Thread Eubulides

America's new coal rush

Utilities' dramatic push to build new plants would boost energy security
but hurt the environment.

By Mark Clayton | Staff writer of The Christian Science Monitor
February 26, 2004 edition

After 25 years on the blacklist of America's energy sources, coal is
poised to make a comeback, stoked by the demand for affordable electricity
and the rising price of other fuels.

At least 94 coal-fired electric power plants - with the capacity to power
62 million American homes - are now planned across 36 states.

The plants, slated to start coming on line as early as next year, would
add significantly to the United States' generating power, help keep
electricity prices low, and boost energy security by offering an
alternative to foreign oil and gas. But they would also pump more airborne
mercury and greenhouse gases such as carbon dioxide, nitrogen oxide, and
sulfur dioxide into the air.

Apparently, economic concerns are trumping environmental ones in
utilities' plans.

Surprisingly, few state officials or even environmentalists are aware of
the magnitude of the new coal rush.

One major reason is the sudden nature of the turnaround for the plentiful
fuel. The situation has changed 180 degrees in the last year, so that
we're almost back to point where we were in the 1970s with a slew of
coal-fired plants on the drawing board, says Robert McIlvaine, president
of a Northfield, Ill., company that tracks energy industry development.
After a decades-long drought, when few large coal plants were added to the
power grid, it's become a flood. We've been getting a new one announced
almost every week since December.

The jump in proposed coal-fired plants over the past three years - which
would add 62 gigawatts or another 20 percent to the US's current
coal-generating capacity - was documented in a report last month by the
National Energy Technology Laboratory (NETL), an arm of the US Department
of Energy. But experts caution that perhaps no more than half of all
proposed plants will ever be built. It can take seven to 10 years for a
coal power plant to go from planning to construction - and legal action
and public protests often halt them.

Aside from the report, buried on the agency's website, the push to coal
power and its estimated $72 billion investment has been largely untouted
by industry and overlooked by the public. Even state officials and
environmentalists who knew more coal power was coming are amazed.

I certainly wasn't aware it was 62 gigawatts. That's an awful lot more
coal to burn, says Dan Becker, director of global warming and energy
program at the Sierra Club. I think most Americans would be shocked that
utilities are dragging the 19th century into the 21st century.

Illinois leads the nation with 10 proposed coal-fired plants that would
create 8 gigawatts of new power capacity, the NETL report says. Yet state
officials were surprised to be the national leader. It's definitely
something we're keeping track of, but I personally wasn't aware it was
nine or 10 plants, says Rishi Garg, an energy policy adviser to Lt. Gov.
Pat Quinn.

From the point of view of energy security, such moves make sense,
proponents say. The US is considered the Saudi Arabia of coal. It sits on
250 years' worth of reserves. Coal already generates about half the
nation's electricity.

The economics have also swung in the fuel's favor. Low-cost, low-emission,
natural-gas turbines sprouted like mushrooms in the '90s and their
contribution to the nation's generating capacity reached 19 percent. But
in the past four years, the cost of natural gas has roughly tripled: from
$2 per 1 million British thermal units of heat generated to over $6 per
million BTUs. By contrast, coal costs less than $1 per million BTUs. That
has put utilities in the position of paying more for the gas they burn to
make power than they can get for the electricity it produces.

But the move back to coal raises environmental concerns. Mr. McIlvaine
estimates that if 50 of the 94 planned projects are built, they would add
roughly 30 gigawatts or 10 percent of base load generating capacity
nationwide. Using industry rules of thumb, he estimates coal consumption
would rise about 10 million tons, or 1 percent, from today's 1 billion
tons annually. That, in turn, would add 120 million cubic feet of exhaust
gases from the stacks every minute of every day for decades to what is
currently vented.

The burning of coal already produces more airborne mercury and greenhouse
gases than any other single source. Robert Dickinson, an atmospheric
scientist and climate modeler at the Georgia Institute of Technology,
calculates the new US coal plants would add roughly one-tenth of 1 percent
to the world's annual carbon-dioxide emissions.

It doesn't sound as bad as SUVs, but we really should be going the other
direction, he says. All these little things add up. How much is east
Asia going to add? The rest of the world?

Utility-industry spokesmen don't

expertise and class composition

2004-02-28 Thread Eubulides

Class war pipe dreams

A biologist becomes a gas fitter, so the barriers are finally breaking
down? Tell that to the shelf packers

Mary Riddell
Sunday February 29, 2004
The Observer

As pipes freeze and domestic boilers implode, a shivering nation can be
grateful to Karl Gensberg. Formerly a researcher at Birmingham University,
he compared his wage slip with his plumber's and decided that his career
in molecular biology, on an annual salary of £23,000, was over. Now Mr
Gensberg, aged 41, is a qualified gas fitter hoping to earn a minimum of
£40,000.

His 10 years of research will, he believes, eventually lead to major
breakthroughs in treating arthritis and cancer. While university wages are
scandalously low, great pioneers in science and the arts have often been
more stoical. On the Gensberg logic, the impoverished Van Gogh, who sold
only one canvas in his lifetime, would have swapped sunflowers for Yellow
Pages and taken up painting and decorating instead.

So perhaps Mr Gensberg was fed up not only with low pay and professional
insecurity, but with the job itself. Newspaper reports hinted, snobbishly,
that only penury could force anyone to swap academia for a life of phoning
maddened clients to report being stuck in traffic on the North Circular
and thus unable to inspect their defunct heating systems until tomorrow.

But talented people, graduates included, want practical work. Hackney
Community College in East London reports 800 applicants competing for 35
places on a four-year NVQ plumbing course. Part of the lure is the £50,000
salary in prospect, but something else is happening. That shift is
illustrated in a portrait of Mr Gensberg, a stubble-chinned Gabriel Oak
moving glamorously on from the 'glory days' when a university post meant
status.

His decision may say less about pay levels than shifting status. Society
is being de-toffed. As the last hereditary peers of the upper chamber are
banished to chilly piles, a new breed of aristo-hustlers, forcibly
democratised, must earn their crust; literally so, in the case of the Earl
of Sandwich, who markets packed lunches. A House of Lords, however
constituted, looks increasingly preposterous when titles are so naff that
any man knighted in an Honours List must pretend he doesn't want to be
called 'Sir'.

The affluent have seen other privileges leeched away by the conduit that
first supplied them. The benefits of the consumer revolution of the
nineteenth century have trickled further downwards, and Orwell's checklist
of 'good roads, germ-free water, police protection', has expanded.
Restaurants, shops, roads and the check-in queues of Gatwick teem with
homogeneous tribes. As John Prescott said: 'We're all middle class now.'

Britain has been slow to recognise this truism, or embrace it. France, at
least at the level of the 'commune', is classless. In the town where I
spend my holidays, the bus driver has the same social standing as the
lawyer. Mr Gensberg and his academic friends, who, he claims, are becoming
scuba diving instructors or letting agents, may be trail-blazers for
equality. But oddly, at just the time fusty notions of prestige are dying,
a contradictory paranoia is setting in.

In his new book, Status Anxiety, and in a two-hour Channel 4 documentary
next Saturday, Alain de Botton argues that we are consumed by worry about
how we are perceived. The idea that social rank equals human worth may be
dead, but so are easy guidelines to being a top person. The Spartan recipe
of muscly, bisexual men with little interest in family life and an
enthusiasm for killing Athenians would attract few takers in a modern
dating agency. Nor would subsequent blueprints of perfection.

As de Botton wonders, if the capacity to hunt jaguars, dance a minuet,
ride a horse in battle or imitate the life of Christ no longer offers
sufficient grounds to be labelled a success, then what is the dominant
Western ideal according to which people are judged and status allotted?
His inability to offer a neatly-packaged successor to the warrior, the
saint and the knight is not surprising when the mandarin classes no longer
command automatic respect or trust. Maybe the new icon is the gas-fitter,
welcomed into icy households like a Messiah in overalls, as well as being
paid a fortune.

Money remains enmeshed with status. The Forbes listing of the planet's
richest people has just been released, complete with fawning coverage of
Britain's dollar billionaires. The latest register of members' interests
allowed newspaper readers to ogle MPs' bank accounts: £450,000 for Robin
Cook's book, £250,000 for Michael Portillo's wit and wisdom. Such figures
are meant to ignite envy.

But as Alexis de Tocqueville noticed, along with Adam Smith and various
modern academics who have so far resisted becoming gasmen, money is no
guarantor of happiness. America, the richest nation on earth, ranks
sixteenth in the national league tables of contentment. Nigeria and Puerto
Rico, where great poverty

Greenspan and the use of time to commit fiscal crime

2004-02-28 Thread Eubulides

[god bless intertemporal optimization]



[New York Times]
February 29, 2004
The Social Security Promise Not Yet Kept
By DAVID CAY JOHNSTON

SOCIAL Security retirement benefits are going to have to be cut, Alan
Greenspan announced last week, because there just is not enough money to
pay the promised benefits. President Bush said those already retired or
near retirement age'' should not worry. They will get their promised
benefits.

That, in short form, was the story carried on front pages and television
news programs across the country.

But there is an element that was forgotten in the rush of news. It dates
back 21 years to the events that catapulted Mr. Greenspan into national
prominence and led to his becoming chairman of the Federal Reserve.

Since 1983, American workers have been paying more into Social Security
than it has paid out in benefits, about $1.8 trillion more so far. This
year Americans will pay about 50 percent more in Social Security taxes
than the government will pay out in benefits.

Those taxes were imposed at the urging of Mr. Greenspan, who was chairman
of a bipartisan commission that in 1983 said that one way to make sure
Social Security remains solvent once the baby boomers reached retirement
age was to tax them in advance.

On Mr. Greenspan's recommendation Social Security was converted from a
pay-as-you-go system to one in which taxes are collected in advance. After
Congress adopted the plan, Mr. Greenspan rose to become chairman of the
Federal Reserve.

This year someone making $50,000 will pay $6,200 in Social Security taxes,
half deducted from their paycheck and half paid by their employer. That
total is about $2,000 more than the government needs in order to pay
benefits to retirees, widows, orphans and the disabled, government budget
documents show.

So what has happened to that $1.8 trillion?

The advance payments have all been spent.

Congress did not lock away the Social Security surplus, as many Americans
believe. Instead, it borrowed the surplus, replacing the cash with
Treasury notes, and spent the loan proceeds paying the ordinary expenses
of running the federal government.

Only twice, in 1999 and 2000, did Congress balance the federal budget
without borrowing from the surplus.

Both parties have treated the surplus Social Security taxes as cash flow
to the government, which has been allowable since the Johnson
administration started counting Social Security as part of the federal
budget, not as a separate budget, said C. Eugene Steuerle, a tax policy
advisor to President Reagan.

He said that voters were promised in 1983 that the federal debt would be
paid off with the surplus Social Security taxes. The fact that this has
not happened and the debt has soared shows that government usually can
only deal with one objective at a time,'' Mr. Steuerle said. Back then, he
added, the prime objective was to settle on a Social Security tax rate
that would back the system and not have to be tinkered with for decades -
not how the surplus would be handled.

He said using the surplus to pay routine bills makes sense to those who
believe the government will have tax revenues in the future to repay the
borrowed money.

President Bush asserts that making his existing income, gift and estate
tax cuts permanent will spur growth that will, in turn, generate more tax
revenue in the long run, making that repayment more likely.

Claire Buchan, a White House spokeswoman, said that making the cuts
permanent will promote prosperity for American workers'' and that older
employees can expect full benefits.

But Mr. Greenspan's new remarks have brought that into question. Other
officials have raised doubts. In June 2001, Paul H. O'Neill, President
Bush's first Treasury secretary, said all that Americans expecting
benefits have is someone else's promise'' that the paper held by the
Social Security Trust Fund will be redeemed with taxes paid later by
others.

Michael Graetz, a Yale Law School tax professor and tax policy adviser in
the administration of President Bush's father, said it was in the nature
of Washington to spend surplus tax revenues. Unless they put the money in
a lockbox, which they haven't, the politicians are going to spend the
money, he said, and say they will repay the loans with future taxes.

Mr. Greenspan said nothing last week about returning to a pay-as-you-go
basis. Doing that would put about $40 a week in the pockets of workers
making $50,000 annually.

Some argue that the surplus taxes are being used to help finance income
tax cuts, which Mr. Bush wants made permanent.

Mr. Greenspan told Congress earlier that Mr. Bush's tax cuts should be
kept in place. The biggest beneficiaries would be the top 400 taxpayers,
whose average income in 2000 was $174 million each. They paid 22.2 cents
on the dollar in federal income taxes and, under the Bush tax cuts, would
have paid about 17.5 cents.

Over all that year, Americans paid 15.3 cents on the dollar of income in

Zoellick in India

2004-02-27 Thread Eubulides

http://www.flonnet.com/fl2105/stories/20040312001805000.htm
WTO
Frictions to the fore
SUKUMAR MURALIDHARAN

The recent visit of U.S. Trade Representative Robert Zoellick to India
with the stated aim of resuming global trade negotiations only serves to
highlight the continuing discord between the two countries on a range of
trade issues.

ROBERT ZOELLICK, the United States Trade Representative, stopped in New
Delhi for a meeting with Union Commerce Minister Arun Jaitley on February
16. His visit was part of a cycle involving other major trading nations,
and the purported agenda was nothing less than the resumption of stalled
global trade negotiations. But the official statement issued on the
occasion was almost cursory on this main item of the agenda, confining
itself to a formal reiteration of both countries' intention to engage
constructively in moving the negotiations forward. This almost routine
statement though, was overshadowed by a very public articulation of
discord on a range of other issues.

Jaitley focussed on the new protectionist fervour possessing the U.S.,
leading to exploratory legislation in some States that would severely
curtail the freedom currently enjoyed by firms to outsource key business
functions to overseas service providers. The Jobs for America Act that has
recently been tabled in the U.S. Senate by leading Democratic Party
legislators effectively moves this process from the State to the federal
level. Among other things, the proposed law would require U.S. companies
that plan to lay off 15 or more workers to make a full public disclosure
of where they intended to relocate the jobs and provide satisfactory
explanations for their decision. It is strange, said the Indian Minister
that on the one hand people are talking about opening of markets and on
the other hand, banning business process outsourcing. And in puncturing
the U.S. demand that India should liberalise its agricultural trade,
Jaitley minced no words: Our agriculture is fragile as it is not
subsidised, as in the U.S.

Zoellick for his part held out the assurance that the outsourcing
controversy was not all that it had been made out to be. Trade opening
would benefit all sides through job growth. And if India were to
liberalise, it would create a context of increasing trade that would
effectively neutralise the outsourcing controversy. Much progress could be
achieved, he said, if India and the U.S. were to look at the areas on
which they agreed: like the elimination of trade-distorting export
subsidies in agriculture and the reduction of domestic support.

The U.S.' top trade negotiator could not have been unaware of the odds he
faces. Senator John Kerry, who is rapidly emerging as the most likely
challenger to President George Bush in the November elections, routinely
chooses the figure of Benedict Arnold, the emblematic representative of
high treason in U.S. history, to castigate the business leaders who he
alleges have been exporting jobs from the U.S. Gregory Mankiw, the
chairman of Bush's council of economic advisers, recently made bold to
suggest that outsourcing was just another way of doing business that was
probably good for the U.S. economy. The qualified endorsement of
outsourcing as an economic plus for the U.S. economy, it transpired, had
been prudent, since Bush has studiedly chosen to distance himself from his
top adviser's opinion.

His political fortunes increasingly threatened by weak economic
fundamentals, the U.S. President recently issued the bravura claim that
his first term in office would end with 2.6 million new jobs in place for
the U.S. workforce. He has since been rather reluctant about being held to
that standard of numerical precision. The last six months have reportedly
seen job-growth of the order of 360,000. The economist Paul Krugman has
estimated that to work itself out of the slump it is currently in, the
U.S. economy would have to add jobs at the rate of about 275,000 every
month.

