RESOURCE: Gopher Site with Wide Array of Progressive Information (fwd)
Hi all, This is a post to remind people about the resource for progressives we have here at UC-Berkeley for progressives called the Economic Democracy Information Network (EDIN) gopher. We are looking for new sources of files and other gopher sites, especially labor and economic-oriented sites. (Labor files are a top priority since there are so few labor files in cyberspace). Please check out the gopher at garnet.berkeley.edu 1250 and if you have other resources to add or know of some we should have "pointers" to, let me know. Thanks. ** *Nathan Newman: [EMAIL PROTECTED] * * UC-Berkeley* == Subject: About the EDIN Gopher ABOUT THE EDIN PROJECT'S GOPHER The Electronic Democracy Information Network (EDIN) Gopher is one of several ventures by the EDIN Project. The following is the mission statement of the EDIN Project. If you'd like more information on the EDIN Project or would like to comment on the EDIN gopher, please send e-mail to [EMAIL PROTECTED] You can connect to the EDIN gopher by connecting to garnet.berkeley.edu 1250 or you will find it listed under the California list of gophers in the "Mother of All Gophers" list. Some notable recent additions to the EDIN gopher are extensive connections to state government legislative information and a new directory devoted to "Political Movements and Theory" with files on the organization and theory of groups ranging from the IWW to Ayn Rand. -- ECONOMIC DEMOCRACY INFORMATION NETWORK (EDIN) From revitalizing inner city communities to creating sustainable development to converting to a peacetime economy, information resources and rapid communication are becoming increasingly important in both our economic and political system. To help avoid the danger of a split between the information haves and have-nots, EDIN will provide community groups throughout California and in the nation greater access to the burgeoning world of information by both providing more information and easier access to electronic communication. COMPONENTS OF EDIN PROJECT: EDIN On-Line Server: This will be the site which will coordinate the gathering of existing economic and social information and providing it electronically in an understandable form, both immediately in text form and over time as we develop the software to transmit information in innovative graphical forms. EDIN will facilitate research and communication on economic issues by EDIN users in different locations around the state. Infrastructure: By working with such groups as public libraries and other public access facilities, we will work to establish walk-in and dial-in access to community groups engaged in community development efforts. Training and Community Involvement: Teams of trainers will work with already existing networks of groups to get them on-line and help facilitate their use of the EDIN system. GOALS OF EDIN PROJECT: Link Economic Information: EDIN would be the first archive to have information on the economic aspects of conversion, community development, and the environment, linked together so that users can approach a problem from several angles at once. Ease of Use: EDIN will make it easy to sort through a broad array of information and quickly determine what you actually want. It will be simple to customize EDIN to your needs. Economic Literacy: EDIN will over time connect its information to glossaries, tutorials, and other tools for facilitating learning about a complex economic topic which interests and intimidates you. In doing so, it will create a new way of promoting economic literacy. Community-Based: EDIN will be based around the idea that the community needs to actively shape its direction; it will be rebuilt and reshaped through a process that strives to serve the community's needs as they understand them. In this way, it will give community groups a way to participate in shaping the coming information society. =
interest rates
Jim Devine wrote: Behind this were the limits set by class society: interest rates couldn't rise so far as to swallow more than the total mass of surplus-value (except perhaps in a transitory liquidity crisis) and couldn't fall below zero (except maybe in the very short run). I don't know what Marx said, but I do know _real_ short-term interest rates in the 1970's were frequently _negative_ in real terms. That is, the annual inflation rate was higher than the rate of profit for finance capital. I think so anyway. J. Gulick UC-Santa Cruz
Re: interest rates
On Thu, 24 Feb 1994 10:15:41 -0800 JGulick said: I don't know what Marx said, but I do know _real_ short-term interest rates in the 1970's were frequently _negative_ in real terms. That is, the annual inflation rate was higher than the rate of profit for finance capital. I think so anyway. You're right: it turned out that real interest rates were negative after the fact (ex post). But were they expected to be so ahead of time (ex ante)? In any event, nominal interest rates rose dramatically so that short rates were positive again. It took longer for long-term interest rates to adjust... at least that is my impression. in pen-l solidarity, Jim Devine BITNET: jndf@lmuacadINTERNET: [EMAIL PROTECTED] Econ. Dept., Loyola Marymount Univ., Los Angeles, CA 90045-2699 USA 310/338-2948 (off); 310/202-6546 (hm); FAX: 310/338-1950
interest rates
Loanable Funds and rentiers don't strike me as useful concepts for understanding interest rate determination. Loanable funds theory assumes that interest rates equilibrate investments and savings. As such, it has nothing to do with Marx and is logically inconsistent because of re-switching and reverse capital-deepening. And why all the talk about rentiers influencing monetary policy? There is empirical evidence that the Administration, Congress and the large commercial banks influence monetary policy, not rentiers. A sell-off in the stock or bond markets would also cause the Fed to change course. But the people in the pits and at the trading desks aren't rentiers. They embody financial capital, which thrives on fees for providing services to industrial capital and by maintaining as large a spread as possible between the interest rate on deposits and the interest rate on loans. Isn't that different from being a rentier?
