Re: Re: Bank lending falls in Japan
Despite the fact that the government has lowered interest rates to ridiculous levels, bank lending actually fell in Japan in November. To interpret which evidence it is not sufficent to be a radical Keynesian. One must be marxist. Chris Burford London Belson, Ken Now bonds pose a problem for Japan's troubled banks. New York Times (Nov 27, 2001):W1(N), W1(L). Chris, i can't get access the article from here, but i think it underlines an important facet of Japan's crisis. rb
FW: Scheiber on the recession -- does what he says make sense to you, Jim?
Some on pen-l may be interested in the following comments that I wrote on a _New Republic_ [New York] article (http://www.thenewrepublic.com/120301/scheiber120301.html). Anyway, I am forwarding to you an essay by Scheiber in the New Republic. He argues that the recession we're in may be longer lasting that many people think. thanks. I think the article is pretty good, though it has some major limitations. I know you write about such matters, especially as regards the Great Depression. Do you have any thoughts about what Scheiber [NS] says here? [the comments below are based on my memories. I don't have the time to re-read the article.] NS's analysis, as I said, is pretty good, but far from perfect. His perspective is that of Schumpeter [JS], which seems pretty appropriate this year. (Interestingly, many of Schumpeter's best ideas come from Marx.) Basically, JS's idea about business cycles is that excesses of the boom period cause a recession which need to be purged by the post-recession stagnation. That's why JS argued that nothing should be done about the Great Depression of the 1930s: eventually, nature would take its course and everything would be hunky-dory once again. Whether he was right or wrong, this prescription wasn't seen as adequate by those who suffered from the Depression's brunt, so that JS's views lost popularity. Nonetheless, NS's analysis of the recession being the aftermath of an over-investment process is okay. I wish he hadn't over-emphasized the high-tech information technology sector. It the process also involved such mundane matters as movie screens (which he mentions later, in passing) and shopping malls. (There was craziness in a lot of industries, as was recently revealed in the Enron collapse.) More crucially, I think he misses a major point: we've seen over-investment and over-building before without the current kind of results. Somehow monetary and fiscal policy worked in the past. NS should bring in other analysts' ideas. Wynne Godley and Alex Izureta (sp?) of the Jerome Levy Institute at Bard College predicted the current collapse pretty well -- without making the silly mistake of pretending they could predict the date. Their analysis indicates the kinds of things that NS leaves out: they point to the government surplus (which the Clintonoids were worshiping). That surplus meant that in order to have the kind of economic boom of the sort that occurred in the late 1990s and 2000, the private sector (households, corporations) would have to have a big deficit, i.e., run up debt. This debt accumulation cannot persist forever, as interest and principle payments grow relative to after-tax income. Different from but complementary to their analysis is my three bears theory [I have some papers on my web-site on this]. R.J. Gordon -- who NS cites -- referred to the Goldilocks economy of the late 1990s. The three bears, I said, are eventually going to be coming back, destroying Goldilocks: consumer indebtedness is rising severely, corporate debt is rising steeply, while the whole thing was based on increased U.S. indebtedness to the rest of the world. Goldilocks was living on borrowed time. (Maybe that's the appropriate punishment for a little blonde girl who breaks enters, steals food, destroys furniture, and invades the more private part of a family's home, the beds.) Following JS, NS puts much too much emphasis on expansionary monetary policy as being the problem. In this analysis, the Fed was giving the junkie more of the drug, hoping that eventually the problem would be solved but instead making matters worse, meaning that the junkie's stay at rehab would be longer. This totally ignores the effort by Greenspan to restrain the economy in 2000 (taking the punch bowl away before the party gets rowdy). Greenspan was raising interest rates in order to avoid irrational exuberance of the stock market along with avoiding the (illusory) threat of inflation. Frankly, I don't think Greenspan had an easy job (even though people at the time treated him like a demigod, a Maestro). The debt and over-investment situations were steadily getting worse, encouraging a steep recession (which Greenspan didn't want), but he didn't want the financial bubble to continue. That is, he had conflicting goals, though he portrayed it in terms of engineering a soft landing. (NS's shallow analysis of monetary policy seems a symptom of his effort to force the real world into a Schumpeterian bed of Procrustes.) I'm afraid that NS also ends up being too optimistic. The imbalances that Godley and Izureta point to haven't been worked out of the economy yet. The corporate debt overhang is still there and will become worse as demand slumps further. Consumer debt is becoming a more and more serious problem as lay-offs spread and unemployment soars. (I use this last word advisedly: the recent measured jump in the unemployment rate was pretty big by historical standards.) The problem of US
oil conspiracy?