The total employment in India's business process outsourcing (BPO) sector
currently stands, in the estimation of the industry association, at less
than 250,000. The number of jobs created in this sector during 2003-04
would, according to the National Association of Software and Service
Companies (NASSCOM), be in the range of 74,000. Adjusting for differences
in relative wages and infrastructural endowments - which have a bearing on
the investment required to create an extra job - this would be the
equivalent of fewer than 30,000 jobs in the U.S., or a mere 2,500
additional jobs every month. In relation to the magnitude of unemployment
in the U.S., the impact of outsourcing is quite obviously marginal,
rendering the overheated rhetoric about Benedict Arnold businessmen just
a little ludicrous.

Zoellick's visit to India nevertheless signals that this item could
prospectively be moved onto the agenda of global trade negotiations. The
U.S. since the failure of Cancun, has shaped its response along two

GAO report on outsourcing the State

2004-02-27 Thread Eubulides

February 27, 2004
COMPETITIVE SOURCING
Greater Emphasis Needed on Increasing Efficiency and Improving Performance
GAO-04-367
http://www.gao.gov/ [click through to the report]

unctad:Africa caught in a commodity trap

2004-02-26 Thread Eubulides

[aren't all of us caught in a commodity trap?]

Full @ :
http://www.unctad.org/Templates/webflyer.asp?docid=4463intItemID=1634lang=1

The majority of African countries are boxed into a trading structure that subjects 
them to secular
terms-of-trade losses and volatile foreign exchange earnings, according to a new 
UNCTAD report,
Economic Development in Africa: Trade Performance and Commodity Dependence (1), 
released today. This
position severely encumbers effective macroeconomic management and stunts capital 
formation,
hampering efforts to diversify into more productive activities and adding to the debt 
overhang. As a
result, and despite years under structural adjustment programmes, much of sub-Saharan 
Africa (SSA)
has remained commodity-dependent. And, as was exposed in Cancún with the cotton case, 
huge Northern
subsidies have contributed in no small measure to undermining the efforts of some 
African countries
to tackle poverty. The Report calls for a three-pronged response to easing the 
short-run burden of
commodity dependence and facilitating longer-run structural changes, by combining 
measures to
strengthen domestic institutional capacities with more balanced international trading 
arrangements
and more generous and innovative international financing schemes. [snip]

Britain in Iraq: still no contracts

2004-02-25 Thread Eubulides

White House rebuffs UK contracts bid

Terry Macalister
Thursday February 26, 2004
The Guardian

Top-level lobbying by British ministers on a trip to Washington on behalf
of UK companies trying to win work in Iraq has been rebuffed by White
House officials.

The trade minister, Mike O'Brien, insisted at a reconstruction conference
on Tuesday that his visit had been successful, but well-placed sources
argue differently.

Confidential papers seen by the Guardian show the US national security
adviser, Condoleezza Rice, phoned Tony Blair's office to discuss the issue
after she read a leak about the concerted lobbying in this newspaper on
February 13.

But Mr O'Brien and Tony Blair's trade envoy, Brian Wilson, were told
clearly there could be no special efforts to help win deals for UK firms.

The White House is sympathetic but officials there say they cannot
intervene in a procurement process handled by the Pentagon, said a
well-placed source.

Briefing documents dated February 20 - before the trip to Washington -
suggest Mr Blair might raise the issue directly with President George Bush
if there is no progress. Depending on the outcome of the minister's
visit, he [Mr O'Brien] may want to recommend to the prime minister that he
raise this directly with President Bush, according to documents marked
restricted. The British government has become embarrassed about domestic
firms' failure to win a big slice of the Iraq reconstruction contracts.
Billions of dollars worth has gone to American companies such as
Halliburton, which used to be headed by US vice-president Dick Cheney.

A new round of contracts come up early next month and the UK looks better
placed, with stakes in 15 of the 17 bids being considered. But there is
still acute nervousness.

Mr O'Brien told a London gathering on rebuilding Iraq that 20 UK firms had
already won deals, although he denied he had made the visit to Washington
last week to plead Britain's case. The trip had been to discuss
transparency and a level playing field.

But the documents prepared ahead of that meeting make clear the true
reason for the mission by Mr O'Brien and Mr Wilson.

Special guidance on how to handle media interest in the Washington trip
argues: The purpose of the visit is to lobby for UK contracts and if
there [are] none offered, then the media would report on this negatively.

Despite Mr O'Brien's comments that we have secured quite a lot of
contracts already, the briefing documents from the UK trade and
investment unit of the Department of Trade and Industry admit the question
of how successful UK firms are in Iraq is impossible to answer because
details are not available.

The Guardian revealed two weeks ago that Mr O'Brien and Mr Wilson were
planning a trip to the US to lobby for more UK contracts, and the article
triggered a flurry of action in Washington.

The latest set of confidential documents reveal that Condoleezza Rice
telephoned Nigel Sheinwald [Mr Blair's special foreign affairs envoy] on
February 13 to ask about the Guardian article that day.

Last night Mr Wilson insisted the US trip was not aimed at avoiding
political embarrassment but an attempt to ensure Britain benefited
commercially from the biggest construction programme in history.

AG on Fannie and Freddie

2004-02-24 Thread Eubulides

http://www.federalreserve.gov/boarddocs/testimony/2004/20040224/default.htm

Testimony of Chairman Alan Greenspan
Government-sponsored enterprises
Before the Committee on Banking, Housing, and Urban Affairs, U.S. Senate
February 24, 2004

science in the corporate interest; yet another iteration

2004-02-24 Thread Eubulides

http://www.nybooks.com/articles/16954

In Science in the Private Interest, a strongly argued polemic against the commercial 
conditions in
which scientific research currently operates, he shows how universities have become 
little more than
instruments of wealth. This shift in the mission of academia, Krimsky claims, works 
against the
public interest. Universities have sacrificed their larger social responsibilities to 
accommodate a
new purpose-the privatization of knowledge-by engaging in multimillion-dollar 
contracts with
industries that demand the rights to negotiate licenses from any subsequent discovery 
(as Novartis
did, Krimsky reports, in a $25 million deal with the University of California at 
Berkeley).

new and improved moral hazard

2004-02-24 Thread Eubulides

[Just what I've always wanted, a mortgage on my mortgage]



[New York Times]
February 25, 2004
Fed Chief Warns of a Risk to Taxpayers
By EDMUND L. ANDREWS

WASHINGTON, Feb. 24 - Alan Greenspan, the chairman of the Federal Reserve,
warned on Tuesday that the nation's two big government-sponsored mortgage
institutions pose a systemic risk that could cost taxpayers dearly.

Mr. Greenspan said that Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac, which buy up and
repackage billions of dollars' worth of mortgages every year, have grown
so rapidly and accumulated so much debt that they cannot adequately hedge
against the risks of financial crises.

The Fed chairman said both companies, which hold about $2 trillion worth
of obligations tied to home mortgages, have grown much faster than their
competitors because investors think the federal government will bail them
out in a crisis.

Mr. Greenspan said this implied subsidy has been a boon to the
companies' shareholders but provided only modest benefits to homebuyers in
the form of lower mortgage rates.

The danger, he said, is that the companies are using this implicit federal
backstop to assume more risk and finance their expansion through increased
debt.

There is a general belief in the marketplace that these securities are
backed by the full faith and credit of the United States government, Mr.
Greenspan testified at a hearing of the Senate Banking Committee.

Even though the federal government does not guarantee the securities of
Fannie Mae or Freddie Mac, Mr. Greenspan suggested that their special
status as government-sponsored enterprises and their huge size would
make it difficult for Congress to avoid a bailout in the event of a
financial calamity. It's basically creating an abnormality, which the
system cannot close around, and the potential of that is a systemic risk
in - sometime in the future, if they continue to increase at the rate at
which they are.

Shares of both companies dropped after Mr. Greenspan's testimony. Fannie
Mae shares fell $2.65, to $76.25. Freddie Mac slid $1.81, to $62.12.

Fannie Mae executives quickly lashed back at Mr. Greenspan, complaining
that many of his criticisms were based on a Fed study that it called
seriously flawed.

We, of course, disagree with most of his conclusions, said Jayne
Shontell, Fannie Mae's senior vice president for investor relations. We
believe that the testimony does not appreciate the role of our mortgage
portfolio and the impact of his proposal.

Mr. Greenspan's lengthy and blunt criticisms are likely to provide new
impetus for legislative proposals aimed at tightening the regulatory
control over both companies.

Though Mr. Greenspan has criticized Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac in the
past, he expressed a greater degree of alarm about the potential risks
posed by the companies, and he was insistent that Congress act sooner
rather than later.

Both companies have been under fire for more than a year, in part because
both have admitted to a wide variety of questionable accounting practices.

Freddie Mac executives admitted in November that the company had
understated earnings by $5 billion, a move they hoped would smooth out the
company's long-term earnings trend and thus assuage investors. In October,
Fannie Mae was forced to correct what it said were $1 billion in errors in
its recent financial results.

Critics have complained for years that the two companies have been far
less transparent in their financial reporting than ordinary financial
institutions. But the larger concern voiced by Mr. Greenspan is that the
companies may represent a huge and hidden financial liability that could
at some point lead to a heavy costs for taxpayers.

The Bush administration has proposed transferring regulatory
responsibility for the companies to the Treasury Department, which might
then set new restrictions on their ability to issue debt or their
requirements to keep larger amounts of capital in reserve.

Republicans and Democrats on the Senate Banking Committee are trying to
draw up a bipartisan plan that would create an independent regulatory
group, overseen by top officials at the Treasury, the Fed and the
Department of Housing and Urban Development.

Originally chartered by Congress, Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac were created
to expand the pool of money for home mortgages at a time when few banks or
savings institutions operated nationwide.

The two companies essentially buy up mortgages from local lenders and
bundle the loans into large securities, which they then resell on
financial markets. Today, Mr. Greenspan said, the companies stand behind
about $4 trillion worth of mortgages - about three-quarters of all
single-family mortgages in the United States.

Mr. Greenspan emphasized that Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac had done a good
job of managing their risk thus far. But he said their total volume of
outstanding debt could soon exceed the debt of the federal government
itself. That would make it hard for the government to avoid a

more cheap Government Surplus!

[Federal Register: February 23, 2004 (Volume 69, Number 35)]
[Notices]
[Page 8183]
From the Federal Register Online via GPO Access [wais.access.gpo.gov]
[DOCID:fr23fe04-57]

---

DEPARTMENT OF DEFENSE

Department of the Army


Availability of Non-Exclusive, Exclusive License or Partially
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Structural Proteins

AGENCY: Department of the Army, DoD.

ACTION: Notice.

---

SUMMARY: In accordance with 37 CFR Part 404.6, announcement is made of
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entitled ``Method for the Purification and Aqueous Fiber Spinning of
Spider Silks and Other Structural Proteins'' issued September 16, 2003.
This patent has been assigned to the United States Government as
represented by the Secretary of the Army.

FOR FURTHER INFORMATION CONTACT: Mr. Robert Rosenkrans at U.S. Army
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SUPPLEMENTARY INFORMATION: Any licenses granted shall comply with 35
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Luz D. Ortiz,
Army Federal Register Liaison Officer.
[FR Doc. 04-3825 Filed 2-20-04; 8:45 am]

BILLING CODE 3710-08-M

if you're a teacher and in the NEA, you're a terrorist......

Paige: Teachers Union Is 'Terrorist Organization'
Education Secretary's Comments Made at Private Meeting With Governors

By Robert Tanner
The Associated Press
Monday, February 23, 2004; 5:52 PM


Education Secretary Rod Paige called the nation's largest teachers union a
terrorist organization Monday, taking on the 2.7-million-member National
Education Association early in the presidential election year.

Paige's comments, made to the nation's governors at a private White House
meeting, were denounced by union president Reg Weaver as well as prominent
Democrats. Paige said he was sorry, and the White House said he was right
to say so.

The education secretary's words were pathetic and they are not a laughing
matter, said Weaver, whose union has said it plans to sue the Bush
administration over lack of funding for demands included in the No Child
Left Behind schools law.

Paige said later in an Associated Press interview that his comment was a
bad joke; it was an inappropriate choice of words. President Bush was not
present at the time he made the remark.

As one who grew up on the receiving end of insensitive remarks, I should
have chosen my words better, said Paige, the first black education
secretary.

Democratic Gov. Jim Doyle of Wisconsin said Paige's words were, The NEA
is a terrorist organization.

Paige said he had made clear to the governors that he was referring to the
Washington-based union organization, not the teachers it represents.

Weaver responded, We are the teachers, there is no distinction.

Paige's Education Department is working to enforce a law that amounts to
the biggest change in federal education policy in a generation. He has
made no attempt to hide his frustration with the NEA, which has long
supported Democratic presidential candidates.

Asked if he was apologizing, Paige said: Well, I'm saying that I'm sorry
I said it, yeah. In a statement released to the media, Paige said he
chose the wrong words to describe the obstructionist scare tactics of
NEA lobbyists.

Said White House spokesman Scott McClellan: The comment was inappropriate
and the secretary recognized it was inappropriate and quickly apologized.

Terry McAuliffe, chairman of the Democratic National Committee, put it in
stronger terms, accusing Paige of resorting to the most vile and
disgusting form of hate speech, comparing those who teach America's
children to terrorists.

Education has been a top issue for the governors, who have sought more
flexibility from the administration on Bush's No Child Left Behind law,
which seeks to improve school performance in part by allowing parents to
move their children from poorly performing schools.

Democrats have said Bush has failed to fully fund the law, giving the
states greater burdens but not the resources to handle them. The union
backs the intent of the law but says many of its provisions must be
changed.

Missouri Gov. Bob Holden, a Democrat, said Paige's remarks startled the
governors, who met for nearly two hours with Bush and several Cabinet
officials.

He is, I guess, very concerned about anybody that questions what the
president is doing, Holden said.

Vermont Gov. Jim Douglas, a Republican, said, Somebody asked him about
the NEA's role and he offered his perspective on it.

Gov. Jennifer Granholm of Michigan, a Democrat, said the comments were
made in the context of we can't be supportive of the status quo and
they're the status quo. But whatever the context, it is inappropriate -- I
know he wasn't calling teachers terrorists -- but to ever suggest that the
organization they belong to was a terrorist organization is uncalled for.

Paige, in an interview, talked at length about his agency's efforts to
work with states over their concerns with the law. He said meetings with
state leaders have erased misunderstandings and a tone of confrontation.

But he said some opposition to the law has been stirred by at least three
groups that are hard nosed, highly financed and well organized. Asked to
name the groups other than the NEA, Paige declined, saying: I've already
got into deep water with that one, haven't I?

The governors were in Washington for four days of discussions at the
annual meeting of the National Governors Association, though the usual
effort to build consensus was marked by partisan politics that Democrats
said couldn't be avoided.

Iowa Gov. Tom Vilsack, chairman of the Democratic Governors Association,
said that during the private meeting, Bush took only two questions,
leaving little time for a full exploration of issues.

It would have been helpful for him to have heard the discussions about
'No Child Left Behind' because there may be a disconnect between what he
thinks and what we know, Vilsack said.

In brief public comments, Bush told the governors that rising political
tensions of an election year won't stop him from working closely with
them.

I fully understand it's going to be the year of the sharp elbow and the
quick tongue, Bush said. But

Re: more cheap Government Surplus!

- Original Message -
From: dmschanoes [EMAIL PROTECTED]



To be used in forthcoming generations of body armor.  You can look it up.




The potential applications are enormous and will be worth *big* bucks. Buy
goat farms...

