Terminator NOT terminated !
Subject: GMO Updates #9: Suicide Seeds on the Fast Track Date: Sun, 26 Mar 2000 03:12:06 -0500 From: [EMAIL PROTECTED] (jean hudon) To: undisclosed-recipients: ; THIS NEWS INFO BELOW IS REALLY UPSETTING BECAUSE WE ALL THOUGHT THAT THE WOLRDWIDE PROTESTS AGAINST THE TERMINATOR TECHNOLOGY HAD SUCCEEDED IN DEFINITLEY PUTTING AN END TO IT. WE HAVE BEEN LIED TO BY MONSANTO - NOW CHANGING NAME TO "PHARMACIA" - WHICH IS THE WORST HYDRA THE WORLD HAS EVER SEEN Date: Sat, 25 Mar 2000 From: Mark Graffis [EMAIL PROTECTED] Subject:Suicide Seeds on the Fast Track EarthVision Reports 03/24/00 SAN FRANCISCO, March 24, 2000 - A report released by the Rural Advancement Foundation International (RAFI) reveals that Terminator and Traitor technology are riding a fast track to commercialization. Terminator technology, the genetic engineering of plants to produce sterile seeds, is universally considered the most morally offensive application of agricultural biotechnology, since over 1.4 billion people depend on farm-saved seeds. Traitor technology, also known as genetic use restriction technology (GURTs), refers to the use of an external chemical to switch on or off a plant's genetic traits. "We've continued right on with work on the Technology Protection System [Terminator]. We never really slowed down. We're on target, moving ahead to commercialize it. We never really backed off." Harry Collins, Delta Pine Land Seed Co., January, 2000 "After Monsanto and AstraZeneca publicly vowed not to commercialize terminator seeds in 1999, governments and civil society organizations were lulled into thinking that the crisis had passed. Nothing could be further from the truth," said RAFI's Executive Director Pat Mooney. "Despite mounting opposition from national governments and United Nations' agencies, research on Terminator and Traitor (genetic trait control) is moving full speed ahead." According to RAFI, Delta Pine Land, the world's largest cotton seed company, is moving aggressively to commercialize Terminator. And despite massive protests, the US Department of Agriculture supports and defends its anti-farmer patent and research on suicide seeds. Last year, AstraZeneca conducted field trials on genetic trait control technology (Traitor technology) in the UK. According to industry sources, it is not the first company to conduct field tests of this kind. RAFI's report concludes that corporate commitments to disavow Terminator are virtually meaningless in light of the pace of corporate takeovers. Monsanto and AstraZeneca have each merged with other companies since they pledged not to commercialize suicide seeds. * On December 2, 1999 Novartis and AstraZeneca announced they would spin-off and merge their agrochemical and seed divisions to create the world's biggest agribusiness corporation -- to be named "Syngenta." * On December 19, 1999 Monsanto announced that it will merge with drug industry giant Pharmacia Upjohn to create a new company, named Pharmacia, with combined annual sales of $17 billion. The Director General of the United Nations Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO) Jacques Diouf recently declared his opposition to Terminator. In publicly rejecting Terminator, FAO's Diouf has come to the defense of the 1.4 billion people who depend upon farm-saved seed for their survival. Among the national governments that have announced their intention to oppose Terminator technology are Panama, India, Ghana, and Uganda. India, one of the first governments to publicly reject Terminator, explicitly prohibits Terminator genes in a draft bill now before the Indian Parliament. Ghanaian Minister of Environment, Cletus Avoka, says that his government will not tolerate the use of Terminator technology. Panama's Minister of Agriculture and Fisheries writes that his government "will adopt measures to prohibit the specific patents as well as the technology in general." Ugandan officials have said that their government is discussing measures to outlaw Terminator at the highest levels of government. Terminator and Traitor technologies are not limited to a single patent, nor is the research confined to one or two companies. Delta Pine Land is currently the high-profile crusader for Terminator, but the goal of genetic trait control is industry-wide. According to RAFI, over 30 patents are collectively held by the multinational agrochemical firms that dominate the field of biotechnology. According to RAFI, the future of Terminator/Traitor Technology rests with national governments and multinational corporations. The pressure points for political action are, first and foremost, with national governments around the world. Second, pressure should be
[Fwd: EMPERORS CLOTHES? NEVER HEARD OF 'EM!]
