Re: HDI, GNP and the PPP factor
Paul wrote: BUT, using the PPP technique I described in earlier posts, the World Bank also calculates an imputed (imaginary) GNI. For the same group of countries this calculation boosts their Gross National Income from $6.1 to $20.5 trillion! This is a 320% increase - but just on paper Relative prices in different parts of the world would have to be considered to obtain a fair picture of relative incomes. I can buy a banana for 3 cents in my city (Pop. 15 million). How much a banana costs in New York? Ulhas Yahoo! India Careers: Over 65,000 jobs online Go to: http://yahoo.naukri.com/
Re: phones and human welfare
--- Devine, James [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: awhile back, a pen-pal from Bolvia forwarded a message from Chile. There, the home of the first neo-liberal revolution (in 1973) -- the cult of the cell phone had gone so far that some drivers had whittled fake ones out of wood so that they could look as if they were talking on the phone while driving. (They needed the cars, but couldn't afford the phones.) In the US, cell phones are taking over. But text-messaging came after a delay of a few years, compared to Europe. --- I just got out of the (spectacularly non-collapsed) Moscow metro, and the walls of the wagons are virtually coated with ads for cell phone service providers, dating services you access via your mobile phone, numbers you call to set the melody that goes off when it rings (including the Soviet Anthem and the Song of the Young Pioneers). It seems like maybe half of the Russian pop songs out there either allude to cell phones or the Internet, sometimes mixing it up with Soviet imagery (as when, e.g., punk-ska band Leningrad updates the classic Soviet pop song My Address Is the Soviet Union with My address is www.leningradspb.ru). Speaking of which, something which I find very interesting as a foreigner is the mixture of the old and the new in pop culture. For instance, MTV Russia plays a mix of about 30% foreign and 70% Russian-language music videos, but they have a special program whoch is 100% Russian. The logo is the MTV trademark placed inside the leaves of grain that contained the hammer and sickle in the Soviet seal, over a moving background of cosmonauts and Red Stars. MTV Russia also shows old Soviet cartoons. __ Do you Yahoo!? Yahoo! Mail Address AutoComplete - You start. We finish. http://promotions.yahoo.com/new_mail
Oink-oink
NY Times, July 25, 2004 For Corporate Donors, the Restraints Are Off By GLEN JUSTICE WASHINGTON, July 24 - As the political conventions begin, corporate big spenders, who have been restrained by new campaign finance laws, finally can cut loose. The Raytheon Company, IBM and Fidelity Investments each gave at least $1 million to the host committee for the Democratic National Convention in Boston, according to a donor list. ATT, Amgen and Nextel Communications each gave at least $500,000. In all, more than 150 donors have contributed more than $39.5 million - money they could not legally give to a political party or a candidate under the new law but are permitted to donate to a convention. Corporate dollars are flowing rather freely, said Wright H. Andrews Jr., a lobbyist at Butera Andrews. A lot of folks are saying, 'Let the good times roll.' Indeed, donors are outdoing themselves to finance the conventions and spend money on parties throughout Boston and New York, courtesy of provisions in federal campaign finance laws and Congressional ethics rules that allow almost unlimited spending at conventions and their attendant social events. In Boston this week, there will be a reception at Fenway Park before the Red Sox play the Yankees, as well as boat cruises, golf outings, concerts and late night events in locations like the trendy club Saint, which features an all-red bordello room and beds for patrons to lounge. Lists circulating around Washington's K Street lobbying corridor trumpet 200 to 300 official and unofficial events from Saturday to Thursday, and similar rosters are already being created for the Republican convention in New York next month. Depending on how much they have given, donors might get invitations to choice events or wads of passes to the convention. And many are giving parties in the hope of mixing with lawmakers, Congressional staff members and other decision makers, building relationships that may be good for business in Washington. These are kind of branding things, said John Jonas, head of public policy for the law firm Patton Boggs, which is giving a late-night party at Saint for hundreds of guests and dozens of lawmakers. We like to think of ourselves as a big name in lobbying, and this is a Woodstock rock concert. It's a place you want to show up. For example, roughly two dozen corporations and trade associations are sponsoring a retirement party for Senator John B. Breaux, a Louisiana Democrat who is stepping down this year, at the New England Aquarium on Tuesday. The event is expected to draw some 1,000 people, including up to 40 lawmakers. Sponsors spent $10,000 to $30,000 each to create a Caribbean theme, where guests will sip rum drinks and listen to Ziggy Marley perform as eels, turtles and sharks drift in a tank nearby. Also on Tuesday, the MBNA Corporation, Merrill Lynch, the Bank of America Corporation and other companies will treat Democrats on the House Committee on Financial Services and the Senate banking committee to a brunch at the Bay Tower, a restaurant high above the city. Another party for hundreds of lobbyists, lawmakers and convention V.I.P.'s will take place at the Museum of Fine Arts