[ Mann was the American ambassador to Turkmenistan from 1998 until this May. Since then, he has served as the US State Department's Senior Advisor for Caspian Basin Energy Diplomacy.] EurasiaNet: What about a Turkmenistan-Afghanistan-Pakistan gas pipeline, which Unocal was interested in during the mid-1990s? That idea has been resurfacing lately in various commentaries and analyses. Mann: [Turkmen] President Saparmyat Niyazov raised this with me when I was in Ashgabat a few weeks ago. I repeated to him what I had been saying for years when I was ambassador to Turkmenistan. The most serious problems for a pipeline taking Turkmenistan's gas through Pakistan - to anywhere - have nothing to do with Afghanistan. They concern, rather, the financial situation in Pakistan, the continued heavy regulation of natural gas prices in Pakistan, and the fact that prospects for Pakistani exports to India are less than sure. All these elements make the downstream from Turkmenistan very difficult, and none of them has anything to do with Afghanistan - which is a separate, large problem. http://www.eurasianet.org/departments/qanda/articles/eav110801.shtml
Re: FW:Slate Politics: Pipe Dreams
[EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: From SLATE magazine, FYI. It's too early in the morning for me to read this, so I am in no way endorsing it. However, a little bit of skepticism is always a good idea. tangled web Pipe Dreams [CLIP] What's absurd about the pipeline theory is how thoroughly it discounts the obvious reason the United States set the bombers loose on Afghanistan: Terrorists headquartered in Afghanistan attacked America's financial and military centers, killing 4,000 people, and then took credit for it. Nopemust be the pipeline. I think _both_ these theories can be rejected. The pipeline theory oversimplifies the strategy and power of an imperial power such as the U.S.. It falls at least partly in that 10% of human activity which only a modified vulgar marxism can explain. But a rejection of such a theory (or similar narrow ones) does not by any means commit one to accepting what Slate here calls the obvious reason. The obvious reason is that (according to the best lights of those now making the decisions) u.s. imperialism is defending its world hegemony. And I want to emphasize _best lights_: One must never discount the possibility that the decision makers do not understand their own interests; that they almost certainly are blundering some, and even may be committing a great blunder. Conspiracy theories treat politics, and especially imperial politics, as a game, in which all moves are made by a single unified intelligence. Absurd. Moves are made in a complex interplay of motives and participants in decision making. I haven't offered an explanation of my own, except at the most general level. The SOBs in D.C. are threats to human survival and must be opposed in every way possible. Our strategy and tactics require serious and hard thinking. Deciding on our strategic goal (in response to the primary contradiction in the world today) of defeating U.S. imperialism requires only minimal thinking combined with minimal recognition of the facts. Debate over this goal is only an obstruction to the hard thinking that needs to be done. Carrol
Study: 3,500 Civilians killed in Afghanistan by U.S. Bombs
FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE DECEMBER 10, 2001 10:00 AM CONTACT: Marc Herold Marc Herold (603) 862-3375 Andrea Buffa (510) 839-8911 3,500 Civilians Killed in Afghanistan by U.S. Bombs University of New Hampshire Economics Professor Releases Study of Civilian Casualties in Afghanistan Monday Morning on Democracy Now! Radio/TV Show DURHAM, NEW HAMPSHIRE - December 10 - More than 3,500 civilians have been killed in Afghanistan by U.S. bombs, according to a study to be released December 10 by Marc W. Herold, Professor of Economics, International Relations, and Women's Studies at the University of New Hampshire. Professor Herold will announce his findings on Monday, December 10 in a discussion with award-winning journalist, Amy Goodman of Democracy Now! in Exile's War and Peace Report (http://www.democracynow.org). Professor Herold has been gathering data on civilian casualties since October 7 by culling information from news agencies, major newspapers, and first-hand accounts. I decided to do the study because I suspected that the modern weaponrywas not what it was advertised to be. I was concerned that there would be significant civilian casualties caused by the bombing, and I was able to