Re: Tentacles of the Eurostate
C. Redmond, You wrote "Asia will mark time until Japan discovers the magic bullet of multinational Keynesianism." That seems remarkable to me. What would you call the government-inspired credit boom that got East Asia to where it is now? The Tiger expansion seems to me the very poster child for "multinational Keynesianism". It might also be a good substitute poster child for the March of Dimes - crippled from birth with the congenital defect of crony capitalism. Where does crony capitalism end and Keynesianism begin? peace
BLS Daily Reportboundary="---- =_NextPart_000_01BD7ACC.4E0CF120"
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_01BD7ACC.4E0CF120 charset="iso-8859-1" BLS DAILY REPORT, FRIDAY, MAY 8, 1998 RELEASED TODAY: Employment increased, and unemployment fell sharply in April. The unemployment rate declined to 4.3 percent in April; from November through March, the rate had been either 4.6 or 4.7 percent. Nonfarm payroll employment grew by 262,000, following a small decline in March. Manufacturing was weak for the third straight month __Productivity in the country's nonfarm business sector grew just 0.2 percent, seasonally adjusted, in the first quarter of 1998, as strong output was nearly matched by hours worked, BLS reports (Daily Labor Report, page D-3; Washington Post, page D1). __Worker productivity grew at the slowest pace in more than a year in the first quarter, reflecting a surge in hours employees spent on the job and acute shortages of job applicants (New York Times, page C6). __Productivity growth slowed sharply in the first quarter, a reminder that it is still an open question whether the U.S. economy can sustain vigorous expansion with low inflation (Wall Street Journal, page A2). __The increase in productivity was the weakest since the third quarter of 1996. But the Labor Department is fine-tuning the way it tracks salaried workers' hourly earnings and hours on the job, which could result in a significantly stronger number for the productivity rate (USA Today, page 1B). --Growth will slow in the second half of 1998 from the rapid inflation adjusted annual rate of 4.2 percent to the first quarter, dipping to 2 percent in the final six months, says a Business Council economic survey. Technical consultants to Business Council members also expect inflation, as measured by the CPI, to edge up throughout the year, as oil prices stabilize. Business Council consultants' consensus is that unemployment will edge up to 4.9 percent in 1999. In a separate report of Business Council members, most respondents were relatively optimistic about the outlook for Asia (Daily Labor Report, page A-10). __U.S. executives think worst of Asia crisis is past (Washington Post, page D3). __The Fed should keep interest rates steady for the foreseeable future since inflation remains in check and the full impact of the Asian financial crisis is still unknown, said top corporate executives meeting in Williamsburg, Va. The chairman of the executive committee of the Business Council, whose members are active and retired chief executives of some of the nation's most prominent companies, predicted that inexpensive imports will continue to flow and keep down prices (Wall Street Journal, page A2). Initial claims for unemployment insurance benefits filed with state agencies declined by 11,000 to a seasonally adjusted 308,000 in the week ended May 2, the Labor Department's Employment and Training Administration announces (Daily Labor Report, page D-1)_The decrease in unemployment claims by 11,000 was an unexpectedly large decline that provided new evidence of the strength of the U.S. economy (Washington Post, page D1). __The nation's major retailers posted strong sales gains in April, as discount retailers and luxury department stores fared well (Washington Post, page D2). __American retailers reported their best monthly sales gains in four years, capping one of the healthiest quarters of retail sales in almost a decade. Sales in retail stores open at least a year rose 10.2 percent in April, according to the Goldman Sachs Retail Composite Index. For the industry's first quarter of 1998, same store sales, or sales in stores open a year, rose 6.5 percent. That was far above any other quarter in the last 10 years, with the exception of the first quarter of 1994, when sales rose 7.9 percent (New York Times, page 1). __Sales at most major retailers were unusually strong in April, buoyed by a late Easter and warm weather that prompted shoppers to head to the stores early for summer items (Wall Street Journal, page B4). In a Letter-to-the-Editor that support raising the minimum wage, John Reeder of Arlington, Va., writes in The Washington Post, "The number of persons employed in the United States aged 16 to 19, according to BLS, increased irregularly from 6,367,000 (seasonally adjusted) in December (the last month before the minimum wage increase went into effect) to 7,000,000 persons in March 1998, a gain of 688,000 jobs. According to BLS data, the minimum wage increase applied to about 10 million workers, 71 percent of whom were adults aged 20 years or older, and 58 percent of whom were women, many with children to support. In 18 states, more than 10 percent of the work force benefited from the increase. Are there some social costs to a minimum wage? Maybe yes, depending on the job market. But are there
Re: Econ. 101 revisited
I've heard it said that Sylvia Nasar travels at least some of the time in progressive circles. What explains her slavishly neoclassical NYT columns, with their obliviousness to dissenting views? Peter Dorman
Re: Tentacles of the Eurostate
