Re: FW: Greenspan drops the Bomb

[Dennis R Redmond]

On Fri, 27 Feb 1998, Richardson_D wrote:

> > For me I guess the real question is whether a geographical shift is
> > possible at this time.  The Japanese seem altogether too irresponsible
> > and too willing to put up with opaque accounting (their banks have
> > hidden losses, not on their books, of over $500b) to be reliable
> > custodians of the world economy.  Also, while their export sectors are
> > ahead of ours, especially with the artificially low valuation of the
> > yen, the purely domestic sectors of their economy are actually quite
> > primitive.

I keep hearing this about Japan, that their export sector is fine, but
their domestic services consist of kimono dry-cleaning firms and the like.
In reality, Japan's service sector has a host of highly competitive,
sophisticated media, advertising and shipping firms. If you want true
economic primitivism, you have to visit America's inner cities, where
Imperial collapse and the rape of the welfare state have created a
vicious, resource-draining, wasteful "cop capitalism" (gangsters have been
pilloried long enough). This notion that Japan is somehow forever behind
us sophisticated Westerners just doesn't do justice to the realities of
1998.

> > While the euro may well be the innovation that makes Europe the
> > capitalist center once again, the experiment has yet to begin.  In
> > addition, Britain is not joining the monetary union and cities like
> > Paris and Frankfurt do not compare with London as financial centers.
> > New York is first and Tokyo is a poor third worldwide.  The strength
> > of both Europe and Japan is in manufacturing, and manufacturing by
> > itself does not lead to any particular advantage in the world
> > competition to be the capitalist center, a point made by the devotion
> > of Venice to manufacturing after its period of dominance had ended and
> > the more recent failure of Germany to make its manufacturing
> > excellence count.  The center has always been pre-eminant in finance.

The UK is just the transaction point for deals, it doesn't actually create
any of the money. Basically, the UK is a large, foggy offshore banking
center, like the Bahamas or Macau, is all; the location of the stuff is
pretty immaterial, e.g. it's like the Greenwich Mean Time market, merely
a symbolic thing. As far as the manufacturing thing goes, what's your
evidence that German manufacturing excellence has failed? Siemens, BMW and
Daimler-Benz are all kicking global market butt. German firms are
powerhouse chip, electrical and aerospace producers, and are getting into
telecoms and software like there's no tomorrow. Eastern Europe is turning
into a gigantic Chinese-style export platform. This dynamism has also been
creating a vast credit infrastructure: Central European banks are some of
the largest in the world. The German banking system alone holds $3.5
trillion in assets, as large as the entire American system (quite a
feat for a country with only a quarter of the US population). The East
Asian financial system, despite its recent problems, has also grown into a
serious challenger for US financiers; the Japanese banking system, bad
debts or no, is still twice as big in terms of assets as the American
system (you'll note that Japanese and not American capital is currently
bailing out the Pacific Rim, and that Japan still has
plenty of resources to simultaneously bail out its own big banks).
The point is that Japanese/Central European capitalism really is a
different beast from its American forerunner -- it has a different
manufacturing model, a different financial model, a different political
logic to it. The banks cooperate with industry via keiretsu
shareholding networks, instead of preying on such; governments tax
rentiers to pay for essential public services and high-quality education;
mobilized and educated consumers demand high-quality, ecologically
efficient goods, etc. This is why real wages are almost twice as high in
Japan/Central Europe as in America, and why I think the fall of
the American Empire/dollar and the rise of the European Union/euro and
some sort of future East Asian superstate/supercurrency are pretty much
inevitable; these economies are, overall, more efficient at mobilizing
capital and harvesting a return on that capital, and are getting more so
by the hour. 

-- Dennis

 

FWD: URGENT ACTION ON IMF

[Robert Naiman]

>From 50 Years is Enough. To folks in the U.S. Please take at least one of 
these actions, and forward. -Robert Naiman

<[EMAIL PROTECTED]>) {[EMAIL PROTECTED]} at 3/01/98 11:41 pm
>Original Recipient(s):
>
>TO:  All 50 Years Members
>RE:  EMERGENCY ACTION ALERT: JUST SAY NO TO EXPANDED IMF FUNDING
>
> The Clinton Administration has made securing $18 billion from
>the US Congress to expand the power and scope of the IMF its top
>legislative priority for 1998.  It has even eclipsed the
>Administration's attempts to secure "fast-track" negotiating
>authority for trade agreements. Robert Rubin, Lawrence Summers,
>have practically taken residence on the hill to lobby for the IMF.
>Federal Reserve Chairman Alan Greenspan and Defense Secretary
>William Cohen have joined in the chorus, and the IMF's head, Michel
>Camdessus, has mounted a charm offensive on Congress.
>
> IF WE DON'T ACT THIS WEEK, THESE MAY BE THE VOICES THAT SHAPE
>GLOBAL ECONOMIC POLICY FOR YEARS TO COME!
>
>Here's what you can do NOW, by order of priority:
>
>1.   By Wednesday, March 4, fax or mail (so that it arrives on the
>hill by March 4) the following letter to ALL MEMBERS OF YOUR STATE
>DELEGATION!  Yes, that might mean that in California, we are asking
>people to send a letter to all 40 members of your congressional
>delegation.  We can fax or email to anyone who needs it the names
>and addresses of their state delegation, so don't hesitate to
>contact us.
>
>IMPORTANT POINT!  GET AS MANY PEOPLE AND GROUPS AS POSSIBLE TO SEND
>A LETTER (ON THE GROUP"S LETTERHEAD) TO ALL MEMBERS OF THE STATE
>LEGISLATION.  WE NEED TO MAKE THE POINT TO MEMBERS THAT THIS IS A
>CONSTITUENT ISSUE!
>
>In addition, receiving lots of constituent letters will the IMF
>issue on the radar of those who don't yet know about it, and
>pressure those who do to do the right thing.
>
>It is vitally important that we get as many (hopefully thousands)
>of letters as possible to Congress by March 4.  Otherwise, efforts
>to compromise and play the game will force even progressive
>democrats to give the IMF everything it wants.
>
>2.   Call your congressperson, and tell them to vote NO to any
>funding for the IMF.  Attached is a Dear Colleague letter written
>by Congressman Kucinich which has the relevant talking points.
>Anyone who wants more information as ammunition, just call or email
>us here at 50 Years.
>
>LET US KNOW WHAT ACTIONS YOU UNDERTAKE, SO WE CAN TRACK HOW
>SUCCESSFUL IT IS!   Our friends in Congress are trying their
>best to fight the IMF appropriations -- we need to do all we can to
>help them.
>
>__
>
>
>
>LETTER TO SEND TO ALL MEMBERS OF YOUR STATE CONGRESSIONAL
>DELEGATION
>
>Dear Congressperson;
>
> On March 5, a bill (HR 3114) to provide $18 billion in funds
>to expand the International Monetary Fund (IMF) will be presented
>for markup in the House Banking Committee.
>
> I am asking you to vote NO to any funding for the IMF this
>year.  The IMF does not need the money, as it has ample funds at
>its disposal to cover current and future bailouts.  Even more
>important, IMF policies make economic crises even worse, as it
>admitted in the case of Indonesia.  In addition, IMF policies
>impose impoverishing conditions on workers and environment-
>destroying prescriptions, places enormous social and economic
>burdens on women, and excludes citizens from having a voice in
>determining their own economic future.
>
> Given its destructive role and the fact that it does not need
>additional funds for current or future bailouts, I urge you again
>to vote NO to any taxpayer funding for the IMF.
>
>   Sincerely,
>
>
>TALKING POINTS
>
>Reasons to Reject the IMF supplemental appropriation
>
>Dear Colleague,
>
>As you formulate your position, I ask that you consider the
>following reasons to say No to the IMF supplemental appropriation.
>
>1) The supplemental appropriation is NOT needed for the Asian
>bailout. The bailout of Asian borrowers has already taken place.
>The funds for the bailout came from existing IMF funds.
>
>2) The IMF has ample funds RIGHT NOW at its disposal.  Even after
>the loans to Thailand, Indonesia and South Korea, the IMF has $45
>billion in liquid resources. It also has a credit line of $25
>billion through the General Arrangements to Borrow. Furthermore, it
>has about $37 billion in gold reserves. And lastly, it can borrow
>funds from the private capital market.
>
>3) The IMF often makes matters worse. The IMF has a record of
>making matters worse even as it carries out a bailout. According to
>the New York Times, "[The] I.M.F. now admits tactics in Indonesia
>deepened the crisis... political paralysis in Indonesia was
>compounded by misjudgment at the I.M.F.'s Washington headquarters.
>The Wall Street Journal's assessment was more damning, "Far from
>stopping the damage, IMF rescue

Re: BLS Daily Report

[Doug Henwood]

Richardson_D quoted:

>Evidence is mounting that productivity growth is returning to the level
>of the golden 1950s and 1960s.

Here are the numbers; I'll leave it to the readers to decide if Business
Week's assertions are true, or just part of the intoxicating afterglow of
checking your mutual fund's NAV. The 1996 and 1997 numbers follow three
dismal years.

Doug



US LABOR PRODUCTIVITY, ANNUAL GROWTH

  nonfarm
  business  manuf'g
  1947
  1948  2.5%
  1949  3.4%
  1950  7.0%  1.6%
  1951  2.5% -1.0%
  1952  1.8%  3.8%
  1953  2.3%  3.1%
  1954  2.1%  2.5%
  1955  4.1%  4.7%
  1956 -0.7% -0.3%
  1957  2.4%  1.9%
  1958  2.2%  1.3%
  1959  4.1%  1.9%
  1960  1.2%  1.6%
  1961  3.1%  3.3%
  1962  4.6%  2.5%
  1963  3.4%  4.1%
  1964  4.4%  4.2%
  1965  3.0%  2.1%
  1966  3.5%  1.2%
  1967  1.8%  4.0%
  1968  3.4%  3.4%
  1969  0.1%  1.4%
  1970  1.5%  3.3%
  1971  4.1%  6.4%
  1972  3.4%  3.7%
  1973  3.1%  2.8%
  1974 -1.6%  1.1%
  1975  2.7%  3.0%
  1976  3.6%  4.0%
  1977  1.6%  3.5%
  1978  1.3%  1.0%
  1979 -0.7% -0.6%
  1980 -0.4%  0.5%
  1981  1.1%  1.3%
  1982 -0.7%  5.5%
  1983  4.1%  3.5%
  1984  1.8%  3.0%
  1985  1.0%  3.8%
  1986  2.6%  4.5%
  1987 -0.2%  2.8%
  1988  0.8%  1.6%
  1989  0.6%  1.3%
  1990  0.5%  1.8%
  1991  0.7%  2.3%
  1992  3.2%  3.6%
  1993  0.1%  2.2%
  1994  0.4%  2.7%
  1995  0.1%  3.1%
  1996  1.9%  3.9%
  1997  1.7%  4.4%

1950s   2.8%  1.9%
1960s   2.8%  2.8%
1970s   1.9%  2.8%
1980s   1.1%  2.8%
1990s   1.1%  3.0%

FW: ASSA

[Fleck_S]

Colleagues,

>From the editor of the RRPE, when I asked her to respond to the
significance of the cuts that ASSA is proposing for all heterodox
groups, especially URPE.