find some mention of casualties in the foreign press but almost nothing in the U.S. press, said Herold. Herold's data will be available at http://pubpages.unh.edu/~mwherold/. For each day since October 7, when the U.S. bombing of Afghanistan began, he lists the number of casualties, location, type of weapon used, and source(s) of information. Following are several examples from his daily calculations: * On October 11, two U.S. jets bombed the mountain village of Karam, comprised of 60 mud houses, during dinner and evening prayer time, killing 100-160 people. Sources: DAWN, (English language Pakistani daily newspaper), the Guardian of London, the Independent, International Herald Tribune, the Scotsman, the Observer, and the BBC News. * On October 13, in the early morning, an F-18 dropped 2,000 lb. JDAM bombs on the Qila Meer Abas neighborhood, 2 kms. South of the Kabul airport, killing four people. Sources: Afghan Islamic Press, Los Angeles Times, Frontier Post, Pakistan Observer, the Guardian of London, and the BBC News. * On October 31, in a pre-dawn raid, an F-18 dropped a 2,000 lb. JDAM bomb on a Red Crescent clinic, killing 15 - 25 people. Sources: DAWN, the Times of London, the Independent, the Guardian, Reuters, Associated Press, and Agence France Presse. Professor Herold has sought whenever possible to cross-corroborate accounts of civilian casualties. He relied upon British, Canadian, and Australian newspapers; Indian newspapers, especially The Times of India; three Pakistani daily newspapers; the Singapore News; Afghan Islamic Press; Agence France Press; Pakistan News Service; Reuters; BBC News Online; Al Jazeera; and a variety of other reputable sources, including the United Nations and other relief agencies. The Pentagon has repeatedly denied reports of civilian casualties in Afghanistan, and most U.S. media outlets have qualified their reports of casualties with the statement could not be independently confirmed. But Professor Herold has been able to confirm the number of casualties and has found that the number is climbing toward 4,000. People have to know that there is a human cost to war, and that this is a war with thousands of casualties, said Herold. These were poor people to begin with, and, on top of that, they had absolutely nothing to do with the events of September 11. ### ___
Stupid profit rate question
How does one calculate the profit rate for a given unit cost? I'm assuming it is: 100% * ((profit - unit cost) / unit cost) Is this correct? So, if something has a unit cost of 2 cents, and sells for 1 dollar, the profit rate is: 100% * ((100 - 2) / 2) or, in this case, 4,900%?? Bill
RE: Stupid profit rate question
How does one calculate the profit rate for a given unit cost? I'm assuming it is: 100% * ((profit - unit cost) / unit cost) Is this correct? If you replace profit with price per unit, that's more like a profit margin. a profit _rate_ would measure total profit [(price - unit cost) times the number of units sold] as a percentage of capital invested. Jim Devine
Baker on external debt
In his highly-useful article The New Economy Goes Bust: What the Record Shows [http://www.cepr.net/new_economy_goes_bust.htm], Dean Baker comments on the fact that the US has replaced its government deficit (taxes spending) and debt accumulation with an external deficit (exports imports) and debt accumulation. He writes: In some ways a foreign debt is a more serious problem than government debt. Foreign debt is a claim on domestic resources by people living outside the country. Government debt is essentially a redistribution of claims on resources among people living within the country. In principle, the interest paid on the debt can be largely taxed back by the government, or the real value of the debt can be reduced with inflation. These options are not generally available to reduce the burden of the foreign debt. A paranoid thought: what if George Bush's efforts to create a US-dominated world government is an effort to change this? Now that the US external debt is increasingly gigantic, if the US government can get taxing power over the rest of the world... it would be a little like when the various states joined the US union back in the 1780s and were able to get the Federal government to help them with their debts. On the other hand, the US already the ability to reduce its external debt via inflation, since that debt is almost entirely denominated in dollars. Another question: do pen-l people agree with Baker that The cause of the [2001 U.S.] recession was the collapse of the stock market bubble? I'd say that the popping of the bubble was only the _proximate_ cause, as in 1929, but that the U.S. economy was riding for a fall. Jim Devine [EMAIL PROTECTED] http://bellarmine.lmu.edu/~jdevine
