Re: [Marxism] After Obama Visit, Assessing U.S.-China Relations: Orville Schell on Fresh Air
== Rule #1: YOU MUST clip all extraneous text when replying to a message. == Ralph J. wrote: ith my limited computer skills I haven't figured out how to locate a url through my Firefox browser. Google orville schell + fresh air. Here it is-- http://tinyurl.com/yjqfuju Send list submissions to: Marxism@lists.econ.utah.edu Set your options at: http://lists.econ.utah.edu/mailman/options/marxism/archive%40mail-archive.com
[Marxism] Defamation
== Rule #1: YOU MUST clip all extraneous text when replying to a message. == Opening today at Cinema Village in New York, “Defamation” is one of the most powerful anti-Zionist film ever seen in movie theaters in the United States, all the more remarkable for the fact that the director Yoav Shamir is an Israeli citizen and from a long-standing Zionist family that arrived in Palestine long before the creation of the state of Israel. The title is very possibly a reference to the Anti-Defamation League in the United States, whose chief executive Abe Foxman plays a prominent role in the film. Like Diogenes with his lamp, Shamir—who assumes a comic persona a bit like Michael Moore or Ross McElwee while remaining off-camera—ventures forth from Israel with his crew in order to answer the question whether anti-Semitism exists. From the front page coverage of major Israeli dailies, as he shows us, you would get the impression that a Kristallnacht is about to break out at any moment. When he asks his 91 year old grandmother in her Israel home at the outset of the movie whether people hate the Jews, she replies to the effect that if so, they should move to Israel. Those who “have money” and who “don’t want to work” might turn that invitation down, she adds. When her grandson tells her that she sounds anti-Semitic, she shrugs her shoulders. read full review: http://louisproyect.wordpress.com/2009/11/20/defamation/ Send list submissions to: Marxism@lists.econ.utah.edu Set your options at: http://lists.econ.utah.edu/mailman/options/marxism/archive%40mail-archive.com
Re: [Marxism] what we share with other animals
== Rule #1: YOU MUST clip all extraneous text when replying to a message. == Several here have come rather close to endorsing the notion that animals deserve some, but less moral consideration because of their relative intelligence to ours. I hope we can all agree how reasonable and convincing that argument is, and how anyone claiming to be a Marxist should feel for saying it. I'd like to quote from a favorite show of mine: [Planet Express: Meeting Room. The crew sit around the table and Bender puts a plate with a cover on the table.] FARNSWORTH: A toast to Leela. She showed us it's wrong to eat certain things. FRY: Hear, hear! BENDER: Let's get drunk! LEELA: Aww, thanks, guys. Pass the veal, please. BENDER: Here you go. [He passes a plate over.] FRY: Mmm, let me get some of that suckling pig. [Amy passes it to him. Bender holds up a plate.] BENDER: Who wants dolphin? [Everyone gasps.] LEELA: Dolphin? But dolphins are intelligent. BENDER: Not this one. He blew all his money on instant lottery tickets. FRY: OK. LEELA: Oh, OK. AMY: That's different. FARNSWORTH: Good, good. LEELA: Pass the blowhole. AMY: Can I have a fluke? HERMES: Hey, quit hogging the bottle-nose. FARNSWORTH: Toss me the speech centre of the brain! Send list submissions to: Marxism@lists.econ.utah.edu Set your options at: http://lists.econ.utah.edu/mailman/options/marxism/archive%40mail-archive.com
[Marxism] the fascism code: rightwing prays for Obama's death
== Rule #1: YOU MUST clip all extraneous text when replying to a message. == http://mikeely.wordpress.com/2009/11/19/righwing-prays-for-obamas-death/ Send list submissions to: Marxism@lists.econ.utah.edu Set your options at: http://lists.econ.utah.edu/mailman/options/marxism/archive%40mail-archive.com
[Marxism] A thank you note I'd like to share
== Rule #1: YOU MUST clip all extraneous text when replying to a message. == To Louis Proyect rec.arts.movies.reviews November 20, 2009 Dear Louis, We wanted to thank you from the bottom of our hearts for writing a wonderful review of our film Yiddish Theater: A Love Story. That review set us on an exciting two year long journey in which the film successfully played in New York , Los Angeles , Tel Aviv, Florida , Indiana and many other places world wide and is now finally culminating with the release of the film on DVD. As you might recall, the film was made on a shoe string budget and had no studio or distribution company backing the release so the effect of your review was enormous. We wanted to share with you what transpired: Yiddish Theater: A Love Story was one of the most successful films the NY Two Boots Pioneer had in its last years, and it played at the Laemmle Theatre chain in LA for 18 weeks. People just kept coming! Since we had no money for advertising there’s no doubt this happened thanks to the reviews - that was the only way people heard about the film. We apologize for taking so long to send this note but since we still do everything ourselves we’ve been swamped in the last two years in a whirlwind of theatrical and semi-theatrical screenings. We are grateful to you for enabling this. With deep gratitude, Ravit Markus, Producer Dan Katzir, Director New Love Films cont...@newlovefilms.com 323-939-3261 www.newlovefilms.com Send list submissions to: Marxism@lists.econ.utah.edu Set your options at: http://lists.econ.utah.edu/mailman/options/marxism/archive%40mail-archive.com
