Re: Global Financial Crisis II
"One man deserves the credit,
One man deserves the fame,
And Nicolai Ivanovich
Chossudovsky is his name!
(Hey!)"
(First one to trace this gets a free drink at my
expense at the AEA meetings.)
Sawicky parody on Tom Lehrer, parody on Danny Kaye/Sylivia Fine
("Stanislavsky").
Mind you, despite all this, Michel Chossudovsky has written some
outstanding analyses - I can think of a couple on Africa and
Yugoslavia. So I'm not conceding that Choss is a Lobachevsky
by any means (unless it was the real Lobachevsky).
Just Email the drink thanks.
Bill
==
Max B. Sawicky Economic Policy Institute
[EMAIL PROTECTED] Suite 1200
202-775-8810 (voice) 1660 L Street, NW
202-775-0819 (fax) Washington, DC 20036
Opinions here do not necessarily represent the
views of anyone associated with the Economic
Policy Institute.
===
Re: Global Financial Crisis II
Rosenberg, Bill wrote: Mind you, despite all this, Michel Chossudovsky has written some outstanding analyses - I can think of a couple on Africa and Yugoslavia. So I'm not conceding that Choss is a Lobachevsky by any means (unless it was the real Lobachevsky). Hear hear. In a land of 30% (official) unemployment, like SA, Michel's rap has gone down very well. If any of you connect into the Third World Network publications out of Penang, you'll know that Michel is usually right at the scene of some financial crime, doing a powerful, well-balanced critique. We had him out to a Johannesburg seminar of the Campaign Against Neoliberalism in SA in February and he packed the house, telling gory structural adjustment tales of his recent travels in Rwanda and Mozambique. The Rwanda information he acquired about the role of the World Bank in financing the import of the tools of genocide through quick-disbursing loans is explosive. His linkage of socio-economic deprivation and political upheaval is usually very well grounded. When you spend time in places like Rwanda and Mozambique where a million people get offed, and you're practically the only one doing analysis of financial power relations and economic contradictions, maybe that generates an apocalyptic tendency. Maybe it should. Just north of here, in Harare, last week saw the Zimbabwe currency drop an astonishing 40% against the US dollar in a matter of *hours* (before a central bank rescue). It's a violently turbulent financial world, seen from the semi-periphery, and it particularly plays havoc with social policy advocacy. The socio-political fallout of some yuppie NY banker's flick of a finger on the keyboard can be terrifying. In SA, a 25% currency crash during a six-week period in 1996 compelled the ANC leadership to formally junk its soc-dem development programme and replace it with a (disfunctional) homegrown SAP, purely for the benefit of the f*ing bond traders, and the ongoing fiscal squeeze is brutal, demonstrably killing ANC constituents. By the way, aside from Michel, we did ask one notable leftist financial commentator from the upper west side of NY out to Johannesburg last year. But though the funds were in place and ticket ready, we got a last-minute cancellation. Which is why some of the reticence, on the part of US comrades, to consider the limits of crisis management -- whereby your markets' solutions to financial bubbles and overproduction effectively means displacement of devaluation to most of the rest of us in the South -- is a slightly irritating characteristic of otherwise crucial information and debate on Pen-L. Not only because it's so US-centric, which it is, but because while everyone and everything else is thinking and acting globally, the concession that capitalism is in ok shape is basically parochial laziness. I'm saying this, of course, with a ;-) because it is the kind of challenge that I posed to Doug Henwood last month at the Brecht Forum and he did, I recall, say he'd do his best to come and check out a different reality as soon as we can next arrange it. Same invitation stands for the rest of you Chossudovsky-critics!