Re: RE: Stupid profit rate question
Jim is right. What is the cost per unit? Does it include the depreciation of durable plant and equipment? If so, the invested value of the durable plant and equipment would be in the denominator. Because economists and accountants have no realistic way of putting a value on durable equipment, profit ratios are often questionable. On Mon, Dec 10, 2001 at 04:03:05PM -0800, Devine, James wrote: How does one calculate the profit rate for a given unit cost? I'm assuming it is: 100% * ((profit - unit cost) / unit cost) Is this correct? If you replace profit with price per unit, that's more like a profit margin. a profit _rate_ would measure total profit [(price - unit cost) times the number of units sold] as a percentage of capital invested. Jim Devine -- Michael Perelman Economics Department California State University Chico, CA 95929 Tel. 530-898-5321 E-Mail [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Economic of Participation conference
11th CONFERENCE OF THE INTERNATIONAL ASSOCIATION FOR THE ECONOMICS OF PARTICIPATION 'PARTICIPATION WORLD-WIDE' Catholic University of Brussels, Belgium 4-6 July 2002 Conference themes The bi-annual IAFEP conferences provide an international forum for the presentation and debate of current research and scholarship on the economics of participation. The major themes of the 2002 conference will be: . Development and combination of forms of workers' participation around the world . Theoretical and empirical studies on the economic and social effects of participation . Workers' participation across borders, in a transnational and global context . Employee participation and EU enlargement . Employee ownership in transition economies . Workers' participation and social economy in developing countries . Workers' participation, social dialogue and civil society Presentations in the following areas are welcome: . Co-determination, works councils, European works councils . Other forms of workers' participation in decision-making . Employee ownership . Self-management, labour-managed firms . Cooperatives . Profit sharing . Economic and industrial democracy . Social enterprises in welfare services Outline Forms of workers' participation are expanding all over the world, and thus seem to have a role in the highly competitive global economy. In the United States, thousands of companies have promoted forms of employee share-ownership and profit-sharing as part of a competitive management policy. In the European Union, workers' participation has become a basic element of the European Social Model, with the promotion of various participatory forms -such as information and consultation, financial participation, and workers' involvement in decision-making- that are developing also in a transnational manner, as witnessed by the recent promotion of European Works Councils. Forms of self-management have been promoted in a number of countries, especially after having been encouraged in the privatisation process carried out by transition economies, in Central and Eastern Europe, Central Asia, and elsewhere. Workers' participation has also been experienced by enterprises in several countries in Asia and South America, and different forms of it are also emerging in many African countries. The aim of the Conference is to provide some assessment of workers' participation as a world phenomenon, and to present new aspects, both theoretical and empirical, of its economic effects, economic performance, and new role in a global economy. Specific emphasis will also be given to the combination of different forms of workers' participation and their effectiveness, from both the economic and the social standpoints. The Conference is also intended to identify how forms of workers' participation can develop and evolve within a context of massive capital movements and internationalisation of economies. While the first plenary session will be dedicated to workers' participation in the European Union, and its prospects in an enlarged EU, the presentation of studies on workers' participation experiences in other areas and countries of the world would be most welcome. We therefore issue a particular call to academics and practitioners working on countries for which as yet no significant research has been done in this area. Call for papers Submissions are invited from