Doug, From their own perspective the Japanese ruling elite is doing well at protecting its own interests. The long-running bailouts of companies by banks, etc. is one great big "let's take care of each other" ball game. That it appears to be running out of steam is another matter. Barkley Rosser On Fri, 8 May 1998 10:01:42 -0400 Doug Henwood <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote: > Dennis R Redmond wrote: > > >(1) Globally, the EU owns the world-system, and can (and will) do anything > >it damn well pleases. > > Except that the EU barely exists as a political entity - they can barely > choose the head of their central bank (and, by the way, the lucky Dutchman > who will, Wim Duisenberg, thinks the Fed's practice of publishing highly > sanitized minutes of their policy meetings is too open!). The U.S. can do > what it damn well pleases right now too. What other country could run $200 > billion current account deficits in its own currency? > > Speaking of political cohesion, what is it with the Japanese ruling class? > They seem barely able to function as a coherent political force in the > midst of an endless slump. And that's mainly a domestic affair; even at the > height of Japan's financial power, there was minimal projection of Japanese > imperial power abroad. Not so the U.S. ruling class, which, despite the > fact that it owes big money to the other two metropoles, is very coherent, > forceful, and confident. > > Doug > > > -- Rosser Jr, John Barkley [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Marx on Prices; Lenin Quote
Folks, I found an interesting quote about prices in the Contribution "Prices are thus high or low not because more or less money is in circulation, but there is more money in circulation because prices are high or low. This is one of the principal economic laws, and the detailed substantiation of it based on the history of prices is perhaps the only achievement of the post- Ricardian English economists," Does anyone know if Lenin said: "We have to be as radical as reality itself." When and where? Thanks Jason
Re: Tentacles of the Eurostate
On Fri, 8 May 1998, Doug Henwood wrote: > Except that the EU barely exists as a political entity - they can barely > choose the head of their central bank (and, by the way, the lucky Dutchman > who will, Wim Duisenberg, thinks the Fed's practice of publishing highly > sanitized minutes of their policy meetings is too open!). The U.S. can do > what it damn well pleases right now too. What other country could run $200 > billion current account deficits in its own currency? Not forever. Sooner or later (usually later, given the wondrous flexibility of credit markets and the incessant state bailouts which accompany them) that currency will come under pressure from value-minded investors. The craze for US T-bills could very easily become a craze for EU E-bills. Also, note that Duisenberg was forced to basically agree to step down after 4 years, allowing Trichet, our man Jospin's finance honcho, to apply for the job at that point. The German press sez this was a slap in the face of Tietmayer, hypermonetarist Uebercashier of the Buba. Suddenly, the European Central Bank is now a political football, as it was all along, and Eurorentiers were heard to bleat worried noises about the sanctity of central banking into the receptive ear of the financial press. Whatever the politics of euro turn out to be, they aren't going to be the monopoly of the central bankers/Eurocrats for long. > Speaking of political cohesion, what is it with the Japanese ruling class? The Japanese elites have long cultivated the gentle art of appearing braindead in front of foreign emissaries, while working overtime to push their own economic agenda. What you see is not what you get. The LDP has engineered one giant stimulus package after another in the 1990s, maybe $300 billion from 1993-95 alone; not enough to start a boom, but plenty to keep the Pacific Rim hopping and Japanese firms afloat. Interest rates were cut to nothing, bailing out half the credit system; and now a big banking bailout, to the tune of some $250 billion in public funds, is underway. This, plus the $125 billion stimulus package, plus innumerable loan bailouts for the other Asian countries, has basically prevented a global credit deflation, for now. I suspect Asia will mark time until Japan discovers the magic bullet of multinational Keynesianism. -- Dennis
request for readings: public policy analysis, transition in E. Europe
I'd like to draw on the collective expertise of pen-l to come up with possible texts for two courses I'm teaching this summer. As the header says, one is a general course in "public policy analysis", the other is on the economic and political transition in E. Europe, with a focus on Hungary and the Czech Republic. The courses will be held in Budapest and Prague, so I'd like to keep the readings fairly brief and allow time for more interesting pursuits. Any ideas? (Incidentally, I have organized a small side trip to Ljubljana, so I can draw my own conclusions on the intermittent pen-l discussion of Slovenia.) Thanks for all suggestions, and don't forget to reply to me off-list rather than automatically tapping the return key. Peter Dorman
Econ. 101 revisited