Original Message Subject: EMPERORS CLOTHES? NEVER HEARD OF 'EM! Date: Sun, 26 Mar 2000 05:45:19 -0500 (EST) From: [EMAIL PROTECTED] Reply-To: [EMAIL PROTECTED] To: [EMAIL PROTECTED] In a an article on the CNN connection with the U.S. Army's psychological Operations division, (PsyOps) Alexander Cockburn wrote that: I came across translations of De Vries' stories on the [CNN/Army Psychological-Operations] matter, after they had appeared in late February in Trouw, the foremost quality newspaper in Holland. Actually Cockburn did not "come across" the de Vries articles. They were thrust upon him. There were two articles. A few days after they were published in English translation on www.emperors-clothes.com, I wrote to Cockburn, sending him the text of the de Vries stories and suggesting he might want to do follow-up work and giving him Abe de Vries email address. He then contacted de Vries. The good thing is that the efforts of de Vries and Emperors-Clothes are leading to results: Pacifica Radio has now covered this story, and it is leaking out to the mainstream press. The annoying thing is that Cockburn did not credit emperors-clothes which, after all, is no different from any other magazine; we expect to be credited for our work since our work is our reputation, etc. On the Pacifica website, Amy Goodman wrote: "For any who have an interest in the Army PSYOPs/CNN story, there's a wonderful little 3-way Real Audio interview between Abe De Vries, the correspondent from Trouw, a major Dutch paper, who exposed the incestuous connection between CNN and PSYOPs, Alexander Cockburn of Counterpunch who published the De Vries article in the US .." etc. The English versions of the articles were in fact not published by Cockburn. They can be read where they were published, by going to: http://www.emperors-clothes.com/articles/devries/psyops.htm and at http://www.emperors-clothes.com/articles/devries/love.htm ) I suppose having one's work used is the highest form of flattery. Another very interesting article by Abe De Vries is his interview with women from Orahovac which is posted below. Best regards, Jared Israel 'Can children be war criminals?' by Abe de Vries (Translated from Trouw, Amsterdam daily newspaper) www.emperors-clothes.com BELGRADE "The sooner the Dutch 'Yellow Riders' leave Orahovac, the better. They're worse than the Germans," says Mirjana. "The soldiers are not so bad, but the officers are terrible'', according to Natasha. "They admit that they're only here for the Albanians, not for the Serbs,'' says Simka. Three women from Orahovac, who until recently lived there or who have family there. This is their story, which differs substantially from the one lieutenant-colonel Tony van Loon, the commander of the Yellow Riders, has told. (Trouw, November 11). His artillery unit will soon be replaced. [See Note # 1 at end] The women read the interview with Van Loon. In their eyes the Yellow Riders don't have even one reason to be proud of themselves. "Dear sir,'' begins an open letter from the Humanitarian Committee of Women from Orahovac, ''the fact that you turned Orahovac into a test field where the Serbs - without a possibility to leave because you pretend not to be able to give them protection - are thus forced to stay imprisoned in a ghetto - should not be something you should be proud of, nor should you leave Kosovo with a clear conscience. To keep the Serbs as prisoners this way is to deliver them to the mercy of terrorists. If this is the way to create a multi-ethnic society, than such a society existed also in Warshaw during World War Two.'' In Orahovac 2500 Serbs and 500 gypsies live a terrible life. They are packed into a few streets with only KFOR [NATO] checkpoints separating them from the extremely hostile Albanian majority in the rest of the town. They all want to leave for Serbia or Montenegro. Only one thing is keeping them in Orahovac: the fact that the Dutch don't want to guarantee their safety if they venture out of the ghetto. The Yellow Riders say they're searching for possible war criminals amongst the Serbs. A lot of Serbian men are afraid the KLA has put their names on a secret list of suspects, so they stay where they are. Mirjana (26), Natasha (27) and Simka (35) have difficulty believing the Serbian police really murdered hundreds of Albanian citizens in Orahovac and the surrounding villages. According to the Yellow Riders, Serbian police reservists born in the area executed perhaps some thousand Albanians in cold blood. Until now, 400 bodies have been found. Natasha: "There was a war going on. The KLA attacked the army and the police, who were not saying: 'O please, kill us.' I was in Orahovac myself when the war started. It was a psychologically unbearable situation. While NATO bombed us from the air, uniformed terrorists were everywhere in the city. In Orahovac and the
[Fwd: Job Opportunity: Chair, Department of Economics (fwd)]
Chair, Department of Economics Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute Unique Opportunity for an established, active and visionary economist to chair a growing Department of Economics at a top-ranked technological university. The successful candidate will have the opportunity to hire up to five additional faculty members, almost doubling the present faculty size of six. In addition to serving Rensselaer's 4500 undergraduate and 2000 graduate students, the Department offers the BS and MS in Economics and developed the first PhD Program in Ecological Economics, which currently has an enrollment of about 20 students. To complement the science and technology that defines the Institute, desirable fields of research include international economics, economics of technical change, organizational/information economics, game theory, econometrics, and environmental/ecological economics. Rensselaer seeks an energetic scholar and leader who can guide the Department to new heights in innovative pedagogy, funded research, and national prominence through partnerships within and outside the university. Send letter of interest (including a vision statement for the Department), curriculum vita, and the names/addresses of five references to: Dr. James M. Tien, Chair Search Committee, Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute, 110 Eighth Street, Troy, NY 12180-3590, [EMAIL PROTECTED] Applications will begin to be reviewed on June 1, 2000. Rensselaer is an affirmative action, equal opportunity employer. www.rpi.edu. 3/17/00
Re: entier's hoarding ?