all relevant fields of study, including labour economics, comparative economic systems, industrial economics, organisational studies, management studies, economic sociology, institutional economics, evolutionary economics, development economics, and studies of economies in transition. Abstract submission deadline Proposals for papers to be presented at the conference should be sent electronically in the form of an abstract of up to 300 words. The deadline for receipt of the abstracts is 28 February 2002. They should include full details of institutional affiliation and a mailing address. Authors will be notified of the acceptance of their papers by 31 March. Final papers plus extended abstracts should be submitted to the organisers by 15 May 2002. Each paper should be no more than 8,000 words in length. The conference organisers will arrange for the reproduction and distribution of each paper before the conference. Abstracts should be sent to the following e-mail: [EMAIL PROTECTED] They may also be sent to: Daniel Vaughan-Whitehead, Avenue du Pesage, 127, B-1050 Bruxelles, Belgium. Young Scholars Prize on Workers' Participation We have the pleasure to announce that the Prize for the best research work on the subject of the economics of participation will be delivered at the Conference. Applicants should be scholars/researchers under 32, having completed or finalising a PhD on workers' participation, either in economics or other related discipline. As described above, the economics of participation overlap with several fields such as labour,
Re: Re: Stupid profit rate question
On Monday, December 10, 2001 at 16:03:05 (-0800) Devine, James writes: How does one calculate the profit rate for a given unit cost? I'm assuming it is: 100% * ((profit - unit cost) / unit cost) Is this correct? If you replace profit with price per unit, that's more like a profit margin. Yes, stupid typo for a stupid question. The formula should be: 100% * ((price per unit - unit cost) / unit cost) a profit _rate_ would measure total profit [(price - unit cost) times the number of units sold] as a percentage of capital invested. OK, so profit margin is, as above: 100% * ((price per unit - unit cost) / unit cost) and profit rate is: 100% * ((price per unit - unit cost) * units sold) / invested capital ? So, if I sell 100 widgets that cost 2 cents to make at 1 dollar a piece, and if I had to spend ten thousand dollars to set up the plant to do the work, the profit rate would be: 100% * ((1.00 - .02) * 100) / 1 or .98 percent, while the profit margin would be (again), 4,900%? Bill
Re: Re: Stupid profit rate question
On Monday, December 10, 2001 at 16:15:35 (-0800) Michael Perelman writes: Jim is right. What is the cost per unit? Does it include the depreciation of durable plant and equipment? If so, the invested value of the durable plant and equipment would be in the denominator. Because economists and accountants have no realistic way of putting a value on durable equipment, profit ratios are often questionable. So, using profit ratios (profit *rate*, or profit *margin*) is not a good way to view how competitive a market is? Bill
Re: Baker on external debt
Devine, James wrote: Another question: do pen-l people agree with Baker that The cause of the [2001 U.S.] recession was the collapse of the stock market bubble? I'd say that the popping of the bubble was only the _proximate_ cause, as in 1929, but that the U.S. economy was riding for a fall. I don't have the technical knowledge to have a legitimate opinion on this, but based largely on what I've read (on list or elsewhere) by people on this list, it rather seems that the bubble burst was an _effect_ of the developing recession rather than any sort of cause at all. (Except in the, almost tautological, sense that in a dynamic system effects snowball into enhancements of the efficacy of the original cause(s).?? Carrol
Re: Re: Re: Stupid profit rate question