on Wednesday, sponsored by the Bellsouth Corporation, Motorola, Fannie Mae, the FedEx Corporation, the Altria Group and more than a dozen other companies that paid about $25,000 each. But the exhibits of ancient Greek artifacts and Chinese costumes will not be the primary draw. Instead, the Democratic whips in the Senate and House, Senator Harry Reid of Nevada and Representative Steny H. Hoyer of Maryland, will be the main attraction. It's an opportunity to do something nice for two big leaders in the Democratic Party who are very influential on many, many decisions that are made, said Anthony Podesta, a Democratic lobbyist who has three clients that are sponsoring the event. There's no question that is on the mind of everybody who decided to sponsor this. Lobbyists have been working for weeks to help clients set up their events, as well as begging and bartering to obtain party invitations, convention passes and other perks. At Mr. Podesta's firm, Podesta Mattoon, preparations began four months ago. A half dozen of the firm's Democrats have been working to pilot clients through the convention. Republicans in his firm are making similar preparations for New York. For clients who are sponsoring events, the firm often helps with details like menus, wines, invitations and seating charts. It's not lobbying, it's party planning, he joked. We could do weddings and bar mitzvahs in our office. full: http://www.nytimes.com/2004/07/25/politics/campaign/25contribute.html -- Marxism list: www.marxmail.org
George Soros and the Democratic Party
NY Times Magazine, July 25, 2004 Wiring the Vast Left-Wing Conspiracy By MATT BAI (clip) By the time this election year ends, George Soros will have contributed more than $13 million to the independent political groups known as 527's. (The term is shorthand for the section of the tax code that makes them legal.) For this reason, Republicans insist that the 74-year-old Soros, who may become the largest single political contributor in history, has resolved to buy the Democratic Party. This is, on its face, a little silly. To put things in perspective, $13 million is a fraction of what it takes to run a serious modern presidential campaign, let alone control a party. And Soros, who made his fortune as an international investor, is worth an estimated $7 billion; his foundation alone gives away some $450 million every year. In other words, if George Soros really felt like buying the party, you would know it. For Soros, spending $13 million on a campaign is like you or me buying 100 boxes of Thin Mints from the Girl Scout next door. The real significance of Soros's involvement in politics has little to do with the dollar amount of his contributions. What will stand out as important, when we look back decades from now at the 2004 campaign, will be the political model he created for everyone else. Until this year, Democratic contributors operated on the party-machine model: they were trained to write checks only to the party and its candidates, who decided how to spend the money. But by helping to establish a series of separate organizations and by publicly announcing that he was on a personal mission to unseat Bush, Soros signaled to other wealthy liberals that the days of deferring to the party were over. He became what the financial world would call the angel investor for an entirely new kind of progressive venture. To understand why Soros matters, you have to slog, however briefly, through the mind-bending swamp of the nation's campaign finance laws. Democrats in the 90's became obsessed with erasing the Republican advantage in fund-raising, so much so that it was fair to wonder which party wasn't representing the rich and privileged. Under Clinton, who became the most powerful money magnet the Oval Office had ever seen, the Democratic Party and its various committees began sucking up mountainous contributions from what are known in politics as access donors -- corporations, Wall Street firms and trade associations whose leaders had an interest in certain legislation or who coveted a ride on Air Force One. Unlike the ''hard money'' checks that an individual might write to a candidate, these corporate contributions to the party were ''soft money,'' meaning they had no legal limits; it was as if both parties were drawing cash from an endless equity line, with power as its only collateral. During the 2000 presidential election cycle, lawyers and law firms gave more than $33 million to the Democratic Party, while securities and investment firms anted up more than $25 million, according to the nonpartisan Center for Responsive Politics. For ideological donors like Soros, whose goal was to effect changes in Democratic policy, these were not the best of times. You could give millions of dollars in soft money to the Democratic Party, if you were so inclined, but a lot of ideological donors were not. (Soros gave $100,000 to the party in the 2000 cycle.) Donors had no control over how the money was spent -- badly, a lot of them suspected -- and because the party was getting so much money from large industries, the influence that might have been gained through such a contribution was instantly diluted. In other words, a $5 million check might buy you an invitation to a state dinner, but it wasn't going to make anyone at the Democratic National Committee listen seriously to your idea for a national health care plan. A lot of ideological donors continued to give money to independent interest groups like Emily's List, Naral Pro-Choice America and the Sierra Club. These issue-based groups, however, were notoriously balkanized and