Karlos and Interest Rates
In a post dated yesterday, the assertion was made that the political limits of interest rates (within the "supply-and-demand-for-loanable-capital" rubric) were that interest could not rise high enough to consume the mass of surplus value and could not fall below zero. This is true, of course, of ex ante interest rates --- but given that the REAL interest rate is an ex post ratio resulting from whatever inflation (or deflation) was occurring, in the real world, interest rates (real) have been negative and (I venture to guess without having any historically specific examples) in times of economic crisis high enough in real terms to capture all (and more) of the surplus value produced. Remember, in periods of significant deflation since NOMINAL interest rates can never fall below zero, real interest rates can be quite high. And if this is a period of negative net profit, then interest is taking more than the mass of surplus value. Obviously, experiences such as negative real interst rates can create new searches for INSTITUTIONS and POLICIES that can protect the rentiers from similar occurrences. Interestingly, one of the major policy efforts of the head of the FED after 1934 (Marriner Eccles) was a LOW INTEREST policy to protect "productive" investors from having the "mass of surplus value " (not his terms obviously!) eaten up by high real interst rates. I am curious, Doug, as to how the low interest policies of the late 1980s and 90s protected the coupon clippers. Many of the real "widows and orphans" of rentier fame (alleged!) really have been harmed by the lowering of rates ... Cheers, Mike Mike Meeropol (bitnet%"mmeeropo@wnec") (in%"[EMAIL PROTECTED]") (#100)
Re: interest rates
On Thu, 24 Feb 1994 15:40:22 -0500 (EST) Dickens said: Loanable Funds and rentiers don't strike me as useful concepts for understanding interest rate determination. Loanable funds theory assumes that interest rates equilibrate investments and savings. As such, it has nothing to do with Marx and is logically inconsistent because of re-switching and reverse capital-deepening. The concept of loanable funds (and the supply of and demand for such funds) is pretty elastic and can cover a multitude of different visions. In one common model that used to show up in very old money and banking texts (and fits with Marx), the demand for loanable funds is based on productive investment, speculation, hoarding and the government deficit. The supply of loanable funds includes saving, dishoarding, and bank credit creation (based on monetary policy). One major innovation arising with Keynes is that economists now emphasize the stock of money rather than the flow of funds, so that the existing stock-supply and stock- demand for money determine interest rates, at least in the short run. In the Mishkin money banking text, the supply and demand for LF might be interpreted in terms of flows or stock magnitudes (he's ambiguous). Anyway, since flows eventually affect stocks significantly, the two conceptions aren't that far off. As for reswitching and reverse capital-deepening, that's about the slope of the demand for funds curve rather than the concept of the demand for funds per se. On the last issue (not reproduced above), my impression was that "rentier" was being loosely applied to mean "financial capital." in pen-l solidarity, Jim Devine BITNET: jndf@lmuacadINTERNET: [EMAIL PROTECTED] Econ. Dept., Loyola Marymount Univ., Los Angeles, CA 90045-2699 USA 310/338-2948 (off); 310/202-6546 (hm); FAX: 310/338-1950
Re: Interest rates and politics
Not to be a vulgar Marxist or anything, but the rentier class took to monetarism because they saw it as a strategy to attack inflation and the aspirations of an uppity working class. Of course ideology played an important part in its triumph, but the politicians most identified with this ideology are Pinochet and Thatcher, repressive centralizers both of them. Doug Doug Henwood [[EMAIL PROTECTED]] Left Business Observer 212-874-4020 (voice) 212-874-3137 (fax) On Thu, 24 Feb 1994, Blair Sandler wrote: Interest rates change not only for economic and political (a la M. HenwoodUs posting) reasons, but also for cultural ones, e.g. the influence of monetarist theory on decision-makers. Blair Sandler
Re: interest rates
Real rates, after making the appropriate Keynesian observation that they are not an observable phenomenon, were indeed negative in the 1970s, which is why the rentier class insisted on Volcker's takeover of the Fed, etc. In the late 1970s, long-term bonds, those of us over 40 may remember, were nicknamed Certificates of Confiscation. Doug Doug Henwood [[EMAIL PROTECTED]] Left Business Observer 212-874-4020 (voice) 212-874-3137 (fax) On Thu, 24 Feb 1994 [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: Jim Devine wrote: Behind this were the limits set by class society: interest rates couldn't rise so far as to swallow more than the total mass of surplus-value (except perhaps in a transitory liquidity crisis) and couldn't fall below zero (except maybe in the very short run). I don't know what Marx said, but I do know _real_ short-term interest rates in the 1970's were frequently _negative_ in real terms. That is, the annual inflation rate was higher than the rate of profit for finance capital. I think so anyway. J. Gulick UC-Santa Cruz