I don't think the distinction between an "overaccumulation/profitability crisis" and a trade cycle crisis can be used to distinguish a Marxian from a Keynesian analysis. Marx and Keynes each allow for both kinds of crisis. Marx, like Keynes, associates trade cycle crises (which he calls "monetary crises") with a sudden sharp increase in the propensity to hoard. Also like Keynes, he describes this as a psychological regression, a regression to the more primitive early form of the capitalist "passions". These are the passions dominant in the "monetary system" phase of capitalist development which, though they put on what Keynes calls a "furtive Freudian cloak" (Treatise on Money v. 2, p. 259), continue in mature capitalism to constitute the "inner man" of the capitalist (see, e.g., Capital, pp. 738-46, and Contribution to a Critique of Political Economy, pp. 134-5). "At the historical dawn of the capitalist mode of production - and every capitalist has to go through this historical stage individually - avarice, and the drive for self-enrichment, are the passions which are entirely predominant." (Capital, p. 741) The early capitalist, the capitalist characteristic of the "monetary system", is a "hoarder" - "a martyr to exchange-value, a holy ascetic seated at the top of a metal column." (Contribution, p. 134) Marx claims reversion to this early form characterizes a monetary crisis. "Under conditions of advanced bourgeois production, when the commodity owner has long since become a capitalist, knows his Adam Smith and smiles superciliously at the superstition that only gold and silver constitute money or that money is after all the absolute commodity as distinct from other commodities - money then suddenly appears not as the medium of circulation but once more as the only adequate form of exchange-value, as a unique form of wealth just as it is regarded by the hoarder. The fact that money is the sole incarnation of wealth manifests itself in the actual devaluation and worthlessness of all physical wealth, and not in the purely imaginary devaluation as for instance in the monetary system. This particular phase of world market crises is known as monetary crisis. The summum bonum, the sole form of wealth for which people clamour at such times, is money, hard cash, and compared with it all other commodities - just because they are use-values - appear to be useless, mere baubles and toys, or as our Doctor Martin Luther says, mere ornament and gluttony. This sudden transformation of the credit system into a monetary system adds theoretical dismay to the actually existing panic, and the agents of the circulation process are overawed by the impenetrable mystery surrounding their own relations." (Capital, p. 146) Keynes, on the other hand and like Marx, claims that in the long run the rate of profit must fall. Since, he claims, "the only reason why an asset offers a prospect of yielding during its life services having an aggregate value greater than its initial supply price is because it is scarce", the abundance of capital created by accumulation over time will "increase the stock of capital up to a point where its marginal efficiency [has] fallen to a very low figure" (General Theory, p. 375). If the propensity to hoard prevents interest rates from falling to the same degree, the economy suffers "the fate of Midas". (General Theory, pp. 217-20) Keynes claimed that "the post-war experiences of Great Britain and the United States are, indeed, actual examples of how an accumulation of wealth, so large that its marginal efficiency [implicitly identified here with the rate of profit which would exist at full employment] has fallen more rapidly than the rate of interest can fall in the face of the prevailing institutional and psychological factors, can interfere, in conditions mainly of laissez-faire, with a reasonable level of employment and with the standard of life which the technical conditions of production are capable of furnishing." (General Theory, p. 219) Ted -- Ted WinslowE-MAIL: [EMAIL PROTECTED] Division of Social Science VOICE: (416) 736-5054 York UniversityFAX: (416) 736-5615 4700 Keele St. Toronto, Ontario CANADA M3J 1P3
Many Companies Are Forced to Dip Deeper Into Labor Pool (fwd)