territorial. Your dollars might be useful in organizing pro-choice voters or in preserving Pacific woodlands, but there was no way to contribute money that would have an impact on the overarching framework of Democratic ideology. Then came the campaign finance law passed in 2002, known informally as McCain-Feingold (after its iconoclastic Senate sponsors, John McCain, a Republican, and Russell Feingold, a Democrat), which prohibited the parties from accepting soft money. Overnight, the era of the access donor essentially ended. Individual lawyers and executives could still wield influence by bundling small personal contributions from employees or colleagues, but their firms could no longer write the giant checks that let them rent out the party as if it were a billboard or a blimp. For the ideological donors, however, the new era seemed quite promising. McCain-Feingold left untouched and
Re: HDI, GNP and the PPP factor
Relative prices in different parts of the world would have to be considered to obtain a fair picture of relative incomes. I can buy a banana for 3 cents in my city (Pop. 15 million). How much a banana costs in New York? Ulhas They are about $1 a kilo in Moscow (not exactly banana-growing country). __ Do you Yahoo!? Yahoo! Mail - 50x more storage than other providers! http://promotions.yahoo.com/new_mail
Re: Oink-oink
Your tax-cut dollars at work. - Original Message - From: Louis Proyect [EMAIL PROTECTED] To: [EMAIL PROTECTED] Sent: Sunday, July 25, 2004 5:25 AM Subject: [PEN-L] Oink-oink NY Times, July 25, 2004 For Corporate Donors, the Restraints Are Off By GLEN JUSTICE WASHINGTON, July 24 - As the political conventions begin, corporate big spenders, who have been restrained by new campaign finance laws, finally can cut loose. ___
Re: HDI, GNP and the PPP factor
5 for a depreciated dollar on street corners in lower Manhattan. - Original Message - I can buy a banana for 3 cents in my city (Pop. 15 million). How much a banana costs in New York? Ulhas
Dear Peter Coyote
As the driving force behind an open letter in support of the Cobb-Kerry campaign, I am a little perplexed over whence you derive your authority. Is it the fact that you star in the cable tv series 4400, about people who were abducted by space aliens? Frankly, I would be far more impressed if Fox Mulder had been heading up such an effort since the X-Files was far less talky and far more entertaining than the show you are presently involved with. Just a suggestion. The ratio between dialog and action on such shows should be approximately 50-50. In 4400, it is about 90-10. Underbudgeted for special effects, are we? Perhaps you are resting on your laurels as a 1960s hippie radical. Your website informs us that: From 1967 to 1975, Peter took off to do the Sixties where he became a prominent member of the San Francisco counter-culture community and founding member of the Diggers, an anarchistic group who supplied free food, free housing and free medical aid to the hordes of runaways who appeared during the Summer of Love. Not that I would gainsay the importance of helping somebody come down from a bummer acid trip (isn't that what they called it?), but I have a feeling that it was far more important to organize protests against the war in Vietnam. You also inform visitors to your website that you were a delegate to the Democratic National Convention which you also covered for Mother Jones Magazine and consider your completely re-built 1964 Dodge 4x4 Town Wagon that you have owned since 1969 your longest-lasting addiction. If I were you, I'd ixnay the references to the Democratic Party and play up the Town Wagon stuff. After all, the Town Wagon was never used to drop napalm on Vietnamese peasants. -- Marxism list: www.marxmail.org
Re: Dear Peter Coyote
Give 'em hell, Louie! Don't back down. No matter how much they bully you, threaten you, you go Louie, you two-fisted battler for humanity! You are the Hulk Hogan of the open letter, and all that's good and right in the world. And I for one look forward to supporting you in your open letter battles with other icons of imperialism. Who's next? --- Checked for splling. - Original Message - From: Louis Proyect [EMAIL PROTECTED] To: [EMAIL PROTECTED] Sent: Sunday, July 25, 2004 6:29 AM Subject: [PEN-L] Dear Peter Coyote As the driving force behind an open letter in support of the Cobb-Kerry campaign, I am a little perplexed over whence you derive your authority. Is it the fact that you star in the cable tv series 4400, about people who were abducted by space aliens? Frankly, I would be far more impressed if Fox Mulder had been heading up such an effort since the X-Files was far less talky and far more entertaining than the show you are presently involved with. Just a suggestion. The ratio between dialog and action on such shows should be approximately 50-50. In 4400, it is about 90-10. Underbudgeted for special effects, are we? Perhaps you are resting on your laurels as a 1960s hippie radical. Your website informs us that: From 1967 to 1975, Peter took off to do the Sixties where he became a prominent member of the San Francisco counter-culture community and founding member of the Diggers, an anarchistic group who supplied free food, free housing and free medical aid to the hordes of runaways who appeared during the Summer of Love. Not that I would gainsay the importance of helping somebody come down from a bummer acid trip (isn't that what they called it?), but I have a feeling that it was far more important to organize protests against the war in Vietnam. You also inform visitors to your website that you were a delegate to the Democratic National Convention which you also covered for Mother Jones Magazine and consider your completely re-built 1964 Dodge 4x4 Town Wagon that you have owned since 1969 your longest-lasting addiction. If I were you, I'd ixnay the references to the Democratic Party and play up the Town Wagon stuff. After all, the Town Wagon was never used to drop napalm on Vietnamese peasants. -- Marxism list: www.marxmail.org
