Devine, James wrote:
I doubt that PK is really endorsing Jim Hightower-type populism, but
it's notable that he's breaking with the IMF-type view that populism is
a dirty word.
In a Fortune column in 1999, PK said that Sweden in 1980 would have
been his social ideal. That's more than your usual
Devine, James wrote:
My impression (at a long distance) is that PK is happy with the role
of as a pundit for the newspaper he's always admired. I would guess
that (on a semi-conscious level) he imagines himself as the next
Keynes, writing essays in persuasion and leading a new policy
Max B. Sawicky wrote:
Sweden is the liberal mainstream ideal because it is
viewed as a place with relatively little market-distorting
policy and a reliance on tax and transfer mechanisms to
uphold social welfare.
But they seriously interefere(d) with the labor market and created
one of the
Devine, James wrote:
response: in my experience (which is more than 20 years old), he's a
technocratic liberal. I remember from his discussions of New York
City (the suburbs of which produced him) that he doesn't like
popular participation in politics.
That's what I would have guessed, but
ken hanly wrote:
Could someone explain what Stiglitz means when he speaks of an investment
overhang and how it is a problem?
After an investment boom there's too much capital equipment to use
profitably, and it has to get worn out before new investment can
start again.
Doug
Max B. Sawicky wrote:
2. trades of stock concentrate wealth because beneficiaries of trades
(recipients of capital gains) tend to have higher wealth on average
3. more trading = more concentration
Not necessarily. More trading generally means worse performance. The
only wealth trading
Devine, James wrote:
One of the first articles I read by Chomsky was in the San
Francisco-based journal SOCIALIST REVOLUTION (now called Socialist
Review, if it still exists)
It's morph'd into Radical Society
http://www.tandf.co.uk/journals/titles/14760851.html, whose
premiere issue is out,
Michael Perelman wrote:
Some of us are quick to attack Stiglitz. Certainly he is an imperfect
vessel on leftist politics. Henry Liu's initial post was useful in
reminding us about Stiglitz's limitations, but the fact that he has come
out from such a prominent position and gone so far call for
The incomparable Henry Liu wrote:
Stiglitz was a key player of the Washington consensus and an
architect of neo-liberal globalization in the Clinton White House
before he went to the World Bank
That's just not true. The chair of the CEA has little power. Within
the Clinton admin he opposed
Michael Pollak wrote:
How would one go about calculating this output gap from publicly available
figures?
Compare the actual GDP numbers
http://www.bea.gov/bea/dn/nipaweb/SelectTable.asp?Selected=N with
the CBO's estimate of potential
http://research.stlouisfed.org/fred/data/gdp/gdppot.
I've just posted my interview with Joseph Stiglitz, which ran on my
radio show yesterday evening. Follow the link from
http://www.leftbusinessobserver.com/Radio.html.
Doug
August 15, 2002 DH on economic news - Fed holds fire, manufacturing
sags * Joseph Stiglitz, co-winner 2001 Nobel
Devine, James wrote:
Doug, I went to this page. Near Stiglitz, the download button
works as advertised. But the button labeled streaming has a
different show, including some fellow named Michael Perelman.
Huh? I just clicked on it and I'm getting the Stiglitz show. Try this
direct link:
.
The IMF has not earned the confidence of the markets; its bailouts
have failed a large percentage of the time, Stiglitz said in an
interview with Doug Henwood on his Left Business Observer weekly
radio show broadcast Thursday in New York.
With more (global) interdependence there is greater
I'm interviewing Joseph Stiglitz on my radio show in about 2 hours
(assuming he shows up). Anyone have any questions for him? I'll be in
email range only until about 4:15 NYC time, when I leave for the
studio.
Anyone wanting to listen (assuming he shows up): WBAI, 99.5 FM New
York and
I've just posted two more individual interviews to my radio archive site:
Bill Robinson (recorded February 2002, broadcast March 14, 2002,
15:05, 5.2 mb) Robinson, a professor of sociology at the University
of California-Santa Barbara, talks about the emergence of a global
ruling class. He is
Foucault is a obscurantist and aesthete who has poisoned the mind of
a whole generation of intellectuals and activists who should be
reading Lenin and/or Alinsky instead. Worse, he's French. How dare
you bring him up on PEN-L!?