Ian

Re: if you're a teacher and in the NEA, you're a terrorist......

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



This is a Spartacus moment.

I am a terrorist!

Jim Devine



Hand out the vines!

Ian

Re: Secret Pentagon report on global warming

2004-02-22 Thread Eubulides

- Original Message -
From: Eugene Coyle [EMAIL PROTECTED]



This account is very misleading.  They report a Pentagon What if...
exercise as a Pentagon prediction.

There is a frightening possibility that sudden climate change can occur,
with some of the outcomes described here.  But this sensationalism takes
away from the serious discussion that needs to hit the mainstream media.

Gene Coyle


=

Yeah, that piece read like the person who wrote it had thrown back a
couple of pints or been toking on that Brit weed. The Fortune article was
better. The reference to Yoda is a tiny hint as to how much sci. fi. is
read by military brass over the past 25 years. From people I know who are
in or have just left Orson Scott Card and Vernor Vinge are *very* popular
with the new generation of  Herman Khans.

Ian

Re: Secret Pentagon report on global warming

2004-02-22 Thread Eubulides

- Original Message -
From: Marvin Gandall [EMAIL PROTECTED]



Details of this report first appeared in Fortune magazine last month.
Today's Observer article is a more sensational recycling of the already
sensational story which Fortune reporter David Stipp broke last month.
And the Observer account misses the main point of the exercise.

As reported by Fortune, the Pentagon study assumed a midrange case of
abrupt global warning, characterized by plunging temperatures in the
Northern hemisphere, droughts, storms, flooding, desperate illegal
migration from poorer regions, border raids, and the possibility of
full-scale warfare between alliances of nuclear-armed states over scarce
food, water and energy supplies.

Note, in particular, the reference to illegal migration. The study's
concern is less scientific than military, less the causes than the
effects of an environmental catastrophe. Stipp is, in fact, quite
explicitly says climate change should  be treated as a national
security issue to protect America's borders and resources.
Significantly - and presuming the reporter is reflecting the views of
his editors who reflect the views of the Fortune 500 - there is little
emphasis, despite the frightening apocalyptic scenario, on any urgent
preventative environmental measures, beyond tightening fuel emission
standards for new passenger vehicles.

It would appear the Pentagon planners invited Stipp in for a chat and
leaked the Marshall study to him in a bid for further resources. Must be
getting close to budget submission time in Washington.


==

UNDERSTANDING INTERNATIONAL
ENVIRONMENTAL SECURITY:
A STRATEGIC MILITARY PERSPECTIVE
Colonel W. Chris King
November 2000
AEPI-IFP-1100A
Army Environmental Policy Institute
http://www.aepi.army.mil/Publications/king.A.pdf

the political ecology of tourism

2004-02-22 Thread Eubulides

http://straitstimes.asia1.com.sg/news/story/0,4386,236479,00.html?
The Great Barrier grief
It will be dead in 50 years, due to global warming

SYDNEY

AUSTRALIA'S Great Barrier Reef is just 50 years from death.

A new report said that the reef will be largely dead by 2050 when instead
of the brightly coloured corals depicted in Finding Nemo, the world's
largest living organism will be bleached out and replaced by ordinary
seaweed because of global warming.

The damage to the rich environment that makes the reef one of the world's
natural wonders would cost the tourism industry billion of dollars, said
the report on the impact of global warming released yesterday.

Authors Hans and Ove Hoegh-Guldberg - the head of Queensland University's
marine studies centre and his economist father - said the destruction of
coral on the reef was inevitable, owing to global warming, regardless of
what actions are taken now.

'Coral cover will decrease to less than 5 per cent on most reefs by the
middle of the century under even the most favourable assumptions,' said
their 350-page report.

'Under the worst-case scenario, coral populations will collapse by 2100
and the re-establishment of coral reefs will be highly unlikely over the
following 200 to 500 years.'

The authors spent two years examining the effects of rising sea
temperatures on the reef for the Queensland tourism authorities and the
World Wide Fund for Nature (WWF).

Their report found no prospect of avoiding the 'chilling long-term
eventualities' of coral bleaching because greenhouse gases were already
warming the seas as part of a process it said would take decades to stop.

Warmer sea waters put corals under thermal stress, eventually causing them
to bleach and die. The report said this could occur if temperatures rose
by as little as 1 deg C, well below the two to six degrees that water
temperatures around the reef are expected to rise by over the next
century.

'There is no evidence that corals can adapt fast enough to match even the
lower projected temperature rise,' it found.

Organisms reliant on coral would become rare or even face extinction, the
report said.

It said the bleaching would cost the economy up to A$8 billion (S$10.7
billion) and 12,000 jobs by 2020 under the worst-case scenario.

Even under the best-case scenario, about 6,000 jobs would be lost and
tourists would be forced to visit 'Great Barrier Reef theme parks'
offshore to view the remaining coral.

The reef covers more than 345,000 sq km off Australia's north-east coast.
Consisting of 2,900 interlinked reefs, 900 islands and 1,500 fish species,
scientists consider it the world's largest living organism.

Yet the delicate habitat faces numerous environmental threats, including
chemical run-off from farms, over-fishing, bleaching and the parasitic
Crown-of-Thorns starfish which attacks coral.

The government announced plans in December to reduce farm run-off and ban
fishing in about a third of the reef in a bid to protect Australia's No.1
tourist drawcard.

But the report's authors said the government needed to do more. They
recommend that it ratifies the Kyoto protocol on reducing greenhouse gases
and takes the lead in emission reduction.

The WWF also said urgent measures must be put in place to minimise reef
damage and reduce greenhouse gases. -- AFP, Reuters

ethnicity and the varieties of capitalism

2004-02-21 Thread Eubulides

The power of the ethnic minority

Martin Jacques salutes Amy Chua's World on Fire, a book that faces up to
the true nature of globalisation

Saturday February 21, 2004
The Guardian

There is a plethora of books about globalisation, many saying roughly the
same thing. This one is different. It is rare, indeed, to read a book
about globalisation where ethnicity is at the core of the argument. That
must have something to do with the fact that the great majority of authors
of such books are white and from the west. The author of this book is a
Chinese-Filipina. That is also surprising because, alas, there is little
Chinese writing on ethnicity either. But this book is a gem. It is not
that everything Amy Chua argues is correct - it is not - but her theme is
different, rich and compelling.

Her starting point is that in many developing countries a small - often
very small - ethnic minority enjoys hugely disproportionate economic
power. As she points out, this is not true in the west: on the contrary,
we are accustomed to small ethnic minorities occupying exactly the
opposite situation, a very disadvantaged economic position. The classic
case is southeast Asia, where the Chinese, usually a tiny proportion of
the population, enjoy an overwhelmingly dominant economic position. In the
Philippines, the Chinese account for 1% of the population and well over
half the wealth. The same is true in varying degrees in Indonesia, Burma,
Thailand, Laos, Malaysia and Vietnam.

As Chua argues, rich and powerful minorities attract resentment
everywhere: but when those minorities are ethnically different - and
highly visible - then that resentment can carry a dangerous charge. In
the Philippines, millions of Filipinos work for Chinese: almost no Chinese
work for Filipinos. The Chinese dominate industry and commerce at every
level ... all of the Philippines' billionaires are of Chinese descent. By
contrast, all menial jobs ... are filled by Filipinos. There is very
little social intermixing and virtually no intermarriage. And the
disparities, Chua argues, have grown more acute with globalisation and
western-inspired market reforms.

Southeast Asia is an acute but by no means isolated example. Throughout
Latin America, a small white elite has traditionally enjoyed both economic
and political power, as well as cultural and racial pre-eminence. However,
while in east Asia anti-Chinese sentiment has long been a powerful
political force, in Latin America, at least until recently, there has been
little ethnic - as opposed to class - resentment against the white elite.
The dominance of a small white elite has long existed in southern Africa.
Although the black majority now enjoys - as do their counterparts in
countries such as Indonesia and Malaysia - political power in South
Africa, economic power remains firmly in the hands of a tiny white elite.
In east Africa, that economic elite is largely Indian; in west Africa, it
is often, though in a less extreme form, the Ibos. The picture that
emerges is that in much (though not all) of the developing world, economic
power is largely concentrated in the hands of - to use Chua's phrase - a
market-dominant ethnic minority.

She argues that this disparity between the economic power of a small
ethnic minority and the disadvantaged position of the majority ethnic
group is a source of great political instability. Ethnicity, as we know,
is potentially a highly combustible issue. That ethnicity can be at once
an artifact of human imagination and rooted in the dark recesses of
history - fluid and manipulable yet important enough to kill for [Chua's
aunt, who came from an extremely rich Chinese family in Manila, was
murdered by her Filipino chauffeur with the complicity of her Filipina
maids] - is what makes ethnic conflict so terrifyingly difficult to
understand and contain. As Chua rightly argues, the mass killing of
Tutsis by the Hutus in Rwanda in 1994 and the grievance felt by the Serbs
towards the Croats in the Balkans were partly related to the economic
advantage enjoyed by the Tutsis and Croats respectively, and the deep
rifts that this engendered.

One of the difficulties faced by many developing countries is ethnic
diversity of a scale utterly unfamiliar in the west, even the United
States. Africa is the most extreme example. The major exceptions to this
are China, Japan, South Korea and Taiwan, all relatively homogeneous,
ethnically speaking, and very successful economically. Chua argues that
globalisation has exacerbated the ethnic disparities in wealth in many
countries, with the market-dominant ethnic minorities, for a variety of
reasons, enjoying disproportionate rewards, thereby fostering growing
instability. This is liable - as happened in Indonesia with the fall of
Suharto and the anti-Chinese riots - to boil over at any time.

Further, she suggests that the western mantra of free markets plus
democracy is ill-conceived and a recipe for disaster in such
circumstances. Here the

Re: An interesting observation

2004-02-21 Thread Eubulides

- Original Message -
From: Sabri Oncu [EMAIL PROTECTED]
To: [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Sent: Saturday, February 21, 2004 9:10 PM
Subject: [PEN-L] An interesting observation

Friends,

Just go to www.google.com and do the following search:

corporate+governance

Also try this one:

corporate governance

Then see how many hits you get!

You may be surprised to see that the above two, at
least the first one, beat any of the following google
searches:

Karl Marx
Adam Smith
sociliasm
capitalism

I wonder why?

Sabri

My pen-l file gives 50 hits from 1-14-02 to present and that doesn't count
emails I've deleted. Does that count? :-

One of my favorites is below:

- Original Message -
From: Ian Murray [EMAIL PROTECTED]
To: [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Sent: Thursday, December 26, 2002 10:52 AM
Subject: [PEN-L:33423] Re: Local Government Rejects Corporate Personhood

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

 You want a justification for corporate personhood? It furthered what
you might euphemistically called economic development, and more
concretely corporate capitalist expansion. There's no secret that the
courts adopt rules that promote business interests all the time. Lots of
them are even quite up front about it. Is it bad for them to do that?
Depends, doesn't it. What the hell do you expect them to do, anyway?
They'rte not making or interpreting law for a socialist society. In a
socialist society, the courts will make socialist law.

=
Nay, because there can be  no such thing. The undemocratic bundle of
rights, privileges, immunities etc. that constitute contemporary
corporations make the label of personhood utterly beside the point[s].
The question for liberal jurisprudence is whether the State has an
obligation from refraining from allowing the design of institutions of
commerce that violate democratic norms and foster authoritarian and
oligarchic relations of production and the concomitant distribution of
wealth. Bracket for a moment the capitalism/socialism binary and ask
instead whether the State should make democratic law or
authoritarian/oligarchic law. Then retrieve the C/S binary.

To the extent that the State enables
http://lists.village.virginia.edu/~spoons/marxism/DefenseE.htm , the
need for a jurisprudence of insurgency, along with calls for a
constitutional convention to clear away the detritus wrought by the
National Paranoia State/Empire becomes ever more urgent. What's going on
in PA is not about some narrow interpretation of the Supremacy Clause or
semantic quibbling over the polysemy of 'corporate personhood.'

 As for circularity, the life of the law has not been logic, it has
been experience. I wish I'd said that, but Holmes beat me to it. This
isn't bad case of circularity, anyway. Maybe the first court to cite
Santa Clara as precedent was cheating to use it as precedent, I don't
know if what you say is true, but constitutional courts make up new
rules all the time. The constitution also doesn't say expressly that
state legislatures can't squelch political speech. It was made to say
that by the incorporation of the First Amendment. I assume you don't
have a problem with that one.

=

And Holmes statement is a euphemism for the life of the law has not
been freedom and justice, it has been power and domination. See the
recent bio of OWH Law Without Values: The Life, Work, and Legacy of
Justice Holmes by Albert Alschuler for an unflattering portrait.

 As for legislative precedent, you're talking the framer's intentions.
This is constitutional interpretation. The personhood is that of the
14th Amendment. Are you waxing originalist? And if you are, do you
suppose the Radical Republicans of 1866 would have had a problem with
corporate personhood? If, like me, you're kind of a textualist, the word
person is broad and ambiguous, and it's not crazy to read to include
suprahuman entities.
 jks

The framers are dead and the document they wrote is 90% in the grave
thanks to the path-dependency of the capitalist class treating the State
apparatus as a commodity, the National Paranoia Complex working
furiously to bring us a Panopticon beyond Bentham's wildest dreams as
well as a whole host of other life-hating technologies. As an espouser
of MS and liberal democratic norms in all spheres of social life, you
know in your bones that one of the big pieces of bringing that about is
dismantling the paradigm of corporate governance and you can't change
that without some serious insurgency at the edges of the law.

Ian

US: costs and benefits of Federal Regs.; request for comments

[Federal Register: February 20, 2004 (Volume 69, Number 34)]
[Notices]
[Page 7987-7988]
From the Federal Register Online via GPO Access [wais.access.gpo.gov]
[DOCID:fr20fe04-77]

===
---

OFFICE OF MANAGEMENT AND BUDGET


Draft 2004 Report to Congress on the Costs and Benefits of
Federal Regulations

AGENCY: Office of Management and Budget, Executive Office of the
President.

ACTION: Notice of availability and request for comments.

---

SUMMARY: OMB requests comments on 2004 Draft Report to Congress on the
Costs and Benefits of Federal Regulation. The full Draft Report is
available at
http://www.whitehouse.gov/omb/inforeg/regpol-reports_congress.html
, and is divided into two chapters. Chapter I presents

estimates of the costs and benefits of Federal regulation and
paperwork, with an emphasis on the major regulations issued between
October 1, 2002 and September 31, 2003. Chapter I also presents a
discussion of the impact of regulation on State, local, and tribal
governments, small businesses, wages, and economic growth. Chapter II
reviews the economics literature on the impacts of regulation on
manufacturing enterprises, and requests public nominations of
regulatory reforms relevant to this sector. Chapter II also requests
suggestions to simplify IRS paperwork requirements, which are
particularly burdensome for small businesses.

DATES: To ensure consideration of comments as OMB prepares this Draft
Report for submission to Congress, comments must be in writing and
received by May 20, 2004.

ADDRESSES: We are still experiencing delays in the regular mail,
including first class and express mail. To ensure that your comments
are received, we recommend that comments on this draft report be
electronically mailed to [EMAIL PROTECTED], or faxed to (202)
395-7245. You may also submit comments to Lorraine Hunt, Office of
Information and Regulatory Affairs, Office of Management and Budget,
NEOB, Room 10202, 725 17th Street, NW., Washington, DC 20503. For
Further Information, contact: Lorraine Hunt, Office of Information and
Regulatory Affairs, Office of Management and Budget, NEOB, Room 10202,
725 17th Street, NW., Washington, DC 20503. Telephone: (202) 395-3084.