Re: Global Financial Crisis II
Doug Henwood: What does it mean to say that capitalism is in "ok shape"? It means that a polarizing system of exploitation is reproducing itself pretty successfully. The creation of poverty alongside of wealth is an ancient feature of this charming economic form. I didn't think I had to make that point with every post to PEN-L, but apparently I do. From the late 1800s until now, the appearance of wealth is very much related the presence of poverty across international boundaries, which makes the system a lot different than the one that Marx wrote about in Capital. For example, Nigeria generates $10 billion in revenue yearly for Shell and Chevron, but Nigeria is the 19th poorest nation in the world just above Mali. The problem is that for all of the pain of the Ogoni people or the indigenous peoples in Ecuador or Papua New Guinea, there is no gain. Standard Oil might have brutalized oilworkers and ruined small farmers in the process of building an oil empire in Oklahoma, but there was capital accumulation. I have just read the first three chapters of Joshua Carliner's "The Corporate Planet" Ecology and Politics in the Age of Globalization", which deals with all of this in extensive detail. It is one of the best books on the environment I have come across. Joshua did a very fine review of "Wall Street" for the Nation, so he is not hostile to Marxism. What's interesting, as a matter of fact, is that the book is published by the Sierra Club, so there's some life in that old carcass I suppose. One of the things that doesn't come across nearly as strong as it should in Doug's comments on global capitalism is the illusory quality of "development" in the third world. When Engels wrote "Conditions of the Working Class in England", he was describing insufferable working and living conditions. But to some extent a person reading the book who had the hindsight of history would understand that--like Stalin's Russia in the 1930s--some form of capital accumulation was taking place. Is this true of Thailand today? Or Nigeria? Or Brazil? I don't think so. Louis Proyect
Re: Global Financial Crisis II
Patrick Bond wrote: The socio-political fallout of some yuppie NY banker's flick of a finger on the keyboard can be terrifying. In SA, a 25% currency crash during a six-week period in 1996 compelled the ANC leadership to formally junk its soc-dem development programme and replace it with a (disfunctional) homegrown SAP, purely for the benefit of the f*ing bond traders, and the ongoing fiscal squeeze is brutal, demonstrably killing ANC constituents. Is this really just the doing of "some yuppie NY banker's" finger-flicking? Or is the FX rate just one mechanism among many that constitute the global economic hierarchy? The fucking bond traders are just one part of a ruling class that includes the top execs of Anglo-American, the Business Roundtable, Chatham House, Bob Rubin - and the comprador elements within the ANC. Not only because it's so US-centric, which it is, but because while everyone and everything else is thinking and acting globally, the concession that capitalism is in ok shape is basically parochial laziness. What does it mean to say that capitalism is in "ok shape"? It means that a polarizing system of exploitation is reproducing itself pretty successfully. The creation of poverty alongside of wealth is an ancient feature of this charming economic form. I didn't think I had to make that point with every post to PEN-L, but apparently I do. Doug
Global Financial Crisis II
In response to the exchange between Tom, Doug and Max, there is recent evidence from Canada that they are both right. Yesterday the Canadian Council on Welfare issued its report on child poverty in Canada in which my home province, Manitoba, was third on the list after New Brunswick and Newfoundland. It is interesting that in both Manitoba and New Brunswick the governments have adopted low wage policies to entice in low wage employers (e.g. telemarketers). The rise in child poverty has come *as a result of falling unemployment* as a consequence of the growing proportion of low-wage jobs, even where both parents are employed. Manitoba, for instance, has had the highest percentage drop in unemployment -- and one of the highest increases in child poverty. The welfare council is calling for a rise in the minimum wage and in the social welfare system -- exactly the opposite of what is being advocated by the neoclassicals and business and the Conservative gov't. Paul Phillips, Economics, University of Manitoba
Re: Global Financial Crisis II