NY Times: March 26, 2000 Many Companies Are Forced to Dip Deeper Into Labor Pool By LOUIS UCHITELLE K ANSAS CITY, Mo. -- Unable to find enough workers in the booming economy, American corporations are trying to expand the labor pool. Until recently, employers had met their labor needs by hiring people who were already employed or at least wanted to work. But as this pool shrinks, they are increasingly recruiting from among the 36 million working-age people in the United States who had not sought a job, or even thought about taking one. The gender gap, the difference between a candidate's votes from men and his votes from women, in presidential elections since 1980. [jobs-labor.1.GIF] The New York Times Percentages may not add up to 100 because of other candidates. Based on exit polls conducted by Voter News Service in 1996, Voter Research and Surveys in 1992 and The New York Times and CBS News in 1980, 1984 and 1988. _ Conrad Bell is one of these new workers. Mr. Bell, a college junior, did not need a job. Living at home, he had enough pocket money, and the first payments on his school loans were still in the future. But when a notice went up on a school bulletin board that H R Block was hiring students skilled in computers to trouble-shoot problems called in from Block offices around the country, Mr. Bell applied and got one of the jobs. "Most of my friends now work," he explained. The company has gone out of its way to accommodate the 23-year-old student, juggling schedules so that he can carry four courses at the DeVry Institute of Technology and still work 25 hours a week. Between semesters, he worked on Tuesdays, then switched to Mondays to attend Tuesday classes. Nearly 200 other students hired for the tax season get similar flexible treatment at Block's new technical center here. In addition to students like Mr. Bell, companies are stepping up recruiting of the urban poor, retirees, housewives, men and women mustering out of military service, the handicapped, women coming off welfare and illegal immigrants not already counted in the labor force. People with jobs are being recruited to moonlight in second jobs, and part-timers are adding hours more easily than in the past. To get workers, some companies even relocate to pockets of relatively high unemployment. The recruiting poster and the promise of flexible hours were what landed Mr. Bell despite his mother's resistance. "She does not want me to work while I'm in school," he said. Aside from flexible hours, companies are offering subsidized transportation, child care, store discounts, free meals, family outings, tuition subsidies, and, in one case here, an $80,000 softball field -- everything, in sum, but significantly higher pay. "We really are in uncharted territory," said Lawrence Katz, a Harvard University labor economist. "The last time we had such tight labor markets, in the 1960's, the baby boomers were beginning to take jobs, and they fed the labor pool. We don't have them today, and we really don't know how many people we can draw." The economy may ride, or fall, on the the answer. Alan Greenspan, chairman of the Federal Reserve, argues that the pool of people still available to take jobs has dwindled to the point that employers will have to pay more in wages to compete for workers and then will push up prices to cover the higher labor costs. Citing this inflationary danger as one reason for their actions, the Fed's policy makers have moved interest rates up a quarter percentage point five times since last June to slow the economy, with the latest increase coming last Tuesday. But Mr. Greenspan's estimate of the number of people still available for jobs relies on the Labor Department's monthly employment surveys, which do not count as available the people who say they are not interested in working. Many of these people are now being recruited, including Mr. Bell, who was busy being a student until he saw the H R Block poster and popped into the labor force. In addition, the Fed chairman's concerns about inflationary labor shortages
Many Companies Are Forced to Dip Deeper Into Labor Pool (fwd)
NY Times: March 26, 2000 Many Companies Are Forced to Dip Deeper Into Labor Pool By LOUIS UCHITELLE K ANSAS CITY, Mo. -- Unable to find enough workers in the booming economy, American corporations are trying to expand the labor pool. Uh-oh. There goes our search engine... Louis Proyect Marxism mailing list: http://www.marxmail.org/
The Price of Oil (fwd)
NYT: March 26, 2000
The Price of Oil
Letters Index
_
To the Editor:
As a former oil trader, I think there are several issues to consider
about the currently high price of oil ("Clinton Calls for New Pool of
Heating Oil for Northeast," news article, March 19).
The tightness in the oil market is directly attributable to our
country's lackluster research and development in alternative fuels and
the improvement of vehicular fuel mileage, as well as lack of
investment in our railroads. It is also a result of an aggressive
foreign policy that has left important oil-producing countries like
the former Soviet Union and Iraq in shambles.
Storing large quantities of heating oil can create its own problems:
it becomes very expensive in oil markets that are (like now) declining
in future value by more than $1 per barrel per month. And there are
chemical and stability issues that usually mandate a product
changeover every few years.
ERIC BRILL
Bedford Hills, N.Y., March 19, 2000
_
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Re: Terminator NOT terminated !