Louis Proyect wrote:
(3) to what extent is Foucault = Gramsci - Marx?
Any thoughts? Thanks.
Eric
I think the only thing that Gramsci and Foucault have in common is
that they give left professors an excuse to go off jet-setting to
some conference somewhere to deliver the 1000th paper on
Devine, James wrote:
it's not true deflation unless prices _in general_ are falling,
though the fall in prices in crucial sectors can indicate that true
deflation is in the offing.
Consumer prices aren't falling, but producer prices are. Year-to-year
change in US PPI, all and excluding food
Louis Proyect wrote:
Plus, JS noted that Argentine beef is very tasty, a pitch certain
to appeal to ever-widening US viewers ;-)
Carl
If I run into Stiglitz on the Columbia campus, I might ask him what
he thinks of Cuba, especially in light of his successor James
Wolfensohn has to say:
Michael Perelman wrote:
tactical pessimism, but I have not heard any Dems. go even that far.
On Fri, Aug 09, 2002 at 07:43:18AM -0500, Bill Lear wrote:
On Thursday, August 8, 2002 at 22:42:10 (-0700) Michael Perelman writes:
I read that Dick Army, Sen. Lugar Hagel are questioning the war.
Michael Perelman wrote:
Is this discussion or the elitism thread going anywhere?
Not really, but does any thread ever go anywhere?
Doug
Today on my radio show (WBAI, 99.5 FM New York and
http://www.wbai.org, 5-6 PM eastern US time):
* Ruy Teixeira of The Century Fund, talking about public opinion on
the corporate scandals
* Michael Hardt, co-author with Antonio Negri of Empire, talking
about the reaction to the book, any
joanna bujes wrote:
I'm confused. The Federal Reserve, despite its name, is very much a
private concern, right? So, why should it not buy equities?
Not very much a private concern. It's a mixed bag. The Board of
Governors, based in Washington, are appointed by the pres and
confirmed by the
Steve Diamond wrote:
Well, Walzer certainly has a just war viewpoint - but fortunately
I wasn't asked to endorse his line when I submitted the review!
They have moved well away from their old Irving Howe style - with
for example some interesting debates on Seattle etc. with younger
Justin Schwartz wrote:
Let us criticize by all means, and experiment, and learn. In an
off-list discussion Jim D accused me of being vague and
ambiguous about liberal democracy, which I am not, but my
conception is very minimal, and compatible with many
implementations. Including a workers'
Michael Pollak wrote:
On Mon, 29 Jul 2002, Devine, James wrote:
Speaking of expertise, my computer won't start. It tells me Non System
Disk or Disk Error. Replace and strike any Key when ready. Not only
can't I find the any key (usually the enter key will do)
You are joking, right? I
Devine, James wrote:
I understand that Windows software doesn't run as well on Macs, too.
http://www.connectix.com/products/vpc5m.html.
Justin Schwartz wrote:
I am in fact a socialist.
I thought you were a bourgeois liberal. I'm confused. How do you
reconcile a collectivist philosophy with a radically individualist
one?
Doug
Justin Schwartz wrote:
What part do you reject, Doug? Representative govt? Univeral
suffrage? Extensive civil and political liberties? In fact you
reject none of it. You are a bourg lib too, as are probably 95% of
the people on this list.
I reject none of it except your label. It's too good
Devine, James wrote:
Me: Is the fact that juries find facts while judges determine the
law set in
a stone that someone brought down from Mount Sinai?
Justin: No, but it's a rule of American law.
and we should take US law as the only way things can be done?
I know bourgeois liberals are
Hinrich Kuhls wrote:
A couple of days ago the NZZ also reported on a rumour going around
that the Fed could have directly intervened on stock markets and
could have bought large amounts of stocks
That one's always floating around. RIght-wing bears are particularly
fond of it. Who knows?
Carl Remick wrote:
What?! The Federal Reserve is explicitly authorized to take equity
stakes in private enterprise? My God, is there anything the
sovereign state of the Fed is *not* entitled to do?
The big financial dereg act of ca. 1980 authorized the Fed to buy
pretty much whatever paper
Yoshie Furuhashi wrote:
Why not fight holders of class power and patriarchal power instead?
Because Western NGOs and foundations wouldn't like you so much, and
fly you around the world to preach the virtues of rootedness.