SUPPLEMENTARY INFORMATION: Congress directed the Office of Management
and Budget (OMB) to prepare an annual Report to Congress on the Costs
and Benefits of Federal Regulations. Specifically, Section 624 of the
FY 2001 Treasury and General Government Appropriations Act, also known
as the ``'Regulatory Right-to-Know Act,''' (the Act) requires OMB to
submit a report on the costs and benefits of Federal regulations
together with recommendation for reform. The Act states that the report
should contain estimates of the costs and benefits of regulations in
the aggregate, by agency and agency program, and by major rule, as well
as an analysis of impacts of Federal regulation on State, local, and
tribal governments, small businesses, wages, and economic growth. The
Act also states that the report should go

[[Page 7988]]

through notice and comment and peer review.

John D. Graham,
Administrator, Office of Information and Regulatory Affairs.
[FR Doc. 04-3652 Filed 2-19-04; 8:45 am]

BILLING CODE 3110-01-U

Re: Brilliant analysis from a soft rock icon

Metallica

- Original Message -
From: Michael Perelman [EMAIL PROTECTED]
To: [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Sent: Friday, February 20, 2004 10:31 AM
Subject: Re: [PEN-L] Brilliant analysis from a soft rock icon

Pat Boone.

On Fri, Feb 20, 2004 at 01:04:56PM -0500, Louis Proyect wrote:
 Davis Meshano wrote:
 Mojo Nixon!  The greatest live performer in the history of rock n'
roll,
 and a libertarian to boot.  I could spend all day quoting Mojo Nixon.

 A libertarian? Wow! That leads to an interesting question. How many
other
 rightwingers made a living as rock-and-rollers? The only one I can think
of
 is Ted Nugent. Maybe you can include Stereolab as well. They were
hanging
 around Frank Furedi's cult for a while. Other than that, there's none
that
 come to mind.

 Louis Proyect
 Marxism list: www.marxmail.org

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

Tel. 530-898-5321
E-Mail michael at ecst.csuchico.edu

Re: Brilliant analysis from a soft rock icon

- Original Message -
From: David B. Shemano [EMAIL PROTECTED]

Neil Peart, the drummer for Rush, is famous for being a Randian, and their
album 2112 is basically Rand's novel Anthem.

=

NP has moved on from the cult of Rand and 2112 today sounds like Fox, CNBC
and MTV and their legions of couch potatoes.

We've taken care of everything
The words you hear, the songs you sing
The pictures that give pleasure to your eyes.


Ian [whose beloved is a pianist and drummer who loves NP]

AG: education, not outsourcing is the problem

Greenspan Warns Against 'Protectionist Cures'
By Martin Crutsinger
AP Economics Writer
Friday, February 20, 2004; 1:53 PM


WASHINGTON -- Federal Reserve Chairman Alan Greenspan warned on Friday
that protectionist cures being advanced to deal with the country's job
insecurities would make the situation worse.

Entering the politically charged debate over U.S. service jobs being
shipped overseas, Greenspan said that it was a lack of adequate
educational training rather outsourcing which posed the greatest threat
to future American prosperity.

Greenspan, speaking to the annual meeting of the Omaha Chamber of
Commerce, said that it was not surprising that there was a high level of
job insecurity in the country at present when more than 2 million people
in the work force have been unemployed for more than a year.

He predicted, as he did in congressional testimony last week, that the
strengthening economy should lead to stronger employment growth in the
months ahead.

We have reason to be confident that new jobs will displace old ones as
they always have, Greenspan said, but America's job-turnover process is
never without pain for those in the job-losing portion.

The issue of how -- how to create them, find them and keep them -- has
dominated the Campaign 2004 early primary season talk. Sen. John Edwards,
now the chief challenger to front-runner Sen. John Kerry, has sought to
highlight the issue repeatedly at various stops.

The Bush White House has backtracked on a forecast in the president's
economic report to Congress which said 2.6 million jobs should be created
this year.

Greenspan, without referring directly to the political campaign or the
individual candidates, said that the current anxiety about losing jobs to
other countries is not new. There were fears about losing jobs to low-wage
Japan in the 1950s and 1960s and to low-wage Mexico in the 1990s and more
recently to low-wage China, he said.

However, Greenspan also said the recent migration of service sector jobs,
such as employees working in telephone call centers, to India is a new
phenomenon. But he cautioned that any answer that involved erecting trade
barriers in this country would be wrong.

The protectionist cures being advanced to address these hardships will
make matters worse rather than better, he said.

Re: dems, etc

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


a week or so ago, Jim D. made the point with which I agree that some of
the Democrats
differ from the Republicans in that they take a larger time horizon.
Also, they can
represent different factions.  Historically, the Democrats favored Savings
and Loans;
the Republicans, banks.

But what do we have to gain by debating whether John Kerry is a real
progressive or
not?  I think we are all agreed on the answer.  I don't think anybody's
mind would be
changed whether it makes sense to support Anyone But Bush or not.

===

Amen. Isn't the following every damn bit as important as which factions of
the rich get to run and ruin a big slice of the North American continent
while making life horrendous for the rest of us on the planet?



http://www.economist.com/agenda/displayStory.cfm?story_id=2440367
ARGENTINA and the International Monetary Fund (IMF) go back a long way. In
1991, Argentina's foreign minister famously declared that he was seeking
carnal relations with Washington. The White House never fully requited
this desire. But the IMF has been in and out of bed with Argentina ever
since, offering advice (between 1991 and 2002, it sent around 50 missions
to the country) and money (at the beginning of this year, Argentina owed
the IMF $16 billion). In December 2001, of course, the couple endured the
messiest of break-ups. The IMF stopped pouring money into the defence of
Argentina's indefensible currency peg (at parity with the dollar);
Argentina defaulted, devalued the peso, and descended into economic and
political turmoil. Now the terms of its relationship with the Fund are
once again in flux.

Last September, the IMF agreed to lend Argentina $13.5 billion, handed out
in stages over three years, to help the country repay past loans. In
return, Argentina would reform its economy and negotiate in good faith
with the private creditors who hold $88 billion of sovereign debt it no
longer services. Next month, the IMF will review its progress and decide
whether or not to hand over the next slice of the funds. But Argentina is
not waiting passively for the Fund's approval. Néstor Kirchner, the
country's fiery president, has threatened not to repay $3 billion due to
the Fund on March 9th unless the IMF guarantees to keep sending the
cheques.

Such brinkmanship has become a habit for Mr Kirchner. In September, he
temporarily defaulted on a $2.9 billion payment due to the Fund. His
punishment? That $13.5 billion loan on relatively cushy terms. By
threatening to default on the IMF again, Mr Kirchner clearly feels he can
retain the upper hand in their relationship.

Mr Kirchner has proven equally high-handed with the country's private
creditors. He has offered to give them 25 cents-worth of fresh bonds for
every dollar of Argentine debt they hold. Pricing in unpaid interest and
the riskiness of the new bonds, bondholders face a haircut of 90% off
the full value of what they are owed. Until this week, Mr Kirchner also
kept the price of electricity and other utilities frozen at rates that
made sense only when the peso was still worth one dollar, not 34 cents as
it is now-despite inflation of around 40% in recent times. This amounts to
a default on contractual promises made to those utilities' shareholders.

Argentina's close-cropped creditors are outraged by their treatment. Some
are threatening to seize Argentine assets abroad. German creditors tried
to lay claim to an Argentine naval vessel. An Italian wanted to seize Mr
Kirchner's presidential jet. A Japanese investor reportedly has his eye on
parts of Patagonia, the southern Argentine region from which Mr Kirchner
hails. Earlier this month, NML Capital, an investor based in the Cayman
Islands which holds $172m in Argentine debt, won court orders to freeze
properties owned by the Argentine government in Washington, DC, and
Maryland.

Such gestures, however, are more an expression of creditors' anger than a
serious attempt to recoup their losses. Without an army to back it up, a
creditor will find most of a sovereign state's assets out of reach. Prior
to a default, as James Carville, a former adviser to President Bill
Clinton, has said, the bond market can intimidate anyone. Governments,
keen to borrow on favourable terms, will go to great lengths to maintain
their good standing in the capital markets. After a default, however, a
government no longer has any standing to worry about. It has nothing left
to lose.

What is at stake for Argentina is the timing and the terms of its
re-admittance to the global capital markets. But Argentina is in no rush.
Its current leaders complain that it has wasted much of the past decade
trying to make the country safe for foreign investors. By binding itself
to a currency board, pegging the peso to the dollar, Argentina let the ebb
and flow of foreign capital dictate its booms, of which it enjoyed two,
and its busts, the last of which

http://story.news.yahoo.com/news?tmpl=storycid=1518ncid=1518e=11u=/afp/20040219/bs_afp/china_forex_040219085615
Economists warn dramatic change in Chinese currency could spell disaster
Thu Feb 19, 3:56 AM ET

BEIJING, (AFP) - A growing number of economists are warning any dramatic
change in the Chinese currency could spell disaster for both China and the
world.

While a stronger yuan, also known as the renminbi, would do little for
developed economies, China itself would suffer, and financial crisis could
result in global markets, they said.

In an environment of heightened speculative enthusiasm, a sudden move in
the renminbi could incite intense speculation in the currency market,
Andy Xie, China economist for Morgan Stanley in Hong Kong, said in a
research note.

(This) may spark a major financial crisis in light of the massive
leverage that has built up in most asset classes during the current period
of a low Fed funds rate, he said.

China has pegged its currency at about 8.28 against the US dollar for the
past decade in a policy recently criticized by US politicians as costing
American jobs.

The central bank on Thursday denied financial authorities had decided for
a revaluation in the near future, calling reports to that effect
groundless.

The central bank statement, carried in the English-language China Daily,
also said the exchange rate system had served China well.

It is exactly under this exchange rate system that the renminbi
maintained its stability and fended off the impact from the Asian
financial crisis, it said.

The denials notwithstanding, Guan Tao, an official with China's State
Administration of Foreign Exchange, said he had already detected early
signs of speculative moves based on the foreign pressure on China.

Repeated American criticism has only encouraged flows of money into China
as investors bet Beijing would cave in and adjust the peg, Guan said in a
commentary in the state-controlled China Securities Journal.

China's own financial system would be far too fragile to cope with a
complete de-peg, according to Paul Coughlin, managing director of Standard
and Poor's Asia Pacific corporate and government ratings.

If there's a free float of the currency and removal of the exchange
controls... that would be very difficult for the banking system to
handle, he told a briefing in Beijing this week.

We think that would be very destabilizing for China's financial system.

But the ripple effects of a freely floating yuan could extend far beyond
the financial system, and cost jobs and incomes in the farthest corners of
China, observers warned.

If the earnings made from exports to American markets were to be worth
less in yuan terms, exporters in China's coastal areas would try to make
up for this by cutting wages.

Interior provinces depend on income remittance from their migrant workers
in the coastal export economy, Xie said.

Depressing the coastal export economy would have a more devastating
impact on the poor interior provinces.

Chinese Premier Wen Jiabao and central bank governor Zhou Xiaochuan both
have addressed the subject in what appears to be deliberately vague terms,
saying the yuan level would remain basically stable.

Some observers have interpreted this wording as an indication that a minor
revaluation, or widening of the current trading band in which the yuan
moves, is on the cards.

A scenario cited by some is for China to eventually peg its currency to a
basket of currencies, better reflecting the country's overall trading
relationships with the inclusion of, say, the euro and the yen.

While either solution would do little or nothing to shift production back
to the United States from China, they are at least feasible given the
current state of the Chinese economy, analysts said.

A small adjustment or a repegging of the currency to a basket of
currencies would not have a major impact, said S and P's Coughlin.

US: pensions; IBM loses case

2004-02-19 Thread Eubulides

http://www.latimes.com
IBM Loses Pension Ruling
A judge says 140,000 employees and retirees are entitled to back pay in a
'cash-balance' case.
By Kathy Kristof
Times Staff Writer

February 19, 2004

In a decision that could cost IBM Corp. billions of dollars, a federal
judge has ruled that the company must make retroactive payments to
employees and retirees who were hurt when IBM abandoned its traditional
pension plan.

The Feb. 12 ruling, released Wednesday, is the latest development in a
case that could ultimately affect hundreds of big companies that have
swapped traditional pensions for so-called cash-balance plans over the
last decade.

Technically this ruling only applies to these IBM employees, but the
implications are tremendous, said Karen Ferguson, director of the Pension
Rights Center in Washington. IBM has been the precedent setter in this
area all along. If the courts uphold this, this could be dynamite.

The case, filed in 1999, claimed that IBM discriminated against older,
long-serving employees when it replaced its pension program with a
cash-balance plan.

Cash-balance accounts are similar to 401(k) plans. Employers contribute
money into individual employee accounts that can be tapped at retirement;
traditional pensions guarantee a set monthly payment.

Older workers have complained that cash-balance plans don't give them
enough time to build solid nest eggs for retirement, and that thousands of
dollars in promised benefits are ripped away from them at a time when they
are least able to make up for the loss.

U.S. District Judge G. Patrick Murphy ruled last summer that IBM's
cash-balance plan was inherently discriminatory against older workers
under pension law. In his follow-up ruling last week, Murphy said 140,000
current and former IBM employees were entitled to retroactive payments for
retirement benefits they lost when the company converted to the new plan
in 1999.

Murphy did not rule on what that amount should be or how it would be
calculated. IBM has estimated that the ruling could cost the company $6
billion under one formula.

After the ruling was released, Armonk, N.Y.-based IBM saw its shares fall
95 cents to $98.42 on the New York Stock Exchange.

IBM argued in court that it should not be liable for back payments, saying
that it could not have foreseen that its cash-balance plan would be
declared illegal.

Our view is that retroactive remedies are not appropriate in this case,
said IBM spokeswoman Kendra Collins.

Murphy, based in East St. Louis, Ill., rejected that argument. The
prohibition against age discrimination existed long before the appearance
of cash-balance plans. All that has changed is IBM's clever, but
ineffectual, response to law that it finds too restrictive for its
business model, Murphy wrote.

The lead plaintiff in the class-action case was Kathi Cooper, a 24-year
IBM veteran from Bethalto, Ill.

What IBM has done is wrong, Cooper said by phone Wednesday. I hope and
pray for a successful outcome for the entire class, and there are about
140,000 of us now.

IBM has appealed Murphy's ruling that its retirement plan is
discriminatory, and plans to fight this one as well.

We stand by our defense and continue to believe that our pension is legal
and sound and that we will prevail on appeal, Collins said.

Collins could not say Wednesday whether the company had set aside reserves
to pay damages in the case, or whether any final judgment would come out
of the company's earnings.

The ruling is potentially devastating to IBM, said Paul Gewirtz, a
Cleveland-based pension consultant.

The wider question, he added, is whether it is devastating to all
cash-balance plans, which hundreds of companies have adopted across the
country.

Gewirtz believes that some cash-balance plans - most notably those that
provided all workers with the option of sticking with the traditional
pension or opting into the cash-balance system - will emerge unscathed.
But, companies that forced their workers to join the plan, as IBM did, may
 not. There are probably millions of employees in this situation, he
added.

Companies such as IBM have shifted to cash-balance plans to save money in
retirement costs. Advantages include the ability of workers to take their
cash-balance account to another company when they change jobs.

But the conversions have come under criticism from employee advocates, who
say companies typically play up the advantages of these plans, while
downplaying the disadvantages.

Dozens of employee lawsuits are pending, pension experts note.

Meanwhile, the Bush administration has proposed legislation that would
provide a new legal formula to allow cash-balance conversions while
providing some safeguards for older employees.

Re: Import-led development as a source of economic growth ?

2004-02-19 Thread Eubulides

- Original Message -
From: Jurriaan Bendien [EMAIL PROTECTED]



... the Chinese trade surplus from its export to the United States has a
quadrupling effect on added US gross domestic product (GDP). In other
words,
for every dollar of US trade deficit in favor of China, the US economy
registers $4 of additional GDP in value-adding services, such as
marketing,
distribution and retail markup, trade and consumer financing, etc.

