date:20030718

I discussed the concept of the virtual company with a Marxist friend once,
and he had an idea. He said, you know how Marx sketches the capitalist
production process as the circuit:

M-C(MP+LP)-P-C'-M'
[_]

Well, he said, the virtual company is the same formula, but then it goes
like this, without the feedback (reinvestment) loop:

M-C(MP+LP)-P-C'-M', M-C(MP+LP)-P-C'-M', M-C(MP+LP)-P-C'-M',
M-C(MP+LP)-P-C'-M' ...

The idea being, that producers would assemble for a specific project, and
then move on.

Yes, I said, but there are production processes which need to be carried on
in a stable, continuous way for many production cycles. That doesn't matter,
he said.

Then I pointed out that in the glory days of Dutch mercantile capitalism,
the Dutch had discovered an even more simple circuit, namely M-M'. He didn't
have an immediate reply to that one.

Regards

J.

Re: Bankruptcy

2003-07-18 Thread David S. Shemano

Michael Perelman writes:

 Exactly.  Why is it the responsibility of the rate payers to bail out the
 share holders?  Are the corps. willing to lower rates when profits are
 flush?

We discussed this two years ago.  The responsibility of the rate payers was to pay a 
sufficient amount for electricity to allow the electric companies to realize a 
reasonable rate of return.  However, when the wholesale price skyrocketed, the State 
of California refused to permit retail prices to correspondingly increase, thereby 
bankrupting the electric companies, thereby making a lot of California bankruptcy 
attorneys, including yours truly, very happy.  In effect, the State of California 
simply took assets from the shareholders and gave it to the retail customers.  As a 
further consequence, the State of California was forced to buy electricity at the high 
wholesale rate and then sell to at retail at the controlled price.  As a result, the 
California budget surplus was wiped out, and taxpayers for the forseeable future will 
be paying interest on the bonds floated to finance the State's buy high, sell low 
strategy.  Therefore, the State of California has transferred assets !
 from California's present and future taxpayers to the retail customers.

Under these circumstances, I see no reason why the retail customers are more 
symphathetic than the taxpayers or even the shareholders.  In fact, as many people are 
retail customers, taxpayers and shareholders, I would submit that only one group of 
people came out ahead -- the bankruptcy lawyers.

David Shemano

2 Top Officials in Hong Kong Resign in Wake of Protests

2003-07-18 Thread Michael Hoover

NYTimes.com

2 Top Officials in Hong Kong Resign in Wake of Protests

July 17, 2003
By KEITH BRADSHER

HONG KONG, July 16 - Two weeks of street protests here
produced a government crisis tonight as two top officials
announced their resignations and the territory's chief
executive said he would fly to Beijing on Saturday to
consult China's rulers about what to do next.

The resignations of Regina Ip, the secretary of security,
and Antony Leung, the financial secretary, represent a very
public humiliation for Beijing because the two had the
reputation of enjoying particularly close ties to top
Communist officials.

Mrs. Ip was widely seen as Beijing's enforcer, sending
police and immigration officers to perform sometimes
politically controversial raids. Mr. Leung is a former
student radical who married China's Olympic diving gold
medalist, Fu Mingxia, last summer.

After Tung Chee-hwa, the chief executive, Mrs. Ip and Mr.
Leung attracted the most vehement criticism at a march on
July 1 that drew a half-million people, most of them to
protest a stringent internal-security bill that Mrs. Ip had
championed.

The resignations tonight came despite Beijing's hardening
stance toward the rallies here in Hong Kong, which has been
a special administrative region of China since Britain
handed it over six years ago.

Gao Siren, the head of Beijing's liaison office here,
called on Tuesday for Hong Kong residents to focus more on
the economy than on politics. The Hong Kong edition of the
official China Daily warned in an editorial on Monday that
the march on July 1 and follow-up rallies on July 9 and
last Sunday represented a vehicle for subverting the
political system here.

Richard Tsoi, one of the main organizers of the July 1
march, said that demonstrators wanted lasting protections
for civil liberties and broad democratic reforms to the
political system here much more than the resignations of
ministers. We still think we have a long way to go, he
said.

Near the front of the march was a three-headed effigy of
Mrs. Ip standing at Mr. Tung's left side and waving a
butcher's knife while Mr. Leung peeked out from behind Mr.
Tung's right shoulder, a reference to Mr. Tung's shielding
him in a tax scandal.

Mrs. Ip said she was resigning for unspecified personal
reasons. Mr. Leung, whose resignation came two hours later
and seemed to catch the government by surprise, said he
felt that he had completed budgetary and economic stimulus
plans that he wanted.

Mrs. Ip, who kept a sword from the People's Liberation Army
at the front of her desk, has overseen the city's police,
immigration, customs and other uniformed officers since
July 1998.

Her efforts to push through the proposed security
legislation, demanded by Beijing but deeply unpopular here,
became almost as controversial as the bill itself. She
questioned last autumn the value of democracy in protecting
civil liberties and suggested that Hitler gained power
because of universal suffrage, a position that historians
dispute because of Hitler's reliance also on political
violence. Three days before the July 1 march, she declared
that she would not feel any pressure no matter how many
people showed up.

Mrs. Ip and Mr. Tung said in separate statements this
evening that she had actually submitted her resignation on
June 25, and that Mr. Tung had tried to talk her out of it
before finally accepting it. Resignations for top officials
become effective 30 days after submission, so Mrs. Ip will
leave office on July 25.

The government's insistence that Mrs. Ip gave her
resignation three weeks ago but that nobody found out about
it until now struck political experts. The government
obviously doesn't want it to look like she's resigning
under pressure from the demonstrations, said Michael
Davis, a professor of law and public affairs at the Chinese
University of Hong Kong.

Mr. Leung is the third-ranking official in the government,
after Mr. Tung and Donald Tsang, the chief secretary. But
he has kept a very low public profile since he saved
himself $24,000 by buying a Lexus LS430 luxury sedan a
month before he raised luxury car taxes steeply in March as
part of an unpopular series of tax increases.

The government's anticorruption agency finished an
investigation of him this week but has not made the results
public. Mr. Leung did not address the subject in announcing
his resignation tonight.

Mr. Leung said in a statement that his resignation was
effective immediately; Mr. Tung waived the normal 30-day
delay for the resignation of ministers.

Mr. Tung did not announce successors for Mrs. Ip or Mr.
Leung. As minister-level appointments, their successors
must be approved first by Beijing.

Mr. Tung announced on July 5 that he was removing three of
the most controversial provisions from the bill, including
one that would have allowed the government to ban any Hong
Kong group linked to an organization banned on the mainland
for national security reasons.

But the march so rattled the

Katha Pollitt in Le Monde diplomatique

2003-07-18 Thread Michael Hoover

Claiming Independence, Asserting Personal Choice
US: feminism lite
_

The collective action that changed women's public and
private lives in the United States is over: personal
choice is now seen as the only true value.

By Katha Pollitt *

Le Monde diplomatique
http://MondeDiplo.com/2003/07/15pollitt

July 2003
_

THE women's movement has transformed the United States
in just over 30 years. Stroll through a park and you're
likely to see a team of girls playing soccer. Drop in
at a law or medical school and women occupy almost half
the seats. Women own about one in four of small
businesses, and have made inroads in such masculine
preserves as bus driving, bartending, the clergy and
military - 12% of the armed forces are now female.

In private life the rules are rapidly changing: girls
and women are more willing to ask men out, and with
women's age at first marriage the latest ever, they
come to marriage with a firmer sense of who they are;
they now expect to work, to share domestic chores, and
to have a full and equal partnership with their mates.
In liberal communities practices that seemed bizarre a
generation ago may be rare, but raise few eyebrows:
lesbian co-parents, or educated single women with good
jobs, who have babies through artificial insemination
or adopt children.