Re: Dear Peter Coyote
sartesian wrote: Checked for splling. Then you should ask for your money back. -- Marxism list: www.marxmail.org
Re: HDI, GNP and the PPP factor
Michael and Yoshie write: Yoshie, you are not the only one that has been pestering Paul. Michael Perelman Paul, why don't you put together your notes on the PPP factor that you've posted here and publish it as an article for the general audience? -- Yoshie Many thanks, the encouragement is much much appreciated. Paul
Re: HDI, GNP and the PPP factor
Ulhas Joglekar writes: Relative prices in different parts of the world would have to be considered to obtain a fair picture of relative incomes. I can buy a banana for 3 cents in my city (Pop. 15 million). How much a banana costs in New York? Thanks for bringing this up. Hold in your mind your point that you are looking for a fair picture of relative incomes between NY and India - this is a key assumption. One might make a very rough comparison of the price of bananas in say Mumbai (I assume?) vs. Manhattan. It is rough partly because as (people have heard via the WTO complaint) the bananas are quite different. The large, tough skinned ones in NY have no taste but were chosen for commercial reasons by the US fruit companies for their US market. These companies enjoy a US monopoly and protectionism has kept out the more tasty ones not grown in Central America by US companies. Over time the protectionism has now created all sorts of non-tariff, non-quota barriers such as shipping\marketing facilities and consumer preferences against the thin skinned but much more tasty bananas (hysterisis, akin to the QWERTY keyboard issue). So a comparison that includes price and quality will not be easy (there is no truly free market) but lets assume, like the neo-classical economists, that the market is so powerful that it will get us close enough. As you know bananas are considered tradable but how to handle non-tradables? Forgive a North American detour for a second. If I try to compare Manhattan with Alabama (poor, more rural south of US), how will I compare the cost of a night at the Opera in Alabama (requires a jet plane) or dining at a fine Japanese restaurant (driving a few hundred miles)? Conversely, how will I compare the cost in Manhattan of setting up a good woodworking shop in my car garage (no garages in crowded Manhattan) or a small backyard pool for the kids (health clubs are not the same)? The different endowments create different possibilities which get locked into different lifestyles and consumer preferences. [Please excuse the silly stereotypes.] And there is no reason to assume that the differences are exactly symmetrical, so it will matter greatly whether I compare NY in Alabama terms or visa-versa (nor will it suffice to do both and then split an asymmetrical difference which would be mathematically impractical for 200 countries anyway). But some reasonable people do press on with the exercise because (one hopes) between NY and Alabama there are more things in common than otherwise: there is free trade, many goods are common, if the price of labour in Alabama gets too low people maybe enough people can migrate to NY to even things out (and visa-versa if the cost of living in NY gets too high). And there is an important practical point: these cost of living calculations are needed to run an national system that has to allocate salaries, benefits, government grants, etc. Now we come to Mumbai - and then on to an Indian village. There is no longer anything like free trade with Manhattan and certainly no free migration. The non-tradables vastly outweigh the (theoretically) tradable. And the effects of history and of differences in available choices balloon into something that could not be called lifestyle. We are no longer comparing bananas and bananas ...but apples and oranges. To solve this dilemma the PPP is deployed. A basket is determined (inherently arbitrary and biased with asymmetries since, as discussed the different groups choose not to consume the same things). The basket has only the few banana-like tradables (which we have seen are not truly tradable, but this is waived off as market imperfections) and the price ratio of this small group is arbitrarily applied to the non-tradables and to labour which not only can't legally immigrate, but couldn't even physically fit in Manhattan. This exercise also imagines that countries can buy imports and pay debts with the imagined adjusted income. This is truly the statistical tail wagging the statistical dog. BUT NOW come back to the original purpose of this contorted exercise: to compare relative incomes NY/India. Maybe (or maybe not) this is a useful exercise since it is inherently talking of apples and oranges. And maybe or maybe not this exercise should be tried through a statistic like the National Accounts which measures something else entirely (the market economy) and leaves out things like non-market income. It could also be tried with several direct measures of life like longevity, nutrition, education. But - in any event - such an international comparison is NOT the purpose to which the exercise is put to use. Instead, these contrived and imaginary numbers ARE used to try to convince Indians that they are better off in INDIAN terms. The PPP numbers ARE used to show that neo-liberal policies in India would be better for India. If such an absurd mis-application of a contrived statistic were used against the