Source: http://www.atimes.com/atimes/global_economy/EA10Dj01.html



Well, if 60-75 cents of every $ of imports from China to the US are
from-to US firms [intrafirm commodity chains] that are located there why
should we insist on seeing contemporary trade accounting flows/identities
as first and foremost having to do with nations simply by virtue of the
path dependency of methodological convention[s]? Better reporting
requirements and methods of accounting for and analyzing intrafirm flows
are needed than the ones we have now in order to understand the
contradictions of trade deficits.

Ian

Re: new frontiers of property rights theory in China

2004-02-18 Thread Eubulides

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



Is there a shadow of socialism or social democracy left in China?

=

One party rule and the penal code...

Ian

USG vs. Skilling

2004-02-18 Thread Eubulides

Skilling Indictment Expected Today
Former Chief Executive Would Be Highest-Ranking Enron Defendant

By Carrie Johnson
Washington Post Staff Writer
Thursday, February 19, 2004; Page E01


Federal prosecutors are expected to announce an indictment of former Enron
Corp. chief executive Jeffrey K. Skilling today, according to sources
familiar with the investigation.

Skilling, 50, has been a central focus of a two-year-old investigation
into alleged widespread earnings manipulation at the Houston energy firm.
As Enron's chief operating officer and later its top executive, he worked
closely with subordinates to develop accounting policies and set profit
targets.

Called to testify before Congress in early 2002, a few months after
Enron's collapse into bankruptcy, Skilling said the company was on solid
financial ground when he resigned that August. That sworn testimony drew
intense scrutiny from the Justice Department's Enron Task Force and
regulators at the Securities and Exchange Commission.

The charges are likely to mirror a separate criminal case the government
filed against former Enron chief accounting officer Richard A. Causey last
month. Prosecutors accuse Causey of taking part in a conspiracy to prop up
Enron's stock price by hiding debt, overvaluing assets, and misusing cash
reserve accounts. They also are seeking forfeiture of allegedly ill-gotten
gains from Enron stock sales. Causey pleaded not guilty to the charges and
his lawyers said he will vigorously fight them in court.

Skilling's lawyer, Bruce M. Hiler, did not return calls yesterday. Last
week he said his client acted on advice from dozens of lawyers,
accountants, and subordinates, who approved Enron's complex business deals
and accounting maneuvers.

If a COO can be indicted on transactions that dozens of experts reviewed
and recommended to the company's board, then no COO should go to work
tomorrow, Hiler said in a written statement.

To build their case against Skilling, prosecutors are relying in part on
information provided by Enron's former chief financial officer, Andrew S.
Fastow, who pleaded guilty to conspiracy last month, and David W.
Delainey, the former head of two big Enron divisions, who pleaded guilty
to insider trading in October 2003.

Sworn accounts by Enron insiders will help to simplify the complex case
for the jury, legal experts said.

At the end of the day, there are people who will tie this [prosecution]
up and paint a bigger, global picture of misdeeds at Enron and Skilling's
alleged involvement in them, said Kirby D. Behre of Washington, a former
prosecutor who defends corporate executives.

Behre noted, however, that the motives of cooperating witnesses are likely
to be plumbed by defense lawyers in vigorous cross-examination.

The government continues to examine what former Enron chairman Kenneth L.
Lay knew about the company's financial problems at the same time he made
optimistic public statements about Enron and sold its stock. Defense
lawyers for Lay said he was kept in the dark by subordinates.

U.S.-Andean Free Trade Agreement; intent to initiate negotiations; hearing and comment request,

2004-02-17 Thread Eubulides

[Federal Register: February 17, 2004 (Volume 69, Number 31)]
[Notices]
[Page 7532-7534]
From the Federal Register Online via GPO Access [wais.access.gpo.gov]
[DOCID:fr17fe04-142]

===
---

OFFICE OF THE UNITED STATES TRADE REPRESENTATIVE


Request for Comments and Notice of Public Hearing Concerning
Proposed United States-Andean Free Trade Agreement

AGENCY: Office of the United States Trade Representative.

ACTION: Notice of intent to initiate negotiations on a free trade
agreement between the United States and Colombia, Peru, Ecuador, and
Bolivia (hereinafter ``the Andean countries''), request for comments,
and notice of public hearing.

---

SUMMARY: The United States intends to initiate negotiations with four
Andean countries on a free trade agreement. The interagency Trade
Policy Staff Committee (TPSC) will convene a public hearing and seek
public comment to assist the United States Trade Representative (USTR)
in amplifying and clarifying negotiating objectives for the proposed
agreement and to provide advice on how specific goods and services and
other matters should be treated under the proposed agreement.

DATES: Persons wishing to testify orally at the hearing must provide
written notification of their intention, as well as their testimony, by
March 10, 2004. A hearing will be held in Washington, DC, beginning on
March 17, 2004, and will continue as necessary on subsequent days.
Written comments are due by noon, March 30, 2004.

ADDRESSES: Submissions by electronic mail: [EMAIL PROTECTED] (notice of
intent to testify and written testimony); [EMAIL PROTECTED] (written
comments).
Submissions by facsimile: Gloria Blue, Executive Secretary, Trade
Policy Staff Committee, at (202) 395-6143.
The public is strongly encouraged to submit documents
electronically rather than by facsimile. (See requirements for
submissions below.)

FOR FURTHER INFORMATION CONTACT: For procedural questions concerning
written comments or participation in the public hearing, contact Gloria
Blue, Executive Secretary, Trade Policy Staff Committee,

[[Page 7533]]

at (202) 395-3475. All other questions should be directed to Bennett
Harman, Deputy Assistant U.S. Trade Representative for Latin America,
at (202) 395-9446.

SUPPLEMENTARY INFORMATION:

1. Background

Under section 2104 of the Bipartisan Trade Promotion Authority Act
of 2002 (TPA Act) (19 U.S.C. 3804), for agreements that will be
approved and implemented through TPA procedures, the President must
provide the Congress with at least 90 days written notice of his intent
to enter into negotiations and must identify the specific objectives
for the negotiations. Before and after the submission of this notice,
the President must consult with appropriate Congressional committees
and the Congressional Oversight Group regarding the negotiations. Under
the Trade Act of 1974, as amended, the President must (i) afford
interested persons an opportunity to present their views regarding any
matter relevant to any proposed agreement, (ii) designate an agency or
inter-agency committee to hold a public hearing regarding any proposed
agreement, and (iii) seek the advice of the U.S. International Trade
Commission (ITC) regarding the probable economic effects on U.S.
industries and consumers of the removal of tariffs and non-tariff
barriers on imports pursuant to any proposed agreement.
On November 18, 2003, after consulting with relevant Congressional
committees and the Congressional Oversight Group, the USTR notified the
Congress that the President intends to initiate free trade agreement
negotiations with the Andean countries and identified specific
objectives for the negotiations. In addition, the USTR has requested
the ITC's probable economic effects advice. This notice solicits views
from the public on these negotiations and provides information on a
hearing, which will be conducted pursuant to the requirements of the
Trade Act of 1974.

2. Public Comments and Testimony

To assist the Administration as it continues to develop its
negotiating objectives for the proposed agreement, the Chairman of the
TPSC invites written comments and/or oral testimony of interested
persons at a public hearing. Comments and testimony may address the
reduction or elimination of tariffs or non-tariff barriers on any
articles provided for in the Harmonized Tariff Schedule of the United
States (HTSUS) that are products of one of the Andean countries, any
concession which should be sought by the United States, or any other
matter relevant to the proposed agreement. The TPSC invites comments
and testimony on all of these matters and, in particular, seeks
comments and testimony addressed to:
(a) General and commodity-specific negotiating objectives for the
proposed agreement.
(b)

new frontiers of price theory

2004-02-17 Thread Eubulides

washingtonpost.com
Cattlemen Awarded $1.28B in Tysons Lawsuit
By Kyle Winfield
Associated Press Writer
Tuesday, February 17, 2004; 3:23 PM

MONTGOMERY, Ala. -- A federal court jury awarded $1.28 billion Tuesday to
a group of cattlemen after finding that the nation's largest beef packer,
Tyson Fresh Meats Inc., had unfairly manipulated cattle prices.

Attorneys for Tyson Fresh Meats said they planned to appeal the class
action verdict.

Cattlemen from across the country filed suit in 1996 against Tyson, known
then as IBP Inc., claiming the company used contracts with a select few
beef producers to create a captive supply of cattle.

The plaintiffs said Tyson relied on this captive supply when cattle prices
were high and entered the cash market for cattle only when prices were
low -- thereby depressing cattle prices.

This verdict represents an extraordinary day for cattlemen in this
country, said the cattlemen's attorney, Randy Beard of Guntersville.

Tyson attorney Thomas C. Green, however, said there are a lot of
problems with the jury's decision.

In my view, it's incompatible and inconsistent with the evidence, Green
said. I suspect that there will be a lot more to say about this verdict
before it's all over.

Visiting senior U.S. District Judge Lyle Strom must decide any injunctive
actions against the company. Cattlemen's attorney David Domina said Strom
likely will wait until after similar trials in Nebraska involving two
other large packers: Swift  Co. and Excel Corp.

The cattlemen will ask Strom to issue an injunction requiring that a
substantial amount of the nation's cattle are bought on the cash market,
not with contracts.

IBP merged with Arkansas-based Tyson Foods Inc. in 2001.

The trial lasted about a month and jurors deliberated for about four days
before returning the verdict.

Eight years have passed since six cattlemen filed a class-action lawsuit
on behalf of up to 30,000 producers who sold cattle to Tyson in the cash
market from February 1994 to October 2002.

The exact size of the class is unknown, and Tyson contends it is much
smaller than 30,000.

Central to the cattlemen's claim is Tyson's use of marketing agreements in
which cattle producers pledge to ship a certain number of cattle to a
packer. The plaintiffs contend Tyson used those agreements to drive prices
down, threatening the livelihood of thousands of ranchers.

Tyson countered that even though it buys roughly one-third of the 30
million cattle sold to U.S. packers each year, that share of the market
does not allow the company to set the market price.

An Auburn University agricultural economist testified that Tyson's
contracts had driven down cattle prices by 5.1 percent, or about $2.1
billion, during the eight-year class period. The defense countered with
two economists who claimed the Auburn professor's model greatly
exaggerated the plaintiffs' alleged loss.

God's banker

2004-02-17 Thread Eubulides

http://news.independent.co.uk/europe/story.jsp?story=492409
Calvi murder linked to missing $70m
By Peter Popham in Rome
18 February 2004


A portion of the huge treasure which the man known as God's banker,
Roberto Calvi, was desperately trying to trace when he was murdered has
been found in banks in the Bahamas.

Amounting to $70m (£37m), the money has been in limbo since June 1982 when
Calvi was found hanged under Blackfriars Bridge in London. His Banco
Ambrosiano had gone bust some months before owing hundreds of millions of
dollars to the Vatican, Sicilian Mafia gangs and many others. Declared by
the original coroner's inquest to be suicide, Calvi's death is now
believed to have been murder and four suspects are expected to go on trial
in Italy.

The new development in the joint Anglo-Italian investigation into the
Calvi affair was leaked to Rome's La Repubblica newspaper yesterday.
According to Luca Tescaroli and Anna Maria Monteleone, the Roman
prosecutors leading the Italian side of the investigation, a sum of about
$70m has been unearthed in several bank accounts in the Bahamas, funds
which it is believed that Calvi was trying desperately to recover at the
time of his death.

When Calvi's corpse was found hanging under Blackfriars Bridge, his coat
pockets were packed with bricks but there were no traces of brick dust on
his hands. His death came shortly after the bank, which had close ties
with the Mafia, the Vatican and a powerful Italian Masonic lodge counting
many top politicians among its members, collapsed with debts of £800m.

City of London Police have said the murder was being actively
investigated using forensic techniques not available at the time of his
death.

Calvi died after being implicated in Italy's biggest post-war banking
scandal. His death was initially recorded by a British coroner as suicide.
However, following protests from his family a second inquest took place
recording an open verdict.

The breakthrough persuading police to reopen the Calvi case came last year
, when a panel of forensic scientists commissioned by a Rome tribunal
concluded that he was killed. It has since been claimed that he was
murdered by the Mafia as punishment for failing to look after their money,
as well as to shut his mouth permanently.

The Italian investigators believe the funds located in the Bahamas are
part of the money Calvi was desperately trying to recover in order to
stave off disaster. They think it could be part of the proceeds of a huge
laundering operation undertaken by Calvi on behalf of Colombia's Medellin
drug lords.

The investigators claim that tens of millions of dollars left Colombia and
passed through various banks in the US before showing up in the branch of
the Banco Ambrosiano in Nassau, capital of the Bahamas. This was where the
investigators of Italy's Direzione Investigativa Antimafia and a cell of
the Milan office of the Guardia di Finanza, the tax police, recently
succeeded in identifying the funds.

The exact provenance and intended eventual destination of the $70m that
has been located is not yet fully understood.

The new development in the investigation was made possible by an
investigation carried out some years ago by the FBI, the investigators
say. By following a paper trail of drug money from the Medellin cartel,
which led through banks in Italy and in other countries, investigators
succeeded in finding $70m transferred to the Banco Ambrosiano branch in
Florida.

It is claimed that Calvi created a network of contactsin south America,
with politicians, bankers, and traffickers who trusted his ability to
launder money gained from the cocaine traffic of the Colombian mafia.

Sources who were close to him maintain that he knew everything about the
intricate financial manoeuvres in high places in Italy, including the
Institute for Religious Works, the private bank of the Vatican.

A witness who testified to the Italian investigators recently maintained
that during the time that Calvi was in detention - from May to July
1981 - and again immediately after his release, many were actively trying
to remove him from Italy, because he was a danger to everybody. He was
the man who knew too much.

Japan: a look at the labor process

2004-02-16 Thread Eubulides

THE ZEIT GIST

Enduring life in the Japanese company
You're not alone if you find working for a Japanese 'kaisha' difficult

By KAORI SHOJI
The Japan Times: Feb. 17, 2004

It's probably just as difficult to find a happily employed Westerner in a
Japanese company as it is to find weapons of mass destruction in Iraq.

Please correct me if I'm wrong, but I have yet to come across a Western
worker who has found the Japanese workplace to be comfortable, inspiring,
psychologically fulfilling or ultimately rewarding.

They point out the structural rigidity, lack of personal office space per
person, the breakdown in communications, the antiquated protocol
masquerading as tradition, the general mistreatment of female staff, to
name just a few.

The Japanese kaisha (company) is just plain yucky.

But to any non-Japanese who has ever felt compelled to voice these
feelings, I offer, by way of apology and regret, the reassurance: don't
worry, the Japanese feel exactly the same way.

The Japanese view of the kaisha is similar to how President George W. Bush
described marriage in his State of the Union address -- an enduring
institution.

Or maybe just an institution for endurance.

My friend Satomi, now working 10 years for the same publishing house in
Jimbocho, says every work day is about bearing up: See all these gray
hairs? That's what working for that kaisha has done to me.

Satomi has seriously considered quitting at least 30 times in her career.
She bitches endlessly to anyone willing to listen.

But deep down, she knows she'll never leave. Her discomfort with her job
has come full circle so that now she's actually (perversely) comfortable.

She's okay with the yuckiness and knows how to cope, yes, much like a
marriage.

For the American (or the westernized) this logic is worse than alien, it's
defeatist. The Westernized want things to improve, to work. They cannot
comprehend the reason why changes and adjustments so clearly for the
better, take such a long time in coming or don't come at all.