Doug
Davies, Daniel wrote:
No fair. The EF Schumacher crowd are pretty non-judgemental on this sort of
issue. Appropriate technology basically just means technology that can
be maintained and repaired without requiring an already existing industrial
society; those wind-up radios certainly count.
Carrol Cox wrote:
Perhaps she (Shiva) simply has wrong ideas. And if the ideas are wrong,
it is best, I should think, to simply critique the ideas rather than
speculate on her conscious or unconscious motives.
I think it in general a bad idea (allowing for bursts of temper other
personal
Ellen Frank wrote:
Last night I was re-reading Friedman's book The Day of Reckoning.
Every chapter starts with a quote from the Old Testament on the
moral hazards of borrowing. He really does seem to be talking more
about the international asset position of the US than about the public
debt,
Michael Perelman wrote:
You are absolutely correct Joanna. I only posted this to say that
technology CAN improve things. And then, this was in the WSJ. Closer
inspection might prove otherwise.
On Fri, Jul 26, 2002 at 03:34:50PM -0700, joanna bujes wrote:
At 03:21 PM 07/26/2002 -0700, you
Michael Pollak wrote:
Calling it a synecdoche assumes what is to be proven: that it is
impossible to make small scale farming more productive if capital, science
and technology were devoted to that end.
There are a million things that need to be built in the countryside:
homes, road,
Justin Schwartz wrote:
In my typical, class-blinkered, petty bourgeois manner, I am a real
fan of expertise. Democracy has its place, but not in micro-managing
the use of real expertise by real experts. There are skills that
require long study and constant application to master, and where the
Yoshie Furuhashi wrote:
In 1998, Vandana Shiva defended the BJP's rise to power as a triumph
of a populist, pluralistic, and non-discriminatory swadeshi
coalition. She may have changed her mind about the BJP by now, but
her poor political judgment is of a piece with her ill conceived
Michael Perelman wrote:
The Wall Street Journal article does not say that the grinder represented
particularly modern technology; nor was it a commercial product. I think
most people would regarded as an example of appropriate technology.
Don't you find something a touch patronizing about the
Michael Pollak wrote:
Again, the village mill model could work for that too. And it is true
when you grind things fresh they taste a lot better. It's certainly true
for coffee and spices.
Grinding flour is a synecdoche for a society characterized by a large
pesantry producing very low-tech
Michael Pollak wrote:
Hey, Shiva sets off my bullshit detectors too, but this is an unfair hit.
Mashing lentils isn't industrialized in Manhattan either. It's something
that happens after cooking, like mashing potatoes. And it's not hard.
Ok then, grind flour.
One could reconcile Shiva's
Devine, James wrote:
it's better than the Justin/Britney/Christina thread.
By the way, when confronted recently by some Harvard students, Larry
Summers brutally refused to say whether he preferred Britney or
Christina.
Doug
Forstater, Mathew wrote:
Some of the criticisms seem well-informed and at least partly valid, but
I have to admit that I think there are bigger enemies out there than
Vandana Shiva, and a lot of what she has written seems to have merit to
me.
Of course there are bigger enemies out there. But
Ulhas Joglekar wrote:
Doug could see my pen-l post number 26813 Why India needs transgenic
crops.
Thanks. I missed that first time around. Do you agree?
Doug
Louis Proyect wrote:
Socialists are not in favor of industrialized farming. Karl Marx wrote:
and
No, she reads rather like the average Frankfurt-influenced leftist
who blames the world's problems on Descartes, industrialization, etc.
I thought the problem was capitalist farming, not
Devine, James wrote:
Doug: So you agree [with V. Shiva] that women rather than machines
should grind flour?
isn't this a false dichotomy (perhaps coming from Shiva)? Isn't
there a spectrum of different techniques for grinding flour, with
some more capital intensive than others, so-called
ravi wrote:
so what is wrong with sitting at home and mashing lentils? isn't the
point that the choice be available? as for shiva's point: it's
unimportant whether its men who are doing it or women (she says
women because they are doing it today). the point she makes is that
it is preferable for
Michael Perelman wrote:
Most of what she says in the piece Lou posted is correct, except Cargen is
really Cargill. She does have a tendency to romanticize and exaggerate, but
this piece seems pretty good.