Nepal: The decline of the Monarchy
The Hindu Sunday, Jul 25, 2004 The decline of the palace [King Gyanendra faces dwindling support. -- Photo: AP ] TWO INCIDENTS earlier this month, the details of which were reported in the Nepali press, confirmed for many their fears about Crown Prince Paras. Last Saturday, the Prince stormed out of his father's birthday celebrations and headed to a nightclub with his cousins. When his wife followed him there to take him home, he fired shots from his gun. Hours later, he jumped into a vehicle with friends, but without his personal security guards, and sped to Pokhara, 200 km away. There, security forces stopped the vehicle and reportedly almost gunned the prince down thinking he was a Maoist guerrilla. They recognised him in the nick of time. Image problems Crown Prince Paras is only one of the many image problems that have surrounded King Gyanendra since he took over as Nepal's constitutional monarch after the 2001 massacre at the Narayanhiti Palace. If the killings of King Birendra and his family diminished the status of the monarchy by exposing the indiscipline behind the Palace walls, his successor has the added problem that Nepalis do not accept the official version of the massacre. King Gyanendra also had big shoes to fill. In the last years of his life, his brother kept a low profile but his aura grew as the politicians of the new multi-party democracy squabbled among themselves. The new King's overt political ambitions, his dissolution of an elected Parliament in 2002, followed by his sacking of the Prime Minister, have led to a steep erosion of his personal image and that of the monarchy. He is widely perceived as playing one political party against another in order to strengthen his own position. We are hearing slogans on the streets against the King that we did not hear even during the People's Movement in 1990, says political analyst Deepak Thapa. For the first time too, there is open talk about a republic. The Maoists, who are waging an insurgent war against the state, were the first to bring up the issue, one of their stated aims being the abolition of the constitutional monarchy. But sections of the Nepali intelligentsia, students and politicians have all joined the debate. This is not a constitutional monarchy, it is a real monarchy, and the king is the biggest obstruction to democracy, says Lok Raj Baral, professor of political science at the Tribhuvan Universty. Recently, the students at the university voted overwhelmingly in favour of a republic in a mock referendum. One of the points of contention about the King's powers is his continuing hold over the Royal Nepal Army, a force originally raised for his protection but which is now deployed in battling the Maoists. When the King is so often encroaching upon the Constitution, why not go for a Constituent Assembly and put the monarchy on its agenda, as the Maoists are demanding, asks Dagan Nath Dhungana, a senior member of the Girija Prasad Koirala-led Nepali Congress (NC) and former Speaker. Mr. Dhungana, who was in the team that framed the 1990 Constitution that gave the monarch a constitutional role in a multi-party democracy, says the experiment failed because the King is not prepared to remain under the Constitution. Role as unifier But there are also large sections of Nepalis who still see a role for the King, provided he plays it by the book. In a country with no common language, or religion, or ethnicity, there is a clear role for him as a unifier. But he must do this strictly within the confines of the Constitution, says Kunda Dixit, editor of the weekly, Nepali Times. Nepal has 60 caste and ethnic groups and Nepali, the official language, is the mother tongue of only 50 per cent of its people. Although commonly described as a Hindu kingdom, its people practise varied religions. But if he goes around saying, as he has done, that he is the King of the world's Hindus, it works against the unifying theory, Mr. Dixit says. Many people still cherish the tradition of kingship, but at the same time, in the last dozen years, people have also got used to thinking freely, he adds. No king can take the country back to an absolute monarchy ... His first order of business should be to restore the respect for the monarchy by leaving politics to politicians. Prabhakar Shamsher Rana, a friend of the King and chairman emeritus of the Soaltee Group, in which the royal family has a sizeable interest, says if Nepal turns into a Republic, the country will descend into anarchy as its democratic institutions are not mature enough to take the monarchy's place. The presence of the monarch gives faith to the people that if other things go wrong, this institution is still there to protect them, to keep the country together, Mr. Rana says. But the institution also needs to keep pace with the times and assist in the evolution of the country's multi-party democracy, he says. The King can't go bicycling as royals do in some countries
Russia/Yukos: the first renationalization in the country's post-Soviet history