Why do things take such time in a Japanese company? Why does management
always sidestep the most important issues and go off (seemingly
arbitrarily) on another tangent?

Why, why, why?

The Japanese are also beating their heads on that gray, cold concrete wall
but there's a deep-seated resignation passed down through the generations,
that the individual can never win against the kaisha and besides the
individual never counted in the first place.

What's more important is that the institution will survive, since it's the
institution that's directly plugged into the Japanese economy: the closest
thing we have to a national identity. So they beat their heads but they'll
also go about doing business as usual.

And whatever changes are brought about come at the slow, labored pace of a
snail that has suffered a stroke.

The fact is, the Japanese often look for job satisfaction in ways that
have no direct connections with the job itself.

For example, there is the enormous emphasis on douki (colleagues who had
entered the company in the same year). A douki is a cross between sibling
and comrade -- the unwritten agreement is that all douki will stick
together, whatever happens.

They work together, organize drinking parties, invite each other to their
weddings, keep in touch and communicate for decades, often until
retirement.

Never mind that some of your douki can be royal pains in the lower
extremities. The mere fact that you and these people all became employees
at the same time enhances affection and excuses the bumps. It's the shared
memories you see, of having cut your teeth at the same time.

Other things they look forward to in the workday are things like ocha
(tea or coffee break) in the mornings, often immediately after clocking
into work.

The Japanese office may claim to start business at 9 a.m. sharp but in
actuality, no one really feels like work until 10 or 10:30.

First, they observe the ritual of going off to the local coffee shop for a
quick mooningu (morning breakfast service) and reading the paper,
smoking and chatting, before moseying back to the office.

This deliberate procrastination slows up the workday, which is largely the
reason for people having to linger around until 8 or 9 p.m. before they
get the resolve to board the train for home.

One American lawyer working for a Japanese shosha (trading house) was so
incensed at what she saw as an unnecessary frittering away of time, that
she circulated an elaborate office memo that exhorted people to start at
9, be as productive as possible during the day and finish by 6.

It was politely acknowledged but ultimately ignored.

It's ridiculous, she says. Much of the famed 13-hour workdays can be
remedied if only people will change their work habits, which they simply
refuse to do.

She also resented that much of office communications and relationships
depended on informal camaraderie fostered outside the workplace (i.e.,
pubs and cafes): it's unfair to those

Re: Bhagwati's defense of Mankiw

2004-02-16 Thread Eubulides

- Original Message -
From: Julio Huato [EMAIL PROTECTED]



If you think that I am exaggerating, let me cite you just one telling
example.  As regards intellectual property protection (IPP), demanded
insistently by the United States and then by other rich countries, most
economists believe that having patents at twenty-year length (as put into
the WTO) is, from the viewpoint of worldwide efficiency, suboptimal, just
as
having no patents almost certainly is also.  Many also consider it to be a
transfer from most of the poor countries to the rich ones and hence as an
item that does not belong to the WTO, whose organizing principle should be
the inclusion of mutually gainful transactions, as indeed noncoercive
trade
is.  But the only institution whose staff was allowed to write clearly and
skeptically about it at the time of the Uruguay Round was the GATT,
whereas
the World Bank played along with IPP, even trying to produce reasons why
it
was good for the poor countries.  Even now, despite all the talk about
poverty alleviation, the World Bank's staff, research, and aid are being
used, I suspect, in a way that, instead of calling into serious doubt the
economic logic of IPP, can be interpreted as contributing to the know-how
that will eventually enable rich countries to get poor countries to set up
administrative machinery to enforce intellectual property rights for the
benefit of the rich countries.


=

What I don't get is how he can look at that one example as an exemplar of
lobbying-cum rent seeking and yet not see that capitalism is littered with
so many examples of the same throughout it's history as to raise so many
legitimation issues even for a cultured academic technocrat such as
himself who might, perhaps, believe in the deep concordance between
liberal democracy and capitalism.


So, at the outset, we must ask: can we think of politics anywhere without
cronies? Political cronies are, of course, the politicians' friends and
supporters. We call them friends here and cronies over there. After all,
we write the script and the check. But that does not alter the facts as we
find them.

Thus, does President Clinton not have his cronies? Surely they include
Barbara Streisand, Alec Baldwin, Kim Basinger and Steven Spielberg in
Hollywood. There are others he befriends on Wall Street. His new home in
Chappaqua was to be financed , until public exposure and outcry threw a
spanner in the works, by an indirect loan from a well-known crony, Mr.
Terry MacAuliffe. One can therefore well imagine that an Asian
intellectual, looking at Washington, would find our politicians with
cronies just the way we find politicians with cronies in Asia. The play is
the same; only the actors differ.
http://www.columbia.edu/~jb38/crony_cap.pdf


**

Insert and/or substitute economist[s] in the quote below and one wonders
what kind of cognitive dissonances JB goes through after seeing so much of
his own hard labor being smashed on the rocks of rent-seeking...



From A Claire Cutler's Private Power and Global Authority: Transnational
Merchant Law in the Global Political Economy

A knowledge structure that privileges expert knowledge through the
juridification, pluralization, and privatization of international
commercial relations and the operation of liberal-inspired commercial laws
that reify the autonomous 'legal subject' provide the ideological
foundation for assumptions concerning the inherent superiority of private
legal ordering in the regulation of international commerce. A mercatocracy
of lawyers, merchants, corporations, and governments maintains this
thought structure by limiting entry to lawyers trained to believe in the
superiority of private law. It works through both consensual and coercive
methods to silence voices of dissent. Corporate global hegemony operates
ideologically by removing private international law from critical scrutiny
and review, producing apparently consensual private arrangements. However,
these arrangements, in fact, operate coercively in that they reinscribe
asymmetrical power relations between buyers and sellers, employers and
workers, insurers and insured, lenders and borrowers, shipowners and cargo
in their contractual arrangements and the very fabric of the law. The
apparent consensual nature of these 'private' relationships contributes to
their characterization as neutral and apolitical, inhibiting the
development of a critical understanding of private international
law...Global authority is increasingly resting upon fragile foundations as
competing social forces contest their peripheralization and
marginalization in the global political economy. The inability of the
mercatocracy to bind these segments by delivering on the rhetoric of
globalization and promises of efficiencies, economic development, and
justice suggests the emergence of an historic bloc based on fraud. To
Gramsci, supremacy based on fraud signals a 'crisis of

Gordon Brown and the ever failing anti-poverty paradigm

2004-02-16 Thread Eubulides

http://news.independent.co.uk/uk/politics/story.jsp?story=492148
Brown: We are 150 years off our targets in tackling world poverty
By Ben Russell and Philip Thornton
17 February 2004


Gordon Brown warned that key global targets for reducing poverty by 2015
might not be met for 150 years as he made an impassioned plea to world
leaders yesterday to double aid to the poorest countries.

The Chancellor used a conference of diplomats and aid organisations in
London to warn that urgent action was needed to have any chance of hitting
the millennium goals for halving poverty, cutting child deaths and
improving education in the Third World by 2015.

He said: If we let things slip, the millennium goals will become just
another dream we once had, and we will indeed be sitting back on our sofas
and switching on our TVs and, I am afraid, watching people die on our
screens for the rest of our lives. We will be the generation that betrayed
its own heart.

Mr Brown called on the international community to support British
proposals for a new international finance facility (IFF), to double aid
from $50bn (£26bn) to $100bn a year, and urged developed nations to take
action on international trade.

His comments will raise expectations for Britain's presidency of the G8
industrialised nations next year, which Tony Blair has pledged to make a
development presidency.

The Chancellor's speech was welcomed by campaigners yesterday, but
opposition MPs and aid groups warned that Britain must do more to increase
aid spending and open world markets to developing countries.

Mr Brown said that progress towards key millennium development goals for
2015 was so slow that in some parts of the world they would take more than
a century to achieve at current rates. He said: On current forecasts,
sub-Saharan Africa will achieve our target for reducing child mortality
not by 2015 but by 2165. This is not good enough. The promise we made was
for 2015, not 2165.

He said that the first target of the millennium development goals - to
ensure by 2005 that girls are given the same opportunities in education as
boys - would be missed, while targets to establish universal primary
education by 2015 would not be met until 2129 at current rates.

Mr Brown also warned of slow progress towards targets for halving the
proportion of people living in extreme poverty in some parts of the world,
saying that: Our best estimate is that it will not be achieved in
sub-Saharan Africa for more than 100 years. Bono, the Irish rock star,
called on delegates, who included the Live Aid founder Bob Geldof, to
dramatise the cause of world poverty just asGeldof had dramatised the
plight of Africa nearly 20 years ago. We need to get people on to the
streets asking why we are breaking these promises, he said.

He told Mr Brown: At a moment like this we need some very big ideas. You
and Tony need to be the Lennon and McCartney of progressive geopolitics.
What we need here is not love. All we need here is cash.

Lord Carey, the former Archbishop of Canterbury, who hosted yesterday's
event at the Treasury, contrasted the £2.3bn spent in England on pet food
and pet care products in 2002 and the $700bn spent by Americans on
beverages with the money allocated for alleviating poverty.

John Bercow, the shadow International Development Secretary, said: While
the developed world practises protectionism on a grotesque scale it is
hardly surprising that the poorest countries in the world cannot compete.
It is time for the OECD to slash distorting subsidies, cut trade barriers
and offer the poorest people on the planet a decent deal.

UN goals for 2015

Halve the number living on $1 a day or suffering from hunger
VERDICT: Some progress
Ensure all children complete primary schooling
VERDICT: Failing
End disparity in education between girls and boys
VERDICT: Failing
Cut death rate in under-fives by two-thirds
VERDICT: Failing
Reduce maternal mortality by three-quarters
VERDICT: Failing
Halt spread of Aids and other major diseases
VERDICT: Failing
Halve the number living without access to drinking water
VERDICT: Failing
Develop global partnership for development
VERDICT: Failing

Re: Bhagwati's defense of Mankiw

2004-02-15 Thread Eubulides

- Original Message -
From: E. Ahmet Tonak [EMAIL PROTECTED]



Any reaction to the following op-ed defense of Mankiw by Bhagwati.  I
observe two flaws:




[EMAIL PROTECTED]

http://www.columbia.edu/~jb38/

Professor Jagdish N. Bhagwati
University Professor
COLUMBIA UNIVERSITY
New York, NY 10027
United States of America


A few months after Seattle was shut down, Bhagwati and Herman Daly
revisited the city and held a public debate at Town Hall. JB belittled the
audience, misrepresented Daly's views in order to engage in point scoring
and dismissed questions from the audience with an inordinate amount of
hand waving --all questions had to be written on 3 x 5 cards after N30
lest people ask long, difficult questions or use the opportunity for a
rant.


Ian

US: a little bit of candor

2004-02-14 Thread Eubulides

Today, only 35,000 companies provide defined benefit pension plans,
which is less than a quarter of the plans available 20 years ago. That
is a big loss. Given the volatility we have seen in the stock market
over the last few years, more employees would benefit from having the
opportunity to earn secure, predictable pension benefits.
  I stand ready to work with my colleagues to address the other
important issues facing companies that are interested in providing
defined benefit pension plans. For example, Congress ought to
reconsider the funding rules to ensure that companies are able to
invest appropriately in their pension plans when business is good and
profits are strong. We also need to consider ways to strengthen the
Pension Benefit Guaranty Corporation which, to say the very least, is
stretched dangerously thin. ['Pete' Rockefeller]
http://frwebgate4.access.gpo.gov/cgi-bin/waisgate.cgi?WAISdocID=78349625452+9+0+0WAISaction=retrieve
[Congressional Record: January 27, 2004 (Senate)]
[Page S270-S278]
From the Congressional Record Online via GPO Access [wais.access.gpo.gov]
[DOCID:cr27ja04-112]

Re: FT: Protecting Sugar

2004-02-14 Thread Eubulides

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



[What's interesting here is the listing of precise numbers each special
interest contributed to produce this result.  I wonder if we'll see more
of this in articles like this now that everyone can just look it up in
Charles Lewis's book _The Selling of the President_.  It makes very clear
the economic rationality of campaign contributions, and the complete
absurdity of talking about the rationality of the market in reference to a
system in they determine policy.]

[And of course the US is not unique in this.  Every national economy is
only half of a political economy, and every political system is
manipulated like this or worse.  The idea of a self-regulating market is
as unreal as the idea of a bodiless mind.  If only we had articles like
this every day that made it this obvious.]



[W]hat business men and economists really meant by *laissez-faire* was;
prevent everybody else at home and abroad from doing as *they* please, in
order that we may do as we please with what we claim as our own. [John
Commons The Economics of Collective Action]

*Political Value*, the value added by advantageous treatment from
politicians, whether legislators, judges, executives, or administrative
boards, in the exercise of the several powers of sovereignty, in so far as
this value exceeds that of the ordinary lawfulness and exposure to
competition out of which the value of going plant or goodwill emerges. As
a use-value this political value does not usually represent an additional
service to customers, creditors, or laborers, inspiring their confidence,
loyalty or patronage, but it is rather the superior privilege emanating
from the blunders, corruption or wisdom of public officials, as shown in
the tax exemption bonuses, special franchises, inside information,
judicial opinion, and similar exercise of royal prerogative or the modern
sovereignty superior to that received by competitors who enjoy only
ordinary lawfulness. [John Commons The Legal Foundations of Capitalism]

Like it or not, Governments are in the business of selling protection.
[can't find the author of this one in my piles/files]

Or as we say in Seattle, free trade for thee but not for me!

Ian

US: pension rules and interest rates

[Federal Register: February 13, 2004 (Volume 69, Number 30)]
[Notices]
[Page 7265-7266]
From the Federal Register Online via GPO Access [wais.access.gpo.gov]
[DOCID:fr13fe04-128]

===
---

PENSION BENEFIT GUARANTY CORPORATION


Required Interest Rate Assumption For Determining Variable-Rate
Premium; Interest Assumptions for Multiemployer Plan Valuations
Following Mass Withdrawal

AGENCY: Pension Benefit Guaranty Corporation.

ACTION: Notice of interest rates and assumptions.

---

SUMMARY: This notice informs the public of the interest rates and
assumptions to be used under certain Pension Benefit Guaranty
Corporation regulations. These rates and assumptions are published
elsewhere (or can be derived from rates published elsewhere), but are
collected and published in this notice for the convenience of the
public. Interest rates are also published on the PBGC's Web site
(http://www.pbgc.gov).

The PBGC notes that the provisions of the Job Creation and Worker
Assistance Act of 2002 that temporarily increased the required interest
rate to be used to determine the PBGC's variable-rate premium to 100%
(from 85%) of the annual yield on 30-year Treasury securities expired
at the end of 2003. Thus, the required interest rate announced in this
notice for plan years beginning in February 2004 has been determined
under prior law. Legislation has been proposed that would further
change the rules for determining the required interest rate. If such
legislation is adopted, and the change affects the required interest
rate for plan years beginning in February 2004, the PBGC will promptly
publish a Federal Register notice with the new required interest rate
and post the change on the PBGC's Web site.

DATES: The required interest rate for determining the variable-rate
premium under part 4006 applies to premium payment years beginning in
February 2004. The interest assumptions for performing multiemployer
plan valuations following mass withdrawal under part 4281 apply to
valuation dates occurring in March 2004.

FOR FURTHER INFORMATION CONTACT: Harold J. Ashner, Assistant General
Counsel, Office of the General Counsel, Pension Benefit Guaranty
Corporation, 1200 K Street, NW., Washington, DC 20005, 202-326-4024.
(TTY/TDD users may call the Federal relay service toll-free at 1-800-
877-8339 and ask to be connected to 202-326-4024.)