So is American feminism, as its detractors claim, a
finished project kept alive only by ideologues? Not so:
the rosy picture above is only a part of the truth.
Women are still paid less (24% on average), promoted
less, and concentrated in poorly paid, stereotypically
female jobs. Women working full-time still make only 76
cents for every $1 earned by men. Only in porn movies
can women expect to earn higher salaries than men.

Men still overwhelmingly control US social, political,
legal and economic institutions and machinery. Rape,
domestic violence and sexual harassment are huge
problems. In four out of five marriages, the wife does
most of the housework and childcare whether or not she
also works full- time (and whether or not her husband
considers himself egalitarian). The flip side of girls'
achievement is the pressure on them from the media,
fashion, boys, each other, to conform to a prematurely
sexualised, impossible beauty ideal. In schools and
colleges, anorexia, bulimia and other eating disorders
are endemic.

Feminism has made the US more equal, more just, more
free, more diverse - more American. But it still has a
long way to go. The sociologist Arlie Hochschild calls
it a stalled revolution - in women's roles, hopes and
expectations to which society has yet to adjust.
Although most mothers, even of infants, are in the
workforce, 45% of which is female, the typical worker
is still seen as a man with a wife at home, thanks to
whom he can be totally available to his employer.

The rules for pensions, social security and
unemployment benefits disadvantage women, who are
usually the ones to take time off to care for children
or sick family. The social supports that ease poverty,
childcare and the working mother's double day in
European welfare states barely exist in the US: 41
million people lack health insurance; and welfare
reform has forced poor single mothers into jobs that
are often precarious and do not pay a living wage.
Without a national system of daycare or pre-school,
finding affordable childcare can be a nightmare even
for prosperous parents. It took the women's movement
more than 20 years to win passage of the Family and
Medical Leave Act, which gives workers in large
companies just 12 weeks' leave to care for newborns or
sick relatives: since the leave is unpaid, few can
afford to take it.

Caught between the old ways and the new, many Americans
blame feminism for difficulties. Men no longer give
their seats to pregnant women on the subway? Legal
abortion has destroyed chivalry. Not married although
you'd like to be? Feminism has made women too choosy
and men too childish. Infertile? You should have
listened to your biological clock instead of Gloria
Steinem. The women's movement has never had a good
press: every few years it has been declared dead. But
demonising feminists is now a pre occupation of
ideologues across the political spectrum. On the right,
misogynist radio hosts - shock jocks - rant against
feminazis, as if a woman who doesn't laugh at a
sexist joke is about to invade Poland. Fundamentalist
preachers such as televangelist Pat Robertson claim
feminism encourages women to leave their husbands,
kill their children, practice witchcraft, destroy
capitalism and become lesbians.

The American left, such as it is, is officially pro-
feminism, but suspicious of the women's movement - too
bourgeois, too white, too pre occupied with abortion
rights. For communitarians, feminists threaten the
family and the social cohesion married families
supposedly produce, and, by focusing on paid labour and
individual

Bush Appointee to FDA Reproductive Healh Drugs Advisory Committee

2003-07-18 Thread Michael Hoover

President Bush has announced his plan to select Dr. W. David Hager to
head up the food and Drug Administration's (FDA) Reproductive Health
Drugs Advisory Committee. The committee has not met for more than two
years, during which time its charter has lapsed. As a result, the Bush
Administration is tasked with filling all eleven positions with new
members.

This position does not require Congressional approval.  The FDA's
Reproductive Health Drugs Advisory Committee makes crucial  decisions
on matters relating to drugs used in the practice of obstetrics,
gynecology and related specialties, including hormone therapy,
contraception, treatment for infertility, and medical alternatives to
surgical procedures for sterilization and pregnancy termination.  Dr.
Hager's views of reproductive health care are far outside the mainstream
of setback for reproductive technology.

Dr. Hager is a practicing OB/GYN who describes himself as pro-life and
refuses  to prescribe contraceptives to unmarried women.  Hager is the
author of As Jesus Cared for Women: Restoring Women Then and
Now. The book blends biblical accounts of Christ healing women with
case studies from Hager's practice. In the book Dr. Hager wrote with his
wife, entitled Stress and the Woman's Body, he suggests that women who
suffer from premenstrual syndrome should seek help from reading the
bible and praying. As an editor and contributing author of The
Reproduction Revolution: A Christian Appraisal of Sexuality,
Reproductive Technologies and the Family, Dr. Hager appears to have
endorsed the medically inaccurate assertion that the common birth
control pill is an abortifacient.  Hagar's mission is religiously
motivated.

He has an ardent interest in revoking approval for mifepristone
(formerly known as RU-486) as a safe and early form of medical abortion.
Hagar recently assisted the Christian Medical Association in a
citizen's petition which calls upon the FDA to revoke its approval of
mifepristone in the name of women's health.  Hager's  desire to overturn
mifepristone's approval on religious grounds rather than scientific
merit would halt the development of mifepristone as a  treatment for
numerous medical conditions disproportionately affecting women,
including breast cancer, uterine cancer, uterine fibroid tumors,
psychotic depression, bipolar depression and Cushing's syndrome.

Women rely on the FDA to ensure their access to safe and effective drugs
for reproductive health care including products that prevent pregnancy.
For some women, such as those with certain types of diabetes and
those undergoing treatment for cancer, pregnancy can be a
life-threatening condition. We are concerned that Dr. Hager's strong
religious beliefs may color his assessment of technologies that are
necessary to protect women's lives or to preserve and promote women's
health.  Hager's track record of using religious beliefs to guide his
medical decision-making makes him a dangerous and inappropriate
candidate to serve as chair of this committee. Critical drug public
policy and research that covers a very broad swath of women health
issues must not be held hostage by antiabortion politics. Members of
this important panel should be appointed on the basis of science and
medicine, rather than politics and religion.   American women deserve no
less.

WHAT CAN YOU DO?
  1. SEND THIS TO EVERY PERSON WHO IS CONCERNED ABOUT WOMEN'S RIGHTS.
  2. OPPOSE THE PLACEMENT OF THIS MAN BY CONTACTING THE WHITE HOUSE
AND TELL THEM HE IS TOTALLY UNACCEPTABLE ON ANY LEVEL. Please email
President Bush at  [EMAIL PROTECTED] or call the White House at
(202) 456- or (202) 456-1414 and say:  I oppose the appointment
of Dr. Hager to the FDA Reproductive Health Drugs Advisory Committee.
Mixing religion and medicine is unacceptable. Using the FDA to promote a
political agenda is inappropriate and seriously threatens women's
health.

Re: Katha Pollitt in Le Monde diplomatique

A few weeks ago, wrote Wendy Murphy, a professor at Harvard Law School, I
asked my students (all women) to raise their hands if they believe in social
equality for women: they all raised their hands. Then I asked if they
believe in economic equality for women: they all raised their hands. Then I
asked if they believe in political equality for women: they all raised their
hands. Finally, I asked for a show of hands from those who considered
themselves to be feminists.

Yes, but Prof. Murphy didn't ask a show of hands from those who considered
themselves to be (heterodox) socialists, that't the point. You imagine such
a thing is possible at Harvard ? A socialist-feminist is like a good trade
union negotiator, pointing out that although gains have been made, things
have yet to be evened up more, to be fair. A feminist-socialist, however,
gives the whole economic fraternity a good intellectual kick up the balls !

Cheers

J.