So you agree that women rather than machines should grind flour?
Doug
Vandana Shiva wrote:
These advanced technologies are not about feeding a hungry world.
They are about seeking control over the natural world, over people,
and taking away the productive capacity of women. The McKinsey
Corporation, a large international consultant firm, recently
produced a
Michael Perelman wrote:
Doesn't the term market correction (rebound) work like the description of
the Middle East peace process -- suggesting a hope rather than
information?
No. As DD pointed out, a correction is a move counter to the larger
trend. A correction in a bull market is a downdraft
Devine, James wrote:
does anyone know anything about the following book?
-
Book Description for Peter M. Garber, _Famous First Bubbles: The
Fundamentals of Early Manias_:
The jargon of economics and finance contains numerous colorful terms
for market-asset prices at
Devine, James wrote:
What's a sokal?
Alan Sokal is a physicist who embarrassed the post-modernist journal
SOCIAL TEXT
Sokal has now joined with ex-Social Text'er Bruce Robbins in a
campaign to get American Jews to sign a petition critical of Israeli
policy. Times change
Doug
joanna bujes wrote:
At 02:12 PM 07/25/2002 -0400, you wrote:
Sokal has now joined with ex-Social Text'er Bruce Robbins in a
campaign to get American Jews to sign a petition critical of
Israeli policy. Times change
Doug
Are you serious?
Completely. They had a big ad in the NY Times the
Justin Schwartz wrote:
Sokal has now joined with ex-Social Text'er Bruce Robbins in a
campaign to get American Jews to sign a petition critical of Israeli
policy. Times change
How so? He always said he was on the left. He was just one of them
flat headed scientific realist leftist types,
Devine, James wrote:
I quoted Epstein Ferguson to the effect that monetary policy
hadn't been applied because of bank influence, agreeing with what
you say below. On the other hand, Doug was saying that it was
applied -- since the discount rate fell a lot -- but didn't work. As
far as I'm
Bill Lear wrote:
On Tuesday, July 23, 2002 at 22:29:25 (-0700) Ian Murray writes:
Robert Dahl is
eighty-six years old. He knows what he is talking about. And he
thinks that the Constitution has got something the matter with it.
Michael Perelman wrote:
Can
the system really avoid problems through good management?
No, but it can mitigate or manage them, at least sometimes.
Doug
Devine, James wrote:
According to FS, in the late 1920s, Federal Reserve policy was too
easy to break the speculative boom, yet too tight to promote healthy
economic growth [quoted in Temin, 1976, _Did Monetary Forces Cause
the Great Depression?_: 23]. This may have been a key problem for
joanna bujes wrote:
If anyone has any interesting reading on deflation, could the please
cite it? (There's a lot of stuff on inflation, but no so much on
deflation.)
A classic:
Fisher, Irving (1933). The Debt-Deflation Theory of Great
Depressions, Econometrica 1, pp. 337-357.
It may be
joanna bujes wrote:
One of the big things I learned at Yale was to have a visceral
distaste for preppies and rich people, and for pretentious people
in general.
Was it that infinite sense of entitlement that put you off? Or something else?
One of the most amazing features of going to Yale
Eugene Coyle wrote:
Is taking care of yourself by screwing associated investors taught at
Yale?
I didn't take that course - maybe Jim Devine did. I got intro macro
from James Tobin, money banking from Henry Wallich, intermediate
macro from William Nordhaus, and none of them uttered a word on
Devine, James wrote:
I wouldn't call what happened in 1930 aggressive Fed easing.
Though interest rates fell, it was mostly due to a fall in the
demand for loans. The Fed wasn't interested in stimulating the
economy. As Milton Friedman notes, the money supply fell during this
period.
The
Carl Remick wrote:
Analysts at research and money management firm Bridgewater
Associates point out that this is the first time since 1930 that the
stock market has fallen in the face of aggressive Fed easing.
Um, this was reported in LBO #100, in May. Damn. Wish I made a
quarter as much as
joanna bujes wrote:
So...following up on the Yale men thread...is the education given at
the ivies worth it?
I thought so. I had some very good professors, and one's fellow
students are an education in themselves. Classes were very lively -
much more so than the University of Virginia, where
Jurriaan Bendien wrote:
Seems to me the main thing getting in the way of Keynesian
pump-priming is the existence of multinational corporations and
international financial markets (international capital mobility).