[Marxism] (no subject)
== Rule #1: YOU MUST clip all extraneous text when replying to a message. == (I tried to clear this up a little and left out the Hegelian crap since in fact al of made the same general error. OK. I was being a pinprick. Less pin . . .) The revolution from feudalism to capitalism was a social revolution, compelling society to reorganize itself around a new technology regime. The social revolution begins - is excited to life, as the result of a qualitative change in the material power of production. The revolution in the material power of production is not indifferent to the existing property relations, but interpenetrates it, and finally shatters its boundaries to the degree these boundaries prevent - fetter, the quantitative expansion of the new technological regime. The revolution from feudalism to capitalism was defined as such amid social and political upheaval where the decisive battles were waged in the political superstructure. The political superstructure - with the property relations within, manifest the strivings of a complex of classes. The real social revolution was from manufacture to industrial production, with the property relations within. Manufacture is a specific organization or of labor. The property relation within that has been at work, within a specific organization of labor blinds the revolutionary to the elementary. No matter how it is explained, at the end of the day, social revolution comes about because of revolution in the material power of production. A change in the form of wealth and its corresponding expression in class cannot produce social revolution on its own, only political revolt. In such a context no matter what class wins the political contest, the technological unpinning of society stays the same, even when the property form undergoes partial change. Consequently, many have written eloquent protestations against “the industrial monstrosity” conceived and articulated as the ultimate in human freedom. The problem is that no one could see beyond the industrial monstrosity until a new technological regime emerged. The material power of production is the more mobile aspect of the unity that is mode of production. Both - means of production and social relations of production are mobile as the one express itself through the other. One is more mobile than the other. Which one is the most mobile depends on the development of the social process at a given moment. You wrote: “The overture to an era of social revolution is, as Marx put it, the conflict between the means of production and the social relations of production-- between the organization of the means of production in a specific form of property, and the demands for the reproduction of that specific property which can no longer be satisfied by the means of production when organized in that form. Coincidentally, as the opposite identity of this process, organization of the specific property relations encapsulating production become an obstacle to the further development of the means of production. (end quote) Social revolution does not come about as the result of “the conflict” between means of production and the social relations of production. The conflict between means and relations of production drives a specific organization of labor, as it is productive, through all its quantitative boundaries of development. Revolution comes about because of revolution in the material power of production or the productive forces. It is precisely the revolution in the productive forces that sets the stage for the emergence of antagonism between means of production and social relations. The leap - transition, is a product of antagonism rather than contradiction or rather conflict. Marx talks about how the steam engine served as a catalyst for the revolution in the material power of production. He also describes in detail the impact of the cotton gin. It is the quantitative addition of a new quality - a new technology regime, which brings to an end, the intensive and extensive expansion of production on the old basis. In this instance, the old organization of production was manufacture, which in turn superseded handicraft, as the qualifying character of the material organization of productive forces. This happens because the new technological regime is a more efficient form of deployment of human-labor. The very real conflict you speak of - (between the organization of the means of production in a specific form of property, and the demands for the reproduction of that specific property) drives a specific organization of human labor + machinery + external energy source through all its boundaries of quantitative expansion. You write that at a
Re: [Marxism] What we share with other animals