I decided that it was worth commenting on the following article in detail and that pen-l folks would be interested. The article ends up being pretty long. My comments are surrounded by >< signs. Your comments are of course welcome. -- Jim Devine May 3, 1998, Sunday Section: Week in Review Desk Ideas & Trends: Chaos Theory; Unlearning the Lessons of Econ 101 By SYLVIA NASAR (Copyright 1998 The New York Times Company) THERE it goes again. Just when economists were wisely preparing a fat and happy America to face the inevitable unpleasant fallout from last summer's Asian financial crisis, the Government reported last week that things are going better than ever. Inflation is more or less gone. Jobs keep going up and growth continues. That's been the story of the current economic boom, one of the longest and healthiest in American history. It has confounded everybody, not least of all the folks who are supposed to know what's going to happen and when to expect it: professional economists. Economic tenets, taught half a generation ago as immutable laws, are turning out not to be true. > by "professional economists," Nasar means mainstream economists. I'll ignore most of the other hyperbole, such as the assertion that the generalizations listed below were seen as "immutable laws," focusing instead on the generalizations themselves.< Not all of them, of course. The vast bulk of mainstream economic theory has held up fine. Trade can make everybody better off. Free markets usually work best. High tax rates undermine incentives to work. The bedevilment is in the details. > "usually" work best? for whom? for the poor and working people? for nature? And _which_ taxes? the idea that the income tax discourages work is Laffer-Reagan supply-side nonsense. It is sad that this nostrum has gotten mixed up in vague statements about "high tax rates" _in general_ is a sign of the right-wing shift of the TIMES and of intellectual bankruptcy.< Here are five economic principles, some called laws, others merely rules of thumb, that seem to have broken down: Low unemployment = High inflation Since 1960, the famous Phillips Curve posits that there can be low inflation or low unemployment, but not at the same time -- at least for long. But so far in the 1990's, unemployment and inflation have not only been marching in the same direction -- south -- but they are now at their lowest levels in a generation. After seven years of economic expansion, unemployment dropped below 5 percent last fall for the first time since the early 70's. Instead of accelerating, inflation has slowed even more. In the quarter that ended in March, the Government's broadest measure of inflation rose at an annual rate of less than 1 percent, the slowest rate since 1964. What gives? >Of course, we've benefited from a shift in the Phillips curve. So what else is new? Economists have been conscious of PC shifts for a long time. The argument is about why it shifts.< Most economists agree with the Nobel Prize-winning economist Milton Friedman, who says the economy has a ''natural'' rate of unemployment, below which inflation accelerates, and above which inflation decelerates. Until recently, economists thought this natural rate was about 6.0 to 6.5 percent. It could be that the natural rate, which is affected by changes in demography, education and labor market institutions, has fallen sharply, perhaps to 5 percent, some economists say. One intriguing explanation is offered by the Princeton economist Robert Shimer, who says, ''The U.S. employment rate is so much lower because the population is so much older.'' Teen-agers have an unemployment rate roughly five times that of adult workers, the thinking goes, and the declining number of teen-age workers is enough to pull down the overall unemployment rate to its current low level. Robert Gordon, an economist at Northwestern University, points to possibly temporary factors -- including falling computer prices, the strong dollar, the shift to managed health care and more accurate [sic] measurements of consumer prices -- to account for the unexpectedly low inflation rate of the late 90's. > All of these make sense, but these hardly form the whole story. We should remember that the US has also benefitted from falling oil and primary-products prices. The US has also benefitted from cheaper imports from East Asia. We might also point to problems with the measurement of the unemployment rate, as did letters to the editor in today's [May 8, 1998's] New York TIMES. > In addition, the structure of the labor market (the locus of the wage-price spiral) has changed: just as unions and other institutions that allow workers to avoid real wage cuts have declined in power, companies have found it harder to raise prices (as competition has increased, partly due to globalization, partly due to deregulation and the like). Both sides of the wage-price spiral have lost the ability to keep up with
Re: Media myopia II
C. Eisenscher, What you describe is the mechanism that plants use in generating energy and oxygen during photosynthesis. Obviously there is tremendous interest in replicating this process industrially. However, I think that the hydrogen/oxygen fuel cells referred to use the opposite process. In other words, they use some sort of catalysis to combine oxygen and hydrogen (without exploding) and take out the electrical energy generated in the reaction. The "without exploding" part is pretty important. Having pure oxygen and hydrogen on board a car during a crash would not be fun. That's one of the tricks in developing fuel cells: how to generate/contain the gases in a non-explosive manner. peace
Re: Gates Leads Rally Against Government (fwd)
Valis, The answer is: Short-term self-interest. Why would Compaq, et al, not want Windows '98 to come out? After all, they *sell* Windows '98. Besides capitalists hate competition and love monopolies, especially in the short-term. peace
Marx on Prices; Lenin Quote -Reply
I don't know where and when Lenin made the quote, but the Anderson Valley Advertiser puts the quote on its masthead: "Be as radical as reality."