Re: Of Coase

2003-07-18 Thread Max B. Sawicky

A couple of thoughts/questions:

1.  You state that the employee must work for someone else because of the
lack of capital, but Coase suggests (demonstrates?) that the firm
(employer-employee relationship) exists because of transaction costs.
Therefore, even if every worker starts with his own capital and is not
compelled to be an employee, firms would still be formed because they would
be more profitable (including for the salaried worker).

 right.  Coase's logic of the firm holds no matter who has
the capital.  The firm in Coase is a bundle of transactions
covered by an implicit contract wherein the workers concede
control over their work time to the coordinator.


2.  You state that the firm needs a coordinator, but Coase fails to explain
why the coordinator is not hired by the workers.  Isn't that because the
firm, by definition, always precedes the workers?  For instance, every
corporation is created by a person that incorporates the corporation,
initially finances the corporation and establish its purposes.

 Financing is a separate matter.  There is no financing in
Coase, nor any capital.  The basis for hierarchy is its favorable
cost, relative to market transactions.

 Once the purpose of the firm is established, then that person determines
what labor is required to achieve the purpose, taking into consideration the
firm's resources and other factors.  Comparatively, is it possible to
imagine certain workers combining themselves without any specific purpose,
and then hiring a coordinator to provide them with purpose?  How would that
work?  I think this points to the necessary role of the entrepeneur in the
equation.  David Shemano

  But such a purpose could be conceived by anyone.
Workers could hire somebody to conceive a firm.  In
Coase, the conceiving (which he describes as dealing
with uncertainty) can be marketized, contrary to Knight,
who (according to Coase) sees it as basic to the firm
and to the formation of classes.

Of course, workers don't hire their boss because they lack
sufficient capital.  With only a modest amount of capital,
sinking it into one business would be too risky for some.
With a lot of capital, the worker is not a worker any more.

In practice, before the advent of huge corporations,
ownership of capital confers the power to assign
'coordination' responsibilities.  Ergo, the ability
to economize on transactions costs provides a rationale
for the firm, it leaves to the imagination the nature
of the employee-employer relationship.

This may be old hat to a lot of people, but I'd like to
note that in Coase the entrepreneur's function is really
mechanical.  There is no innovation, creativity, or special
faculty being exercised.  (All of that you can buy.)
The coordinator is just another worker.  Maybe there's
something radical there.

mbs

Marcuse

http://www.latimes.com/features/lifestyle/la-et-goetz18jul18192424,1,4074845.story 
http://www.latimes.com/features/lifestyle/la-et-goetz18jul18192424,1,4074845.story  


Berlin offers Marcuse respect and a final home


The philosopher who inspired a generation of '60s radicals in the U.S. died in 1979; 
his ashes will be interred today.


By John Goetz
Special to The Times

July 18, 2003

BERLIN  The grand boulevard of Friedrichstrasse runs through the center of this 
once-divided city, from West Berlin through Checkpoint Charlie and then into the 
former East Berlin. It ends at a 300-year-old cemetery.

It is there, among some of Germany's intellectual giants, that the remains of a 
controversial philosopher of the 1960s student revolution will be given a final 
resting place today.

For Herbert Marcuse, the German-born Marxist philosopher and a father of America's 
radical student movement, his last trip to Berlin will end with an official gesture of 
respect unlike anything he received in his lifetime.

In America, where he had come to flee the Nazis, Marcuse's views and teachings made 
him a lightning rod for controversy. Then-Gov. Ronald Reagan once demanded his 
resignation from a teaching post at UC San Diego. The American Legion and the 
Christian Anti-Communist Crusade pressured the university to fire him. The Ku Klux 
Klan threatened to kill him.

The Dorotheenstadtischer Cemetery is not a final resting place for ordinary Germans. 
The remains of such important intellectual figures as the philosophers G.W.F. Hegel 
and Johann Gottlieb Fichte are there. And near philosophers' row are the graves of 
dramatist Bertolt Brecht, his wife, actress Helene Weigel, and other artists.

Today the remains of Marcuse, a former Santa Monica and La Jolla resident, will be 
interred in the cemetery  at the special invitation of the city of Berlin; his 
grave will be tended and maintained by the city. 

The ceremony will include the professor's family, as well as many of his students and 
followers, among them 1960s radical Angela Davis, who teaches at UC Santa Cruz.

Herbert Marcuse was born in 1898 to a Jewish family in the wealthy Dahlem section of 
Berlin. He studied philosophy and was active in politics as a young man.

Marcuse joined the legendary Institute for Social Research, the so-called Frankfurt 
School, which sought to combine cultural studies of Freud and Marx. The Nazi seizure 
of power left the Institute and Marcuse on the run, first to Geneva, then to Paris and 
later to the United States.

Arriving in New York, he found a country amid a depression and flooded with German 
refugees. But he was offered a teaching position and so became a U.S. citizen.

During World War II, Marcuse helped his new country, working as an analyst for the 
Office of Secret Services, where he prepared psychological profiles of Nazis. 

After the war, he helped prepare evidence for trials against German conglomerates 
involved in supporting the Nazis. He returned to academia in 1952, going first to 
Columbia University, then to Harvard and, in 1958, to Brandeis University.

It was at Brandeis that Marcuse wrote his opus that inspired the student movement  
One Dimensional Man  and had Davis and Abbie Hoffman as students. His critique of 
America, with its comfortable, smooth, reasonable, democratic unfreedom did not 
cause him trouble. Instead, it was a fight over free speech on campus and his 
opposition to the war in Vietnam that lead Brandeis not to renew Marcuse's contract.

In 1965, the 67-year-old, white-haired professor accepted a long-standing offer from 
UCSD and moved to La Jolla.

He loved the California lifestyle and took his daily constitutional on the beach, 
recalled his grandson, Harold Marcuse.

His class at UCSD, Theories of Society, became one of the most popular on campus. He 
became widely revered by the student movements that embraced his critique of 
capitalist consumerism.

The people recognize themselves in their commodities; they find their soul in their 
automobile, hi-fi set, split-level home, kitchen equipment, he wrote.

His message inspired legions of young radicals in Europe as well as in the United 
States.

Daniel Cohn-Bendit, also known as Danny the Red and a leader of the May 1968 
uprising in Paris, recalled: Herbert Marcuse was particularly important in Germany, 
because the German student movement needed an intellectual leader who was not tainted 
by national socialism but who at the same time sought the emancipation from 
capitalism.

Another fan of Marcuse (and a leader of the German student movement of the late 1960s) 
is Germany's foreign minister, Joschka Fischer. The popular Green Party leader spent 
his radical years in Frankfurt and was influenced by the Frankfurt School and in 
particular by Marcuse. 

Joschka read a whole lot of Marcuse. He was very influenced by his critique of the 
Soviet Union, says Cohn-Bendit, a close friend of Fischer for more than 20 years.

But

Re: No Googling quiz

- Original Message -
From: Tom Walker [EMAIL PROTECTED]



 They are private companies, but the enormous scope of their influence
comes
 largely as a result of their government-conferred power.

 1. Who said it?
 2. What was the circumstances?
 3. Which private companies was s/he referring to?

 NO GOOGLING!

 Tom Walker
 604 255 4812

=

What, is Lieberman's staff lurking on Pen-L?




How about this one:

Men naturally rebel against the injustice of which they are victims. Thus,
when plunder is organized by law for the profit of those who make the law,
all the plundered classes try somehow to enter  by peaceful or
revolutionary means  into the making of laws. According to their degree
of enlightenment, these plundered classes may propose one of two entirely
different purposes when they attempt to attain political power: Either
they may wish to stop lawful plunder, or they may wish to share in it.

Woe to the nation when this latter purpose prevails among the mass victims
of lawful plunder when they, in turn, seize the power to make laws! Until
that happens, the few practice lawful plunder upon the many, a common
practice where the right to participate in the making of law is limited to
a few persons. But then, participation in the making of law becomes
universal. And then, men seek to balance their conflicting interests by
universal plunder. Instead of rooting out the injustices found in society,
they make these injustices general. As soon as the plundered classes gain
political power, they establish a system of reprisals against other
classes. They do not abolish legal plunder. (This objective would demand
more enlightenment than they possess.) Instead, they emulate their evil
predecessors by participating in this legal plunder, even though it is
against their own interests.