SUPPLEMENTARY INFORMATION:

Variable-Rate Premiums

Section 4006(a)(3)(E)(iii)(II) of the Employee Retirement Income
Security Act of 1974 (ERISA) and Sec. 4006.4(b)(1) of the PBGC's
regulation on Premium Rates (29 CFR part 4006) prescribe use of an
assumed interest rate (the ``required interest rate'') in determining a
single-employer plan's variable-rate premium. The required interest
rate is the ``applicable percentage'' (currently 85 percent) of the
annual yield on 30-year Treasury securities for the month preceding the
beginning of the plan year for which premiums are being paid (the
``premium payment year''). (Although the Treasury Department has ceased
issuing 30-year securities, the Internal Revenue Service announces a
surrogate yield figure each month--based on the 30-year Treasury bond
maturing in February 2031--which the PBGC uses to determine the
required interest rate.) The required interest rate to be used in
determining variable-rate premiums for premium payment years beginning
in February 2004 is 4.23 percent (i.e., 85 percent of the 4.98 percent
yield figure for January 2004).
The PBGC notes that the provisions of the Job Creation and Worker
Assistance Act of 2002 that temporarily increased the required interest
rate to be used to determine the PBGC's variable-rate premium to 100%
(from 85%) of the annual yield on 30-year Treasury securities expired
at the end of 2003. Thus, the required interest rate announced in this
notice for plan years beginning in February 2004 has been determined
under prior law. Legislation has been proposed that would further
change the rules for determining the required interest rate. If such
legislation is adopted, and the change affects the required interest
rate for plan years beginning in February 2004, the PBGC will promptly
publish a Federal Register notice with the new required interest rate
and post the change on the PBGC's Web site.
The following table lists the required interest rates to be used in
determining variable-rate premiums for premium

[[Page 7266]]

payment years beginning between March 2003 and February 2004.


   The required
 For premium payment years beginning in:   interest rate
is:

Stephen Roach on worship

[at least he's confessed]


http://www.morganstanley.com/GEFdata/digests/latest-digest.html#anchor0
Global: Offshoring Backlash
Stephen Roach (New York)

It's economics versus politics.  The free-trade theory of globalization
embraces the cross-border transfer of jobs.  Political systems do not -
especially as election cycles heat up.  That heat is now being turned up
in Washington, as incumbent politicians in both parties come face to face
with the angst of America's jobless recovery.  Jobs could well be the hot
button in Campaign 2004.  And offshoring - the transfer of high-wage US
jobs to the low-wage developing world - could quite conceivably be the
most contentious aspect of this debate and one of greatest risk factors
for ever-complacent financial markets.

Like most economists, I worship at the high altar of free-market
competition and the trade liberalization that drives it.  But that doesn't
mean putting a positive spin on the painful dislocations that trade
competition can spawn.  Unfortunately, that was the mistake made recently
by the Bush administration's chief economist, Gregory Mankiw, in his
dismissive assessment of white-collar job losses due to offshoring.  Like
most economic theories, the optimal outcomes cited by Mankiw pertain to
that ever-elusive long run.  Over that timeframe, the basic conclusion of
the theory of free trade is inarguable: International competition lowers
costs and prices, thereby boosting the purchasing power and standard of
living of consumers around the world.  The practical problem in this
case - as it is with most theories - is the concept of the long run.
Sure, over a long enough timeframe, things will eventually work out
according to this theoretical script.  But the key word here is
eventually - the stumbling block in presuming that academic theories map
neatly into the shorter time horizons of financial markets and politics.
Lord Keynes put it best in his 1923 Tract on Monetary Reform, cautioning,
In the long run, we're all dead.

History, of course, tells us that a lot can happen between now and that
ever-elusive long run.  That's precisely the risk in the great offshoring
debate, in my view.  As always, context defines the issues of contention.
And in this case, the context is America's jobless recovery - an
unprecedented hiring shortfall in the first 26 months of this recovery
that has left private nonfarm payrolls fully 8 million workers below the
path of the typical hiring upturn.

This is where the offshoring debate enters the equation.  One of the
pillars of trade theory is that wealthy industrial economies like America'
s can be broken down into two basic segments of activity - tradables and
nontradables.  International competition has long been confined to the
tradable goods, or manufacturing sector.  By contrast, the nontradables
sector was largely shielded from tough competitive pressures, thereby
providing shelter to the 80% of America's private sector workforce that
toil in services.  Consequently, as competitive pressures drove down
prices in tradable goods, the bulk of the economy and its workforce
benefited from the resulting expansion of purchasing power.  Advanced,
knowledge-based economies thrive on this distinction between tradables and
nontradables - manufacturing and services.

That critical distinction has now been blurred.  In days of yore, it used
to be that services had to be delivered in person, on site.  Cross-border
trade in services was unheard of.  Now, courtesy of the Internet, that
critical assumption has been turned inside out.  There is now real-time
connectivity between the knowledge content of offshore white-collar
workers and parent companies in the West.  That is a truly transforming
event - it essentially converts many nontradables into tradables.

Maybe it's just a coincidence, but it turns out that the private services
sector has accounted for 5.3 million jobs of the cyclical shortfall in
total private hiring, by our reckoning.  That underscores the
extraordinary pressures that are now bearing down on what had long been
the most powerful element of the Great American Job Machine.  Not
surprisingly, at the same time, the IT-enabled services export industry
has sprung to life in places like India.  Meanwhile, US businesses, still
operating in a no-pricing-leverage climate, have little choice other than
to continue in their unrelenting efforts to take out excess costs.  The
IT-enabled global labor arbitrage provides high-wage companies in the
developed world with a new and very powerful means to execute that option.
That means is offshoring.

Offshoring is seen as but a bump in the road for theorists like Mankiw.
The presumption in this case is that an innovation-led, flexible US
economy is able to uncover new sources of job creation that can fill the
void left by this cross-border labor arbitrage.  Yet that may be a heroic
assumption for the foreseeable future.  As nontradables become tradable,
America's once

military Ricardianism redux

http://www.latimes.com
COMMENTARY
More Arms Are Not What India and Pakistan Need
Washington should delay planned military sales to avoid poisoning delicate
peace talks and destabilizing the region.
By Selig S. Harrison

Selig S. Harrison, director of the Asia program at the Center for
International Policy, is a former South Asia bureau chief for the
Washington Post.

February 13, 2004


Washington wants to encourage the search for a South Asian peace that was
launched by Prime Minister Atal Behari Vajpayee of India and President
Pervez Musharraf of Pakistan at their January summit. But the Bush
administration could poison the atmosphere for India-Pakistan talks that
start Monday if it goes ahead with imminent plans for major military sales
to both countries.

President Bush promised Musharraf $1.5 billion in new military aid last
June on top of $400 million that had been set aside for military sales to
Islamabad after Pakistan signed up as a U.S. ally against Al Qaeda.

In the name of bolstering military operations against Al Qaeda and Taliban
forces in Afghan border areas, Pakistan is pressing for immediate military
deliveries instead of the five-year program envisaged by the White House.
But most of the desired hardware - such as 80 attack helicopters, 1,000
armored personnel carriers and two squadrons of F-16 aircraft - would be
used on the Indian border, not in Afghanistan. Giving them to Pakistan now
would rekindle tensions between New Delhi and Islamabad just when the
fragile peace process is getting underway.

The United States should freeze military transfers indefinitely to
Pakistan and India until domestic political support for a detente is solid
enough in both countries to neutralize the tensions that would be touched
off by new military aid. This should include a delay in authorizing
Israel's pending sale to New Delhi of the Arrow antimissile system, which
was developed in cooperation with the United States.

Musharraf's domestic political position is shaky in the aftermath of the
recent scandal over illicit nuclear deals by Pakistani scientists with
North Korea, Iran and Libya, and the sale of the Arrow would strengthen
the opponents of detente.

In the case of India, Vajpayee is campaigning for a new five-year term in
April elections. His opponents would use U.S. military sales to Pakistan
to fan fears of Islamabad and rekindle memories of the massive Cold War
infusion of U.S. military hardware to earlier military regimes there.

The Pentagon spin that U.S. military help for Islamabad would relate only
to the war on terror sounds to Indian ears like President Eisenhower's
1954 reassurances that a program of limited U.S. weapons aid to Pakistan
would be solely for use against the Soviet Union and China. By 1965, the
United States had poured $3.8 billion in military hardware into Pakistan.
This encouraged the Pakistani military dictator, Gen. Ayub Khan, to stage
cross-border raids in Kashmir that touched off a wider war in which his
forces freely used its U.S. planes and tanks.

No sooner had India begun to forgive and forget than the Soviet occupation
of Afghanistan led to another outpouring of weapons aid to pay off
Islamabad for serving as a front-line state.

With its new F-16 aircraft and heavy tanks, this second aid package was
clearly not intended for use on the mountainous Afghan border but rather
to bolster Pakistan's balance of power in plains warfare with India. Still
more U.S. weapons channeled through Pakistan to Afghan resistance forces
were skimmed off for Pakistani use.

In a striking repeat of history, the type of military aid that Pakistan is
now seeking has less to do with Afghanistan than India. Islamabad's wish
list includes the Predator aerial spy plane used by the United States in
Afghanistan, Hawkeye mini-AWACs, AIM-9 missiles and P3 anti-submarine
aircraft.

In addition to military aid, Bush's promises in June included $1.5 billion
in economic assistance.

This aid should be provided, but with two conditions: Musharraf's
cooperation with the United States in preventing the leakage of nuclear
material and weapons to terrorist groups and rogue states - so far
refused - and a commitment to negotiate confidence-building measures
relating to India-Pakistani nuclear weaponry in the peace talks.

India, eight times larger than Pakistan, is much more important to
long-term American interests, and the two nations should not be equated in
U.S. policy.

The Bush administration's January announcement that it plans to expand
high-tech cooperation with India, including cooperation in civilian
nuclear and space technology, was a welcome recognition of what the White
House called a new strategic partnership with New Delhi.

On military matters, however, the United States should proceed with
caution, especially while peace talks are still at a delicate stage.

the other Texas Rangers

http://www.texasobserver.org/showArticle.asp?ArticleID=1564

Re: The economy - a new era?

2004-02-12 Thread Eubulides

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



Garraty, John A. 1957. Right-Hand Man: The Life of George W. Perkins
(NY: Harper and Brothers): p. 219 says that Morgan's right hand man
argued that the trusts represented a high order of socialism.  What is
the difference between the U. S. Steel Corporation ... and a Department
of Steel as it might be organized by the government?

===

We must get back to competition. If it is impossible then let us go to
socialism, for there is no way between.

[William Howard Taft--who also advocated the Federalization of the
corporate chartering process] [from Martin Sklair's The Corporate
Reconstruction of American Capitalism 1890-1916 p. 378]

Re: The economy - a new era?

2004-02-12 Thread Eubulides

- Original Message -
From: Doug Henwood [EMAIL PROTECTED]



Michael Perelman wrote:

I was thinking of the architecture of the managerial structure.

Do you buy Michael Albert's critique of a coordinator class? Could
you have large enterprises with a flat self-managing structure,
without some sort of managers?

Doug

==

Has Michael A. ever worked for an extended period of time in a Fortune 500
company spread across the globe?

Ian

Buy today's Wall St. Journal

[apologies for length, but some list members might not have access to the
article...]

U.S. tilt to business stirs backlash in Indonesia
PETER WALDMAN, The Wall Street Journal
Wednesday, February 11, 2004

http://www.sfgate.com/article.cgi?file=/news/archive/2004/02/11/financial1013EST0050.DTL


(02-11) 07:13 PST (AP) --

JAKARTA, Indonesia -- In January of 2000, Lawrence Summers, then U.S.
Treasury secretary, visited Indonesia to meet its first democratically
elected president and cheer its emergence from three decades of
dictatorship and crony capitalism under President Suharto.

The word must go out, Mr. Summers told a luncheon of business leaders,
that in a new Indonesia, no one is above the law. America would be a
model for the emerging democracy, he said, and the most important
component of our bilateral support ... (is) the quality of the examples we
are able to suggest.

On the same day, a Jakarta court dismissed a corruption lawsuit against a
power project -- part-owned by U.S. companies and linked to Suharto
relatives -- that had saddled Indonesia with high electricity costs. The
American ambassador played a central role in getting the corruption case
dropped.

Washington's discordant signals have left a bitter legacy here. A nation
once robustly pro-American has become a bastion of anti-U.S. hostility. In
1999, 75 percent of Indonesians held a favorable view of the U.S.,
according to the Pew Research Center. In a poll last last year, the figure
was just 15 percent. It's the worst anti-Americanism here in 25 years,
says Sidney Jones of the International Crisis Group, a nonprofit group
that monitors global hot spots.

This shift has multiple causes, including the war in Iraq. But among them
is a widely held view here that in the aftermath of the Suharto
dictatorship -- a time of crisis but also of promise -- the U.S. threw its
weight behind its business interests to the detriment of Indonesians.

While anti-U.S. sentiment in the developing world is hardly new, its
upsurge here is especially untimely. Facing one of its major challenges of
the era -- terrorism rooted in militant Islam -- America now finds limited
public support in the world's largest Muslim country.

The case illustrates a particular challenge the U.S. faces as a superpower
with a democratic system. Its policies toward an overseas nation can at
times be swayed by determined groups at home: defense interests,
human-rights advocates or multinational corporations.

In Indonesia's case, protecting the interests of major investors and
creditors was at the center of the table in everything we did, says
Edmund McWilliams, who was chief political counselor at the U.S. embassy
in Jakarta from 1996 to 1999. Concerns about stability made it to the
margins. Concerns about human rights, democracy, corruption never made it
onto the table at all.

After Mr. Suharto resigned amid the 1998 Asian economic crisis, U.S.
officials poured into Indonesia to advocate a new era of democracy,
transparency and rule of law. But at the same time, amid talk in Jakarta
of canceling business deals that had enriched Suharto friends, American
diplomats and legislators strove to protect the contracts.

Washington also pressed the Indonesian government to bail out private
banks to restore liquidity. Most of the banks were owned by Suharto
associates, who had withdrawn large amounts of money, much of which they
didn't have to pay back.

The moment Indonesians threw out Suharto, we told them they had to honor
contracts that favored his cronies. People are asking, 'What kind of
principle is that?'  says Joseph Stiglitz, a Nobel-laureate economist who
became a critic of U.S.-led globalization after posts in the Clinton White
House and at the World Bank. We imposed Pax Americana, Mr. Stiglitz
says, yet it wasn't a pax that tried to create a fair global regime but
one reflecting our own commercial interests.

Former Treasury Secretary Summers himself didn't intervene on the Paiton
project's behalf, according to people familiar with the case. Mr. Summers,
now president of Harvard University, says, Our general approach at
Treasury was to focus on broad national interests, rather than specific
commercial interests, in our economic diplomacy.

No serious critics say Washington should shy from defending the interests
of American companies. But in the case of Indonesia, the pendulum swung
far in that direction.

At the same time as the U.S. was defending U.S. power-project contracts,
the International Monetary Fund, working with the Clinton administration,
was prescribing a program of economic austerity for Indonesia. Such
medicine -- higher interest rates combined with lower government
spending -- can bolster a nation's currency and restore public confidence.
In Indonesia's case, however, it appears to have exacerbated what became a
deep depression. Nearly half of the Indonesian population sank into
poverty. The IMF later acknowledged mistakes in its prescription for

speaking of Larry Summers

http://www.thecrimson.com/article.aspx?ref=357308

pensions redux; Britain

Pensions insurance attacked

Scrupulous companies to foot bill for negligent rivals

Rupert Jones and Phillip Inman
Thursday February 12, 2004
The Guardian

The government is today likely to face the wrath of employers' groups,
trade unions and opposition politicians over its measure aimed at
protecting company pension scheme members if their employer goes bust.

Today sees the publication of the pensions bill - the government's
response to the crisis in retirement saving - and ministers are likely to
confirm that a crucial element of the safety net they are planning has in
effect been put on ice for the time being.