== Rule #1: YOU MUST clip all extraneous text when replying to a message. == Gilles D'Aymery wrote: There's been quite a few posts theorizing about whether animals were able to experience pain and thinking, and the like. What booyeh! (If the word does not exist, let me be clear: What BS and what absolute self-centered, human centric, discourse.) That animals experience pain is not theory, it is fact. Some want to treat it as a theory because they don't want to face the ramifications. Anyone with half a brain and minimal sensitivity could tell from watching Louis' post on the pig farm vid that the pigs were in extreme, extreme, pain. As I said before and will say again, animal intelligence has absolutely nothing to do with it, although I agree with Gilles' point that dogs, pigs, and other mammals have more brains, and more of an emotional life than some folks would like to admit. The psychological truth is obvious. Flesh eaters don't feel comfortable eating animals which have intelligence because it trespasses on their comfort zone. But isn't it enough to realize that these sentient creatures living in the bowels of factory farm hell experience high levels of pain, brutality, and otherwise cruel treatment during their brief lives before they die a meaningless death? Or does that just whet the appetite? Greg Send list submissions to: Marxism@lists.econ.utah.edu Set your options at: http://lists.econ.utah.edu/mailman/options/marxism/archive%40mail-archive.com
Re: [Marxism] A thank you note I'd like to share
== Rule #1: YOU MUST clip all extraneous text when replying to a message. == Wow! sometimes the magic works regards Gary Send list submissions to: Marxism@lists.econ.utah.edu Set your options at: http://lists.econ.utah.edu/mailman/options/marxism/archive%40mail-archive.com
Re: [Marxism] What we share with other animals
== Rule #1: YOU MUST clip all extraneous text when replying to a message. == I haven't plunged into this one, because it's one of those hopelessly irrational arguments that usually do little more than provide participants with a chance to vent. But I have to say that the forwarded comment from Gilles hit the nail on the head. The question is not evaluating different kinds of life from some non-existent objective point. We deal with these things from the only authentic perspective we know, our human empathy. I've never met really humane people who didn't have that empathy for animals and I've never met anyone oblivious to animals who wasn't also, by degrees, oblivious to people. The presumably scientific assessments by animal psychologists are often worthless and usually a source of comic relief for people who live with dogs and cats. Cats, they tell us, have memories that are no longer than three days. As though any self-respecting feline is going to take seriously some stupid test that some particularly self-important jumped-up chimpanzee came up with! Ask someone with a cat whether the animal forgets them when they're gone for a longweekend, or a week, or a summer. And, as for dogs, they have a definite sense of humor, though it's inclined to physical comedy. On the big picture, I was listening to an NPR report on the reappearance of slave labor in Florida agriculture. Interesting stuff. And you know the bosses who are using debt peonage to enslave the vulnerable...the homeless and illegals...and locking them in U-Haul trailers overnight, working them, underfeeding them, beating them... To them, they're just work animals of a different sort. We are what we make of ourselves and what we let the capitalist system make of us. ML Send list submissions to: Marxism@lists.econ.utah.edu Set your options at: http://lists.econ.utah.edu/mailman/options/marxism/archive%40mail-archive.com
[Marxism] Register Online for the May Day Weekend Conference in Chicago
== Rule #1: YOU MUST clip all extraneous text when replying to a message. == http://www.mayday2010.info/index.html Send list submissions to: Marxism@lists.econ.utah.edu Set your options at: http://lists.econ.utah.edu/mailman/options/marxism/archive%40mail-archive.com
Re: [Marxism] Hand of Frog strikes Eire down: Henry admits handball, FAI requests replay
== Rule #1: YOU MUST clip all extraneous text when replying to a message. == http://www.jeu-de-main.com/ Send list submissions to: Marxism@lists.econ.utah.edu Set your options at: http://lists.econ.utah.edu/mailman/options/marxism/archive%40mail-archive.com
Re: [Marxism] Zizek in the Socialist Review (SWP-UK)
== Rule #1: YOU MUST clip all extraneous text when replying to a message. == Fight Club (another masterpiece of the Hollywood left). Really... Fight Club a masterpiece? The left? I think Richard Seymour was right when he described it and American Beauty as pop-Heideggerian. On Fri, Nov 20, 2009 at 2:50 PM, Maxwell Clark maxclar...@gmail.com wrote: An encouraging development. Is Zizek becoming a partisan activist? Let's hope so, utopians that we all are. --St. Max http://www.socialistreview.org.uk/article.php?articlenumber=11020 Send list submissions to: Marxism@lists.econ.utah.edu Set your options at: http://lists.econ.utah.edu/mailman/options/marxism/archive%40mail-archive.com
[Marxism] Zizek in the Socialist Review (SWP-UK)
== Rule #1: YOU MUST clip all extraneous text when replying to a message. == The movie They Live! is one of the great movies of all time. The review is very accurate but it's very good on several levels, not just as social commentary. It's a pretty good science-fiction movie as well. Given the start, Roddy Piper, was a former professional wrestler (albeit one of the smaller ones in that venue) it contained probably the best fight scene ever in a movie, and today, stands as the *longest* fight scene between two people in any movie. Just a fist fight, nothing fancy. Beats out anything, I might add, in Fight Club, another great movie. I happened know that this movie made the Reagan-fertilized Neo-conservatives in the DC Beltway absolutely fume. They knew *exactly* who this movie was aimed at and why. They really detested it. If you can get it on DVD by all means, do so. Have fun, because that's the kind of movie it is. Proletarian culture of the best kind, IMO. David Send list submissions to: Marxism@lists.econ.utah.edu Set your options at: http://lists.econ.utah.edu/mailman/options/marxism/archive%40mail-archive.com