Susan

Susan Fleck
w:(202) 606-5654 x415
h:(301) 270-1486
e-mail: [EMAIL PROTECTED]
**
My personal opinions do not necessarily reflect those of my employer and
my postings can not be attributed to my employer.



> --
> Sent: Monday, February 23, 1998 10:14 AM
> To:   Fleck_S
> Subject:  ASSA
> 
> 
> 
> Original
> message
> Dear Susan, The number of ASSA panels has a direct bearing on the RRPE
> because we publish the proceedings issue.  If panels are cut
> significantly,
> we may no longer have the necessary material to fill 4 issues a year.
> It
> is more important than ever to encourage people to publish in the
> RRPE; the
> RRPE is the breadwinner for URPE after all.  Hazel
> 

Re: EMU

[Rosser Jr, John Barkley]

Doug,
That's because you are in the US mostly reading US 
media and lit.  Everybody in Europe knows it is a big deal 
and if you are there reading the local media at all for any 
extended period of time it is very clear that it is a big 
deal and that everybody knows it.  It is a constant, almost 
daily, topic of news and commentary in almost every EU 
member.
You may be right about perceptions in the US, but then 
it is well known in the rest of the world that most 
Americans don't their asses from a hole in the ground about 
anything outside the US, unless US troops or the British 
royal family are involved.
Barkley Rosser
On Mon, 2 Mar 1998 10:51:49 -0600 (CST) valis 
<[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote:

> > I've been reading up on European monetary union, which is just 10 months
> > away, and my impression is that no one is really prepared for just how big
> > a deal it could be. Am I wrong?
> > 
> > Doug
> 
> According to the BBC 2 nights ago second thoughts are blossoming in Germany,
> where there is a fear of somehow being dragged down by relative basket cases 
> like Spain and Greece.  EMU may turn into the biggest single issue of the 
> German election.
>  valis
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 

-- 
Rosser Jr, John Barkley
[EMAIL PROTECTED]

green permits and taxes

[Rosser Jr, John Barkley]

 Just back from the EEA and I read my mail backward.  
So here is a response to Robin H.'s latest.
 I've already said I prefer auctions to handouts.  
Robin challenges us to say when were there auctions (they 
were proposed in Wisconsin, but not carried out).  I'll 
turn it around.  He insists on comparing an "ideal" tax 
system to an actually existing permit system.  But in the 
real world, as I have now already mentioned twice, tax 
systems are generally combined with subsidies to industry.  
Is this fine with you, Robin?
 Another broader question has to do with uncertainty, 
of which there is humongous amounts on all sides on this 
issue.  Robin presents us with the neoclassical textbook 
story about equating social MC and social MB, nice and 
neat, although recognizing that estimating the social costs 
of pollution is difficult.  Indeed.  For that matter, 
governments don't know the costs of cleanup, although the 
private sector does.   If there is a broad band of 
riskiness regarding the social costs, with a threat of a 
sharp upward turn, then one would prefer to fix the 
quantity rather than the price that is controlled in order 
to guard against a catastrophe.  Tradeable permits do that 
and taxes don't.
 Also, although the corpps don't like further quantity 
cutbacks, at least in the US right now there is strong 
public sentiment in favor of that.  There is little-to-no 
public support for any tax increases.  Indeed that is why 
we here probably have a mostly c and c system rather than a 
tax one.  I remind everyone that for global warming a major 
needed tax would be a big hike on gasoline.  But two years 
ago we saw the spectacle of Clinton and Dole competing to 
lower already ridiculously low gasoline taxes.  Forget it.
 BTW, one other argument for taxes not put forward by 
Robin is due to a colleague (Scott Milliman) and a former 
colleague and co-author of mine (Ray Prince) who argued in 
a much-cited JEEM 1989 paper that taxes will lead to more 
innovation in pollution control.  However that result is 
subject to a lot of assumptions that may not hold.  
 Again, I have a feeling that this taxes versus permits 
debate as we have been debating it has a "rearranging deck 
chairs on the Titanic" air about it.  None of this really 
deals with more deeply rooted ecological questions that get 
buried in that nice fuzzy rubric of "measuring social costs 
of pollution"...
Barkley Rosser
- 
Rosser Jr, John Barkley
[EMAIL PROTECTED]

Re: union density in u.s.

[H H Leland]

Mike--

For the latest Bureau of Labor Statistics' annual estimate, try

ftp://146.142.4.23/pub/news.release/union2.txt

--Hank Leland
[EMAIL PROTECTED]

Mike Yates wrote:

>  Friends,
>
> I just read something on union density in the U.S. for 1997, but I
> cannot remember where.  Can anyone help me out?
>
> michael yates

Re: EMU

[Doug Henwood]

Rosser Jr, John Barkley wrote:

>That's because you are in the US mostly reading US
>media and lit.  Everybody in Europe knows it is a big deal
>and if you are there reading the local media at all for any
>extended period of time it is very clear that it is a big
>deal and that everybody knows it.  It is a constant, almost
>daily, topic of news and commentary in almost every EU
>member.

I read a British newspaper every day, so I'm not quite the provincial you
make me out to be. That British daily, the one on pink paper, has devoted a
lot of ink to the diplomacy and mechanics of EMU, but very little to the
social and economic effects. There's no historical precedent for a monetary
union on this scale - GEMU isn't exactly an inspiring precedent for the
whole continent, is it? It seems that Europeans are sleepwalking into
something quite momentous that their leaders have prepared for them without
explaining it - the euro's birth is less than 10 months away. It will
almost certainly result in more American-style financial and labor markets;
do Europeans know that and understand what it means? Maybe, given your vast
experience as a globe trotter, Barkley, you know better, but from my
admittedly distant vantage point, I think not.

EMU's going to have a big effect on the outside world, so the lack of
interest on the part of that outside world is a bit unsettling too.

Doug

Wallerstein on wages

[James Devine]

Immanuel Wallerstein writes: >From the point of view of capitalists, as we
know, the point of increasing production is to make profits. In a
distinction that does not seem to me in the least outmoded, it involves
production for exchange and not production for use. Profits on a single
operation are the margin between the sales price and the total cost of
production, that is, the cost of everything it takes to bring that product
to the point of sale [multiplied by volume] ...

>But what constrains total costs? The price of labor plays a very large
role in this, and this of course includes the price of the labor that went
into all of the inputs. The market price of labor is not merely, however,
the result of the relationship of supply and demand of labor but also of
the bargaining power of labor. This is a complicated subject... What can be
said is that, over the history of the capitalist world-economy, this
bargaining power has been increasing as a secular trend, whatever the ups
and downs of its cyclical rhythms. Today, this strength is at the verge of
a singular ratchet upward as we move into the twenty-first century because
of the deruralization of the world...

>Thus, even though there is still an enormous army of reserve labor
throughout the world-system, the fact that the system is being rapidly
deruralized means that the average price of labor worldwide is going up
steadily. This means in turn that the average rate of profits must
necessarily go down over time. This squeeze on the profits ratio makes all
the more important the reduction of costs other than labor costs. But, of
course, all inputs into production are suffering the same problem of rising
labor costs. While technical innovations may continue to reduce the costs
of some inputs, and governments may continue to institute and defend
monopolistic positions of enterprises permitting higher sales prices, it is
nonetheless absolutely crucial for capitalists to continue to have some
important part of their costs paid by someone else. <

Brian Green replies: >> I also can understand Wallerstein's argument...No
doubt de-ruralization is driving wages up to a certain extent. However, I
think the following should be taken into consideration. ... The impact of
de-ruralization could in fact be misleading, as far as living standards are
concerned. Certainly waged work (largely though not exclusively in urban
centres) drives up the dollar figures earned by these workers; but we also
need to consider the fact that rural workers and campesinos have/had some
ability to produce their own means of subsistence. And as these people
increasingly take on waged work, less time is devoted to the subsistence
farming etc. that previously accounted for some portion of their
livelihood. So, it is concievable that the shift to waged work drives
incomes up, while living standards either drop or remain constant.<<

Right. I think this fits with (rather than contradicting) IW's perspective,
though. IW isn't talking about the standard of living of workers as much as
the constraints on capitalists struggling for higher profit rates. Further,
deruralization raises the cost of reproducing labor-power over time,
putting an upward pressure on wages that's independent of, but can
reinforce, IW's bargaining-power story. (NB: I don't think this cost --
a.k.a. the value of the subsistence bundle -- determines wages directly but
via supply & demand and bargaining strength.)

On the other hand, the increased urbanization means that urban workers lack
the "fall-back position" that a small plot of land provides, so their
bargaining power can be weakened; they are more proletarianized. But the
urban setting and factory work can mean that there exists a basis for
solidarity in unions, strikes, etc. that can more than compensate for the
lack of a garden.

 I think that though I agree with many of his conclusions, IW's
theoretical framework is shaky. What does he mean by "bargaining power"?
The kind he seems to refer to is the ability of workers to raise wages.
Over the very long haul, I agree with IW that deruralization (and the
depletion of other "latent reserve armies of labor") tends to raise
workers' bargaining power of this kind.

On the other hand, there's another meaning to this phrase, i.e., the
ability of workers to raise wages relative to labor productivity (commodity
output per worker or worker-hour hired). This seems relevant, since part of
capitalism's normal mode of operating is to raise labor productivity
steadily over time. It's only if wages rise relative to the trend of
labor-productivity growth that we see the profit squeeze that IW points to.
This can and does happen in periods of labor-power scarcity (e.g., the US
in the late 1960s) but capital or its government usually responds with
recession and/or an intensification of labor-productivity growth. So the
profit squeeze is temporary (which mean over a decade, if capital faces
contradictory goals: for example, the US

Re: EMU II

[valis]

Quoth Rosser Jr, John Barkley: 

> Doug,
> That's because you are in the US mostly reading US 
> media and lit.  Everybody in Europe knows it is a big deal 
> and if you are there reading the local media at all for any 
> extended period of time it is very clear that it is a big 
> deal and that everybody knows it.  It is a constant, almost 
> daily, topic of news and commentary in almost every EU member.
> You may be right about perceptions in the US, but then 
> it is well known in the rest of the world that most 
> Americans don't [know] their asses from a hole in the ground about 
> anything outside the US, unless US troops or the British 
> royal family are involved.