Comments are after specific sections: THIS NEWS INFO BELOW IS REALLY UPSETTING BECAUSE WE ALL THOUGHT THAT THE WOLRDWIDE PROTESTS AGAINST THE TERMINATOR TECHNOLOGY HAD SUCCEEDED IN DEFINITLEY PUTTING AN END TO IT. WE HAVE BEEN LIED TO BY MONSANTO - NOW CHANGING NAME TO "PHARMACIA" - WHICH IS THE WORST HYDRA THE WORLD HAS EVER SEEN Monsanto did not lie. It is not moving ahead with the Terminator Technology. As the post itself points out, Delta Pine Land is doing so. It holds the patent on Terminator Technology together with the USDA. Monsanto originally intended to buyout Delta Pine Land to get the technology but withdrew when it announced that it was not going to develop the technology. Delta Pine gave no undertaking not to continue with development of the technology. Date: Sat, 25 Mar 2000 From: Mark Graffis [EMAIL PROTECTED] Subject:Suicide Seeds on the Fast Track EarthVision Reports 03/24/00 SAN FRANCISCO, March 24, 2000 - A report released by the Rural Advancement Foundation International (RAFI) reveals that Terminator and Traitor technology are riding a fast track to commercialization. Terminator technology, the genetic engineering of plants to produce sterile seeds, is universally considered the most morally offensive application of agricultural biotechnology, since over 1.4 billion people depend on farm-saved seeds. Traitor technology, also known as genetic use restriction technology (GURTs), refers to the use of an external chemical to switch on or off a plant's genetic traits. Aren't seedless watermelons just as morally offensive? You can't save the seeds. Farmers can save their own seed as long as they are growing open pollinated varieties or any varieties not protected by Plant Breeder's Rights legislation. It is not just GM seed that is covered by such legislation by the way. ALso, hybrid seed typically will not produce to type and so it is useless to save it. According to many critics GM seed does not produce any more, does not reduce pesticide use, and does not cost less. Why don't farmers then just grow other varieties and save not only seeds but money as well? Oh I forgot. farmers are stupid and get sucked into the latest biotechnology when they read all those big Monsanto ads. "We've continued right on with work on the Technology Protection System [Terminator]. We never really slowed down. We're on target, moving ahead to commercialize it. We never really backed off." Harry Collins, Delta Pine Land Seed Co., January, 2000 "After Monsanto and AstraZeneca publicly vowed not to commercialize terminator seeds in 1999, governments and civil society organizations were lulled into thinking that the crisis had passed. Nothing could be further from the truth," said RAFI's Executive Director Pat Mooney. "Despite mounting opposition from national governments and United Nations' agencies, research on Terminator and Traitor (genetic trait control) is moving full speed ahead." At least Pat Mooney does not make the mistake of the poster. He correctly notes that it is Delta Pine Land, not Monsanto doing the research. According to RAFI, Delta Pine Land, the world's largest cotton seed company, is moving aggressively to commercialize Terminator. And despite massive protests, the US Department of Agriculture supports and defends its anti-farmer patent and research on suicide seeds. Last year, AstraZeneca conducted field trials on genetic trait control technology (Traitor technology) in the UK. According to industry sources, it is not the first company to conduct field tests of this kind. RAFI's report concludes that corporate commitments to disavow Terminator are virtually meaningless in light of the pace of corporate takeovers. Monsanto and AstraZeneca have each merged with other companies since they pledged not to commercialize suicide seeds. * On December 2, 1999 Novartis and AstraZeneca announced they would spin-off and merge their agrochemical and seed divisions to create the world's biggest agribusiness corporation -- to be named "Syngenta." * On December 19, 1999 Monsanto announced that it will merge with drug industry giant Pharmacia Upjohn to create a new company, named Pharmacia, with combined annual sales of $17 billion. I suppose it is possible that the new merged company might obtain patents to the technology and claim that it was another company that made the commitment not to, but we will have to wait and see. Neither Pharmacia nor Sygenta have the technology at present. As usual, the anti-GM folk are negative about new technology and positive about traditional practices. Why not just convince farmers that the new technology is useless and will not allow them to save seed. The biotechnology industry is not forcing farmers to use GM modified or
Re: [Fwd: EMPERORS CLOTHES? NEVER HEARD OF 'EM!]
Carrol Cox quoted: The annoying thing is that Cockburn did not credit emperors-clothes which, after all, is no different from any other magazine; we expect to be credited for our work since our work is our reputation, etc. This is pretty funny. The list of Alex's uncredited sources would rival the Manhattan white pages. Even people who get explicit credit as co-authors are overlooked by most readers. Doug
Re: The Price of Oil (fwd)
I would add the lack of city planning as another major culprit -- which makes
public transit work poorly and requires long commutes.
Stephen E Philion wrote:
NYT: March 26, 2000
The Price of Oil
Letters Index
_
To the Editor:
As a former oil trader, I think there are several issues to consider
about the currently high price of oil ("Clinton Calls for New Pool of
Heating Oil for Northeast," news article, March 19).
The tightness in the oil market is directly attributable to our
country's lackluster research and development in alternative fuels and
the improvement of vehicular fuel mileage, as well as lack of
investment in our railroads. It is also a result of an aggressive
foreign policy that has left important oil-producing countries like
the former Soviet Union and Iraq in shambles.