Like I said. Thursday, July 22, 2004. Page 1. Investors Caught in Yukos Crossfire By Catherine Belton Staff Writer Shocked investors continued to pile out of Yukos stock Wednesday, a day after the government raised the stakes in an increasingly vicious battle with the company's owners by saying it was preparing to tear out the oil firm's biggest production unit and sell it off. Yukos shares plummeted nearly 12 percent to close at $6.00 on the RTS -- a fall of 26 percentage points in just two days. Even normally bullish analysts said minority investors risked being steamrollered in what now seems like an unstoppable fight between the state and Yukos' majority shareholder, Group Menatep. It looks like Menatep is trying to bring down everything with it, while the government appears to be willing to inflict as much damage as need be, said Eric Kraus, Sovlink's chief equity strategist. The only innocent victims are going to be international investors. Some market watchers still hoped that the Justice Ministry was bluffing by saying it was preparing to sell off Yukos' 100 percent stake in the Yuganskneftegaz production unit, which produces nearly two-thirds of the oil firm's total output, as payment for a $3.4 billion back tax bill. It could be an attempt, they said, to force Yukos' owners into a deal on the government's terms. But others said the politically charged standoff, which has led to the arrest of Yukos billionaire owners Mikhail Khodorkovsky and Platon Lebedev on charges of fraud and tax evasion, already looked to be snowballing out of control. This is starting to look like a game of chicken and neither side is swerving, Kraus said. If this is a bluff, they're bluffing very close to the edge. Investors fear that if the government moves to sell Yukos' stake in Yuganskneftegaz, it could be sold off at a knockdown price to a company close to the Kremlin such as Surgutneftegaz, or sold to state-owned energy companies such as Gazprom or Rosneft, a move that would be tantamount to the first renationalization in the country's post-Soviet history. Already, Yuganskneftegaz is valued at around $30.4 billion by leading consulting firm DeGolyer and MacNaughton, way above the $3.4 billion back tax claim. In a statement issued late Tuesday, Khodorkovsky said the ball was now in the government's court. My position is unequivocal, to obey court decisions, to seek a compromise with the government that will let Yukos survive, he said in a statement posted on his web site, khodorkovsky.ru. Further developments, including issues of personnel, depend exclusively on the goodwill of the government. Khodorkovsky has publicly offered to hand over his shares in Yukos to the company as payment for the tax bills. But the government has so far made no public response to that offer and some analysts have said the government may not be able to accept such an offer because in order to sell the shares as payment for the tax bill, it would have to take the risky move of lifting a freeze on Menatep's majority stake in Yukos. Some observers have said Menatep and Khodorkovsky may have been trying to deliberately force the government into taking steps that could damage the investment climate, since -- either locked up in jail or on an Interpol wanted list -- they effectively had nothing to lose. Khodorkovsky's recent standoff with Yukos board chairman Viktor Gerashchenko, in which Khodorkovsky called for his dismissal, could be one example of a chicken strategy. On Friday, Gerashchenko fired back at Khodorkovsky by accusing Yukos' majority owners of obstructing a compromise with the government on staving off a breakup or bankruptcy over the $3.4 billion tax bill for 2000. His claim that proposals made by the company on restructuring the debt were not sincere could have made it even harder for the government to consider them. But even as Gerashchenko and Khodorkovsky traded blows in public, there was still no official call Wednesday for an extraordinary shareholders meeting to replace Gerashchenko. In another sign he was refusing to bow down, Khodorkovsky remained defiant last Friday as he made his first public statements in court on the fraud and tax charges against him and said the state was making him a scapegoat for its own failings in privatizations. Robert Amsterdam, the Toronto-based lawyer for Menatep, Khodorkovsky and Lebedev, warned on Wednesday that if the government went ahead with a sell-off of Yukos' Yuganskneftegaz stake, it could face a slew of lawsuits in international courts, resulting in possible seizures of Russia's sovereign assets abroad. Such a sale is illegal, he said by telephone. Everyone in the world knows what the value of that property is. It's a hold-up in broad daylight. It would be a clear case under international law of expropriation, he said. Individual investors would have access to bilateral investment treaties in the event of expropriation, in which sovereign immunity does not
Re: HDI, GNP and the PPP factor
Paul wrote: The PPP numbers ARE used to show that neo-liberal policies in India would be better for India. I don't know what you mean neo-liberal, but nobody is using _PPP numbers_ in India to support neo-liberal policies. Nor anybody in India is opposing _PPP numbers_ to justify Marxists or fascist policies. Btw, the Human Development Report for India is prepared by India's Planning Commission. What WB has to do with it? Ulhas Yahoo! India Careers: Over 65,000 jobs online Go to: http://yahoo.naukri.com/
Advert for self
The American Plan Time was, not so long ago,when the decline of the dollar was seen as the end of "US hegemony," and the re-ascent of Europe, as if there ever had been, or is, anunified entity called "Europe." The dollar's depreciation was supposed to be an indication of Europe's, as if there ever was single economic unit called "Europe," emerging rivalry, more than rivalry, superiority, to the US's capitalism.