While it would be rash to assume that Doug is generally provincial in his
readings, the apparent news xenophobia of perhaps a majority in America
is indeed something to worry and wonder about.  A sort of twisted 
patriotism may be the reason, or main reason.  America has been at war or
near war with so many countries - even Britain if one goes back far enough - 
that foreign news might be considered by some as simply a source of lies,
propaganda and disinformation, so why bother.  Let's remember too that most 
immigrants left their native shores muttering the mother tongue's equivalent
of "I'm outta here!," and that this sense of estrangement from even the
dearest of foreign places can become an attitudinal fixture of subsequent
generations, the inverse of a greater investment in American perfection.

More to the point may be educational level; to have the conceptual framework 
necessary to process news from abroad requires at very least a good workout 
in high school, which is becoming a rare experience outside immigrant 
neighborhoods and the more self-indulgent suburbs.  Nevertheless the main
culprit may be the general attitude bred by what passes for US foreign
policy: If we're always right and they're always wrong, why bother to look  
more deeply into things.  When the US is poor and weak, its citizens will
peruse the affairs of states and nations with an objectivity born of  
humility and dependence.  Till then consider how I applied one-liner reason
in the case of one small life here in Milwaukee.  I told a guy that 
ignoring foreign news was as ridiculous as not following the Brewers when
they're on the road.  For him, anyway, this quip worked.
 valis

query: "Indian" schools

[James Devine]

I heard a report this morning on (US) NPR about the abuses that many
Canadian Indians had been subject to in boarding schools sponsored and run
by the Canadian government and the United Church of Canada. Independent of
the sexual and physical abuse that was the centerpiece of the story (which
was about a lawsuit), does anyone know about this program? were Indian
children forcibly taken from their parents and/or communities? I know they
were forced to stop speaking their original languages and prevented from
practicing their cultural rituals. But how were they separated from their
parents?

Further, how different is the case of the US, which the NPR story never
mentioned? The fact that my wife's friends in the Indian community hate the
idea of "Indian" schools and the fact-based fictional children's movie
called "The Education of Little Tree" that I saw a while back suggests that
the similarities between the US and Canadian systems of aggressive
acculturation are more important than their differences. 

(I wish I could talk to my wife's friends about this, but she moved on to a
new job so we see them much more rarely.)

 
Jim Devine   [EMAIL PROTECTED] &
http://clawww.lmu.edu/1997F/ECON/jdevine.html
"There's nothing wrong with the planet. The planet is fine... Been here 4
1/2 billion years. We've been here, what a 100,000 years, maybe 200,000.
And we've only engaged in heavy industry a little over 200 years. 200 years
vs. 4 1/2 billion. And we have the conceit to think that somehow we're a
threat? The planet isn't going away. We are."
 -- George Carlin. 

Brassed Off

[PHILLPS]

For those of you who appreciated "the
Full Monty", let me highly recommend
another British film in the same genre --
"Brassed Off" about the closure of a
coal pit and the performance of the
collery band.  It isn't quite as funny
but it is more explicitly political.

Paul Phillips,
Economics,
University of Manitoba

The euro cometh

[Trevor Evans]

Valis asks about the euro and the possibilities of speculation during the
transition period.

The euro is being introduced in two stages, the first in January 1999, when
the currencies of the participating countries will be irrevocably locked to
the euro, and certain wholesale banking and government transactions start
to be denominated in euros, and the first half of 2001, when euro notes and
coins will come into circulation. But in the intervening period, national
currencies cease to exist, and the national notes and coins function merely
as local representatives of the euro at the established exchange rate.
There is therefore no basis for speculating in one of the currencies, since
they will have ceased to exist as separate national money. 

There has been some discussion about what would happen if there was a
massive demand to switch from holding, say Italian lira to German marks.
The answer is that this could be met by the authorities, but that  there is
no reason to switch more than is needed to meet local payments, unless one
expected the whole euro project to collapse, something which would involve
a complete crisis for all the states involved, and the chance of which is
absolutely minimal.

A problem of speculation could however arise in the second half of this
year, because the Maastricht treaty fails to fully specify how the exchange
rate is determined when the currencies lock into the euro. This is  because
 the euro will exchange 1:1 with the current European Monetary Unit (emu),
but the emu is based on a basket of currencies, and includes the currencies
of some countries that will not be joining the euro, at least at the
outset. 

At present, most of the currencies likely to participate in the euro are
trading close the centre of their permitted range against the emu. Current
official thinking appears to be to announce these rates as the prospective
permanent rates in May, when the formal decision on which countries will
participate is to be taken. But this means these rates will then have to be
defended in the exchange markets until the end of the year. If there were a
major financial crash in the second half of the year events could take an
interesting turn.

Trevor Evans.

Enter the Euro-dragon

[Dennis R Redmond]

On Mon, 2 Mar 1998, Trevor Evans wrote:

> At present, most of the currencies likely to participate in the euro are
> trading close the centre of their permitted range against the emu. Current
> official thinking appears to be to announce these rates as the prospective
> permanent rates in May, when the formal decision on which countries will
> participate is to be taken. But this means these rates will then have to be
> defended in the exchange markets until the end of the year. If there were a
> major financial crash in the second half of the year events could take an
> interesting turn.

There's also the incidental fact that Central Europe's business cycle
tends to lag the Anglo-Saxon economies by twelve to eighteen months (the
US-Brit recession of 1990-92 didn't show up in Germany until 1993, for
example), while Spain, France and Scandinavia tend to follow a more
American schedule. Interestingly, it's precisely the countries which are
the most likely to get clobbered by a world recession which are the most
skittish about the euro -- e.g. Spain, Greece and the UK. Barring a
generalized worldwide credit meltdown, which I think no First World
government in its right (or Left) mind would permit nowadays, it could be
that we're seeing a two-stage process, where the Central European core
will lock in the euro and then, once the thing has greater credibility
further down the road and weathers whatever nastiness the Pacific meltdown
has in store for the world economy, the semi-peripheries will be slowly
locked into orbit around Starship Europa (we'll know it's a done deal
when Soros starts frantically buying up Czech koruna/Hungarian forint).

-- Dennis

Re: Global Warming

[James Devine]

Mark Jones writes: >When climatologists began to home in on the the fact
that global warming will manifest itself chiefly in the form of intensified
and more exteme weather events ...<

Though I am far from being a climatologist, I've been convinced of the
"global warming causes increased weirdness of weather" hypothesis for
awhile now. Global warming disrupts the rough equilibrium the defines
stable weather patterns. But is there any evidence for the increased
weirdness? Do climatologists see, for example, a rising variance of
rainfall in specific geographical areas or larger deviations from the
historical norm? It seems like this hypothesis is testable (except for the
fact that our measurements are better now than in the past and we likely
missed some weirdness).

in pen-l solidarity,



Jim Devine   [EMAIL PROTECTED] &
http://clawww.lmu.edu/1997F/ECON/jdevine.html
"As far as the laws of mathematics refer to reality, they are not certain;
as far as they are certain, they really do not refer to reality." -- Albert
Einstein. 

Re: EMU

[R. Anders Schneiderman]

At 04:16 PM 2/28/98 -0500, Doug wrote:
>I've been reading up on European monetary union, which is just 10 months
>away, and my impression is that no one is really prepared for just how big
>a deal it could be. Am I wrong?

Interesting enough, in the computer industry lit, there's been much
groaning and gnashing of teeth about it.  The costs of coverting all the
software, providing new point-of-sale toys that can handle it, etc. are
quite scary.  Coming on top of the last-minute frenzy over the Year 2000
problem, a number of folks on the IT side are saying that it's insane to do
it now.

Anders Schneiderman

Re: query: "Indian" schools

[James Michael Craven]

> Date sent:  Mon, 2 Mar 1998 12:58:53 -0800
> Send reply to:  [EMAIL PROTECTED]
> From:   James Devine <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
> To: [EMAIL PROTECTED]
> Subject:query: "Indian" schools

> I heard a report this morning on (US) NPR about the abuses that many
> Canadian Indians had been subject to in boarding schools sponsored and run
> by the Canadian government and the United Church of Canada. Independent of
> the sexual and physical abuse that was the centerpiece of the story (which
> was about a lawsuit), does anyone know about this program? were Indian
> children forcibly taken from their parents and/or communities? I know they
> were forced to stop speaking their original languages and prevented from
> practicing their cultural rituals. But how were they separated from their
> parents?
> 
> Further, how different is the case of the US, which the NPR story never
> mentioned? The fact that my wife's friends in the Indian community hate the
> idea of "Indian" schools and the fact-based fictional children's movie
> called "The Education of Little Tree" that I saw a while back suggests that
> the similarities between the US and Canadian systems of aggressive
> acculturation are more important than their differences. 
> 
> (I wish I could talk to my wife's friends about this, but she moved on to a
> new job so we see them much more rarely.)
> 
>  
> Jim Devine   [EMAIL PROTECTED] &
> http://clawww.lmu.edu/1997F/ECON/jdevine.html
> "There's nothing wrong with the planet. The planet is fine... Been here 4
> 1/2 billion years. We've been here, what a 100,000 years, maybe 200,000.
> And we've only engaged in heavy industry a little over 200 years. 200 years
> vs. 4 1/2 billion. And we have the conceit to think that somehow we're a
> threat? The planet isn't going away. We are."
>  -- George Carlin. 
> 
Response: The reasons and means for taking Indian children varied:

1) Some of the children were products of "liasons" between married 
white men and Indian women and the children were wanted in neither 
world so they were farmed out for adoption (the lighter skinned the 
better);

2) Indian parents were promised a future for their children that the 
parents had no hope of providing;

3) Indian families were split apart by early deaths, abandonment etc 
and the children were sent to boarding schools so that the women 
would have some chance of finding another mate;

4) The missionaries tricked Indians into believing that free 
education was being provided and in the course of signing many 
papers, the parents wound up signing away--for adoption--their 
children through tricky language;

5) Children were placed in religious schools with the promise of 
being trained to work for religious orders (like Nuns and Priests);

6) children were actually physically kidnapped with parents being 
told that their children were dead or about to die from serious 
diseases;

7) Tribes were given token sums to identify children without strong 
family support and those children were taken through false promises 
or just taken after being abandoned;

8) Children, often sent to be with relatives in urban areas--away 
from the reservations--were especially vulnerable to being isolated 
and taken without support from the Tribes on the reservations;

9) Many Indian children were born from midwives on the Reservation 
with no birth certificates issued so that true parentage and custody 
could be easily disputed;

10) The Mormons have this thing about Indians as "The lost Tribes of 
Israel" and for theological reasons were heavily involved in taking, 
adopting out and training Indian children;

These are some of the common stories.