It is as if it were necessary, before a reign of justice appears, for
everyone to suffer a cruel retribution  some for their evilness, and some
for their lack of understanding.

Re: No Googling quiz

 How about this one:

 Men naturally rebel against the injustice of which they are victims.

Frederic Bastiat, author of Economic Harmonies, criticised by Karl Marx.
Oops I googled to check if I got it correct. To my great surprise, I as a
naive young socialist was one day accosted in New Zealand by a woman  who
actually tried to sell me a copy of one of Bastiat's texts, in the street. I
had only read Marx's critique of Bastiat, not Bastiat himself, and declined
the offer, suspecting a petty-bourgeois sect. Big mistake for an aspiring
heterodox socialist.

J.

Re: No Googling quiz

2003-07-18 Thread Tom Walker

You googled? But you didn't answer 2. and 3.

Ian wrote:

What, is Lieberman's staff lurking on Pen-L?

Tom Walker
604 255 4812

Re: Of Coase

2003-07-18 Thread andie nachgeborenen

I think this points to the
 necessary role of the entrepeneur in the equation.

 David Shemano

That is what Hayekians say about why you need
capitalism, not just markets, but I do not understand
why entrepreneurship requires ownership. Hell, most
capitalist entrepreneurship is corporate, and the
owners are not likely to be the entrepreneurs. jks

__
Do you Yahoo!?
SBC Yahoo! DSL - Now only $29.95 per month!
http://sbc.yahoo.com

Re: No Googling quiz

- Original Message -
From: Tom Walker [EMAIL PROTECTED]



 You googled? But you didn't answer 2. and 3.

 Ian wrote:

 What, is Lieberman's staff lurking on Pen-L?

===

No. Enron hearings iirc.


Ian

This is the sort of simplistic answer that serves conservatives well but
of course it has little to do with what happened. What happened was that
the utilties had the legislature make the rate payers pay not "a sufficient
amount for electricity to allow the electric companies to realize a reasonable
rate of return" but a price very much higher. That higher price generated
several billion dollars over and above the wholesale price of electricity.
PGE put these billions into an unregulated subsidiary which itself
just went bankrupt, unrelated to California law or markets. The president
of the utility said at the time of the legislation that the company would
take the risk -- which he no doubt took to be very small.

Essentially PG^E bet the company on the belief that the over collection
would continue long enough to produce a huge gain. It didn't quite. The
combination of a poor hydro year and the cooperation if not the collusion
of the generators to fix prices came too early for PGE which by law
would have been allowed to pass through any of the costs in just a few more
months.

So, David Shamano ignores the actual history and separately ignores the
price fixing -- which of course can't happen in his world -- to reach the
same old story -- if only the government didn't screw with markets the world
would be perfect.

Gene Coyle

David S. Shemano wrote:

Michael Perelman writes:

Exactly. Why is it the responsibility of the rate payers to bail out the
share holders? Are the corps. willing to lower rates when profits are
flush?

We discussed this two years ago. The responsibility of the rate payers was to pay a sufficient amount for electricity to allow the electric companies to realize a reasonable rate of return. However, when the wholesale price skyrocketed, the State of California refused to permit retail prices to correspondingly increase, thereby bankrupting the electric companies, thereby making a lot of California bankruptcy attorneys, including yours truly, very happy. In effect, the State of California simply took assets from the shareholders and gave it to the retail customers. As a further consequence, the State of California was forced to buy electricity at the high wholesale rate and then sell to at retail at the controlled price. As a result, the California budget surplus was wiped out, and taxpayers for the forseeable future will be paying interest on the bonds floated to finance the State's buy high, sell low strategy. Therefore, the State of California has transferred assets !

from California's present and future taxpayers to the retail customers.

Under these circumstances, I see no reason why the retail customers are more symphathetic than the taxpayers or even the shareholders. In fact, as many people are retail customers, taxpayers and shareholders, I would submit that only one group of people came out ahead -- the bankruptcy lawyers.

David Shemano

Cheney was looking ahead?

2003-07-18 Thread Dan Scanlan

MEDIA ADVISORY from the Conservative Watchdog Group, Judicial Watch

CHENEY ENERGY TASK FORCE DOCUMENTS FEATURE MAP OF IRAQI OILFIELDS
Commerce  State Department Reports to Task Force Detail Oilfield 
Gas Projects, Contracts 
Exploration
Saudi Arabian  UAE Oil Facilities Profiled As Well
(Washington, DC) Judicial Watch, the public interest group that
investigates and prosecutes government
corruption and abuse, said today that documents turned over by the
Commerce Department, under court order as a result of Judicial
Watchs Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) lawsuit concerning the
activities of the Cheney Energy Task Force, contain a map of Iraqi
oilfields, pipelines, refineries and terminals, as well as 2 charts
detailing Iraqi oil and gas projects, and Foreign Suitors for Iraqi
Oilfield Contracts. The documents, which are dated March 2001, are
available on the Internet at: www.JudicialWatch..org.
The Saudi Arabian and United Arab Emirates (UAE) documents likewise
feature a map of each countrys
oilfields, pipelines, refineries and tanker terminals. There are
supporting charts with details of the major
oil and gas development projects in each country that provide
information on the projects, costs, capacity, oil company and status
or completion date.
Judicial Watch has been seeking these documents under FOIA since
April 19, 2001. Judicial Watch was forced to file a lawsuit in the
U.S. District Court for the District of Columbia (Judicial Watch Inc.
v.
Department of Energy, et al., Civil Action No. 01-0981) when the
government failed to comply with the
provisions of the FOIA law. U.S. District Court Judge Paul J.
Friedman ordered the government to produce the documents on March 5,
2002.
The documents were produced in response to Judicial Watchs on-going
efforts to ensure transparency and accountability in government on
behalf of the American people. Judicial Watch aggressively pursues
those goals by making FOIA requests and seeking access to public
information concerning government operations. When the government
fails to abide by these sunshine laws Judicial Watch files lawsuits
in order to obtain the requested information and to hold responsible
government officials accountable.
These documents show the importance of the Energy Task Force and why
its operations should be open to the public, stated Judicial Watch
President Tom Fitton.

Re: Of Coase

Max writes:
This may be old hat to a lot of people, but I'd like to
note that in Coase the entrepreneur's function is really
mechanical.  There is no innovation, creativity, or special
faculty being exercised.  (All of that you can buy.)
The coordinator is just another worker.  Maybe there's
something radical there.

but Coase would be subject to the Austrian school and the Marxian school's critique 
that the neoclassical economics that Coase pursues is fundamentally static and thus 
ignores the role of entrepreneurs and innovation. 

I don't believe in the innovation argument, BTW, because there's nothing that says 
that innovation is automatically good (since, e.g., the new Ponzi schemes that are 
thought up almost every day are examples of innovation) and there's nothing that says 
that governments, grass-roots democratic groups, etc., can't innovate. 
Jim

Re: No Googling quiz

2003-07-18 Thread Tom Walker

Ian wrote,

No. Enron hearings iirc.

That's two out of three. For the (partial) answer to number three, I'll
defer to NYT columnist, Thomas Friedman's possibly hyperbolic reference:

There are two superpowers in the world today in my opinion. Theres the
United States and theres Moodys Bond Rating Service. The United States can
destroy you by dropping bombs, and Moodys can destroy you by downgrading
your bonds. And believe me, its not clear sometimes whos more powerful.