Re: interest rates
I may be a bit rusty on this, but I thought loanable funds theory referred to the supply and demand for loan capital, not savings and investment. To cover my butt in my original posting I deliberately said LF or liquidity so as not to take a side on that hoary controversy. I also used the term "rentiers" rather loosely (but contemptuously) to refer to a class of people who hold or manage capital in money form. They are not the passive coupon clippers of old, but extremely active hard working (if unproductive) folks like pension fund managers and insurance company executives. The degree to which they serve industrial capital is highly debatable, given that industrial capital is overwhelmingly self-financing, especially the larger units, and the (post-)modern rentiers only care about increasing their money returns. How much of the $1 trillion a day that passes through the CHIPS wire becomes capital in Marx's sense, that of engaging living labor? Doug Doug Henwood [[EMAIL PROTECTED]] Left Business Observer 212-874-4020 (voice) 212-874-3137 (fax) On Thu, 24 Feb 1994 [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: Loanable Funds and rentiers don't strike me as useful concepts for understanding interest rate determination. Loanable funds theory assumes that interest rates equilibrate investments and savings. As such, it has nothing to do with Marx and is logically inconsistent because of re-switching and reverse capital-deepening. And why all the talk about rentiers influencing monetary policy? There is empirical evidence that the Administration, Congress and the large commercial banks influence monetary policy, not rentiers. A sell-off in the stock or bond markets would also cause the Fed to change course. But the people in the pits and at the trading desks aren't rentiers. They embody financial capital, which thrives on fees for providing services to industrial capital and by maintaining as large a spread as possible between the interest rate on deposits and the interest rate on loans. Isn't that different from being a rentier?
Participatory Planning
The following may be of interest -- Jim Devine Original message I am interested in some of the brief comments that have been made recently on participatory economic planning "from the bottom up" in the context of a reconstituted socialism. I would like to make one empirical observation. I did some investigation of the Yugoslav planning system in 1987 which was based on enterprise and local community plans which were integrated at the commune and republic level and then at the national levle. Reconciliation was then attempted and the results sent back down to the lower planning levels where plans were adjusted and the process repeated (i.e. iterative procedures). Unfortunately, for the 5 year plans, the procedure took more than five years so that the plan was never completed until after the planning period was over. It was not really suprising, therefore, that the plan goals were never achieved. IMHO, the model of democratic participatory planning at the micro level is an unattainable, utopian dream. (This does not mean that I am either opposed to macro planning or participatory democracy/socialism -- which I am). Paul Phillips, Economics, University of Manitoba, Winnipeg, Manitoba. [EMAIL PROTECTED]
RESOURCE: Gopher Site with Wide Array of Progressive Information (fwd)
Hi all, This is a post to remind people about the resource for progressives we have here at UC-Berkeley for progressives called the Economic Democracy Information Network (EDIN) gopher. We are looking for new sources of files and other gopher sites, especially labor and economic-oriented sites. (Labor files are a top priority since there are so few labor files in cyberspace). Please check out the gopher at garnet.berkeley.edu 1250 and if you have other resources to add or know of some we should have "pointers" to, let me know. Thanks. ** *Nathan Newman: [EMAIL PROTECTED] * * UC-Berkeley* == Subject: About the EDIN Gopher ABOUT THE EDIN PROJECT'S GOPHER The Electronic Democracy Information Network (EDIN) Gopher is one of several ventures by the EDIN Project. The following is the mission statement of the EDIN Project. If you'd like more information on the EDIN Project or would like to comment on the EDIN gopher, please send e-mail to [EMAIL PROTECTED] You can connect to the EDIN gopher by connecting to garnet.berkeley.edu 1250 or you will find it listed under the California list of gophers in the "Mother of All Gophers" list. Some notable recent additions to the EDIN gopher are extensive connections to state government legislative information and a new directory devoted to "Political Movements and Theory" with files on the organization and theory of groups ranging from the IWW to Ayn Rand. -- ECONOMIC DEMOCRACY INFORMATION NETWORK (EDIN) From revitalizing inner city communities to creating sustainable development to converting to a peacetime economy, information resources and rapid communication are becoming increasingly important