Quoth Valis: Quoth Tom re Max: The disruption and the socialization of the losses are not random processes. Life goes on more or less for some people and just less for others. While Chossudovsky may have been hyperventilating, Max's and Doug's sanguine comments about the "low rate of unemployment" reveal a quaint U.S.-centric parochialism. . . . Good one, Tom. Sometimes I think a few of this list ought to be paradropped into Bangladesh -or even just Spain - without a passport; nothing permanent, one purgatorial week should do. A full fridge and certain basic structural assurances can be corrosive of ideological moorings, it seems, and all of us are susceptible. Hey, anybody actually read my original message? Where I never said "low" unemployment more or less everywhere, but "relatively low" UE in the U.S.? Eh? It ought to be possible to logically separate the issue of historic landmarks of utter, systemic breakdown (e.g., "crisis") from value judgements about how lousy things are for the workers and peasants of Spain, Bengla-Desh, and the places you-all live. Now if you'll pardon me I have to load the fridge with my latest cargo of sumptuary indulgences. Champion of Full Employment == Max B. Sawicky Economic Policy Institute [EMAIL PROTECTED] Suite 1200 202-775-8810 (voice) 1660 L Street, NW 202-775-0819 (fax) Washington, DC 20036 Opinions here do not necessarily represent the views of anyone associated with the Economic Policy Institute. ===
Re: Global Financial Crisis II
And another thing. Are you saying that _I_ sympathize with Chossudovsky's politics or excuse failures in logic and careless use of data? Or are you just setting up a bogus dichotomy as a platform to pontificate from? I simply was pointing out that Doug and Max were citing low unemployment data as if the significance of that data was self-evident. [Walker] Obviously, in light of this thread, very little of what I said was self-evident. I merely pointed out that the U.S. data of *relatively* low unemployment contradicted one of Cho's several breathless generalizations, but most of my post was a set of questions about the issues of financial fragility and market fixing, which you and Valis turned into a discussion about who had bigger calluses. That doesn't make me a Chossudovsky "sympathizer" or an "adversary" of either Henwood or Sawicky. Henceforth, the names of Walker and Chossudovsky will be forever intertwined, their ethnic contrast notwithstanding, though there may be some truth to the rumor that Chossudovsky's real name was Lodge and he changed it to make it as a radical economist. By the same token, Walker's original name was Lobachevsky and he changed it to make it as a Canadian wilderness guide. Jeez, Colin, what a thin-skinned exercise in guilt by non-association. I sure hope Doug and Max take my points more constructively. As indeed I have. I will say, however, that pooh-poohing the apocalypse can be as much of a pose as apocalypticism itself. It might even be interesting to ask whether apocalyptic pooh-poohing isn't itself just a variation on the theme of apocalypse. In other words, Sawicky's rhetorical labelling of Chossudovsky's tract as "apocalyptic" was itself an apocalyptic gesture. The logic of this utterly escapes me, my hostility to it notwithstanding. Think about it. Hmm. Nope. Nothing. MBS "One man deserves the credit, One man deserves the fame, And Nicolai Ivanovich Chossudovsky is his name! (Hey!)" (First one to trace this gets a free drink at my expense at the AEA meetings.) == Max B. Sawicky Economic Policy Institute [EMAIL PROTECTED] Suite 1200 202-775-8810 (voice) 1660 L Street, NW 202-775-0819 (fax) Washington, DC 20036 Opinions here do not necessarily represent the views of anyone associated with the Economic Policy Institute. ===
Re: Global Financial Crisis II
Doug Henwood wrote, Are you waxing deconstructive here, Tom? Being anti-apocalyptic requies an (unacknowledge) dependency on the notion of apocalypse? If so, what is the unnarativizable other? The answer to the first question is, "yes". As for the second, I wouldn't say that the dependency is all that unacknowledged. After all, Max was pretty explicit in calling Chossudovsky's tract "apocalyptic" (BTW, I agree). Obviously Max had a model narrative in mind with which to compare Chossudovsky's. He also has a critique of that apocalyptic narrative. As far as that goes, it's fine. It's only when Max starts asserting the counter-narrative of "life more or less goes on" as the way it _really_ is that Max's critique begins to slide over into anti-apocalypse. And this is where the "low unemployment" discussion becomes tendentious, too. Within the context of "life more or less going on", unemployment is just another expression of flux. "U goes up, u goes down, nothing really happens." Yes, I guess that means that the "other" to apocalypse _is_ unnarrativizable -- it's a critique, not a counter-story. It seems to be an almost unbearable temptation to go beyond the critique, though. Regards, Tom Walker ^^^ knoW Ware Communications Vancouver, B.C., CANADA [EMAIL PROTECTED] (604) 688-8296 ^^^ The TimeWork Web: http://www.vcn.bc.ca/timework/
Re: Global Financial Crisis II