Storing large quantities of heating oil can create its own problems:
it becomes very expensive in oil markets that are (like now) declining
in future value by more than $1 per barrel per month. And there are
chemical and stability issues that usually mandate a product
changeover every few years.
ERIC BRILL
Bedford Hills, N.Y., March 19, 2000
_
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Help/Feedback | Classifieds | Services | New York Today
Copyright 2000 The New York Times Company
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--
Michael Perelman
Economics Department
California State University
[EMAIL PROTECTED]
Chico, CA 95929
530-898-5321
fax 530-898-5901
Marx and financial crises
Ted, You quote Marx's explanations of financial crises in terms of a flight from financial assets, including fiat monies, to gold. What are the implications of the fact that this did not occur for the relevance of Marx to understanding recent financial crises? Edwin (Tom) Dickens
Re: Re: Marx and financial crises
Doug Henwood wrote: I'm not Ted, but it tells me that Marx was wrong when he said that crises cannot be resolved by "allowing one bank, e.g. the Bank of England, to give all the swindlers the capital they lack in paper money and to buy all the depreciated commodities at their old nominal values." Maybe not wrong for all time, but wrong for the last several decades. Now the flight is into state-issued assets, like T-bills, and the crisis is contained by central bank lifeboat operations. Doug Doesn't that create a problem for your--and Michael's--argument that the only way out of a crisis (e.g., in Japan right now) is to liquidate real estate, liquidate labor, etc., as Andrew Mellon used to say? Edwin (Tom) Dickens
Re: Re: Re: Marx and financial crises
I would not say that it would be the only way -- just the conventional way. What strikes me is that Japan has almost been able to tread water for a decade and possible could be able to ride to recovery on the next world upswell. One interesting factor is that the capital stock of Japan is aging and they might possibly -- I just don't know -- be able to ride this out and liquidate via long term depreciation. Again, I am not sure. Maybe we can get Bill Tabb on board. Edwin Dickens wrote: Doesn't that create a problem for your--and Michael's--argument that the only way out of a crisis (e.g., in Japan right now) is to liquidate real estate, liquidate labor, etc., as Andrew Mellon used to say? Edwin (Tom) Dickens -- Michael Perelman Economics Department California State University [EMAIL PROTECTED] Chico, CA 95929 530-898-5321 fax 530-898-5901
Re: Re: Re: Marx and financial crises
Doesn't that create a problem for your--and Michael's--argument that the only way out of a crisis (e.g., in Japan right now) is to liquidate real estate, liquidate labor, etc., as Andrew Mellon used to say? Edwin (Tom) Dickens I'm not Doug, but I thought the point was that Marx was wrong, but not for all places and all times. One could argue that Japan's crisis will require the liquidation of real estate especially, because the state has lent no small backing to its continued overvaluation--property taxes are much lower than sales or cap gains taxes All best Christian
Re: Marx and financial crises
Tom wrote: You quote Marx's explanations of financial crises in terms of a flight from financial assets, including fiat monies, to gold. What are the implications of the fact that this did not occur for the relevance of Marx to understanding recent financial crises? I don't know about Ted's views, but to me, the US dollar (fiat money) has replaced gold, though it could lose that status. Gold has become a speculative commodity. It's hard to imagine that anyone would want to flee dollars to hold a commodity whose value is rapidly fluctuating due to the speculative psychology of gold-bugs. Instead the flight would be to hard (convertible) currency. In CAPITAL, vol. I, Marx talks about the way that states can force the circulation of fiat money within their national boundaries. I think that in the current situation -- indeed in the situation since the Bretton Woods conference of 1944 -- the dollar has been forced into circulation by the power of the US state as the hegemonic power (within the capitalist world and now for the whole world). This hegemony endorsed by all of the advanced capitalist countries. The fact that the US dollar became the _de facto_ world currency reflects the US state's power and its perceived legitimacy. Since that hegemony has encouraged integration amongst the major capitalist powers and a decline in the nation-state-centered model of economic development, this hegemony has a basis for persistence: just as the rich countries clung to the gold-exchange standard during the 1920s for lack of an alternative, they are likely to cling to something similar to the current dollar-dominated system. Complicating matters is the fact that there are some other states that have been able to make their currencies very "hard" within the context of the US-dominated world financial system. Central are the Yen and the shaky Euro. Some economists talk about these as competing with the dollar as the world currency, but I have a hard time seeing that as extremely serious, especially since Yen are not in wide circulation outside of East Asia. (Please correct me if I am wrong.) The way I see it is that the Yen, Euro, US$, the British pound, etc., are part of a US$-dominated (and US-dominated) system organized around the IMF. Within this system, exchange rates can fluctuate a bit... If other