in both our economic and political system. To help avoid the danger of a split between the information haves and have-nots, EDIN will provide community groups throughout California and in the nation greater access to the burgeoning world of information by both providing more information and easier access to electronic communication. COMPONENTS OF EDIN PROJECT: EDIN On-Line Server: This will be the site which will coordinate the gathering of existing economic and social information and providing it electronically in an understandable form, both immediately in text form and over time as we develop the software to transmit information in innovative graphical forms. EDIN will facilitate research and communication on economic issues by EDIN users in different locations around the state. Infrastructure: By working with such groups as public libraries and other public access facilities, we will work to establish walk-in and dial-in access to community groups engaged in community development efforts. Training and Community Involvement: Teams of trainers will work with already existing networks of groups to get them on-line and help facilitate their use of the EDIN system. GOALS OF EDIN PROJECT: Link Economic Information: EDIN would be the first archive to have information on the economic aspects of conversion, community development, and the environment, linked together so that users can approach a problem from several angles at once. Ease of Use: EDIN will make it easy to sort through a broad array of information and quickly determine what you actually want. It will be simple to customize EDIN to your needs. Economic Literacy: EDIN will over time connect its information to glossaries, tutorials, and other tools for facilitating learning about a complex economic topic which interests and intimidates you. In doing so, it will create a new way of promoting economic literacy. Community-Based: EDIN will be based around the idea that the community needs to actively shape its direction; it will be rebuilt and reshaped through a process that strives to serve the community's needs as they understand them. In this way, it will give community groups a way to participate in shaping the coming information society. =
interest rates
Jim Devine wrote: Behind this were the limits set by class society: interest rates couldn't rise so far as to swallow more than the total mass of surplus-value (except perhaps in a transitory liquidity crisis) and couldn't fall below zero (except maybe in the very short run). I don't know what Marx said, but I do know _real_ short-term interest rates in the 1970's were frequently _negative_ in real terms. That is, the annual inflation rate was higher than the rate of profit for finance capital. I think so anyway. J. Gulick UC-Santa Cruz
interest rates
Loanable Funds and rentiers don't strike me as useful concepts for understanding interest rate determination. Loanable funds theory assumes that interest rates equilibrate investments and savings. As such, it has nothing to do with Marx and is logically inconsistent because of re-switching and reverse capital-deepening. And why all the talk about rentiers influencing monetary policy? There is empirical evidence that the Administration, Congress and the large commercial banks influence monetary policy, not rentiers. A sell-off in the stock or bond markets would also cause the Fed to change course. But the people in the pits and at the trading desks aren't rentiers. They embody financial capital, which thrives on fees for providing services to industrial capital and by maintaining as large a spread as possible between the interest rate on deposits and the interest rate on loans. Isn't that different from being a rentier?
Re: interest rates
On Thu, 24 Feb 1994 10:15:41 -0800 JGulick said: I don't know what Marx said, but I do know _real_ short-term interest rates in the 1970's were frequently _negative_ in real terms. That is, the annual inflation rate was higher than the rate of profit for finance capital. I think so anyway. You're right: it turned out that real interest rates were negative after the fact (ex post). But were they expected to be so ahead of time (ex ante)? In any event, nominal interest rates rose dramatically so that short rates were positive again. It took longer for long-term interest rates to adjust... at least that is my impression. in pen-l solidarity, Jim Devine BITNET: jndf@lmuacadINTERNET: [EMAIL PROTECTED] Econ. Dept., Loyola Marymount Univ., Los Angeles, CA 90045-2699 USA 310/338-2948 (off); 310/202-6546 (hm); FAX: 310/338-1950
Re: Carving Up the 'Superhighway'