For extra credit now (an open-ended question): what are activist
groups/scholars/journalists doing to comprehend and contest the superpower
influence of these private companies with government-conferred power?

(Hint: 1. the answer is not nothing and 2. I don't know the answer. That's
why I'm asking.)

Original questions:

 They are private companies, but the enormous scope of their influence
comes
 largely as a result of their government-conferred power.

 1. Who said it?
 2. What was the circumstances?
 3. Which private companies was s/he referring to?

Tom Walker
604 255 4812

Re: No Googling quiz

- Original Message -
From: Tom Walker [EMAIL PROTECTED]
To: [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Sent: Friday, July 18, 2003 10:27 AM
Subject: Re: [PEN-L] No Googling quiz

 Ian wrote,

 No. Enron hearings iirc.

 That's two out of three. For the (partial) answer to number three, I'll
 defer to NYT columnist, Thomas Friedman's possibly hyperbolic reference:

 There are two superpowers in the world today in my opinion. Theres the
 United States and theres Moodys Bond Rating Service. The United States
can
 destroy you by dropping bombs, and Moodys can destroy you by
downgrading
 your bonds. And believe me, its not clear sometimes whos more
powerful.

 For extra credit now (an open-ended question): what are activist
 groups/scholars/journalists doing to comprehend and contest the
superpower
 influence of these private companies with government-conferred power?

 (Hint: 1. the answer is not nothing and 2. I don't know the answer.
That's
 why I'm asking.)
===

Question 3 response readout:

The synaptic cluster 'you' are trying to access is quiescent at this
time, please diffuse more serotonin to the hypothalamic region to avoid
this response in the future.

For scholars try Timothy J Sinclair for starts...

Ian

Re: Of Coase

2003-07-18 Thread Max B. Sawicky

What would the critics say to Coase's dictum
that you can buy innovation or rent entrepreneurs?

I suppose innovation is hard to price, hence the
market for it is deficient.  For inability to sell
innovation, entrepreneurs (and venture capital) are born.
This would be accentuated insofar as there is innovation
without social purpose that drains effort and capital
from useful innovation.  Either way, the power is still
with capital.

mbs




but Coase would be subject to the Austrian school and the Marxian school's
critique that the neoclassical economics that Coase pursues is fundamentally
static and thus ignores the role of entrepreneurs and innovation.

I don't believe in the innovation argument, BTW, because there's nothing
that says that innovation is automatically good (since, e.g., the new Ponzi
schemes that are thought up almost every day are examples of innovation) and
there's nothing that says that governments, grass-roots democratic groups,
etc., can't innovate.
Jim

Re: No Googling quiz

2003-07-18 Thread Max B. Sawicky

For extra credit now (an open-ended question): what are activist
groups/scholars/journalists doing to comprehend and contest the superpower
influence of these private companies with government-conferred power?

(Hint: 1. the answer is not nothing and 2. I don't know the answer. That's
why I'm asking.)



Organizing to free Mumia?

(Sorry.  We kid because we love.)

No, the answer is global regulation, notwithstanding the problem
that we can't get national regulation.

mbs

Re: No Googling quiz

- Original Message -
From: Max B. Sawicky [EMAIL PROTECTED]
To: [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Sent: Friday, July 18, 2003 11:15 AM
Subject: Re: [PEN-L] No Googling quiz

 For extra credit now (an open-ended question): what are activist
 groups/scholars/journalists doing to comprehend and contest the
superpower
 influence of these private companies with government-conferred power?

 (Hint: 1. the answer is not nothing and 2. I don't know the answer.
That's
 why I'm asking.)

 Organizing to free Mumia?

 (Sorry.  We kid because we love.)

 No, the answer is global regulation, notwithstanding the problem
 that we can't get national regulation.

 mbs

=

Well, via UNCITRAL  WTO [esp. the deepening of GATS] they're setting up
the regulation of us and further constraining our ability of regulate
them. Privatization is the consummate euphemism for asset stripping.

Ian

Re: Of Coase

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

 Why this lust for innovation? Most innovations are either (1)
 destructive or (2) desperate attempts to compensate for the destruction
 brought by prior innovations.

 Carrol

 P.S. I won't accept as an answer that capitalism must innovate. That is
 one of the most destructive aspects of capitalism. Innovation which is
 forced on one by invisible social relations existing behind your back
 are a manifestation of unfreedom, not of freedom or human creativity.



Let's go back to Eden and reinvent consciousness so the so-called
malignant invisible hand won't take over.


Sheesh,

Ian

Re: Of Coase

Max:
What would the critics say to Coase's dictum
that you can buy innovation or rent entrepreneurs?

I suppose innovation is hard to price, hence the
market for it is deficient.  For inability to sell
innovation, entrepreneurs (and venture capital) are born.
This would be accentuated insofar as there is innovation
without social purpose that drains effort and capital
from useful innovation.  Either way, the power is still
with capital.

I guess you could say that each case of entrepreneurship is such a unique item that 
the market for such would be so thin that there would be no price. Looked at another 
way, trying to sell an innovation would either be totally academic (since innovations 
_qua_ innovations have to be put into practice) or would undermine its uniqueness and 
therefore the entrepreneur's profits. Now, someone could buy a partially-revealed 
innovation as a pig in a poke, but then that person would be the entrepreneur 
(risk-taker), not just a purchaser of an innovation.

As I said before, innovation isn't necessarily good. The nature of innovation under 
capitalism is socially irresponsible, either ignoring external costs and benefits or 
(more actively) seeking to internalize external benefits (e.g., public spaces) for 
private profit or to externalize internal costs (e.g., pollution). It's not all 
producing new goodies, while much of what is called innovation is 
government-subsidized -- or is simply imitation driven by competition. 

Innovation would be very different with a socialist-democratic system.


Jim Devine [EMAIL PROTECTED]   http://bellarmine.lmu.edu/~jdevine

Re: quick question

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


 Eubulides wrote:
 
  Right but the dictionary entry is saying 1873. I'm reading a review of
  Heckscher's book [it's Tuesday and I don't have a tv :-)] and I'm
asking
  in an historiographical and nominalist sense...
 

 OED Online gives first date as 1838. But I can't find their bibliography
 of sources so I don't know what kind of asource they took the quote
 from. New Moral World 22 Dec. 142/2. I don't have the foggiest idea what
 the New Moral World was. For mercantile system the earliest source
 given, as Michael says, is Smith.

 Carrol



Thanks for the above Carrol.

Here's a tidbit from one of Lars Magnusson's papers:

Quoting a guy named D C Coleman:


...what was this mercantilism? Did it exist? As a description of a trend
in economic thought the term  may well be useful. As a label for economic
policy the term is not simply misleading, but actively confusing, a
red-herring of historiography. It serves to give a false unity to
disparate events, to conceal the close up reality of particular times and
particular circumstances...

Re: quick question

While it's true that abstract concepts such as mercantilism can give a false unity to 
disparate events, to conceal the close up reality of  particular times and particular 
circumstances... that doesn't mean that the use of such concepts _always and 
everywhere_ leads to such confusion, excessive abstraction, or reification. We 
shouldn't give in to the abstract drive to reject abstractions. 

We could see mercantilism as summarizing the shared characteristics of heterogeneous 
empirical phenomena -- while also noting the differences amongst the phenomena. Though 
we may need a long book like that of Hechscher to talk about mercantilism in all its 
variety, we could also learn something from the abstract summary at the beginning or 
end of that book. And leaving out those summaries -- in a vain effort ot avoid 
abstraction or reification -- would simply leave us with a bunch of disparate facts 
(a buzzing, blooming confusion) on which we'd impose our own pre-conceived theories 
rather than benefiting from the deductions of the author (with which we could agree or 
disagree). 