   Jim Craven

*---*
* "In the development of productive * 
*  James Craven   forces there comes a stage when   *
*  Dept of Economics  productive forces and means of inter- *  
*  Clark College  course are brought into being which   *
*  1800 E. Mc Loughlin Blvd.  under the existing relations only * 
*  Vancouver, Wa. 98663   cause mischief, and are no longer *
*  [EMAIL PROTECTED]  productive but 'destructive' forces.  *  
*  (360) 992-2283 (Office)...individuals must appropriate the   *
*  (360) 992-2863 (Fax)   existing totality of productive forces*
* not only to achieve self-activity,but,*
* also, merely to safeguard their very  *
* existence." (Karl Marx)   *
* MY EMPLOYER HAS NO ASSOCIATION WITH MY PRIVATE/PROTECTED OPINION  * 

Re: query: "Indian" schools

[James Devine]

Jim, are those stories all for the US? or do they apply just as well to
Canada?

Jim Devine   [EMAIL PROTECTED] &
http://clawww.lmu.edu/1997F/ECON/jdevine.html
"Poverty is the parent of revolution and crime." -- Aristotle

Re: Enter the Euro-dragon

[Doug Henwood]

Dennis R Redmond wrote:

>the Central European core
>will lock in the euro and then, once the thing has greater credibility
>further down the road and weathers whatever nastiness the Pacific meltdown
>has in store for the world economy, the semi-peripheries will be slowly
>locked into orbit around Starship Europa

Is it going to be this easy to create the euro? Can countries as different
as Spain and Germany be under the same monetary space with no possibility
of national countercyclical fiscal or monetary policies? As a single euro
financial market emerges, it's almost certain that U.S.-style trading and
governance practices will come with it; see the IMF working paper at
. That could
produce a US-style boom, but that's not what you mean, is it Dennis? With
low wage service labor and the freedom to fire? Lower tax rates and people
will purchase more services outside the household instead of providing them
within. EPI economist Eileen Applebaum, who's worked with a German whose
name escapes me, says that the major difference in the US and German
national income accounts is purchased household services. Not that
socializing household labor is necessarily a bad thing - it's just that it
means lots of crappy jobs, if the US script is followed.

Barkley Rosser wrote:

>Everybody in Europe knows it is a big deal
>and if you are there reading the local media at all for any
>extended period of time it is very clear that it is a big
>deal and that everybody knows it.

Here's Timothy Garton Ash, from the very useful Verso collection The
Question of Europe (Peter Gowan & Perry Anderson, eds.): "Whereas British
politicans make an artificial separation of the national and the European,
ignoring the degree to which the two are already intertwined, French and
German politicans utterly conflate the national and the European, so it is
almost impossible to distinguish when they are talking about Europe and
when about their own nations." And a bit later: "In the Continental elites'
building plans for EU-rope, from Messina to Maastricht, the telos was a
substitute for an absent demos - with the hope of eventally contributing to
the creation of a new European demos"

Doug

Re: Manufacturing Consent--NYT War-mongering:Biowarfare

[R. Anders Schneiderman]

At 01:14 PM 3/2/98 -0600, Dennis wrote:
>
>this is worth reading . . . It's Francis Boyle--U of Illinois Law
>professor,  international law expert, radical public intellectual activist 
>and his communication with NY Times reporter.

Dennis,

Do you happen to know this guy?  He made a number of claims about Iraq and
our bioweapons programs that I'd love to learn more about.  Do you know if
he'd be willing to post a few more details?

Anders Schneiderman

Re: query: "Indian" schools

[James Michael Craven]

> Date sent:  Mon, 2 Mar 1998 14:00:46 -0800
> Send reply to:  [EMAIL PROTECTED]
> From:   James Devine <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
> To: [EMAIL PROTECTED]
> Subject:Re: query: "Indian" schools

> Jim, are those stories all for the US? or do they apply just as well to
> Canada?
> 
> Jim Devine   [EMAIL PROTECTED] &
> http://clawww.lmu.edu/1997F/ECON/jdevine.html
> "Poverty is the parent of revolution and crime." -- Aristotle
> 
Jim,

They apply to Canada, the US, Hawaii, South America, New Zealand, 
Australia and even among the Nagas in India; the modus operandi are 
often the same among the missionaries as well as among the non-
Aboriginals in dealing with Aboriginals.

I'll put out more later on the subject.

 take care,
 
 Jim

*---*
* "In the development of productive * 
*  James Craven   forces there comes a stage when   *
*  Dept of Economics  productive forces and means of inter- *  
*  Clark College  course are brought into being which   *
*  1800 E. Mc Loughlin Blvd.  under the existing relations only * 
*  Vancouver, Wa. 98663   cause mischief, and are no longer *
*  [EMAIL PROTECTED]  productive but 'destructive' forces.  *  
*  (360) 992-2283 (Office)...individuals must appropriate the   *
*  (360) 992-2863 (Fax)   existing totality of productive forces*
* not only to achieve self-activity,but,*
* also, merely to safeguard their very  *
* existence." (Karl Marx)   *
* MY EMPLOYER HAS NO ASSOCIATION WITH MY PRIVATE/PROTECTED OPINION  * 

Re: Enter the Euro-dragon

[valis]

Quoth Dennis Redmond, in part:
> .. Barring a
> generalized worldwide credit meltdown, which I think no First World
> government in its right (or Left) mind would permit nowadays, it could be
> that we're seeing a two-stage process, where the Central European core
> will lock in the euro and then, once the thing has greater credibility
> further down the road and weathers whatever nastiness the Pacific meltdown
> has in store for the world economy, the semi-peripheries will be slowly
> locked into orbit around Starship Europa (we'll know it's a done deal
> when Soros starts frantically buying up Czech koruna/Hungarian forint).

In 1977, through a chance role of the social dice I ended up spending
a few days with a family that had been, one way or another, part of the
American occupation forces Imperium almost without interruption since
V-E Day.  Its adult members spent most of their time drinking or shopping. 
During a spell of the former activity I mentioned that in nearly 2 months
in Germany I had been unable to find anyone under ~60 who expected to 
awaken in a tidal wave of Soviet tanks a few weeks after the US Army's
departure.  Further, I argued that NATO should be turned into - if anything
at all - an exclusively political alliance, and at once.

These Virginia Junkers stared at me in utter amazement, as though I were
some barnyard animal that had somehow acquired the power of human speech.
Today, Germany having conquered Europe without firing a shot, Neanderthals
of this ilk face the dual purgatory of irrelevance both there and here,
since they forged their links - early and well - with what is now the
wrong class of Germans.  I think of them whenever I hear that a few more 
boys and their toys have been sent to Kuwait, that pearl of democracy.

valis

The Euro-dragon rolls in

[valis]

> In 1977, through a chance role of the social dice I ended up spending
\roll

I see enough spelling atrocities here without contributing my own.  Sorry.

valis

Re: green permits and taxes

[Louis Proyect]

> Again, I have a feeling that this taxes versus permits 
>debate as we have been debating it has a "rearranging deck 
>chairs on the Titanic" air about it.  None of this really 
>deals with more deeply rooted ecological questions that get 
>buried in that nice fuzzy rubric of "measuring social costs 
>of pollution"...
>Barkley Rosser

Good point, Barkley. (Sorry we didn't hook up, by the way. I just couldn't
get out of bed on Sunday morning, if you gather my drift.)

The discussion started out of a Wallerstein post that rejected the notion
that capitalism could resolve these sorts of crises, either through
punitive taxes or permits. Something that would place this into the sort of
urgency it deserves is this article on Kodak, pollution and cancer that
appeared in today's NY Times. Read it and ask yourselves whether outfits
like this will ever clean up their act. Two other things to note. The
federal government helps in the cover-up. And there is no proof that the
pollution is causing the cancers. This is a particulary insidious defense,
since cancer intrinsically can not be "proved" to be caused by any
particular substance. There is only circumstantial evidence, which will get
you off in a bourgeois court. We need worker's justice, don't we? With good
old-fashioned firing-squads.

March 2, 1998

Mother Seeks Answers as Rare Cancers Appear

ROCHESTER, N.Y. -- When Debbie Cusenz gets together with neighbors, she
catches up on the activities of their children. Not just Little League and
school plays, but brain scans, chemotherapy and surgery. 

Mrs. Cusenz, 40, keeps track of the children with a map in the living room
of her home. She marks cancer cases with multicolored stars and angels. Red
angels represent leukemia, and blue angels, lymphoma. 

But it is the green angels, marking children with rare cancers of the brain
and central nervous system, that have caused the most concern; there have
been 68 such cases in Monroe County since 1976. 

Many parents here believe that the cases are a cancer cluster related to
environmental pollutants, and some have sued the Eastman Kodak Co., the
county's biggest employer. Some environmental groups have said that it is
also the state's largest polluter. 

Mrs. Cusenz, whose husband works at Eastman Kodak, thinks the problem is
bigger than any one company. She said that although she believes that Kodak
is not blameless, she thinks pollution by all companies, both large and
small, should be examined. 

Kodak officials say there is no scientific evidence of a link between film
manufacturing and cancer. 

At a public hearing on Wednesday, experts in epidemiology from the Federal
Agency for Toxic Substances and Disease Registry said they had determined
that past local studies, which had found no evidence of a link, were
scientifically sound, but they called for further review. 

The problem may be part of a national trend, they said. Brain cancer in
children up to 4 years old has increased by a per capita rate of 47 percent
in the last 20 years, said Dr. Wendy Kaye, chief epidemiologist for the
federal agency, which is based in Atlanta. She wants to include Rochester
in a $500,000 study of the occurrence of brain cancer in three states. 

Mrs. Cusenz (pronounced like cousins), whose cancer maps drew the interest
of the federal experts last fall, said she would keep pressing them for
more studies. She has been involved in the effort since 1995, when the
oldest of her two sons became her first green angel. 

She had taken her son Christopher, now 21, to the doctor to follow up on
his complaint that two fingers on his right hand were becoming numb. His
illness was diagnosed as cancer of the spinal cord, one of just 150 cases
seen worldwide each year. 

Four days later, the family flew to New York City, where the tumor was
surgically removed. Although Christopher Cusenz lost some motor control and
had to learn to walk and feed himself again, doctors were optimistic about
his recovery. But eight months later the tumor was back. 

During a second visit to New York for surgery, Mrs. Cusenz met Sandra
Schneider, whose daughter was being treated for cancer of the central
nervous system. 

Mrs. Cusenz said, "We got to talking and comparing where we lived," which
turned out to be within a few miles of each other. In Rochester, they
started an informal support group named Brainstormers that grew from 2
families to 11 in a year. 

"It just seemed too coincidental," Mrs. Cusenz said. "Evelyn started
saying, 'Gee, is there a chance Kodak is to blame or this?"' 

Concerns about the company's emissions peaked in 1988, when Kodak
acknowledged that it had released 20 million pounds of toxic chemicals into
the air the previous year. About half the material released was methylene
chloride, a toxic solvent used to make film base. 

The Environmental Protection Agency suspects methylene chloride to be a
carcinogen, but medical experts have never proved that it is. 