This is in response to Mr. Henwood's message posted on Feb. 14. If the personal details are irrelevant, then why did you bring them up? I think it shows your bad taste to bring up Mr. Negroponte's father, as if he had something to do with what his father did. You are also using a logical fallacy by implying that what his father did, he is also to blame. I feel that you own Mr. Negroponte an apology for this implied slur on his name. Christine. Posted on 14 Feb 1994 at 11:12:23 by Uriacc Mailer (002033) Re: Carving Up the "Superhighway" Date: Mon, 14 Feb 1994 10:15:57 -0500 (EST) From: Doug Henwood [EMAIL PROTECTED] Irrelevant personal detail: [Nick] Negroponte is the son of John N, who [allegedly] supervised torture in Brazil in the 1960s for the CIA and who, as ambassador to Honduras, supervised part of the contra war in the 1980s. Doug Doug Henwood [[EMAIL PROTECTED]] Left Business Observer 212-874-4020 (voice) 212-874-3137 (fax) On Thu, 10 Feb 1994, Zodiac wrote: The news article I wrote: "When I come home at night," Negroponte says, "the machine will say, 'Hello, Nicholas, I've looked at 14,000 hours of television and have made you this half-hour tape of stuff I thought you'd be interested in.'" Anders: Thanks for the peek into the Canadian version of the craze hitting the States. Incidentally, the man describing the computer system of the future got it wrong. He should have said, "When I come home at night, the machine will say, 'Hello, Nicholas, I've looked at 14,000 hours of television and am suing you for cyber-abuse.'" Hilarious!!! I still laugh aloud when I read the corrected version. Thanks, Anders. Ken. -- "Don't HATE the media... | K.K.Campbell beCOME the media!" --*--[EMAIL PROTECTED] - J. Biafra | . . . . cum grano salis
Karlos and Interest Rates
In a post dated yesterday, the assertion was made that the political limits of interest rates (within the "supply-and-demand-for-loanable-capital" rubric) were that interest could not rise high enough to consume the mass of surplus value and could not fall below zero. This is true, of course, of ex ante interest rates --- but given that the REAL interest rate is an ex post ratio resulting from whatever inflation (or deflation) was occurring, in the real world, interest rates (real) have been negative and (I venture to guess without having any historically specific examples) in times of economic crisis high enough in real terms to capture all (and more) of the surplus value produced. Remember, in periods of significant deflation since NOMINAL interest rates can never fall below zero, real interest rates can be quite high. And if this is a period of negative net profit, then interest is taking more than the mass of surplus value. Obviously, experiences such as negative real interst rates can create new searches for INSTITUTIONS and POLICIES that can protect the rentiers from similar occurrences. Interestingly, one of the major policy efforts of the head of the FED after 1934 (Marriner Eccles) was a LOW INTEREST policy to protect "productive" investors from having the "mass of surplus value " (not his terms obviously!) eaten up by high real interst rates. I am curious, Doug, as to how the low interest policies of the late 1980s and 90s protected the coupon clippers. Many of the real "widows and orphans" of rentier fame (alleged!) really have been harmed by the lowering of rates ... Cheers, Mike Mike Meeropol (bitnet%"mmeeropo@wnec") (in%"[EMAIL PROTECTED]") (#100)
Re: interest rates
Real rates, after making the appropriate Keynesian observation that they are not an observable phenomenon, were indeed negative in the 1970s, which is why the rentier class insisted on Volcker's takeover of the Fed, etc. In the late 1970s, long-term bonds, those of us over 40 may remember, were nicknamed Certificates of Confiscation. Doug Doug Henwood [[EMAIL PROTECTED]] Left Business Observer 212-874-4020 (voice) 212-874-3137 (fax) On Thu, 24 Feb 1994 [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: Jim Devine wrote: Behind this were the limits set by class society: interest rates couldn't rise so far as to swallow more than the total mass of surplus-value (except perhaps in a transitory liquidity crisis) and couldn't fall below zero (except maybe in the very short run). I don't know what Marx said, but I do know _real_ short-term interest rates in the 1970's were frequently _negative_ in real terms. That is, the annual inflation rate was higher than the rate of profit for finance capital. I think so anyway. J. Gulick UC-Santa Cruz
Participatory Planning
The following may be of interest -- Jim Devine Original message I am interested in some of the brief comments that have been made recently on participatory economic planning "from the bottom up" in the context of a reconstituted socialism. I would like to make one empirical observation. I did some investigation of the Yugoslav planning system in 1987 which was based on enterprise and local community plans which were integrated at the commune and republic level and then at the national levle. Reconciliation was then attempted and the results sent back down to the lower planning levels where plans were adjusted and the process repeated (i.e. iterative procedures). Unfortunately, for the 5 year plans, the procedure took more than five years so that the plan was never completed until after the planning period was over. It was not really suprising, therefore, that the plan goals were never achieved. IMHO, the model of democratic participatory planning at the micro level is an unattainable, utopian dream. (This does not mean that I am either opposed to macro planning or participatory democracy/socialism -- which I am). Paul Phillips, Economics, University of Manitoba, Winnipeg, Manitoba. [EMAIL PROTECTED]