currencies were to seriously challenge the dollar, that system would stop being a hard money system (and a flight to gold would become more likely). This seems likely only if Japan and Europe go against the US politically. That's more than mere economic rivalry of the sort that Brenner emphasizes. It's more like the intra-imperialist rivalries that spawned World Wars I and II. My impression is that the US seigneurage power (i.e., its ability to simply print dollars and thus claim foreign resources) has fallen since the early 1970s, so that the Japanese and others are willing to put up with the US financial hegemony. I think that those who see intra-imperialist rivalries as crucial (seeing military rivalry between Germany and the US in the Balkans, etc.) are thinking in terms of the political economy of the 1910s, when Lenin and Bukharin wrote, rather than the current situation. The international monetary system is not an automatic mechanism, so the finance ministers have to regularly meet to stabilize it. They may fail here. Currently, even BUSINESS WEEK (April 3, 2000, p. 33) points to the steeply rising US current-account deficit. This suggests that a US financial crisis would induce a flight to Yen, Euros, or even better, a diversified basket of hard currencies. The Fed would have to hike the Fed Funds rate to the moon, encouraging recession, or would have to allow the dollar to fall (in which case inflation would be resurrected). With the latter, there'd have to be a serious effort to patch up the international monetary system, re-establishing the dollar (or less likely, setting up a new system). Even though I don't see the Fed and its friends as successfully stifling economic crisis, I have a hard time seeing gold as coming back unless there was an actual war. Jim Devine [EMAIL PROTECTED] http://liberalarts.lmu.edu/~JDevine/JDevine.html
more on US trade problems
quoth Krugman from today's NY TIMES: The most likely scenario is that the trade deficit will eventually be reined in by a decline in the foreign-exchange value of the dollar. The great dollar slide of 1985-87, precipitated by a trade deficit that was actually smaller compared with G.D.P. than the deficit today, reduced the value of a dollar by 40 percent in terms of German marks and Japanese yen. And there is no obvious reason why the same thing can't happen again. But if that is the way it will play out, at least some of the money we are now pulling in is being brought in under false pretenses. Right now foreign investors are willing to hold 10-year U.S. government bonds, even though they pay only a slightly higher interest rate than their European counterparts. Those investors seem to believe, in other words, that today's strong dollar will persist for another 10 years. But the size of our trade deficit makes that unlikely. So foreign investors, and therefore the value of the dollar, are arguably doing a Wile E. Coyote -- one of these days they will look down, realize that they have already walked over the edge of the cliff, and plunge. And when they do it will come as a rude shock not only to them, but also to American financial markets that have become accustomed to big inflows of foreign money. Jim Devine [EMAIL PROTECTED] http://liberalarts.lmu.edu/~JDevine/JDevine.html
Re: Marx and financial crises
Ted,
You quote Marx's explanations of financial crises in terms of a flight from
financial assets, including fiat monies, to gold. What are the
implications of the fact that this did not occur for the relevance of Marx
to understanding recent financial crises?
Edwin (Tom) Dickens
Here, it seems to me, things get very complex.
As I said about the application of Keynes's ideas to Japan, it is a key
aspect of the approach of both Marx and Keynes that significant changes in
circumstances are assumed to change the the character of the dominant
psychology. This is an implication of assuming that social interdependence
is "dialectical", that social relations are "internal".
So even where Marx's analysis is based on realistic assumptions about the
motivation dominant in 19th century capitalism (which, like Keynes, he does
not treat as all of a piece - his analysis of the psychology of gold
hoarding in India, for instance, differing significantly, as does Keynes's,
from his analysis of it in England), it is certain that significant aspects
of these assumptions would not be relevant to, say, U.S. capitalism now.
This is implicit in the passages to which I pointed. These claim that the
motives dominant in early capitalism differ from those dominant in mature
capitalism (though Marx links them through the idea of the "inner man" of
the mature capitalist).
This applies to the role of gold in capitalist psychology. (Even now however
it remains true that there are still "gold bugs" in all cultures and that
there are significant cross-cultural differences in the role played by gold
hoarding.)
However, even though the role of gold may be different other features of the
irrational psychology Marx attributes to capitalists may remain relevant.
Keynes, for instance, though assuming (Treatise on Money, v. 2, p. 260) that
"the long age of commodity money has at last passed finally away before the
age of representative money" ("gold has ceased to be a coin, a hoard, a
tangible claim to wealth, of which the value cannot slip away so long as the
hand of the individual clutches the material stuff"), still assigns a
significant role to a regressive intensification of an irrational
"instinctive or conventional" "feeling about money" in his account of
monetary crises.