BTW, if I remember Heckscher's analysis correctly, he saw mercantilism as the economic 
side of absolutism, i.e., the effort by small feudal lords to unite bigger territories 
under their rule, to become kings running unified states. It didn't simply involve the 
violation of the canons of free trade theory as Smithians suggest (since trade was 
hardly free before mercantilism). In fact, it involved the breaking down of trade 
barriers (and such things as tax farming) _within_ the king's territory.  It's a 
little like the creation of the European Common Market (or other trade blocs), which 
not only freed trade within its bounds but also raised the effective trade barriers 
vis-a-vis the non-ECM. 


Jim Devine [EMAIL PROTECTED]   http://bellarmine.lmu.edu/~jdevine




 -Original Message-
 From: Eubulides [mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED]
 Sent: Friday, July 18, 2003 11:41 AM
 To: [EMAIL PROTECTED]
 Subject: Re: [PEN-L] quick question
 
 
 - Original Message -
 From: Carrol Cox [EMAIL PROTECTED]
 
 
  Eubulides wrote:
  
   Right but the dictionary entry is saying 1873. I'm 
 reading a review of
   Heckscher's book [it's Tuesday and I don't have a tv :-)] and I'm
 asking
   in an historiographical and nominalist sense...
  
 
  OED Online gives first date as 1838. But I can't find their 
 bibliography
  of sources so I don't know what kind of asource they took the quote
  from. New Moral World 22 Dec. 142/2. I don't have the 
 foggiest idea what
  the New Moral World was. For mercantile system the earliest source
  given, as Michael says, is Smith.
 
  Carrol
 
 
 
 Thanks for the above Carrol.
 
 Here's a tidbit from one of Lars Magnusson's papers:
 
 Quoting a guy named D C Coleman:
 
 
 ...what was this mercantilism? Did it exist? As a 
 description of a trend
 in economic thought the term  may well be useful. As a label 
 for economic
 policy the term is not simply misleading, but actively confusing, a
 red-herring of historiography. It serves to give a false unity to
 disparate events, to conceal the close up reality of 
 particular times and
 particular circumstances...

Re: quick question

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


While it's true that abstract concepts such as mercantilism can give a
false unity to disparate events, to conceal the close up reality of
particular times and particular circumstances... that doesn't mean that
the use of such concepts _always and everywhere_ leads to such confusion,
excessive abstraction, or reification. We shouldn't give in to the
abstract drive to reject abstractions.

===

My guess is that Cole was attempting to assert that we shouldn't say that
those policymakers/powerholders from the 16-early 18th centuries saw
themselves as mercantilists pursuing mercantilist policies.

Ian

Re: quick question

 My guess is that Cole was attempting to assert that we 
 shouldn't say that
 those policymakers/powerholders from the 16-early 18th centuries saw
 themselves as mercantilists pursuing mercantilist policies.

of course they didn't (since the owl of Minerva only flies after the fact). I don't 
think that Bush thinks of himself as a capitalist pawn pursuing capitalist policies.
Jim

Re: Of Coase

2003-07-18 Thread Michael Perelman

Schumpter is relevant here because he insists (following Marx) that
innovation makes the existing price system irrelevant --  to the extent
that it is really innovative.

On Fri, Jul 18, 2003 at 02:12:55PM -0400, Max B. Sawicky wrote:
 What would the critics say to Coase's dictum
 that you can buy innovation or rent entrepreneurs?

 I suppose innovation is hard to price, hence the
 market for it is deficient.  For inability to sell
 innovation, entrepreneurs (and venture capital) are born.
 This would be accentuated insofar as there is innovation
 without social purpose that drains effort and capital
 from useful innovation.  Either way, the power is still
 with capital.

 mbs




 but Coase would be subject to the Austrian school and the Marxian school's
 critique that the neoclassical economics that Coase pursues is fundamentally
 static and thus ignores the role of entrepreneurs and innovation.

 I don't believe in the innovation argument, BTW, because there's nothing
 that says that innovation is automatically good (since, e.g., the new Ponzi
 schemes that are thought up almost every day are examples of innovation) and
 there's nothing that says that governments, grass-roots democratic groups,
 etc., can't innovate.
 Jim

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

Tel. 530-898-5321
E-Mail [EMAIL PROTECTED]

Re: quick question

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



 My guess is that Cole was attempting to assert that we
 shouldn't say that
 those policymakers/powerholders from the 16-early 18th centuries saw
 themselves as mercantilists pursuing mercantilist policies.

of course they didn't (since the owl of Minerva only flies after the
fact). I don't think that Bush thinks of himself as a capitalist pawn
pursuing capitalist policies.
Jim



Description

Descriptions of descriptions

Contested descriptions of descriptions of descriptions


..

From a rhetorical standpoint, a description is a verbal representation of
some object to some audience, such that the speaker is able to change the
audience's attitude toward the object without changing the object itself.
Thus, the trick for any would-be describer is to contain the effects of
her discourse so that the object remains intact once her discourse is
done. In descriptions of human behavior, this is often very difficult to
manage, as the people being described, once informed of the description,
may become upset and proceed to subvert the describer's authority. [Steve
Fuller]


'perceptual fault lines' run through apparently stable communities that
appear to have agreed on basic institutions and structures and on general
governing rules. Consent comes apart in battles of description. Consent
comes apart over whose stories to tell. [Kim Scheppele]

Re: quick question

are you disagreeing? what _are_ you saying? why should we agree with these people? 


I wrote:
 I don't think that Bush thinks of himself as a capitalist pawn
 pursuing capitalist policies.

 

Ian writes: 
 
 Description
 
 Descriptions of descriptions
 
 Contested descriptions of descriptions of descriptions
 
 
 ..
 
 From a rhetorical standpoint, a description is a verbal 
 representation of
 some object to some audience, such that the speaker is able 
 to change the
 audience's attitude toward the object without changing the 
 object itself.
 Thus, the trick for any would-be describer is to contain the 
 effects of
 her discourse so that the object remains intact once her discourse is
 done. In descriptions of human behavior, this is often very 
 difficult to
 manage, as the people being described, once informed of the 
 description,
 may become upset and proceed to subvert the describer's 
 authority. [Steve
 Fuller]
 
 
 'perceptual fault lines' run through apparently stable 
 communities that
 appear to have agreed on basic institutions and structures 
 and on general
 governing rules. Consent comes apart in battles of 
 description. Consent
 comes apart over whose stories to tell. [Kim Scheppele]

Re: quick question

- Original Message -
From: Devine, James [EMAIL PROTECTED]
To: [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Sent: Friday, July 18, 2003 2:10 PM
Subject: Re: [PEN-L] quick question

are you disagreeing? what _are_ you saying? why should we agree with these
people?

What does it mean to say they were mercantilists if that is merely one
form of ex post description amongst possible others [and no I'm not
providing a cluster of counterfactuals to serve as the basis for a
different narrative]? Whose description trumps given Quine-Duhem?

Ian

Re: quick question

I asked: 
 are you disagreeing? what _are_ you saying? why should we 
 agree with these
 people?

Ian: 
 What does it mean to say they were mercantilists if that is merely one
 form of ex post description amongst possible others [and no I'm not
 providing a cluster of counterfactuals to serve as the basis for a
 different narrative]? 

It means that I think that one theory (that there is something called mercantilism 
which describes shared characteristics of pre-19th century Western European state 
economic policies) works in the sense that it allows more understanding of the 
phenomena than simply avoiding theory altogether (which is impossible, anyway). If 
there are better theories, I'd like to hear of them.   

Whose description trumps given Quine-Duhem?

I don't know what their theory of mercantilism is. My understanding is that they were 
both philosophers of science, not social scientists, so I doubt that they wrote 
anything about mercantilism. 