The U.S., Japan, and the EU are all relatively closed economies, with
imports
Devine, James wrote:
I'd have to look again at this, but the Fed often has let the
discount rate follow the market -- and market rates were clearly
falling. According to Friedman Schwartz, market rates may have
fallen more than the discount rate: Though discount rates fell
absolutely
Devine, James wrote:
I wouldn't be surprised if the company suffered from a whiff of
Ponzi, i.e., that their stock-market value is dependent on the
growth of the number of the suckers -- I mean, customers -- for
their credit cards. But that number can't keep on increasing,
especially in
Jurriaan Bendien wrote:
I used to design survey questionnaires for a job once. You should
start off by inquiring into the survey methodology. Anybody can
manufacture a certain public opinion. Let's not get trapped in
categories which may not reveal what people really think. Threats
for whom
On Thu, Jul 18, 2002 at 12:25:26AM +0200, Jurriaan Bendien wrote:
The good side of recessions is that they clear away ideological fog and
make room for fresh ideas.
They can also generate new ideological fogs: our problems are caused
by lazy minorities/parasitic immigrants/disloyal
Tom Walker wrote:
Recessions can do neither. _During_ a recession, _people_ may clear away
their ideological fog or generate new fogs. Or perhaps it would be more
direct to simply say that the fog consists of attributing agency to a thing,
the recession.
I can see that PEN-L is once again
Devine, James wrote:
Third, the author says that in the late 1990s, Profit growth was
below normal and the product of fraudulent accounting. The miracle
economic numbers were the result of manipulated government
statistics. It's true that profit growth was below normal (as the
rate of profit
Michael Perelman wrote:
I don't think that he would characterize them as good. Crises are part of
the natural conditions of capitalism. In the short run, they wipe out
ficititous capital and restore balance, preparing the way for a further
bad period of capitalist prosperity -- unless, as will
Devine, James wrote:
James Glassman... predicted that the Dow Jones industrial average
would not stop at 10,000 but rise inexorably to 36,000.
He was interviewed on US NPR this morning. He still thinks that the
Dow will hit 36,000, about 10 years from now. (Frankly, I think the
Messiah
Tom Walker wrote:
Joanne Bujes wrote,
And prosperity is just around the corner...
Or around the coroner.
Ah, we're back on Depression Watch, aren't we? Hope you all have good
plan for taking advantage of the blood that will soon be flowing in
the streets. And a good explanation to offer the
Justin Schwartz wrote:
American democracy in particular is remarkably narrow and
close-minded. Toqueville said that he knew of no other country where
there was so little freedom of thought. I don't think that has
changed much, despite the progress. Consider: the drug war, the
punitive nature
Justin Schwartz wrote:
Whar's got into you, Doug, you think I have come around to
supporting the domiannce of money and that I would deny that it
narrow the political and cultural sphere?
I'm trying to see how you relate economic organization to politics
and culture. You write as if markets
joanna bujes wrote:
To take an example, I think Pete Seeger's songs had much greater
influence on working class consciousness...than any utopian novel.
Really? I thought it was middle-class beatniks, hippies, and Commies
who listen to that stuff, while the working class was/is listening to
Michael Perelman wrote:
I appreciate that we have avoided a rehash of the market socialism
debate. With
regard to the surplus, many traditional societies consumed the surplus in the
form of a ceremony at the end of the year rather than engaging in
accumulation.
You nostalgic for that
Justin Schwartz wrote:
Well, there's a tension there. But like the bumblebee, supposedly
aerodynamically impossible, the old whore keeps going along, which
means she's not as crooked as some say. Btw democracy is notoriously
a sinkhole of corruption and self-dealing too, when it's not an
Justin Schwartz wrote:
But Doug, tell me true, you have been relentlessly caricaturing my
views for the last little while, when you could write the answers to
your own own snipes,a nd agree with thosea nswers. Why have you been
doing this? jks
I'm not the one who made the analogy between
Justin Schwartz wrote:
Lots of socialist share Stalin's view that profit and competition
are just wicked. Course Uncle Joe didn't go in for democratic
discussion of people's preferences.