[Marxism] Fw: Anarchism in Science
== Rule #1: YOU MUST clip all extraneous text when replying to a message. == - Original Message - From: johnaimani To: r...@lists.riseup.net Sent: Friday, November 20, 2009 5:55 PM Subject: WSJ: Anarchism in Science a.. NOVEMBER 20, 2009 More Scientists Treat Experiments as a Team Sport Massive Collider, a Global Collaboration, Has a Bumpy Start; but Sometimes the Work of Crowds Yields Wisdom a.. By ROBERT LEE HOTZ If all goes well, researchers Friday may power up the Large Hadron Collider -- a $6 billion particle accelerator near Geneva. The atom smasher is so large that a brief status report lists 2,900 authors, so complex that scientists in 34 countries have readied 100,000 computers to process its data, and so fragile that a bird dropping a bread crust can short-circuit its power supply -- as occurred earlier this month. The Large Hadron Collider, a $6 billion particle accelerator, is so large that a recent status report lists 2,900 authors. Robert Lee Hotz says the project is a prime example of how scientists are inventing new ways to foster teamwork through the Internet and shared data bases around the world. Far from trouble-free, the proton accelerator is resuming operations after a catastrophic breakdown in 2008 that triggered a year of repairs and recriminations. Its large research teams operate on such an elaborate scale that project management has become one of science's biggest challenges. Around the world, scientists are cutting across boundaries of place, organization and technical specialty to conduct ever more ambitious experiments. Inspired by such cooperative enterprises as Linux and Wikipedia, they are encouraging creative collaborations through networks of blogs, wikis, shared databases and crowd-sourcing. Once a mostly solitary endeavor, science in the 21st century has become a team sport. Research collaborations are larger, more common, more widely cited and more influential than ever, management studies show. Measured by the number of authors on a published paper, research teams have grown steadily in size and number every year since World War II. To gauge the rise of team science, management experts at Northwestern University recently analyzed 2.1 million U.S. patents filed since 1975 and all of the 19.9 million research papers archived in the Institute for Scientific Information database. We looked at the recorded universe of all published papers across all fields, and we found that all fields were moving heavily toward teamwork, says Northwestern business sociologist Brian Uzzi. As research projects grow more complicated, management becomes a variable in every experiment. You can't do it alone, says research management analyst Maria Binz-Scharf at City College of New York. The question is how you put it all together. Researchers ready the Large Hadron Collider, which physicists hope will reveal the forces that shaped the universe. The key is bringing the people together in the first place, which has sped technological advancements that often benefited the rest of us. The ease of global business and social networking today owes much to the World Wide Web, which was designed to aid information-sharing between scientists. It was invented at the European Organization for Nuclear Research (CERN), the home of the Large Hadron Collider. New online science management experiments are underway. Last year, the National Science Foundation started a $50 million project to map all plant biology research, from the level of molecules to organisms to entire ecosystems, so scientists can swoop through shared data as if they were using Google Earth. Last month, U.S. computer experts launched a $12 million federal project to create a national biomedical network called VIVOweb to encourage collaborations. Scientists are experimenting with the new technology of teamwork even in mathematics, where researchers customarily work alone. Last January, British mathematician Timothy Gowers invited volunteers to work on a problem in combinatorial research called the density Hales-Jewett theorem, which he posted at his Polymath Project blog. By brain-storming together online, two dozen volunteers solved the problem in 37 days. This way of doing research led to our finding the proof much more quickly than otherwise, says Dr. Gowers at Cambridge University. Recommended Reading a.. Northwestern University researchers analyzed millions of research papers and patents to document The Increasing Dominance of Teams in Production of Knowledge. b.. Teamwork in science increasingly spans university boundaries in most research fields, analysts reported in Multi-University Research Teams: Shifting Impact, Geography, and Stratification in Science. c.. To examine the development of creative teams,
Re: [Marxism] Best books on Allende?