In any event, what is meant by trumping Quine-Dumen? I'm not interested in 
trumping a philosophy of science but instead in getting a better understanding of 
empirical reality (until an even better one comes along). 

Jim

Re: mercantile capitalism

As far as I understand it, a theme in the controversy about mercantile
capitalism was whether you could call a society such as 18th century Holland
with developed commercial relations (but still a large rural population;
industrialisation took off late in Holland, namely in the last quarter of
the 19th century) capitalist, even although it did not yet feature
large-scale capitalist industry. Following Wallersteinian logic, you might
well call it capitalism, namely mercantile capitalism. If you did so, then
the question was raised about what the capitalist mode of production
really referred to. In the case of Andre Gunder Frank, this type of
controversy led him to abandon the concept of mode of production
altogether. However, Ernest Mandel and Kozo Uno among others took quite a
different approach. This approach depends on distinguishing carefully
between capital and capitalist production. Capital, i.e. value in search
of a surplus value, money used to make more money, existed for thousands of
years even prior to the advent of pockets of capitalistic production,
which emerged both in China and in Europe. This capital could be usury
capital, bank capital, merchant capital, and so forth. But the existence of
capital did not imply capitalism except in some vague sense as the
pursuit of increasing one's capital. The real problem was to understand the
processes by which production for the market becomes generalised over time,
i.e. the processes of marketisation, and these processes are not simply
economic, but cultural, technological, social and political. Only when
substantial means of production and labour have become tradeable objects,
Mandel and Uno argue, can we begin to speak of a genuinely capitalist mode
of production, and what this means is that almost the entire production
process of an economic community is now marketised, and becomes dominated by
capital. When Marx refers to the capitalist mode of production, he similarly
has in mind capitalist industry, the subordination of production to the
rules of capital, and he concerns himself with the industrialisation process
in its capitalist form. This means, in effect, that capital has become the
regulative force of the entire economic process, and that the capitalist
mode of production becomes an organic, self-reproducing social totality
which, swung into orbit as it were, follows its own trajectory, ultimately
determined by its own inner laws, contradictions and regularities, what Marx
calls the law(s) of motion of capitalism, even although the specific way in
which these laws, contradictions and regularities might work themselves out,
depend greatly on the specific (geographic, social, cultural, political)
environment within which it operates. The question then is, how do we date
the beginning of the capitalist mode of production in the proper sense of
the word. Mandel takes the view, that the starting point is the 1820s or so,
i.e. the emergence of a world market in industrially-produced goods, and he
reserves the term capitalism for the capitalist mode of production. He
reserves the concept of a mode of production for an organic,
self-reproducing social totality featuring a specific combination of forces
of production (means of production and labour power) and relations of
production (ownership. work and reproductive relations). Following Louis
Althusser, he distinguishes between a mode of production and a social
formation, the latter containing the former as well as other institutions,
namely political institutions and the institutions of civil society, which
Marx did not analyse systematically. In that case, a society like 19th
century Holland was not really capitalist, but a hybrid formation
combining feudal relations and bourgeois-commercial relations, or if you
like, an articulation of modes of production intertwined with each other
(although manufactories and cottage industries were not very significant at
that time). That is to say, transitional epochs occur in history in which
one mode of production gradually displaces another, through technological
revolutions, social revolutions and incremental processes.  For Mandel, this
historical debate was not entirely scholastic, because it had a direct
bearing on the transition to socialism. You had to be able to say clearly
when a society was capitalist, and when it was no longer capitalist, and
what the transition to socialism would mean. For Mandel, the transition to
socialism meant essentially the displacement, over time, of markets by other
methods of resource allocation, which, at least in outline, had already been
developed within the capitalist mode of production. It would mean in the
first instance, that capital and labour could no longer be freely traded,
but that resource allocation would be subject to social priorities and
social regulation determined by the political state. The crucial criterion
here was whether private ownership of the majority of means of production
and exchange was

Re: quick question

2003-07-18 Thread MIYACHI

Can anyone remove how to remove PEN-L

[EMAIL PROTECTED]

the global mic

US war system reaps $2bn for BAE

David Gow
Saturday July 19, 2003
The Guardian

BAE Systems, Britain's biggest defence manufacturer, yesterday secured its place at 
the heart of the
Pentagon's visionary new electronic warfare programme, with a contract from Boeing 
worth up to $2bn.

Two north American businesses of hard-pressed BAE are among 15 partners chosen by 
Boeing, leader of
the US Army's Future Combat System (FCS), linking ground and airborne units.

It is seen by the Pentagon as capable of delivering a precise firepower that will 
dwarf the shock
and awe seen in Iraq this year.

The new network-centric system, which effectively gets rid of the tank and other 
hardware
developed since the first world war, is meant to transform the US Army into a highly 
manoeuvrable,
high-speed force.

BAE's selection, along with Lockheed Martin, Northrop Grumman and Raytheon, America's 
biggest
defence contractors, buttresses its ambition to become a substantial US military 
supplier.

The company, at loggerheads with the British government, has made no secret of its 
ultimate plans
for merger with the big US players such as Boeing or Lockheed, though talk of an 
imminent deal is
too premature.

The highly classified work of BAE's two US units, one of them acquired from Lockheed 
and both run by
US citizens, will be kept secret from the company's main British businesses under US 
laws, which
forbid such technology transfer - a restriction that Tony Blair asked to be lifted in 
his Washington
visit this week.

In the UK, up to 4,000 jobs, the bulk of them in Wales, are at risk because of secret 
government
plans to scrap its scheme to repair military jets and hand the work over to BAE 
Systems, unions and
MPs claimed yesterday.

Jack Dromey, chief defence industry negotiator at the TGWU, said the plans would mean 
the end of a
£70m project, known as Red Dragon, to build a repair facility in the centre of a new 
aviation park
at RAF St Athans, near Cardiff.

establishmentarian whining

washingtonpost.com
Corporate Reform Could Go Too Far
By Steven Pearlstein
Friday, July 18, 2003; Page E01


In my hand is a news release from the Business Roundtable that would have
been unthinkable 18 months ago.

Back then, the Roundtable's president, John Castellani, was adamant in an
interview that Enron was really just one bad apple and that there was no
need for new laws or regulations requiring fundamental corporate reform.

Now, in a sign of just how far the Roundtable has retreated, Castellani
boasts about how many of the biggest corporations have gone beyond the
reforms mandated by Washington and are voluntarily embracing ideas such as
regular meetings of independent directors (55 percent) and new procedures
for shareholders to talk directly with the board (66 percent).

The timing of this release may be no coincidence. The Roundtable is
anxious to forestall the next installment in the reform process -- a new
rule making it easier for shareholders to nominate their own slates of
directors. Some of the corporate lobbying against the idea has been a bit
overdone, with that end of capitalism as we know it quality to it. But I
do wonder whether we've reached that tricky point in the reform cycle
where the political momentum is such that the risk is of going too far
rather than not going far enough.

In the case of allowing shareholders to nominate directors, for example,
much of the rationale seems to be based on the romantic notion that
corporations should be laboratories of democracy, with open annual
elections for all directors, and majority and minority factions. In
practice, I suspect running a corporation requires more stability and
internal harmony than the democratic model allows.

Of course, there will be situations when a corporate board repeatedly
insists on being more responsive to management than shareholders. But the
way to deal with such situations, it seems to me, is to provide a
mechanism for shareholders to register a vote of no confidence in the
directors. They should have access to the proxy packet to lay out their
case and solicit votes for the annual meeting. And if they garner a
shareholder majority, only then should they gain the right to nominate a
competing slate of directors.

Such an arrangement probably would satisfy neither the Roundtable nor the
die-hard reformers. But at the moment, it looks like a sensible compromise
that has attracted serious interest from the Securities and Exchange
Commission staff and a majority within the agency.