"Why should anyone outside a lunatic asylum wish to use money as a store of
wealth?
"Because, partly on reasonable and partly on instinctive grounds, our
desire to hold Money as a store of wealth is a barometer of the degree of
our distrust of our own calculations and conventions concerning the future.
Even though this feeling about money is itself conventional or instinctive,
it operates, so to speak, at a deeper level of our motivation. It takes
charge at the moments when the higher, more precarious conventions have
weakened. The possession of actual money lulls our disquietude; and the
premium which we require to make us part with money is the measure of the
degree of our disquietude." (Collected Writings, vol. XIV, p. 116)
Keynes also assumes that ideas about money and liquidity differ
significantly at the same time and place. Thus, though
"the vast majority of those who are concerned with the buying and selling of
securities know almost nothing whatever about what they are doing. They do
not possess even the rudiments of what is required for a valid judgment, and
are the prey of hopes and fears easily aroused by transient events and as
easily dispelled. This is one of the odd characteristics of the capitalist
system under which we live, which, when we are dealing with the real world,
is not to be overlooked." (Treatise on Money, v. 2, p. 323)
there are "professional investors" (the "wisest" market participants) whose
object is "to anticipate mob psychology rather than the real trend of
events, and to ape unreason proleptically." (p. 323)
This both makes their liquidity preference different psychologically from
that of the "mob" and gives it a different object.
"as soon as the price of securities has risen high enough, relatively to the
short-term rate of interest, to occasion a a difference of opinion as to the
prospects, a 'bear' position will develop, and some people will begin to
increase their savings deposits either out of their current savings or out
of their current profits or by selling securities previously held. Thus in
proportion as the prevailing opinion comes to seem unreasonable to more
cautious people, the 'other view' will tend to develop with the result of an
increase in the 'bear' position." (Treatise on Money, v. 1, p. 229)
"In modern conditions, both in Great Britain and in the United States, the
total 'bear' position can, of course, much exceed the amount of savings
deposits B, since professional investors have other, and generally more
profitable, means of lending 'bear' funds against liquid claims on cash than
through the banking system, e.g. by buying treasury bills and by direct
loans to the
Deja vu all over again?
Conditions (and people) now are not the same as conditions (and people) then (a point to which, as I've said, Keynes himself gave great emphasis in warning against the dangers of uncritically concluding that what happened in the past is a good guide to what will happen now and in the future). There are some parallels, however, as the following passage from the Treatise on Money (vol. 2, pp. 175-6) indicates: ""With the Wall Street collapse in the autumn of 1929 one of the greatest 'bull' stock exchange movements in history came to an end. But we may remark that this was preluded by the development of 'two views' on an enormous scale. Whilst one section were still keen to buy stocks and carry them on borrowed money, even at very high rates of interest, another section were 'bears' of the position (in the sense in which I have used the term) and preferred to hold money rather than stocks. If we take the volume of brokers' loans on the New York stock exchange as the measure of the 'bull-bear' position, i.e. of the degree to which 'two views' had developed, we find that at the end of September 1929, which was the culminating point, the total of these loans had risen to $8,549. Three months later the collapse of stock prices had brought the 'two views' together, at a level of values where the two parties could agree with one another more nearly, and the total of the brokers' loans fell to less than half the above, namely $3,990 million. We have not had on any previous occasion so perfect a statistical test of the way in which, when stock prices have risen beyond a certain point, the machinery of the 'two views' functions. But the fact that the technique of the New York market allows an important proportion of the 'bear' position to be lent directly to the 'bulls' without the interposition of the banking system, together with the low reserve which the member banks are required to hold against time deposits, facilitated immense fluctuations in the magnitude of this position without the disturbance to the industrial circulation which would result almost inevitably in such conditions as characterise the British system. Nevertheless the high market rate of interest which, prior to the collapse, the Federal Reserve System, in their effort to control the enthusiasm of the speculative crowd, caused to be enforced in the United States - and, as a result of sympathetic self-protective action, in the rest of the world - played an essential role in bringing about the rapid collapse. For this punitive rate of interest could not be prevented from having its repercussion on the rate of new investment both in the United States and throughout the world, and was bound, therefore, to prelude an era of falling prices and business losses everywhere. "Thus I attribute the slump of 1930 primarily to the deterrent effects on investment of the long period of dear money which preceded the stock-market collapse, and only secondarily to the collapse itself." Ted -- Ted WinslowE-MAIL: [EMAIL PROTECTED] Division of Social Science VOICE: (416) 736-5054 York UniversityFAX: (416) 736-5615 4700 Keele St. Toronto, Ontario CANADA M3J 1P3