Who's doing caricature now?
Anyone who brings up planning, you invoke Stalin - and then hold up
Hayek
Devine, James wrote:
Is it possible that Schrub belongs to Skull Bones, the famous
Yale secret society, which is supposed to pledge to support any
member's career for life -- or to guarantee some minimum yearly
income for them? (Of course, we don't know, since it's secret.) If
he wasn't a
joanna bujes wrote:
Private school tuition ranges from $8,000/year to $20,000/year...and
it goes up every year.
My alma mater is up to $34,030! That's nearly 2,300 hours of work at
the average wage, twice as much as in 1973, when I was there.
But do we know how much people really pay? Most
Ulhas Joglekar wrote:
Anti-imperialism is almost dead is in large parts of Asia (Palestinian
struggle excluded) and there is no sign that it will be revived in the
forseable future. Thus, the contradiction between Asia and the developed
world is not present either.
BTW, the binary image of the
Ulhas Joglekar wrote:
1. Domestic prices of grain are higher than prices in the world market. But
Indian government fixes prices every year. These prices are
annually hiked. Such increases are disproportionate to the domestic rate of
inflation. The government is committed to procure any
Ulhas Joglekar wrote:
Is Lenin's theory of imperialism relevant today?
The minute Japan and the EU begin an arms buildup and fight with the
U.S. for influence in the so-called South, and U.S., EU, and Japanese
capitalists withdraw their investments in each other - maybe.
Doug
[EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote:
revealed preferences
Who came up with that concept?
Doug
Romain Kroes wrote:
Geographically, the whole world is
already more or less integrated into the net of the financial markets.
But how deeply rooted is this net, to mix metaphors hideously? In
national economies, the financial system is deeply bound up with
issues of ownership and control of
Michael Pollak wrote:
On Tue, 2 Jul 2002, Ellen Frank wrote:
A while back there was a billboard in Times Square that tracked the US
federal debt minute by minute. Does anyone happen to know when that was
and who paid for it?
This billboard is now posted on 14th Street, on the south side
Davies, Daniel wrote:
Bonus points if you can work in a few words on how the
URPE had it coming.
Usage note: it's URPE, sans definite article. Kind of like the way
DC-heads say Justice and Treasury and CBO.
Doug
Michael Perelman wrote:
Help me out here Doug. Usually, I would be inclined to believe Census figures
over something from Texas, but
Texas Transportation Institute. 2002. 2002 Urban Mobility Study
http://mobility.tamu.edu/ums/
Congestion is growing in areas of every size. The 75 urban areas
joanna bujes wrote:
OK, fine. Economists have decided that most of what people spend
money on: houses, education doesn't count. But the question remains:
how does this affect their planning and calculation and the
information that filters out to the uninitiated? My eight year old
daughter
pms wrote:
So remind me, what is URPE, said she, the non-econ.
The Union for Radical Political Economics http://www.urpe.org
(which just wasn't working), founded way back when. It publishes a
journal, the Review of RPE. Its annual summer conference is a
dizzying trip for mind and libido.
Michael Perelman wrote:
I have some questions: For example, how much have waiting times for medical
care increased?
The medical care component of the CPI has increased more than twice
as much as the overall CPI since 1979. Its weight is only 6% of the
total index, however.
Do rising
Devine, James wrote:
The worst of the fundamentalist Marxism occurred when the Social
Democrats had some power in Germany at the start of the depression
and endorsed deflationist policies, making matters worse.
Yup, with Hilferding as finance minister. But there's a good reason
he/they acted
Ellen Frank wrote:
A while back there was a billboard in Times Square
that tracked the US federal debt minute by minute.
Does anyone happen to know when that was and
who paid for it?
http://www.cnn.com/2000/US/09/07/debt.clock/
NEW YORK -- The plug was pulled on the National Debt Clock, which
Devine, James wrote:
this is a common mistake, i.e., that of assigning some sort of
normative meaning to value or surplus-value, when these are
normative only from the perspective of commodity-producing society
or capitalism (respectively). The attachment of normative meaning to
Devine, James wrote:
other righties want to go back to the gold standard, perhaps
because they've hoarded gold in the past and want to benefit from
capital gains...
And because it's stateless money, and the only major asset for which
there is no correponding liability (except that incurred
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