Max Sawicky wrote, Henceforth, the names of Walker and Chossudovsky will be forever intertwined, their ethnic contrast notwithstanding, though there may be some truth to the rumor that Chossudovsky's real name was Lodge and he changed it to make it as a radical economist. By the same token, Walker's original name was Lobachevsky and he changed it to make it as a Canadian wilderness guide. Ah, Max, your reckless jest has forced from my lips the sad tale of my appellation. Until a decade ago, I went by the name "Max Sawicky". Then, sometime in the mid 1980s, when I could no longer bear being dogged by skip tracers and the odd shotgun toting dad (and his even odder daughter), I adopted the handle of Rip van Winkle. To make a long story short, when I awoke I changed my name again, this time to another Washington Irving character, and I have remained Tom Walker to this very day. Max also said, Obviously, in light of this thread, very little of what I said was self-evident. I merely pointed out that the U.S. data of *relatively* low unemployment contradicted one of Cho's several breathless generalizations, but most of my post was a set of questions about the issues of financial fragility and market fixing, which you and Valis turned into a discussion about who had bigger calluses. Max is right. Chossudovsky's characterization of the unemployment fundamentals was bombastic rather than substantive. But Max is only half right. His "evidence" refuting Chossudovsky's breathless generalizations consisted of the statement "Employment is relatively high now, even taking non-standard work arrangements into account." Not a breathless generalization, to be sure. But a generalization equally laden with ideological baggage (not necessarily Max's). And as for the question about who has bigger calluses and who turned Max's post into such a discussion. Let's just go back to Doug Henwood's breathless snapshot of US employment: Doug Henwood wrote, Relatively high? The US EPR is at a record high, part-time employment has actually fallen over the last year, temp employment hasn't grown at all over the last six months even as overall employment has risen by about a million, and real wages are rising at around 2% a year. Unless of course the BLS is making this all up. Taken at face value, the selected data above portray an image of robust good times. Not exactly the "plenty of misery 40 blocks south" nor the "sick with overwork", "plagued by deprivation" or "stagnant and/or declining real hourly wages" that Doug later cited. Or was there something written between the lines that I missed? All I did was point out that one doesn't have to believe the BLS is making up the above data to question it's self-evident relevance to the big picture. Real wages are rising at around 2% a year? So what? For how long have they been rising and for how long before that had they been falling and by how much? Etc. etc. etc. Doug knows those data better than I do. You'll have to excuse me, now, chaps. I have to go feed my moral high horse his oats. Regards, Tom Walker ^^^ knoW Ware Communications Vancouver, B.C., CANADA [EMAIL PROTECTED] (604) 688-8296 ^^^ The TimeWork Web: http://www.vcn.bc.ca/timework/
Re: Global Financial Crisis II
Tom Walker wrote: I will say, however, that pooh-poohing the apocalypse can be as much of a pose as apocalypticism itself. It might even be interesting to ask whether apocalyptic pooh-poohing isn't itself just a variation on the theme of apocalypse. In other words, Sawicky's rhetorical labelling of Chossudovsky's tract as "apocalyptic" was itself an apocalyptic gesture. Are you waxing deconstructive here, Tom? Being anti-apocalyptic requies an (unacknowledge) dependency on the notion of apocalypse? If so, what is the unnarativizable other? Speaking of which, has anyone ever deconstructed the productive/unproductive labor binary? Doug
Re: Global Financial Crisis II
On Fri, 28 Nov 1997, Doug Henwood wrote: It's magic: lower incomes + higher labour force participation = a lower rate of unemployment. This precisely confirms the right-wing nostrum that there is no such thing as involuntary unemployment. At a low enough wage, there is a job for everyone who wants to work. Kick out the "barriers" to "labour flexibility" and unemployment will fall. The "right-wing" analysis is not entirely untrue. Provide no welfare state, or dismantle an existing one, and you can force lots of people to work any kind of crappy job at any kind of crappy wage. The problem with this isn't its untruth but its brutality. Anecdotal evidence at least from New Zealand's experience with the Employment Contracts Act 1991 would seem to confirm what Doug is saying. At least in its early days as employers were dismantling penalty rates (overtime, shift premiums, etc) workers were lining up for no-wage, experience-only jobs. The problems was especially acute for younger workers for whom the law provided NO minimum wage. By 1993, even the conservative National Government, the author of the law, recognized that conditions were so bad they had to enact a Youth Minimum Wage. I have copies of some contracts that, aside from wages, provide some amazing provisions. My personal favorite is the contract that exists minute to minute and can be terminated at any time. One can only speculate about the meanness of the company that would want to employ its workers in this way and the conditions of the workers that makes them willing to accept this. Ellen J. Dannin California Western School of Law 225 Cedar Street San Diego, CA 92101 Phone: 619-525-1449 Fax:619-696-