== Rule #1: YOU MUST clip all extraneous text when replying to a message. == Pat Costello wrote: What are the best books on Salvador Allende and in particular the involvement of the US government in the downfall of Allende? *Disaster in Chile: Allende's Strategy and why it Failed* Les Evans (ed). Pathfinder, 1974. I think one would be hard pressed to call it one of the best, but it could prove useful in that it is a collection of articles from an international selection of authors --all Trotskyists, to be sure. Peter Winn, *Weavers of Revolution: The Yarur Workers and Chile's Road to Socialism* Oxford University, 1986. Could well be worth a read, at least for the popular background in which UP gov. took place. Send list submissions to: Marxism@lists.econ.utah.edu Set your options at: http://lists.econ.utah.edu/mailman/options/marxism/archive%40mail-archive.com
Re: [Marxism-Thaxis] The SWP and underconsumptionism
JF: Charles [B] is right about that. Obama's policies more closely resemble those followed by Herbert Hoover rather than those followed by FDR. An unabashed Keynesian would criticize Obama for not directing enough of his spending to lower income people, who, according to Keynes, would have a higher propensity to consumption than more affluent people. I would say HH and FDR were birds of a capitalist feather. FDR ran on a campaign that criticized Hoover for his profligate spending, the result of budget increases that resulted in high deficits (at least up until that time), and his tax increases. In practice, both HH and FDR pursued both monetary and fiscal measures to address the perceived political crisis that was a result of an economic crisis (any time a politician has trouble get re-elected, the crisis becomes real to him). It's hard to liken Obama to either Hoover or FDR in terms of what he inherited. HH inherited a budget surplus and ran it into deficits. Obama inherits a deficit that is so enormous it is beyond human intelligence to comprehend. I would also say under a capitalist system there are a number of ways to hurt consumption. One would be to run deficits so high that government borrowing squeezes credit. Under the current US system, the idea appears to be to lower interest rates so much that it encourages borrowing. But this could be two sides of the same coin--or even the same side. You can slash interest rates to zero, that doesn't mean people and companies who actually produce something will want to borrow--expand their production or borrow in order to consume now. Moreover, if you have many people who rely, at least in part, on interest income, keeping interest rates low could discourage consumption. That would be people like pensioners or anyone who still saved money because it brought some return in interest on the account. Do any Americans do this? What is the reward doing it now with interest near zero? But bond investing look troubled and might I point out that overall if you hold stocks you haven't seen any overall gain since 2000. In fact, if you take a 15 year view of stocks and bonds, they both suck. Obama is unlike FDR in that the US he inherited never really got out of the mentality that got them through WW II. You could say, in that sense, he is the post-FDR president (since FDR's role was to save American capitalism while getting everyone to support WW II). Still, I like comparisons to Carter better (so far). Also, if Hoover gets slammed with being anti-free trade because of the Hoot-Smawley act passed while he was in office, you also have to point out that a world war isn't really a period of capitalist free trade or globalism (i.e., the FDR follow up), so it would be hard to call FDR an anti-thesis of Hoover on trade. The current policy, inherited from the Bushwaites, is apparently to EXPORT the US's economic crisis through monetary and fiscal policies that devalue the dollar. Yes, a cheap dollar is supposed to encourage exports because the goods are cheaper. But the problem is it saddles other economies with far worse economic crises of their own, thereby limiting any export boom. A good example would be Japan, now stuck with holding huge amounts of increasingly worthless dollars while having to export goods and services denominated in an increasingly high yen (while Japanese live in a country that has had near-zero interest rates for the last 15 years!). I would say much of the current crisis was caused by Bush's policies, many of them supported by, as usual, a Repug-Demoncrat consensus. War, huge deficits on war, high oil (most of all because Iraqi oil was taken off the world market, and that drove up the price of other high grade crudes, and plentiful high grade is what makes Iraq the envy of so many other countries). And then this 'need' to end trade deficits by cheapening the dollar (which in turn drove the oil pricing bubble). Finally, hey it's almost time to organize to get Obama re-elected. I know what he can run on: Don't let all our good work go unfinished. CJ -- Japan Higher Education Outlook http://japanheo.blogspot.com/ We are Feral Cats http://wearechikineko.blogspot.com/ ___ Marxism-Thaxis mailing list Marxism-Thaxis@lists.econ.utah.edu To change your options or unsubscribe go to: http://lists.econ.utah.edu/mailman/listinfo/marxism-thaxis