Re: Advert for self
Excuse me, forgot to add: http://www.thewolfatthedoor.blogspot.com - Original Message - From: sartesian To: [EMAIL PROTECTED] Sent: Sunday, July 25, 2004 12:17 PM Subject: Advert for self The American Plan Time was, not so long ago,when the decline of the dollar was seen as the end of "US hegemony," and the re-ascent of Europe, as if there ever had been, or is, anunified entity called "Europe." The dollar's depreciation was supposed to be an indication of Europe's, as if there ever was single economic unit called "Europe," emerging rivalry, more than rivalry, superiority, to the US's capitalism.
Re: HDI, GNP and the PPP factor
Economics is all about measuring in measurable. I was reading this week about scientific racism in Victorian England, where people tried to develop mathematical measures of how close various peoples came to being Africans. These measures showed the Irish were almost Black. Such matters were taken very seriously and the time. If we were gone to try to make some sort of quantitative measure of a human development index, I think I will try to get a handle on how people at the bottom fared rather than looking at averages. -- Michael Perelman Economics Department California State University Chico, CA 95929 Tel. 530-898-5321 E-Mail michael at ecst.csuchico.edu
Re: HDI, GNP and the PPP factor
Speaking of scientific racism, ever read Chase's Legacy of Malthus? Best work on it, I think. - Original Message - From: Michael Perelman [EMAIL PROTECTED] To: [EMAIL PROTECTED] Sent: Sunday, July 25, 2004 10:01 AM Subject: Re: [PEN-L] HDI, GNP and the PPP factor Economics is all about measuring in measurable. I was reading this week about scientific racism in Victorian England, where people tried to develop mathematical measures of how close various peoples came to being Africans. These measures showed the Irish were almost Black. Such matters were taken very seriously and the time. If we were gone to try to make some sort of quantitative measure of a human development index, I think I will try to get a handle on how people at the bottom fared rather than looking at averages. -- Michael Perelman Economics Department California State University Chico, CA 95929 Tel. 530-898-5321 E-Mail michael at ecst.csuchico.edu
Re: HDI, GNP and the PPP factor
Ulhas writes: I don't know what you mean neo-liberal, but nobody is using _PPP numbers_ in India to support neo-liberal policies. It is buried in the statistics they (the neo-liberal proponents) use. For example, on Thursday you helpfully posted the Financial Express's article on the statement from the Government releasing the HDI statistics. The first line (quoted from your post) reads: India's human development index (HDI) has shown a steady improvement in the last couple of years. India's ranking, however, at 127 out of 177 countries remains the same as in the previous year... Well, this HDI, that has shown steady improvement in the last couple of years is partly based on the PPP version of India's GNI (and only that version is presented). What the Government should really have to answer for is why - after decades of significant improvement - the infant mortality rate and the under-five mortality rate have NOT improved in the last couple of years. For reasons I explained earlier, these are much more illustrative statistics when it comes to human development. In fact there were almost 2.5 million child deaths EACH year. According to UN and Government of India-agreed estimates the vast majority of these deaths could have been prevented and were unnecessary - if these poor children had been given a small fraction of the political commitment shown the business community. BTW, I would *guess* that for the pro-neo liberals virtually every GDP\GNI statistic in the India vs. China debate uses the PPP version. Btw, the Human Development Report for India is prepared by India's Planning Commission. What WB has to do with it? Ulhas Yes the last Report was 2001 (publ. 2002) and prepared by the IPC, funded by the UNDP. The various Indian state reports (worth looking at, see http://hdr.undp.org/reports/view_reports.cfm?country=INDcountryname=INDIA%20 ) were prepared by the state governments and funded by UNDP. These reports are different than the global Human Development Report which publishes the global HDI and is published exclusively by UNDP itself. The press report you posted referred to the global UNDP report. It prepares the HDI based on the data received from the World Bank (for national accounts). Paul
Re: HDI, GNP and the PPP factor