Re: Global Financial Crisis II
Tom Walker wrote: There's nothing fishy about the *numbers* -- they measure what they're intended to measure. There is something fishy about the *relevance* of those numbers in terms of the lives of working people. A family in which one adult is working full time and earning enough to support the entire household contributes one active participant to the labour force. A family in which two adults have to be working full time to earn a similar level of income contributes twice as many participants to the labour force and thus "improves" the employment picture. Surprisingly enough, I not only know this, but I've written about it many times. American society is sick with overwork, at least as much as it's plagued by deprivation, and stagnant and/or declining real hourly wages are a big reason for this. But the kind of analysis I was responding to - a cliche of left writing, which features "part-time" work, and the undermeasurement of unemployment - can't make this point. It's magic: lower incomes + higher labour force participation = a lower rate of unemployment. This precisely confirms the right-wing nostrum that there is no such thing as involuntary unemployment. At a low enough wage, there is a job for everyone who wants to work. Kick out the "barriers" to "labour flexibility" and unemployment will fall. The "right-wing" analysis is not entirely untrue. Provide no welfare state, or dismantle an existing one, and you can force lots of people to work any kind of crappy job at any kind of crappy wage. The problem with this isn't its untruth but its brutality. Doug
Re: Global Financial Crisis II
Quoth Tom re Max: If the bubble breaks, there is some disruption and often some socialization of the losses, but life more or less goes on. Where's the apocalypse? The disruption and the socialization of the losses are not random processes. Life goes on more or less for some people and just less for others. While Chossudovsky may have been hyperventilating, Max's and Doug's sanguine comments about the "low rate of unemployment" reveal a quaint U.S.-centric parochialism. I wouldn't worry about the apocalypse -- bedlam's as bad as it gets. Good one, Tom. Sometimes I think a few of this list ought to be paradropped into Bangladesh -or even just Spain - without a passport; nothing permanent, one purgatorial week should do. A full fridge and certain basic structural assurances can be corrosive of ideological moorings, it seems, and all of us are susceptible. ^ valis
Re: Global Financial Crisis II
Colin Danby wrote, No, increased labor force participation by itself will raise the unemployment rate not lower it. Look up the definition of unemployment. Colin, I'm not impressed with this facile hair splitting. Why don't _you_ go look up the definition of solipsism. You might have understood from the example I gave that I'm wasn't talking about increased labour force participation "by itself". If I wanted to say "by itself" I would have said it. Maybe what I should have said, instead of "increased labour force participation" is "more people working". Where has Doug argued *anything* resembling the proposition that "working people are 'better off' if they're working more hours for less income"? Where have I said that Doug argued anything resembling the proposition? I might have implied that by failing to criticize the self-evident "meaning" of unemployment stats that Doug was letting the odious proposition stand unchallenged. That's not the same thing as saying that Doug agreed with the proposition. Failures in logic and careless use of data, which riddled the Chossudovsky piece, should not be excused because one sympathizes with the writer's politics. By the same token pointing out these problems is not tantamount to agreeing with "supply siders" or other political adversaries. Are you saying that _I_ sympathize with Chossudovsky's politics or excuse failures in logic and careless use of data? Or are you just setting up a bogus dichotomy as a platform to pontificate from? I simply was pointing out that Doug and Max were citing low unemployment data as if the significance of that data was self-evident. That doesn't make me a Chossudovsky "sympathizer" or an "adversary" of either Henwood or Sawicky. Jeez, Colin, what a thin-skinned exercise in guilt by non-association. I sure hope Doug and Max take my points more constructively. I will say, however, that pooh-poohing the apocalypse can be as much of a pose as apocalypticism itself. It might even be interesting to ask whether apocalyptic pooh-poohing isn't itself just a variation on the theme of apocalypse. In other words, Sawicky's rhetorical labelling of Chossudovsky's tract as "apocalyptic" was itself an apocalyptic gesture. Think about it. Regards, Tom Walker ^^^ knoW Ware Communications Vancouver, B.C., CANADA [EMAIL PROTECTED] (604) 688-8296 ^^^ The TimeWork Web: http://www.vcn.bc.ca/timework/