Re: [Marxism-Thaxis] The SWP and underconsumptionism
Does anyone here remember in the waning months of the Bushwa's last term how they sent out everyone a 300 dollar check for 'economic relief'? I think you got one if you filed your federal income tax returns properly. It wasn't in any way a tax refund (although I also remember Bush was a big tax cutter, which is one of the ways he raised the federal deficits so much--in addition to pouring over a trillion dollars a year on militarism in the name of 'security' and the 'war on terror'). That sounds like something postmo Keynesian might argue for, but it didn't seem to have much of an effect on consumption. At any rate, it doesn't look like those depending on interest income are going to spend more--that is because they have far less interest income to spend. Meanwhile, those in debt are trying to pay off debt and/or save, with the latter getting no returns. It looks like a 'critical mass' of people have hit the wall and can't borrow anymore. So it doesn't look like you are going to see any increase in consumption on their part. The Obama administration ought to give each household 1000 dollars and cut the military budgets by 500 billion dollars, starting NOW. That would do it. Of course, there would be a mlitary coup in answer to it (most likely with ironmaiden Clinton taking charge of things with Gen. Gates in a junta). But if that didn't happen, then the Obamaites ought to apologize to Iraqis in order to avoid war reparations and use the savings to provide health care and adequate nutrition to all Americans. Then I would be all for war crimes trials for Bush Cheney Rice etc. Seeing how much dignity they brought to the lynching of Saddam Hussein, Bush etc. could be executed on pay-per-view TV, with the profits going toward the national debt. Oops. I'm letting my fantasies carry me away. The real outrageous fantasy comes in saying that Obama would ever do such a thing as cut the military budgets. I'm glad the boys at the Pentagon taught him how to salute the gyrines and flyboys who ferry him around. It makes it look like he really is in charge in DC. Now if someone would only teach him that you bow to the emperor first and then shake his hand. You don't do both at the same time. For your edification: http://finance.yahoo.com/news/Americans-save-more-but-earn-apf-3318981277.html?x=0 excerpt: As banks pour money into U.S. Treasurys, it forces down interest rates and yields for people with money in government debt or bank deposits. On Friday, the three-month Treasury bill offered a return of 0.02 percent -- after falling as low as 0.005 percent Thursday. That's the lowest level since a year ago, in the throes of the financial crisis. Lower interest rates make it cheaper for people and companies to borrow, and they help sustain a weak economy. They also help keep mortgage rates low, which is key to turning the housing market around. And lower rates make it much cheaper for the government to borrow money to finance deficits. But the government's policy of stimulating the economy by cutting rates to try to get people to borrow and spend is essentially robbing the elderly of a vital income stream, argued Greg McBride, senior financial analyst at Bankrate.com. It takes money out of the pockets of senior citizens and anyone living on a fixed income and gives it to borrowers, many of whom are overly indebted, McBride said. It's as if Grandma stuffed an envelope full of cash, walked down the street and gave it to the guy with two new cars, a big-screen TV and who's behind on his mortgage. For some perspective on the rapid drop in CD interest rates, just look back a year. The interest rate for a one-year CD was 2.53 percent this time last year. Today, it earns just 0.88 percent. That means a retiree with $100,000 saved in a CD could have earned $2,530 in 2008, or about $211 a month. At current rates, that same $100,000 is earning just $880 year. The retiree's monthly income has sunk to about $73. Besides savers, low rates hurt investors in fixed-income assets like U.S. Treasurys. Demand for Treasury bonds has soared even as the government auctions off record amounts of new debt to finance record budget deficits. Interest rates aren't expected to rise anytime soon. The Federal Reserve seems determined to keep rates low as long as unemployment remains up and consumer spending is weak. Comments made by top Fed officials in recent days, including Federal Reserve Chairman Ben Bernanke, have convinced investors that any increase in rates is months away at the earliest. The Fed is not going to be tightening monetary policy for a long time, said Mark Zandi, chief economist at Moody's Economy.com. ___ Marxism-Thaxis mailing list Marxism-Thaxis@lists.econ.utah.edu To change your options or unsubscribe go to: http://lists.econ.utah.edu/mailman/listinfo/marxism-thaxis