In the years since, Kodak

Re: EMU

[valis]

> I've been reading up on European monetary union, which is just 10 months
> away, and my impression is that no one is really prepared for just how big
> a deal it could be. Am I wrong?
> 
> Doug

According to the BBC 2 nights ago second thoughts are blossoming in Germany,
where there is a fear of somehow being dragged down by relative basket cases 
like Spain and Greece.  EMU may turn into the biggest single issue of the 
German election.
 valis

Manufacturing Consent--NYT War-mongering:Biowarfare

[Dennis Grammenos]

this is worth reading . . . It's Francis Boyle--U of Illinois Law
professor,  international law expert, radical public intellectual activist 
and his communication with NY Times reporter.
  
PLEASE FORWARD

-- Forwarded message --
"Boyle, Francis" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>:

Dear Friends:

Today's New York Times has a scare-piece entitled Iraq's
Deadliest Arms: Puzzles Breed Fears, co-authored by Judith Miller.
Attached is the correspondence between us in conjunction with the
preparation of this article, where Miller asked my for  assistance
beforehand. As you can see for yourself, she had obviously read my
Testimony to the United States Congress in support of the legislation
which I authored, the Biological Weapons Anti-Terrorism Act of 1989, as
well as my comments about how hypocritical and duplicitous the charges
made by the United States government against  Iraq were, especially in
light of outstanding US biowarfare programs. 

I then proceeded to send her all of my e-mail postings on this subject
that have been generally put on the internet in circulation  and in
particular on the Abolition Caucus site. She was aware that I was the
Author of the Biological Weapons Anti-Terrorism Act of 1989, and I offered
to go on record about US biological weapons programs,  as indicated in my
correspondence to her below. I also offered to go on record as to the
legal and criminal accountability of United States government officials
for providing weapons-specific biological agents to Iraq.

And yet despite this mass of information that I forwarded to her at her
explicit request, there is not one word about the United States biological
weapons program that I analyzed in my Testimony and numerous other posts,
and I am certainly not mentioned at all in this article. That shows you
the way the mainstream news media work in the United States of America,
including and especially the New York Times, which has been mongering for
war against Iraq for quite some time. 

By the way, and most critically of all, she deliberately refused to point
out in the article the well-known fact that former UNSCOM inspector
Raymond Zalinskas admitted to National Public Radio that UN inspectors had
already seen all reasonable weapons sites and had destroyed whatever
potential existed. But of course that critical piece of information did
not matter to the New York Times that is so hell-bent upon manipulating
these biowarfare charges into manufacturing public support for more war
against Iraq. I will not bother to review the article and point out all
the serious distortions, half-truths, and omissions. 

But again, this article is nothing more than a piece of pure propaganda
mongering for war against Iraq.

All the news that's fit to print? 
Well in America, the only news deemed fit to print and make it on the
television sets are those that monger for war. George Orwell had it right:
In America today, war is peace;freedom is slavery;ignorance is strength;
we all love big brother; and Ronald Reagan was President in 1984. Miller
really works for the NEWSPEAK TIMES.

Yours very truly,
Francis A. Boyle
Professor of International Law
Author, Biological Weapons Anti-Terrorism Act of 1989

-
> From: Boyle, Francis
> Sent: Friday, February 20, 1998 6:22 AM
> To:   'Judy Miller'
> Subject:  RE: WMD
> Importance:   High
> 
> Dear Judy:
>   Yes, during the past two weeks the British Press has had several
> reports of these post war shipments.I have been following them on the
> computer. Concerning the US shipments, if they occurred after the
> effective date of the Biological Weapons Anti-Terrorism Act of 1989,
> they were felonies punishable by life in prison. The same is true in
> Britain, where their domestic implementing legislation goes back to
> 1974 and provides for life in prison. Although we were parties to the
> BWC, we did not make its violation a crime until 1989, though of
> course there are statutes on the books that could be used to prosecute
> for the violation of a treaty or other crimes if someone really wanted
> to (e.g., the general federal conspiracy statute), though by now the
> statute of limitations would have probably run.
>   Best regards,
>   Francis A. Boyle
>   Professor of Law
>   Author, Biological Weapons Anti-Terrorism Act of 1989
> 
>   --
>   Sent:   Friday, February 20, 1998 6:16 AM
>   To: [EMAIL PROTECTED]
>   Subject:WMD
> 
>   Dear Professor Boyle,
>   I found your testimony very interesting. I'm a reporter for the
> New York Times. While the American shipments of anthrax strains to
> Baghdad during the Iran/Iraq war are now well known, do you know of any
> equipment, media, and/or other material shipped to Iraq AFTER the Gulf
> war? If so, from which countries?
>   Thanks for your help.
>   Judith Miller
> 
> 


{At th

Re: Enter the Euro-dragon

[Rosser Jr, John Barkley]

There is a lot that can be said on this topic, a lot, 
and I won't go on now and here.  But one observation that 
is very central and very crucial, and indeed has been used 
by British opponents (and others as well) is the relatively 
undemocratic nature of the EU as a political entity.  The 
European Parliment in Strasbourg cannot initiate 
legislation.  That only comes from the unelected European 
Commission in Brussels which Thatcher used to freak out 
about because of its allegedly being controlled by French 
socialists under Delors.  Now _The Economist_ has been 
chucking and grinning that the Commission under the Single 
European Act of 1986 and the introduction of the full 
Common Market in 1992 and the common regs, free capital 
mobility, etc. implied, has become the battering ram for 
continental neoliberalism.
Barkley Rosser
On Mon, 2 Mar 1998 17:07:17 -0500 Doug Henwood 
<[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote:

> Dennis R Redmond wrote:
> 
> >the Central European core
> >will lock in the euro and then, once the thing has greater credibility
> >further down the road and weathers whatever nastiness the Pacific meltdown
> >has in store for the world economy, the semi-peripheries will be slowly
> >locked into orbit around Starship Europa
> 
> Is it going to be this easy to create the euro? Can countries as different
> as Spain and Germany be under the same monetary space with no possibility
> of national countercyclical fiscal or monetary policies? As a single euro
> financial market emerges, it's almost certain that U.S.-style trading and
> governance practices will come with it; see the IMF working paper at
> . That could
> produce a US-style boom, but that's not what you mean, is it Dennis? With
> low wage service labor and the freedom to fire? Lower tax rates and people
> will purchase more services outside the household instead of providing them
> within. EPI economist Eileen Applebaum, who's worked with a German whose
> name escapes me, says that the major difference in the US and German
> national income accounts is purchased household services. Not that
> socializing household labor is necessarily a bad thing - it's just that it
> means lots of crappy jobs, if the US script is followed.
> 
> Barkley Rosser wrote:
> 
> >Everybody in Europe knows it is a big deal
> >and if you are there reading the local media at all for any
> >extended period of time it is very clear that it is a big
> >deal and that everybody knows it.
> 
> Here's Timothy Garton Ash, from the very useful Verso collection The
> Question of Europe (Peter Gowan & Perry Anderson, eds.): "Whereas British
> politicans make an artificial separation of the national and the European,
> ignoring the degree to which the two are already intertwined, French and
> German politicans utterly conflate the national and the European, so it is
> almost impossible to distinguish when they are talking about Europe and
> when about their own nations." And a bit later: "In the Continental elites'
> building plans for EU-rope, from Messina to Maastricht, the telos was a
> substitute for an absent demos - with the hope of eventally contributing to
> the creation of a new European demos"
> 
> Doug
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 

-- 
Rosser Jr, John Barkley
[EMAIL PROTECTED]

Re: The euro cometh

[Rosser Jr, John Barkley]

Trevor,
 Coins and notes don't come in until 2002.  Because of 
hassles about introducing them around Christmas, it now 
appears that they will come in later in the year.  
 It is not entirely clear that there is no danger of 
speculation against an individual currency between 1999 and 
2002.  I have heard the argument you have presented.  But, 
the new Eurofed will have to defend whatever currency is 
under attack.  I don't see the system as secure until the 
actually get rid of the national currencies in 2002.
 BTW, Americans who raise questions about the euro are 
often lumped in with other US critics such as Milton 
Friedman and Martin Feldstein, even when their politica 
economics are obviously not of the same sort, and accused 
of being afraid of how the euro will dethrone the dollar 
globabally.  There is a lot more to this than many are 
aware of.
Barkley Rosser
On Mon, 2 Mar 1998 16:02:57 -0500 Trevor Evans 
<[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote:

> Valis asks about the euro and the possibilities of speculation during the
> transition period.
> 
> The euro is being introduced in two stages, the first in January 1999, when
> the currencies of the participating countries will be irrevocably locked to
> the euro, and certain wholesale banking and government transactions start
> to be denominated in euros, and the first half of 2001, when euro notes and
> coins will come into circulation. But in the intervening period, national
> currencies cease to exist, and the national notes and coins function merely
> as local representatives of the euro at the established exchange rate.
> There is therefore no basis for speculating in one of the currencies, since
> they will have ceased to exist as separate national money. 
> 
> There has been some discussion about what would happen if there was a
> massive demand to switch from holding, say Italian lira to German marks.
> The answer is that this could be met by the authorities, but that  there is
> no reason to switch more than is needed to meet local payments, unless one
> expected the whole euro project to collapse, something which would involve
> a complete crisis for all the states involved, and the chance of which is
> absolutely minimal.
> 
> A problem of speculation could however arise in the second half of this
> year, because the Maastricht treaty fails to fully specify how the exchange
> rate is determined when the currencies lock into the euro. This is  because
>  the euro will exchange 1:1 with the current European Monetary Unit (emu),
> but the emu is based on a basket of currencies, and includes the currencies
> of some countries that will not be joining the euro, at least at the
> outset. 
> 
> At present, most of the currencies likely to participate in the euro are
> trading close the centre of their permitted range against the emu. Current
> official thinking appears to be to announce these rates as the prospective
> permanent rates in May, when the formal decision on which countries will
> participate is to be taken. But this means these rates will then have to be
> defended in the exchange markets until the end of the year. If there were a
> major financial crash in the second half of the year events could take an
> interesting turn.
> 
> Trevor Evans.

-- 
Rosser Jr, John Barkley
[EMAIL PROTECTED]

BLS Daily Reportboundary="---- =_NextPart_000_01BD4630.1C20B400"

[Richardson_D]

This message is in MIME format. Since your mail reader does not understand
this format, some or all of this message may not be legible.

-- =_NextPart_000_01BD4630.1C20B400
charset="iso-8859-1"

BLS DAILY REPORT, MONDAY, MARCH  2, 1998

As it did nationally, the unemployment rate in about three-quarters of
the states and all four regions fell in 1997, BLS reports =85.(Daily =
Labor
Report, page D-3).