Re: Global Financial Crisis II
Tom W on Doug: A family in which two adults have to be working full time to earn a similar level of income contributes twice as many participants to the labour force and thus "improves" the employment picture. It's magic: lower incomes + higher labour force participation = a lower rate of unemployment. No, increased labor force participation by itself will raise the unemployment rate not lower it. Look up the definition of unemployment. ... According to supply side economics, working people are "better off" if they're working more hours for less income. You don't buy the former set of lies, why should you buy the later? Where has Doug argued *anything* resembling the proposition that "working people are 'better off' if they're working more hours for less income"? Max Doug pointed out numerous factual errors in the Chossudovsky article, including assertions about the U.S. economy which the author clearly had not checked. Where was the "quaint U.S.-centric parochialism," to quote a previous Tom W post, in pointing out these errors? Failures in logic and careless use of data, which riddled the Chossudovsky piece, should not be excused because one sympathizes with the writer's politics. By the same token pointing out these problems is not tantamount to agreeing with "supply siders" or other political adversaries. Best. Colin
Re: Global Financial Crisis II
Doug Henwood wrote, I know it's sometimes thrilling to mount a moral high horse and declaim, but I was responding specifically to the assertions in the original histrionic document that there was something fishy about U.S. employment numbers. There's nothing fishy about the *numbers* -- they measure what they're intended to measure. There is something fishy about the *relevance* of those numbers in terms of the lives of working people. A family in which one adult is working full time and earning enough to support the entire household contributes one active participant to the labour force. A family in which two adults have to be working full time to earn a similar level of income contributes twice as many participants to the labour force and thus "improves" the employment picture. It's magic: lower incomes + higher labour force participation = a lower rate of unemployment. This precisely confirms the right-wing nostrum that there is no such thing as involuntary unemployment. At a low enough wage, there is a job for everyone who wants to work. Kick out the "barriers" to "labour flexibility" and unemployment will fall. Lies, damned lies and statistics. Comparing unemployment statistics is like comparing IQ scores. According to racist IQ arguments, black people are inherently inferior. According to supply side economics, working people are "better off" if they're working more hours for less income. You don't buy the former set of lies, why should you buy the later? And, no, this is not to blame the BLS for the interpretation (or lack of interpretation) of their statistics. By the way, there's plenty of misery about 40 blocks north of where I sit that I don't really need to be parachuted anywhere to see it first hand. Probably more misery than there is among the unemployed of Spain, in fact. Maybe the interpretive problem, Doug, is that you're spending too much time SITTING 40 blocks south of where the misery is, looking at numbers. Believe me, I'm on no moral high horse here. I'm simply talking about analysis and interpretation, not about motivation and intention. Regards, Tom Walker ^^^ knoW Ware Communications Vancouver, B.C., CANADA [EMAIL PROTECTED] (604) 688-8296 ^^^ The TimeWork Web: http://www.vcn.bc.ca/timework/
Re: Global Financial Crisis II
valis wrote: Quoth Tom re Max: If the bubble breaks, there is some disruption and often some socialization of the losses, but life more or less goes on. Where's the apocalypse? The disruption and the socialization of the losses are not random processes. Life goes on more or less for some people and just less for others. While Chossudovsky may have been hyperventilating, Max's and Doug's sanguine comments about the "low rate of unemployment" reveal a quaint U.S.-centric parochialism. I wouldn't worry about the apocalypse -- bedlam's as bad as it gets. Good one, Tom. Sometimes I think a few of this list ought to be paradropped into Bangladesh -or even just Spain - without a passport; nothing permanent, one purgatorial week should do. I know it's sometimes thrilling to mount a moral high horse and declaim, but I was responding specifically to the assertions in the original histrionic document that there was something fishy about U.S. employment numbers. By the way, there's plenty of misery about 40 blocks north of where I sit that I don't really need to be parachuted anywhere to see it first hand. Probably more misery than there is among the unemployed of Spain, in fact. Doug