Andrew Smith, the work and pensions secretary, will give more details
about the new pensions protection fund, a compensation scheme which will
protect millions of members of final salary company schemes if their
employer goes bankrupt.

The fund, similar to an American scheme, will guarantee that people who
have already retired will receive 100% of their pension while those still
working will receive 90%. This will be paid for by a levy imposed on all
companies that offer final salary pensions and is aimed at ending what the
government says is the scandal of workers being denied pensions built up
over many years.

Under the original plans, companies at greater risk of going bust would
have had to pay more than employers with well-funded schemes. But devising
a levy that would work in this way has proved tricky, and the department
for work and pensions is today set to announce that it will be starting
off with a flat-rate levy where all firms pay the same.

The pensions protection fund was controversial, even before this latest
apparent backtracking, and critics were quick to attack the plan
yesterday, saying that well-run companies should not have to bail out
irresponsible employers in this way.

Steve Webb MP, the Liberal Democrat work and pensions spokesman, said the
pensions bill was half baked. He said: The pensions protection fund is
an insurance scheme not based on risk. It's like asking a careful driver
to pay the same as a boy racer. To ask all companies to pay the same
punishes the good guys.

It is understood the department of work and pensions decided to put off
imposing a risk-based levy on occupational schemes after advice that the
complex arrangements could delay the rescue scheme's start in 2005.

The department yesterday insisted that a levy based on risk was still
absolutely fundamental to the protection fund, but it appears it could
be a few years before this system is fully up and running.

It seems certain that the department has rejected trade union calls for
the new rules to be applied retrospectively. That means they will not help
the tens of thousands of workers who have lost some or all of their
occupational pension after their companies went bust.

Workers from failed steel firm ASW and other defunct companies intend to
keep up the pressure on the government by staging a protest at the Royal
Courts of Justice.

is AG blowing a China bubble

Is Alan Greenspan Behind China's Bubble Too?: William Pesek Jr.
Feb. 11 (Bloomberg) -- Globalization is globalizing the Federal Reserve.

It has 12 districts and acts based on U.S. events, but its influence has never been 
greater. It
isn't far-fetched to think of Latin America as the 13th district, Southeast Asia the 
14th, Russia
the 15th, China the 16th, and so on.

Perhaps it's not surprising, then, that some observers are blaming the Fed for 
problems in one of
its de facto, satellite districts. China, Asia's second-largest economy, is 
experiencing a dangerous
asset bubble, one that's making investors antsy.

It seems a reach to blame Fed Chairman Alan Greenspan and his colleagues here in 
Washington. After
all, Asia isn't a huge blip on the Fed's radar screen these days. The Fed also has 
taken its share
of flack for the U.S. bubble of the late 1990s. But the U.S. central bank's global 
reach is being
felt in Asia.

``The Fed commitment to keeping interest rates low for a considerable period of time 
fueled
speculation in high-risk assets,'' says Andy Xie, Hong Kong-based chief economist at 
Morgan Stanley
Asia Ltd.

``The byproducts of this speculation,'' Xie explains, ``are the wealth effect on 
consumption in the
U.S. and the cheap capital-fueled investment boom in China -- the twin engines or 
bubbles, depending
on your perspective, for the global economy today.''

The cycle, Xie says, will end with either the Fed reversing its policy or with a 
financial accident
caused by the leverage building up in high-risk assets around the world. ``History 
would not be kind
to the Fed,'' Xie says. ``Its accommodation and even encouragement of speculative 
excesses would be
viewed as the primary cause of the massive bubble in the global economy today, the 
consequences of
which are yet to show.''

The Fed's culpability is debatable. What's not is that speculative capital flows into 
Asia reached a
record high last year, surpassing the previous peak in 1996.

The big recipients of capital in 1996 were Hong Kong, South Korea and Southeast Asia. 
This time,
it's China. Just like the capital flow destinations of the 1990s, China is 
experiencing an
investment bubble.

In 2003, East Asia's foreign-exchange reserves rose $234 billion more than the 
region's trade
surpluses. That compares with an average of $26 billion in the 1990s and $8.3 billion 
in the 1980s.
China and Japan were the main capital recipients in Asia last year.

The increase began in 2001, when the Fed cut interest rates aggressively to boost U.S. 
growth. Like
clockwork, China's foreign-exchange reserves rose by more than its trade surplus for 
the first time
since 1996. The inflows picked up speed and reached record levels last year.

What can be done about all this? China needs to tighten capital controls to slow the 
inflow, Xie
argues.

Such a step would be anathema to free-market aficionados and to the Group of Seven 
nations, which
last weekend renewed its call for flexible exchange rates. But the longer Beijing 
allows such rapid
inflows of speculative capital, the more difficult it will be to avoid a financial 
crisis.

Xie's views are contrarian, indeed, but it's hard to dismiss them. The vast majority 
of world
leaders, economists and investors think China's currency is undervalued and that 
Beijing should let
it rise. That was certainly the thrust of the G-7's latest communique.

But ``the appreciation of China's currency, which many advocate as the main means to 
cool the
bubble, would only encourage more speculation, as we saw in Southeast Asia,'' Xie 
says. ``The
resulting bigger bubble would make a hard landing inevitable.''

China may be presenting economists with a rare throw-away- the-textbooks situation. 
Established
macroeconomic models hold that more exchange-rate flexibility will squeeze some air 
out of China's
bubble and keep the economy from overheating. Freeing the yuan may do exactly the 
opposite.

Beijing has taken steps to cool its economy. The central bank, for example, increased 
reserve
requirements on commercial banks to curb money-supply growth. Higher interest rates in 
the U.S.
could help temper China's boom. Global investors are looking for hints on the subject 
when Greenspan
testifies in Congress this week.

``The massive swings in capital flows into Asia could only be explained by the 
speculative drives
that rise or ebb with some stimulus,'' Xie says. ``The stimulus is usually Fed policy 
changes.''

It's doubtful Greenspan is preoccupied with all this. But those speculating on China's 
rise should
keep two things in mind. One, the Fed's policy decisions here in Washington may have 
considerable
influence on China's outlook. Two, what markets think they know about China's currency 
policy could
be 100 percent wrong.



To contact the writer of this column:
William Pesek Jr. in Washington, or [EMAIL PROTECTED]

To contact the editor of this column:
Bill Ahearn in New York, or [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Last

new chairs at WTO

Press/371
11 February 2004
GENERAL COUNCIL
WTO chairpersons for 2004
The WTO General Council today (11 February) noted the consensus on the following slate 
of names of
chairpersons for WTO bodies:


Chairpersons of WTO Bodies - 2004


General Council  Amb. Shotaro OSHIMA (Japan)
Dispute Settlement  Body Amb. Amina MOHAMED (Kenya)
Trade Policy Review Body  Amb. Puangrat ASAVAPISIT (Thailand)
Council for Trade in Goods  Amb. Alfredo CHIARADIA (Argentina)
Council for Trade in Services  Amb. Peter BRNO (Slovak Republic)
Council for TRIPS  Mr. Joshua LAW (Hong Kong, China)
Committee on Trade and Environment  Amb. Naéla GABR (Egypt)
Committee on Trade and Development  Amb. Trevor CLARKE (Barbados)
Committee on Balance-of Payments Restrictions  Mr. Giulio TONINI (Italy)
Committee on Regional Trade Agreements  Amb. Ronald SABORÍO SOTO (Costa Rica)
Committee on Budget, Finance and Administration  Amb. Henrik Rée IVERSEN (Denmark)
Working Group on Trade and Transfer of Technology  Amb. Jaynarain MEETOO (Mauritius)
Working Group on Trade, Debt and Finance  Amb. Péter BALÁS (Hungary)



Chairpersons of Bodies established under the Trade Negotiations Committee - 2004

(To serve until the 6th Session of the Ministerial Conference - date to be determined.)


Negotiating Group on Market Access  Amb. Stefán JÓHANNESSON (Iceland)
Negotiating Group on Rules  Amb. Eduardo PÉREZ MOTTA (Mexico)
Special Session of the Council for Trade in Services  Amb. Alejandro JARA (Chile)
Special Session of the Council for TRIPS  Amb. Manzoor AHMAD (Pakistan)
Special Session of the Dispute Settlement Body  Amb. David SPENCER (Australia)
Special Session of the Committee on Agriculture  Amb. Tim GROSER (New Zealand)
Special Session of the Committee on Trade and Environment  Amb. Toufiq ALI (Bangladesh)
Special Session of the Committee on Trade and Development  Mr. Faizel ISMAIL (South 
Africa)





PS Note that no chairs for the Singapore issues working groups were appointed. This is 
because those
opposing these issues being on the WTO agenda insisted that the lack of consensus 
regarding the
post-Cancun mandate of these working groups militates against their continued 
operation. However,
outgoing General Council Chair Perez del Castillo mentioned that WTO Deputy Directory 
General Xerxa
would still be continuing his informal consultations with Members regarding Trade 
Facilitation.

voodoo economics 2004

[sent this yesterday but it never made it.]


http://www.gpoaccess.gov/eop/index.html

Economic Report of the President:

The Economic Report of the President is an annual report written by the
Chairman of the Council of Economic Advisors. It overviews the nation's
economic progress using text and extensive data appendices. The Economic
Report of the President is transmitted to Congress no later than ten days
after the submission of the Budget of the United States Government.
Supplementary reports can be issued to the Congress which contain
additional and/or revised recommendations. Documents are available as
ASCII text and PDF files.


2004 Economic Report of the President
http://a257.g.akamaitech.net/7/257/2422/09feb20040900/www.gpoaccess.gov/usbudget/fy05/pdf/2004_erp.pdf

voodoo economics 2004

http://www.gpoaccess.gov/eop/index.html

Economic Report of the President:

The Economic Report of the President is an annual report written by the
Chairman of the Council of Economic Advisors. It overviews the nation's
economic progress using text and extensive data appendices. The Economic
Report of the President is transmitted to Congress no later than ten days
after the submission of the Budget of the United States Government.
Supplementary reports can be issued to the Congress which contain
additional and/or revised recommendations. Documents are available as
ASCII text and PDF files.


2004 Economic Report of the President
http://a257.g.akamaitech.net/7/257/2422/09feb20040900/www.gpoaccess.gov/usbudget/fy05/pdf/2004_erp.pdf

voodoo economics, 2004

http://www.gpoaccess.gov/eop/index.html

Economic Report of the President:

The Economic Report of the President is an annual report written by the Chairman of 
the Council of Economic Advisors. It overviews
the nation's economic progress using text and extensive data appendices. The Economic 
Report of the President is transmitted to
Congress no later than ten days after the submission of the Budget of the United 
States Government. Supplementary reports can be
issued to the Congress which contain additional and/or revised recommendations. 
Documents are available as ASCII text and PDF files.
More.

2004 Economic Report of the President
http://a257.g.akamaitech.net/7/257/2422/09feb20040900/www.gpoaccess.gov/usbudget/fy05/pdf/2004_erp.pdf

Re: The economy - a new era?

- Original Message -
From: David B. Shemano [EMAIL PROTECTED]



If airline deregulation was not a success, in your view, what do you
propose to reregulate?  Do you propose to go back to the pre-1978 era,
where industry capture was an art form and the CAB actively prevented
new entrants and price competition in the name of the public interest?  Or
do you propose nationalization and a single airline owned by the federal
government?

David Shemano



Hell, why stop at nationalization; some of the corps. want the WTO to
regulate the allocation of routes and landing slots and other stuff not
already in GATS transport annex. Just imagine the computer programs for
solving all those traveling salesman problems for divvying up market
shares.

Ian

Brit coal miner's strike, 20th anniversary

Arthur was right by instinct

Two decades after the miners' strike, the full costs of the destruction of
the coal industry are only now becoming clear

Dave Feickert
Wednesday February 11, 2004
The Guardian

Never has any community of working people contributed so much to their
country and yet been so badly treated. Never has there been such a wilful
destruction of so many individual communities, of such a vast amount of
productive public capital, or of a nation's strategic energy resource.

Perhaps the real measure of the miners' sacrifice is this: since records
were first kept in 1850, more than 100,000 of them have been killed at
work. Countless others were injured or struck down by disease, with the
present generation only now being compensated for some of those diseases -
bronchitis and emphysema. Imagine what it must have been like to have had
one of those men as a son, husband or father. Now, at the point when
technology can prevent such destruction, that selfsame technology is being
removed from the few remaining pits.

On the 20th anniversary of the start of the miners' strike three key
points need to be understood. First, on energy policy: instead of being
the only European Union country that is self-sufficient in energy and a
net oil exporter, in a few years we will join the others in their energy
dependency. This time the UK will be at the end of the gas and oil
pipelines from Russia, central Asia, Algeria and the Gulf. Windfarms,
however welcome, will not save us.

Last year's energy white paper acknowledged this: By 2020 we are likely
to be importing around three-quarters of our energy needs. And by that
time half the world's gas and oil will be coming from countries that are
currently perceived as relatively unstable, either in political or
economic terms. There are no major plans to build clean coal stations,
but that is what Spencer Abraham, the US energy secretary, advised George
Bush and Tony Blair in July 2003.

Second, the economic and social costs of destroying the British coal
industry have been huge - at least £28bn. This is nearly half of the North
Sea tax revenues of £60bn collected since 1985. Unless further support is
forthcoming, the horrendous damage to mining communities will take at
least two generations to heal, notwithstanding the work of the Coalfields
Regeneration Trust and the Coalfield Communities Campaign.

Third, the miners' strike could not have taken shape in the way it did in
any other EU country. It would have been negotiated to a settlement firmly
within the restructuring aid framework of the European Coal and Steel
Community treaty, the founding treaty of the European economic and social
model. Instead, in Britain we had the application of 19th-century
industrial relations to an industry that was at a technological watershed.

Arthur Scargill, the miners' leader, was right about two things in
particular: the huge scale of the redundancy and closure programme, and
the inability of the consultation procedures within the industry to handle
the issue. Restructuring had to be collectively bargained as well, but
neither the National Coal Board (NCB) nor the government wanted to
negotiate the substantive issues.

Scargill was right by instinct, but also because a group of us from
Bradford University had done the research. In 1982 we showed the National
Union of Mineworkers executive that automated, heavy-duty technology would
produce a productivity explosion. If the market for coal remained the
same, this would lead in the worst case to the loss of more than 165,000
jobs, or 74% of the 1981 pit workforce of 225,000. The first to go would
be the coalfields of Scotland, the north-east, Kent and south Wales, which
had received little investment. As Nelson Mandela observed with his
customary frankness at an international mineworkers' conference in
Johannesburg in 1992: Scargill and the NUM have been vilified for trying
to defend their members.

At the famous meeting of March 6 1984, James Cowan, NCB deputy chairman,
admitted only reluctantly that around 20 pits and 21,000 jobs would be
hit. Scargill's initial figure of 70,000 job losses was attacked as
scaremongering. Only in her 1993 memoirs could Mrs Thatcher admit the
truth. Ian MacGregor, NCB chairman, had told her in September 1983 that he
wanted to cut 64,000 jobs in three years and extend the redundancy scheme
to include miners under 50.

The huge hi-tech Selby coalfield is due to close by June this year. Then
there will be fewer than 5,000 miners working in Britain's pits. While the
second phase of pit closures arose in the 1990s from market displacement -
mainly by the new, privatised gas power stations - the majority of job
losses had earlier flowed from the productivity revolution. To illustrate
this point: just one hi-tech coalface, at Kellingley colliery in
Yorkshire, was producing 42,000 tonnes a week in 2003, almost as much as
the 46,000 tonnes a week the whole pit was producing in 1983 from six
faces,

Re: Brit coal miner's strike, 20th anniversary