__An upswing in  inventory building and still-strong trade held =
economic
activity aloft during the fourth quarter, with growth advancing a
stronger-than-expected 3.9 percent, the Commerce Department reports
.(Daily Labor Report, page D-5).
__The U.S. economy wasn't as strong in the final three months of last
year as it originally appeared, and growth likely is slowing this
quarter, analysts said after the Commerce Department revised some of =
its
fourth-quarter numbers.  Commerce said the economy grew at a 3.9 =
percent
pace in the October-December period instead of the 4.3 percent rate
previously estimated.  It said that more than a third of the gain was
accounted for by a buildup in unsold goods at the nation's businesses,
which some analysts said suggested that growth would slow.  At 3.9
percent, the fourth-quarter rate was still larger than those of the
second and third quarters of last year, both of which were slightly =
more
than 3 percent (Washington Post, Feb. 28, page H1). =20
__The economy grew at a slower pace in the fourth quarter than first
estimated but still posted its best annual growth in nearly a decade,
while inflation remained tame.  Analysts said that since imports rose
faster and exports grew more slowly in the quarter than previously
thought, the revision contained hints that Asia's problems were slowing
United States growth (New York Times, Feb. 28, page B3). =20
__The Commerce Department's downward revision for fourth-quarter growth
of gross domestic product still shows that the economy ended 1997 with
tremendous strength (Wall Street Journal, page A4).

The U.S. economy had so much momentum in 1997 that the fallout  from =
the
Asian crisis has not yet been felt and probably will not be evident
until the second half of the year, several economists predict.  Some
analysts say it may not be that bad Lower interest rates are part =
of
the "silver lining" of the Asian crisis because foreign money has =
poured
into U.S. Treasury securities, bringing with that lower yields, and
because expectations about inflation remain optimistic (Daily Labor
Report, page D-1).

Women are more likely than men to start a business because they have a
good idea they want to exploit, according to a new survey.  The study,
funded by the international securities firm Salomon Smith Barney, =
sought
to find out why the number of women-owned  businesses increased at =
twice
the rate of male-owned companies from 1987 to 1992.  The U.S. has 8
million women-owned businesses, about 36 percent of all businesses.  =
The
survey of 800 men and women who own businesses was done by the National
Foundation for Women Business Owners, Catalyst, and the Committee of
200, three prominent women's organizations.  An entrepreneurial idea =
was
the No. 1 reason each gender gave for starting a business:  44 percent
for women, 36 percent for men (Washington Post, March 1, page H6).

Calculating the costs of relocating:  Workers considering a job-related
move are advised to carefully weigh a new city's living expenses and
lifestyle differences, says a Washington Post article (March 1, page =
H6)
.As the business marketplace becomes increasingly global and U.S.
companies scramble to fill a demand for skilled workers that exceeds
their supply, workers are hopping from town to town as never before,
workplace experts say.  Although more people are moving to take new
jobs, relocation remains a difficult adjustment for many families,
suggests a recent survey by Runzheimer International, a Rochester,
Wis.-based management consulting firm.  Runzheimer based its survey on
the living costs for a family of four with a $60,000 annual income, and
it found that the average annual cost for its model family far exceeded
$60,000 in many cities.  At the top of the list is San Jose, with an
average annual cost of more than $80,000.  Washington ranked sixth, =
with
an annual cost of slightly more than $70,000.  Runzheimer based its
price tags on the same factors that workers should consider, the =
company
said.  In addition to the cost of a mortgage on a 2,200-square-foot
home, the company figured in the costs of two cars, taxes, a number of
goods and services, and a small amount for investments =20


-- =_NextPart_000_01BD4630.1C20B400

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RhUUyiV1RRyxvhHRlQYCYIzbYCoABhR40AAAvTY2HgAxQAENUklDSEFSRFNPTl9E
AAMAGkAAHgAwQAENUklDSEFSR

Re: EMU

[Rosser Jr, John Barkley]

Just For The Record:
 Even though dandy Doug H. did not show up at any of 
the six papers I presented at the EEA (including the one on 
speculative bubbles in European exchange rates), I not only 
forgive him, but I also want to say that I most certainly 
did not intend to include him among the set of generic 
Americans who don't know you know what.  Heck, he's more up 
on lots of data than [even] I am, a regular cosmopolite,:-).
 Nor do I claim to understand more about what is going 
on in terms of social and economic effects of the euro 
than the Europeans. I will note that there tends to be much 
more discussion of this on the Continent than in the UK.  
The FT (that rag on pink paper, if not of pink ideology) is 
not so concerned about such matters, especially given the 
UK's continuing to hold back.  But you'll find plenty in 
places like _Le Monde Diplomatique_ that is quite lengthy  
and thoughtful that raises the issues very sharply.  It 
is ironic that Jospin got in basically on critiquing the 
euro fiscal crunch, but then kowtowed.  
 It is also opposed on the right by the National Front, 
and the right libertarians in France are also opposed and I 
saw one article by them claiming that it is ruse for German 
hegemony, despite the fears in Germany about it.
 Of course the main reason that both Sweden and Denmark 
are staying out is precisely to protect their social 
welfare states from the fiscal pressure that would come 
from a monetarist Eurofed.  And it will be that, even if 
the French get their way and have Trichon in as the 
Euro-Greenspan. It will have to prove to the Germans that 
they did not give up the beloved Bundesbank for a pack of 
Post Keynesianism.
 BTW, Greece is irrelevant for the moment.  Not 
eligible because of too far off from meeting the macro 
criteria.
Barkley Rosser
On Mon, 2 Mar 1998 15:09:17 -0500 Doug Henwood 
<[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote:

> Rosser Jr, John Barkley wrote:
> 
> >That's because you are in the US mostly reading US
> >media and lit.  Everybody in Europe knows it is a big deal
> >and if you are there reading the local media at all for any
> >extended period of time it is very clear that it is a big
> >deal and that everybody knows it.  It is a constant, almost
> >daily, topic of news and commentary in almost every EU
> >member.
> 
> I read a British newspaper every day, so I'm not quite the provincial you
> make me out to be. That British daily, the one on pink paper, has devoted a
> lot of ink to the diplomacy and mechanics of EMU, but very little to the
> social and economic effects. There's no historical precedent for a monetary
> union on this scale - GEMU isn't exactly an inspiring precedent for the
> whole continent, is it? It seems that Europeans are sleepwalking into
> something quite momentous that their leaders have prepared for them without
> explaining it - the euro's birth is less than 10 months away. It will
> almost certainly result in more American-style financial and labor markets;
> do Europeans know that and understand what it means? Maybe, given your vast
> experience as a globe trotter, Barkley, you know better, but from my
> admittedly distant vantage point, I think not.
> 
> EMU's going to have a big effect on the outside world, so the lack of
> interest on the part of that outside world is a bit unsettling too.
> 
> Doug
> 
> 
> 

-- 
Rosser Jr, John Barkley
[EMAIL PROTECTED]

Re: Global Warming

[R. Anders Schneiderman]

At 08:38 AM 3/2/98 -0800, Jim wrote:
>Though I am far from being a climatologist, I've been convinced of the
>"global warming causes increased weirdness of weather" hypothesis for
>awhile now. Global warming disrupts the rough equilibrium the defines
>stable weather patterns. But is there any evidence for the increased
>weirdness? 

Newt Gingrich, whose favorability rating is still somewhere near the
Unabomber, has said he's going to run for President.  Need we say more?

Anders Schneiderman

green permits and taxes

[Rosser Jr, John Barkley]

Since by now we have been around on this quite a bit, 
just three points:
 1)  The French and German and Dutch subsidies paid for 
by pollution taxes are to cover the installation of 
pollution control equipment, not for sequestration per se.
 2)  I think Robin's right that firms don't know other 
firms' costs of reduction.  But they do know their own, at 
least in the short run.
 3)  I am not for setting the quantity limits "just" 
below the level of where catastrophe can happen, lower, 
definitely much lower.  And I agree that more generally we 
face severe info problems that need to be resolved on many 
fronts.
Barkley Rosser

-- 
Rosser Jr, John Barkley
[EMAIL PROTECTED]

EU Parliament Opposes MAI (fwd)

[Sid Shniad]

>  As reported in this message, forwarded from Holland, a committee
>  of the European Parliament recommends that:
> 
>   The European Court of Justice should examine thoroughly the
>   Multilateral Agreement on Investments (MAI) before it is signed
>   by the EU member states.
> 
> 
> Date: Fri, 27 Feb 1998 13:14:30 +0100 (MET)
> From: Erik Wesselius <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
> To: [EMAIL PROTECTED]
> Subject: European Parliament Committee on Foreig Affairs adopts critical
> report on MAI
> 
> PRESS RELEASE
> (The Green Group in the European Parliament)
> 
> Brussels, 25 February 1998
> 
> Kreissl-Doerfler Report approved in EP Committee with overwhelming majority
> 
> EU Court of Justice should scrutinize MAI
> 
> The European Court of Justice should examine thoroughly the Multilateral
> Agreement on Investments (MAI) before it is signed by the EU member
> states. This is the demand put up in a report by German Green MEP
> Wolfgang Kreissl-Doerfler, which was approved today by the
> Committee for External Economic Relations by an overwhelming majority.
> 
> The MAI, which should guarantee the protection of foreign investments,
> is currently being negotiated by the 29 member states of the OECD
> (Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development). The Greens
> have raised at a very early point serious doubts about the agreement
> which they say gives one-sided privileges to big investors and will
> overrule environmental and economic regulations. "The protection of
> foreign investments must not lead to a corrosion of environmental or
> social standards," MEP Kreissl-Doerfler said today after the vote in the
> Committee. "We urge substantial ameliorations to the draft of the OECD."
> 
> The European Parliament is the first legislative body in the EU which is
> coming up with a report on this highly sensitive question. "The MAI must
> not be signed without a thorough discussion in the public as well as in
> the national parliaments," said Kreissl-Doerfler. The Green MEP criticised
> that the MAI was negotiated behind closed doors and under strong
> lobbying by industry associations. Kreissl-Doerfler expects the report to
> be supported by a vast majority in the plenary in Strasbourg where it is
> scheduled for 11 March.
> 
> The MAI must not break existing environmental agreements as Rio 92 or
> Kyoto nor hinder the development of further international environmental
> regulations, Kreissl-Doerfler stressed. Moreover, the cultural autonomy
> and sovereignty of the signatory states must remain untouched by MAI.
> 
> "The developing countries must not be forced to join the MAI
> unconditionally," Kreiss-Doerfler raised another problem. "The interests
> of the developing countries must not be put behind the interests of the
> big investors." The Green MEP also rejected the introduction of a new
> arbitration procedure. "This would give unilateral and unjustified rights
> to the investors in regards to the national states. Thus Chiquita could
> sue the United Kingdom, but London could not sue the banana multinational."
> 
> **
> Press Service
> of the Green Group 
> in the European Parliament
> ***
> Helmut WEIXLER
> phone:+32-2-284 4683
> fax: +32-2-284 4944
> e-mail: [EMAIL PROTECTED]
> 
> 
> --
> Results of the vote on the MAI in the EP REX (External Economic
> Relations) committee (25.2.98)
> --
> 
> 1. The vote echoes the fears expressed in recent weeks publicly on
> the MAI project, especially the fears concerning loss of sovereignty
> in many policy sectors, from environmental law to social policies,
> including the cultural sector.
> 
> 2. The REX states that the aim of the MAI should be to stop ruinous
> competition between investors -- the so-called race to the bottom by
> lowering standards in order to attract investors -- in order to foster,
> on a global scale, environmentally and socially sustainable and
> regionally balanced economic development.
> 
> 3. The REX recalls that there have not yet been made impact
> studies concerning transport, trade, labour market, intellectual property
> and on the compatibility with existing legislation within the EU, 
> including ACP relations and development policy.
> 
> 4. The MAI should be compatible with all international agreements
> signed by the EU.
> 
> 5. Concerning the actual project, the REX is extremely sceptical
> about the chapter on performance requirements which aims at reducing
> existing legislation in the fields of environment, social policy etc.
> as well as the chapter on investment protection, expropriation and
> compensation. 
> 
> 6. The REX insists on a REIO clause to facilitate further
> harmonisation of environmental and other legislation inside the EU.
> 
> 7. Concerning any MAI, the REX asks to include the Guidelines on
> Multilatera

Chinese Issue Commemorative Edition of Manifesto

[Michael Eisenscher]

Marx? Engels? China Turns the Radicals Chic

By Steven Mufson
Washington Post Foreign Service
Monday, March 2, 1998; Page A13 

BEIJING—Entrepreneurs of the world, step right up! Get them while
they last!