Paul wrote: It is buried in the statistics they (the neo-liberal proponents) use. I was making a simple point that the debate on economic policy in India has little to do the utility of PPP numbers. Paul was trying to show how PPP numbers overstate the economic growth in the developing countries. I am not sure I understand how he has reached that conclusion. Ulhas Yahoo! India Careers: Over 65,000 jobs online Go to: http://yahoo.naukri.com/
Re: HDI, GNP and the PPP factor
Ulhas Joglekar wrote: I was making a simple point that the debate on economic policy in India has little to do the utility of PPP numbers. But apparently _our_ understanding of that growth has much to do with those PPP numbers. Your post on growth in India incorporated those numbers, and we in the U.S. might not understand your post without Paul's explanation of what those numbers meant. Paul was trying to show how PPP numbers overstate the economic growth in the developing countries. I am not sure I understand how he has reached that conclusion. Paul suggests (or this is what I get from his posts) that the proper way to estimate a nation's economic growth is to measure the well-being of (say) the worst-off 20% of its population. How does the infant mortality rate of that part of the Indian population compare to the infant mortality rate of that part of the French or German or U.S. populations? Without such comparisons, not of statistical creations but of actual lives, we can't judge _real_ economic growth, which in material terms can only mean the economic improvement of those who are worst off. There are some passages in Charles Dickens's novel, _Hard Times_, which bring this out very dramatically. Similarly, in measuring the present economy in the U.S., we should not look at the unemployment rates or the average GNP per capita but examine the life conditions of the worst-off 20% of the u.s. population. And as I drive through the west side of Bloomington Illinois on a summer day, the quality of life of that segment of the population does not look very good. Is that (lower 20%) of the population of India (measured by infant mortality, available medical care, etc.) worse or better off than those neighborhoods in west Bloomington? Carrol Ulhas Yahoo! India Careers: Over 65,000 jobs online Go to: http://yahoo.naukri.com/
Re: HDI, GNP and the PPP factor
On measuring the unmeasurable, 3.5 centuries ago, Sir William Petty, was devising ways to measure the economy. I wonder how silly we will look in the future, unless we continue to destroy the future. Routh, Guy. 1977. The Origin of Economic Ideas (New York: Vintage). 45: In comparing wealth of Holland and Zealand, he takes 2 guesses by 2 other people, doesn't like the result and so uses his own guess. He estimates the population of France from a book that says that it has 27,000 parishes and another that says that it would be extraordinary if a parish had 600 people. He estimates 500 people per parish and a population of 13.5 million. -- Michael Perelman Economics Department California State University Chico, CA 95929 Tel. 530-898-5321 E-Mail michael at ecst.csuchico.edu
Re: Subject: Re: Suicides, Military and Economic
Yesterday my school buddy returned after having spent 2 months in Hyderabad, the capital of Andhra Pradesh. He is an IT guy so he attributed the suicides partly to water shortage, consistent with limited monsoon rain in the region. But what he said was that Chandra Babu Naidu the laptop toting chief minister of Andhra Pradesh, who was recently ousted in the elections, transferred massive water to the urban, high tech driven city, at the expense of the rural folks. The water table is drastically falling in the southern region and virtually all major southern cities (Hyderabad, Bangalore, Chennai) are all facing massive water supply problems. cheers, anthony xxx Anthony P. D'Costa, Professor Comparative International Development University of WashingtonCampus Box 358436 1900 Commerce Street Tacoma, WA 98402, USA Phone: (253) 692-4462 Fax : (253) 692-5718 xxx On Sat, 24 Jul 2004, [iso-8859-1] Ulhas Joglekar wrote: Michael Perelman wrote: Yes, but why are they localized in only 1 state? Aren't these problems more widespread? I have not studied the pattern of rainfall region by region. Distribution of monsoon varies from region to region and within each region its timing during June-September monsoon period. Some regions also get rains in winter, others have irrigation based on snow fed rivers. Without that sort of study (which I have not done), it's hard to explain why, e.g. we don't hear about suicides by Karnataka farmers _on the same scale_ as those in Andhra Pradesh? Ulhas Yahoo! India Careers: Over 65,000 jobs online Go to: http://yahoo.naukri.com/