A similar compromise is needed on the equally contentious issue of stock
options.

The passion surrounding this arcane accounting question certainly suggests
that stock options have been tarred as the primary source of corporate
malfeasance during the '90s boom. In truth there were many villains --
just as there were many companies where options were used to attract
employees and give them performance incentives. Last week, Microsoft
joined the growing list of companies that have concluded that restricted
stock or simple cash bonuses are better ways to compensate employees than
stock options. I suspect they are right. But at the same time, I don't see
why the accounting system or the tax code should try to dictate such a
result or even tilt the decision in that direction. This is something best
left to the marketplace.

Along those lines, the best policy was probably laid out by Sen. Carl
Levin of Michigan long ago: Don't require companies to expense stock or
stock options granted to employees, but don't let them take tax deductions
for them, either.

Although stock and options obviously have value, calculating that value
involves the kind of guesswork that only undermines the credibility of a
company's income statement. Why not simply record all the information
about the options on the balance sheet, along with all the other corporate
liabilities, and let investors and analysts make all the adjustments they
want if they want to think of options as an annual operating expense?

In the end, the problem with stock options was not that they were used to
manipulate earnings and fool investors -- it's that they gave executives
too great an incentive to manipulate earnings through other means. Or put
another way, it was how stock options were misused that was the
fundamental problem, not how they were accounted for.

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2003-07-18 Thread MIYACHI

[EMAIL PROTECTED]

academic racketeering

Academics in 'degrees for cash' inquiry

John Hooper in Rome
Saturday July 19, 2003
The Guardian

Eighteen people including students, university administrators, lecturers
and professors were yesterday confined by judicial order to their homes in
and around Rome as police continued an investigation into what they said
was a huge degree-trading racket at Europe's biggest university.

Investigators said they had secretly recorded conversations worthy of a
Mafia thriller, in which law students at La Sapienza university bought
exam results using a code based on the names of flowers.

One was told: A bunch of roses [according to the police, a first-class
pass in criminal law] costs ?3,500 [£2,500].

Among those under house arrest was the head of the university's law
faculty, Carlo Angelici.

The Italian universities' system of oral examination is notoriously liable
to abuse. In this instance, said investigators, the fraud was masterminded
by three university administrators who brokered deals between well-to-do
undergraduates and junior lecturers who were willing to let them have the
questions and answers in advance.

There is also evidence of straightforward forgery. Dawn raids in Rome and
nearby towns on Thursday uncovered, among other things, a rubber stamp
that appeared to have been used to falsify certificates.

Detectives posed as students to collect much of their evidence. One was
quoted by La Stampa as saying: We witnessed unbelievable scenes. On
occasions, the system broke down, and the student ended up with the wrong
junior lecturer.

He or she would not say a word, not having studied anything. Then we
would see the same student called back by the junior lecturer who was in
on the conspiracy, answering the pre-arranged questions correctly, and
coming out with top marks.

The rector of La Sapienza, Giuseppe D'Ascenzo, said he was saddened by the
affair, and denied that any member of the teaching staff had been involved
in exam rigging.

There is abundant evidence to suggest that higher education in Italy is
riddled with corruption and favouritism. In the past 15 years, there have
been exam-rigging scandals in the universities of Venice, Naples, Pescara
and Messina.

La Sapienza, which had 144,000 undergraduates at the end of the last
academic year, has been the subject of several police inquiries. The
biggest involved some 700 students.

In a case six years ago, a law student, Marta Russo, was shot dead,
apparently hit by a bullet fired from the university's law faculty
building. Two junior lecturers were found guilty of her murder.
Investigators said the two had been trying to prove a theory of the
perfect, motiveless crime.

Those at the centre of the current scandal at La Sapienza were said to
have approached either mature students who seemed to have ample resources
or, more commonly, the children of rich parents.

The code allegedly evolved between the conspirators was distinctly poetic.
Euros were tulips; the thorny rose was the notoriously difficult criminal
law exam; and the low-maintenance geranium was the reputedly easier canon
law paper.

Young Italians looking forward to a future in the ecclesiastical courts,
wrangling over marital annulments and clerical disputes, allegedly needed
to stump up a mere 1,000 tulips to secure the necessary diploma.

Re: establishmentarian whining

2003-07-18 Thread Eugene Coyle

On the issue of valuing stock options:  Can't they just apply Myron
Scholes' formula?
Gene Coyle

Eubulides wrote:

washingtonpost.com
Corporate Reform Could Go Too Far
By Steven Pearlstein
Friday, July 18, 2003; Page E01
In my hand is a news release from the Business Roundtable that would have
been unthinkable 18 months ago.
Back then, the Roundtable's president, John Castellani, was adamant in an
interview that Enron was really just one bad apple and that there was no
need for new laws or regulations requiring fundamental corporate reform.
Now, in a sign of just how far the Roundtable has retreated, Castellani
boasts about how many of the biggest corporations have gone beyond the
reforms mandated by Washington and are voluntarily embracing ideas such as
regular meetings of independent directors (55 percent) and new procedures
for shareholders to talk directly with the board (66 percent).
The timing of this release may be no coincidence. The Roundtable is
anxious to forestall the next installment in the reform process -- a new
rule making it easier for shareholders to nominate their own slates of
directors. Some of the corporate lobbying against the idea has been a bit
overdone, with that end of capitalism as we know it quality to it. But I
do wonder whether we've reached that tricky point in the reform cycle
where the political momentum is such that the risk is of going too far
rather than not going far enough.
In the case of allowing shareholders to nominate directors, for example,
much of the rationale seems to be based on the romantic notion that
corporations should be laboratories of democracy, with open annual
elections for all directors, and majority and minority factions. In
practice, I suspect running a corporation requires more stability and
internal harmony than the democratic model allows.
Of course, there will be situations when a corporate board repeatedly
insists on being more responsive to management than shareholders. But the
way to deal with such situations, it seems to me, is to provide a
mechanism for shareholders to register a vote of no confidence in the
directors. They should have access to the proxy packet to lay out their
case and solicit votes for the annual meeting. And if they garner a
shareholder majority, only then should they gain the right to nominate a
competing slate of directors.
Such an arrangement probably would satisfy neither the Roundtable nor the
die-hard reformers. But at the moment, it looks like a sensible compromise
that has attracted serious interest from the Securities and Exchange
Commission staff and a majority within the agency.
A similar compromise is needed on the equally contentious issue of stock
options.
The passion surrounding this arcane accounting question certainly suggests
that stock options have been tarred as the primary source of corporate
malfeasance during the '90s boom. In truth there were many villains --
just as there were many companies where options were used to attract
employees and give them performance incentives. Last week, Microsoft
joined the growing list of companies that have concluded that restricted
stock or simple cash bonuses are better ways to compensate employees than
stock options. I suspect they are right. But at the same time, I don't see
why the accounting system or the tax code should try to dictate such a
result or even tilt the decision in that direction. This is something best
left to the marketplace.
Along those lines, the best policy was probably laid out by Sen. Carl
Levin of Michigan long ago: Don't require companies to expense stock or
stock options granted to employees, but don't let them take tax deductions
for them, either.
Although stock and options obviously have value, calculating that value
involves the kind of guesswork that only undermines the credibility of a
company's income statement. Why not simply record all the information
about the options on the balance sheet, along with all the other corporate
liabilities, and let investors and analysts make all the adjustments they
want if they want to think of options as an annual operating expense?
In the end, the problem with stock options was not that they were used to
manipulate earnings and fool investors -- it's that they gave executives
too great an incentive to manipulate earnings through other means. Or put
another way, it was how stock options were misused that was the
fundamental problem, not how they were accounted for.

Japan/debt