China is issuing a special limited edition of the "Communist Manifesto"
to mark the anniversary of the tract written 150 years ago by Karl Marx
and Friedrich Engels.

Written as revolution was spreading across Europe in 1848, the
manifesto has now been turned into a marketing opportunity. Never
mind the masses. China is issuing 5,000 commemorative copies of the
work and 500 copies of a collectors' edition, the state-run New China
News Agency said last week.

"In China the manifesto has fostered generations of Communist
stalwarts and proletarian revolutionaries," the agency said. And now
those who have struck it rich during the economic-reform era can buy a
special one. It didn't say how much a copy will cost.

The new editions feature replicas of the cover and contents page of the
original German-language edition as well as reproductions of Marx's
handwriting.

Although enshrined as one of the Chinese Communist Party's basic
texts and still routinely given homage at major party functions, the
"Communist Manifesto" is out of step with the current policies of the
ruling Communist Party in Beijing.

Marx and Engels called for revolution, but the current Chinese
government craves stability. Marx sought equality; China has created
vast inequalities as it tries to create financial rewards for its most
productive workers and business people.

Marx and Engels criticized excessive returns on capital; the Chinese
government is striving to boost returns on foreign capital. Marx and
Engels appealed to the workers to unite, whereas the Chinese
government now is trying to prevent the uniting of workers -- especially
the 10 million who are either on furlough with subsistence wages or
who have been laid off from state-owned enterprises.

Marx looked to China for solace in 1853, as revolution was fading in
Europe. He predicted the imminent demise of the Qing Dynasty -- 59
years prematurely -- and said that collapse in China would spark
revolution in Europe.

"It may safely be augured that the Chinese revolution will throw the
spark into the overloaded mine of the present industrial system and
cause the explosion of the long-prepared general crisis, which,
spreading abroad, will be closely followed by political revolution on the
continent," Mark wrote.

Instead, China is trying to export industrial products, not revolution, to
Europe these days. The "Communist Manifesto" has in many ways
become a relic and a museum piece. Under the guise of rejecting
narrow-minded interpretations of Marx, President Jiang Zemin has
embraced capitalist economic reforms including mergers and
acquisitions, stock ownership, privatization, and worker layoffs -- all
measures Marx and Engels might have viewed dimly.

It is only the latest chapter in a history of adapting the "Communist
Manifesto" to Chinese characteristics.

The manifesto was first translated in part into Chinese in 1906. But the
translator took some liberties. For example, the translator used the term
"common people" instead of "workers," because largely rural China
would have to rely on peasants to rise up against the imperial regime.

The historian Jonathan Spence has noted that the manifesto's classic
conclusion was altered in the translation. The original read: "The
proletarians have nothing to lose but their chains. They have a world to
win. Working men of all countries, unite!"

The Chinese translation read: "Then the world will be for the common
people, and the sounds of happiness will reach the deepest springs.
Ah! Come! People of every land, how can you not be roused?"


   © Copyright 1998 The Washington Post Company

Re: green permits and taxes

[Robin Hahnel]

>  I've already said I prefer auctions to handouts.
> Robin challenges us to say when were there auctions (they
> were proposed in Wisconsin, but not carried out).

I knew about the Wisconsin case, and must say I'm not surprised that
although auctions were proposed (obviously only by some) they were not
the method of distribution actually chosen. I don't know of any actual
permit program where the permits were auctioned off so the government
collected revenue. I'm asking if anyone knows of one.

> I'll
> turn it around.  He insists on comparing an "ideal" tax
> system to an actually existing permit system.

I did not insist on anything like this. I already stipulated that actual
pollution taxes are almost always too low. Just like actual permit
programs almost always issue too few permits. I simply said that I don't
know of any situation in which an equivalent tax would not be better
than an equivalent permit program -- where equivalent means yielding the
same aggregate pollution reduction.

>  But in the
> real world, as I have now already mentioned twice, tax
> systems are generally combined with subsidies to industry.
> Is this fine with you, Robin?

Do you mean the same companies paying pollution taxes are then given
some kind of compensatory reduction in their profits taxes, or some
other business taxes they pay? In this case it's not fine with me at all
since I can think of no reason to support corporate tax relief. Or do
you mean that companies that sequester pollutants are paid sequestration
subsidies just like companies that emit the pollutants are charged
pollution taxes? I do support this kind of subsidy. As a matter of fact
I have been talking up the idea of paying sequestration subsidies to
countries that are net carbon sequesterers [these are all third world
countries with rain forests] to go along with charging carbon taxes to
combat global warming.

>  Another broader question has to do with uncertainty,
> of which there is humongous amounts on all sides on this
> issue.  Robin presents us with the neoclassical textbook
> story about equating social MC and social MB, nice and
> neat, although recognizing that estimating the social costs
> of pollution is difficult.  Indeed.  For that matter,
> governments don't know the costs of cleanup, although the
> private sector does.

I don't want to dispute this point, but the private sector is sometimes
as clueless about their own marginal costs of pollution reduction as the
government is. Witness the amazing "no action" in the sulfur dioxide
permit market the government opened up -- which investigators attributed
to private utilities not knowing where they stood visa vis other
utilities in the cost reduction hierarchy.


  If there is a broad band of
> riskiness regarding the social costs, with a threat of a
> sharp upward turn, then one would prefer to fix the
> quantity rather than the price that is controlled in order
> to guard against a catastrophe.  Tradeable permits do that
> and taxes don't.

I've read this argument before. I think its 99% bull. I think its high
priced economic theoreticians who have over invested in statistical
human capital coming up with theoretical possibilities that serve the
corporate agenda -- getting people to buy into permits on supposed
"technical efficiency grounds." There is a lot of uncertainty predicting
the borderline between more normal pollution and a catastrophe. That is
the major uncertainty problem and is just as big a problem for setting
the number of permits just below catastrophe -- a lousy policy goal in
any case -- as it is setting the tax rate so that the amount of
emissions ends up just below catastrophe. But why am I preaching
catastrophe (chaos) theory to Professor Rosser?!

>  Also, although the corpps don't like further quantity
> cutbacks, at least in the US right now there is strong
> public sentiment in favor of that.  There is little-to-no
> public support for any tax increases.  Indeed that is why
> we here probably have a mostly c and c system rather than a
> tax one.  I remind everyone that for global warming a major
> needed tax would be a big hike on gasoline.  But two years
> ago we saw the spectacle of Clinton and Dole competing to
> lower already ridiculously low gasoline taxes.  Forget it.

I have suggested making pollution taxes attractive to the non-polluting
public by cutting regressive taxes, dollar for dollar, for every dollar
raised through pollution taxes precisely to make it more politically
viable. Clinton competing with Dole to lower gas taxes is certainly a
sign of the incredibly bankrupt political times in which we live. Just
as conceding the necessity of bribing polluting corporations to pollute
us a little less by giving them pollution permits for free is!

>  BTW, one other argument for taxes not put forward by
> Robin is due to a colleague (Scott Milliman) and a former
> colleague and co-author of mine (Ray Prince) who argued in
> a much-cited JEEM

pl.fwd..Chiapas: Indicators of Impending War (fwd)

[Sid Shniad]

> Date: Mon, 2 Mar 1998 01:52:07 -0800 (PST)
> From: John Shafer <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
> To: [EMAIL PROTECTED]
> Subject: Chiapas: Indicators of Impending War
> 
> 
> Subject: Your help urgently Needed For Chiapas World-Wide Online Campaign!
> 
> ***Please immediately forward this message to all progressive websites,
> listserves,*** newsgroups, and individuals with which you are aquainted.
> This is an emergency.
> 
> 
> To: All concerned individuals and webmasters
> From: Chiapas Alert Network
> http://www.stewards.net/chiapas/10.htm
> [EMAIL PROTECTED]
> 
> Hi there,
> 
> With just a two minute effort, you can help to end the brutal paramilitary
> and military violence and intimidation currently directed by the Mexican
> government and its ruling party against Indigenous civilians in Mexico's
> southern state of Chiapas.  Many respected international human rights
> organizations such as Amnesty International have  roundly denounced the
> recent violence in Chiapas as an extreme violation of human rights.
> 
> If you are an *individual*, please go to
> http://www.stewards.net/chiapas/47.htm  where you will find an automated
> messaging system which will enable you to instantly and automatically send
> copies of a strong pre-prepared letter of protest, or a letter of your own
> design, to all three Nafta governments - Mexico, the U.S., and Canada, as
> well as the European Union.  These protest letters will carry both your own
> name and your email address.
> 
> If you are a *webmaster*, please go to
> http://www.newhumans.com/chiapas/hotlogo1.html, where you will be able to
> obtain an attractive and poignant animated icon which can be placed on your
> website.  When clicked by visitors to your site, this icon will take them to
> the automated messaging page to send the protest letter.
> 
> Help us bombard the Nafta governments and Eu with our message! 
> 
> Eric
> 
> P.S. When the numbers warrant, we will also announce the campaign - and the
> results - to the world media.
> 
> P.P.S.  There's a `notification system' at the page which allows you to
> automatically inform your online friends and acquantances about the campaign.
> 
> 
>BACKGROUND
> 
> Right-wing violence and intimidation aimed at civilian Indigenous people in
> Mexico's southern state of Chiapas has not ceased since a brutal massacre
> (people were hunted like animals for 5 hours) in Chiapas at the little town
> of Acteal took the lives of 45 people at prayer in a church, most of them
> women and children, on Dec.22 last year.  
> 
> The Mexican government has used this massacre as the pretext to greatly
> expand its aggression not only against the Zapatista Indigenous Army, camped
> in the jungle at the extreme southern tip of Chiapas, and with which the
> government has a supposed peace agreement.  But the `crisis' has also been
> used to justify using the army to attempt occupations of many civilian
> communities in Chiapas, in an attempt to break the power of the civilian
> Indiginous cooperative economic and political organizations, and the Chiapas
> indigenous automony movement,  which are consciously seeking to pursue a
> path of cooperative ecological development in the region, and which in many
> cases are not even closely aligned with the Zapatistas.  
> 
> Deaths, injuries, terrible fear, and thousands of refugees have been
> generated by this military activity in the past 10 days.  There is every
> reason to fear that a still more aggressive campaign, and far more deaths,
> may be on the immediate horizon.
> 
> Your help is needed. Please forward this message. Please go to our website.  
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 

Re: Manufacturing Consent--NYT War-mongering:Biowarfare

[Dennis Grammenos]

On Mon, 2 Mar 1998, R. Anders Schneiderman wrote:
> Do you happen to know this guy?  He made a number of claims about Iraq and
> our bioweapons programs that I'd love to learn more about.  Do you know if
> he'd be willing to post a few more details?

I know Professor Boyle.
I encourage you to contact him, although I have to warn you that he is
extremely busy.  So, I don't know just how much he can participate:-)


Regards,
Dennis Grammenos

Re: Wallerstein's view of wages

[Rosser Jr, John Barkley]

 I don't know about any press conference, but one can 
read it in the volume edited by Freeman and Carchedi from 
two years ago.  David Laibman (are you out there, Dave?) 
along with some others, most notably Gary Mongiovi who 
defends the Sraffian critique view, aren't buying.  David 
and Andrew Kliman got into a bit of a dustup about the 
whole business, although I gather this has become a bit of 
a running road show, :-)
Barkley Rosser
On Fri, 27 Feb 1998 18:22:25 -0500 Louis Proyect 
<[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote:

> >While I am sympathetic to the point W's trying to make, I'm wondering 
> >what folks on this list think of his argument that 1) there is a secular
> trend 
> >toward an increase in the average price of labour worldwide and 2) that 
> >there is a secular trend for the average rate of profit to decrease as a
> result.
> >
> >Sid Shniad
> 
> Maybe David Laibman can speak to this. He gave a presentation based on his
> new book at the Brecht Forum last year and made an identical point about
> rising wages that I also found startling. I suspect that Dave is
> incommunicado for the next couple of days at the big International
> Conference on Value Theory at the Crowne Royal hotel in NYC. I heard from
> sombody that they finally solved that gosh-darned transformation and have a
> news conference scheduled for Monday morning when they will announce the
> solution to the world.
> 
> Louis Proyect
> 

-- 
Rosser Jr, John Barkley
[EMAIL PROTECTED]

Re: green permits and taxes

[Rosser Jr, John Barkley]

Louis P.,
 Well, as a matter of fact this sort of case in 
Rochester is exactly the sort that says that there needs to 
be some very specific quantity controls.  This is the kind 
of case I had in mind with my mumbling about risky 
situations and how social cost curves can suddenly go up, 
that is that there are critical threshold levels that one 
may not know about beyond which very unpleasant things can 
happen, catastrophes.
 It may be that some kind of democratized central 
planning is what is needed to set those limits.  (But then 
the mkt soc in me says, let them trade permits within those 
limits to min costs of achieving that after that...).  
(Glad alternative breakfast worked out.  Another time.)
 BTW, hey Doug, what's with going to hear Bertell 
Ollman and skipping out on me?  I know, I'm just one of 
those crummy math types who doesn't know alienation from a 
hole in the ground, :-).
Barkley Rosser
On Mon, 02 Mar 1998 15:17:13 -0500 Louis Proyect 
<[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote:

> > Again, I have a feeling that this taxes versus permits 
> >debate as we have been debating it has a "rearranging deck 
> >chairs on the Titanic" air about it.  None of this really 
> >deals with more deeply rooted ecological questions that get 
> >buried in that nice fuzzy rubric of "measuring social costs 
> >of pollution"...
> >Barkley Rosser
> 
> Good point, Barkley. (Sorry we didn't hook up, by the way. I just couldn't
> get out of bed on Sunday morning, if you gather my drift.)
> 
> The discussion started out of a Wallerstein post that rejected the notion
> that capitalism could resolve these sorts of crises, either through
> punitive taxes or permits. Something that would place this into the sort of
> urgency it deserves is this article on Kodak, pollution and cancer that
> appeared in today's NY Times. Read it and ask yourselves whether outfits
> like this will ever clean up their act. Two other things to note. The
> federal government helps in the cover-up. And there is no proof that the
> pollution is causing the cancers. This is a particulary insidious defense,
> since cancer intrinsically can not be "proved" to be caused by any
> particular substance. There is only circumstantial evidence, which will get
> you off in a bourgeois court. We need worker's justice, don't we? With good
> old-fashioned firing-squads.
> 
> March 2, 1998
> 
> Mother Seeks Answers as Rare Cancers Appear
> 
> ROCHESTER, N.Y. -- When Debbie Cusenz gets together with neighbors, she
> catches up on the activities of their children. Not just Little League and
> school plays, but brain scans, chemotherapy and surgery. 
> 
> Mrs. Cusenz, 40, keeps track of the children with a map in the living room
> of her home. She marks cancer cases with multicolored stars and angels. Red
> angels represent leukemia, and blue angels, lymphoma. 
> 
> But it is the green angels, marking children with rare cancers of the brain
> and central nervous system, that have caused the most concern; there have
> been 68 such cases in Monroe County since 1976. 
> 
> Many parents here believe that the cases are a cancer cluster related to
> environmental pollutants, and some have sued the Eastman Kodak Co., the
> county's biggest employer. Some environmental groups have said that it is
> also the state's largest polluter. 
> 
> Mrs. Cusenz, whose husband works at Eastman Kodak, thinks the problem is
> bigger than any one company. She said that although she believes that Kodak
> is not blameless, she thinks pollution by all companies, both large and
> small, should be examined. 
> 
> Kodak officials say there is no scientific evidence of a link between film
> manufacturing and cancer. 
> 
> At a public hearing on Wednesday, experts in epidemiology from the Federal
> Agency for Toxic Substances and Disease Registry said they had determined
> that past local studies, which had found no evidence of a link, were
> scientifically sound, but they called for further review. 
> 
> The problem may be part of a national trend, they said. Brain cancer in
> children up to 4 years old has increased by a per capita rate of 47 percent
> in the last 20 years, said Dr. Wendy Kaye, chief epidemiologist for the
> federal agency, which is based in Atlanta. She wants to include Rochester
> in a $500,000 study of the occurrence of brain cancer in three states. 
> 
> Mrs. Cusenz (pronounced like cousins), whose cancer maps drew the interest
> of the federal experts last fall, said she would keep pressing them for
> more studies. She has been involved in the effort since 1995, when the
> oldest of her two sons became her first green angel. 
> 
> She had taken her son Christopher, now 21, to the doctor to follow up on
> his complaint that two fingers on his right hand were becoming numb. His
> illness was diagnosed as cancer of the spinal cord, one of just 150 cases
> seen worldwide each year. 
> 
> Four days later, the family flew to New York City, where the tumor was

Re: green permits and taxes

[Michael Perelman]

Concerning Eastman Kodak, it is interesting that they worked closely with the
Atomic Energy Commission in the 50s regarding fallout.  The AEC was worried
that fallout, while benign to the human organism, might degrate Eastman's film.

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

Tel. 916-898-5321
E-Mail [EMAIL PROTECTED]

Images of American Radicalism

[Louis Proyect]

"Images of American Radicalism" (Christopher Publishing, Hanover, MA), by
Paul Buhle and Edmund B. Sullivan, is an astonishing new book. It consists
of photos, drawings, old magazines, leaflets, posters and buttons from the
1600s to the modern era, with extensive informed commentary. As you turn
from page to page, you are both edified and entertained. The biggest
pleasure is finding out about leftist connections to the broader culture
that you never dreamed possible. Buhle's vision of the American left is
like my own. It is inclusive and nonsectarian. This means that the images
are drawn from Socialist, anarchist, Communist, Trotskyist and other
sources. Whatever your particular affiliation, there will be material here
to delight you. For an eclectic like myself, every image is a delight.

Here are some tidbits:

--A cartoon protesting the invasion of the Philippines from 1901. It is a
mountain of skulls being guarded by American soldiers. The caption says,
"And this is what they call civilization!"

--A 1935 painting of Metacomet, the Pokanoket Chief who led an allied
Indian force in 1675 to defend southern New England Indians against
appropriation of their lands. The artist is Thomas Hart Benton, who was
sympathetic to leftist causes.

--various advertisements from the International Socialist Review in the
1910s, including one how to become a "successful socialist speaker." For
only a SASE with 2 cents postage, you will get word on the "WINNING METHOD"
that is used by lawyers, orators and leading socialist speakers.

--A photo of a May Day parade in NYC, 1940. The marchers include members of
the pro-Soviet International Workers Order (IWO) in baseball uniforms from
their IWO chapter teams. Their signs demand: "Admit Negroes into Big League
Baseball"

--A stunning photo of Raya Dunayevakaya, CLR James and Grace Lee from the
1940s. The 3 Trotskyists developed a "state capitalist" analysis of the
USSR in the 1940s, but are much more interesting for their general analysis
of American society. The text that accompanies the photo mentions that Lee
was the daughter of a prominent Chinese restaurateur, earned a PhD in
philosophy from the U. of Chicago, and married black autoworker James
Boggs. Now known as Grace Lee Boggs, she still writes occasionally for MR.

--On the opposite page is a flyer for a New Year's "Atom and Eve" Ball for
the Brooklyn Communist Party. It says "Bring Uranium and I'll Bring Mine."
Featured bands are The Duke of Iron, a Calypsonian and Frankie Newton,
famed trumpet player and Communist.

--A photo of a lunch counter sit-in in Greensboro, NC, 1960. It includes
legendary disk jockey and rock-and-roll pioneer Johnny Otis, a white man. I
have heard his radio show in Los Angeles and never would have dreamed that
he was an activist. The text says that he met with Langston Hughes around
this time, who Otis often acknowledged as his inspiration.

--A circular from the Highlander Folk School in Tennessee. This center of
civil rights education and a religious based socialism existed from the
1930s on and had a strong CP influence. Martin Luther King Jr. was trained
there. The circular states that it provides "steward training," where you
can learn how to handle grievances.

--A photo of Dave Dellinger and my friend David McReynolds from an
anti-nuclear demo in 1980. David's is wearing shades and looks like a beat
poet.

Louis Proyect