The first year, that would be the profit rate. God knows what the profit rate should be the second year. What is the depreciation rate? How is it affected by the business cycle? On Mon, Dec 10, 2001 at 07:18:45PM -0600, William S. Lear wrote: On Monday, December 10, 2001 at 16:03:05 (-0800) Devine, James writes: How does one calculate the profit rate for a given unit cost? I'm assuming it is: 100% * ((profit - unit cost) / unit cost) Is this correct? If you replace profit with price per unit, that's more like a profit margin. Yes, stupid typo for a stupid question. The formula should be: 100% * ((price per unit - unit cost) / unit cost) a profit _rate_ would measure total profit [(price - unit cost) times the number of units sold] as a percentage of capital invested. OK, so profit margin is, as above: 100% * ((price per unit - unit cost) / unit cost) and profit rate is: 100% * ((price per unit - unit cost) * units sold) / invested capital ? So, if I sell 100 widgets that cost 2 cents to make at 1 dollar a piece, and if I had to spend ten thousand dollars to set up the plant to do the work, the profit rate would be: 100% * ((1.00 - .02) * 100) / 1 or .98 percent, while the profit margin would be (again), 4,900%? Bill -- Michael Perelman Economics Department California State University Chico, CA 95929 Tel. 530-898-5321 E-Mail [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Re: Re: Re: Stupid profit rate question
The answer -- and which of these you want to look at -- depends on the amount of capital per unit of sale. For example, supermarkets are always touting the claim that they make only 1% or 2% on sales. But what do they make on capital? Somewhere upwards of 15 or 20 or 25% or more? Other industries might have substantially more investment per unit of sales -- they would point in the opposite direction --- i. e. a low profit rate, while perhaps earning a high profit margin. Gene Coyle William S. Lear wrote: On Monday, December 10, 2001 at 16:15:35 (-0800) Michael Perelman writes: Jim is right. What is the cost per unit? Does it include the depreciation of durable plant and equipment? If so, the invested value of the durable plant and equipment would be in the denominator. Because economists and accountants have no realistic way of putting a value on durable equipment, profit ratios are often questionable. So, using profit ratios (profit *rate*, or profit *margin*) is not a good way to view how competitive a market is? Bill
Re: Re: Re: Stupid profit rate question
Bill, turnover rates are an important factor. If a supermarket sells a loaf of bread each day. The bread costs $1 and it sells for $1.01. But it makes $3.65 per year on the bread. On Mon, Dec 10, 2001 at 07:20:42PM -0600, William S. Lear wrote: On Monday, December 10, 2001 at 16:15:35 (-0800) Michael Perelman writes: Jim is right. What is the cost per unit? Does it include the depreciation of durable plant and equipment? If so, the invested value of the durable plant and equipment would be in the denominator. Because economists and accountants have no realistic way of putting a value on durable equipment, profit ratios are often questionable. So, using profit ratios (profit *rate*, or profit *margin*) is not a good way to view how competitive a market is? Bill -- Michael Perelman Economics Department California State University Chico, CA 95929 Tel. 530-898-5321 E-Mail [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Re: Re: Stupid profit rate question
On Monday, December 10, 2001 at 17:31:20 (-0800) Michael Perelman writes: Bill, turnover rates are an important factor. If a supermarket sells a loaf of bread each day. The bread costs $1 and it sells for $1.01. But it makes $3.65 per year on the bread. I guess I should say that what I'm interested in is a measure of which markets are good candidates for public investment. It seems that if you have high profit *margins*, low unit costs, and high capital investment costs (as with drugs), the public would win big-time --- of course in more ways than one --- by paying the investment costs. I'm just wondering with which markets we should start our program of public ownership. Bill
wars on terrorism
Lots of wars on terror The Bush doctrine is now a template for conflicts worldwide: to every action a disproportionate response Gary Younge Monday December 10, 2001 The Guardian President George Bush has cemented unlikely friendships over the last months. Not even war crimes during Ramadan could shake his partnership with Pakistan's General Pervez Musharraf. Nor could his insistence on pursuing military supremacy in space disrupt his chemistry with the Russian premier, Vladimir Putin. But there can be no less likely partner in his war against terror than Zimbabwe's President Mugabe. As a leader who constantly rails against the nefarious effects of colonialism, imperialism, racism and international capital on developing countries - often correctly but always cynically - Mugabe would not appear to be a natural cheerleader for US military campaigns. But when it comes to combating terror the US president could have no finer friend. We agree with President Bush that anyone who in any way finances, harbours or defends terrorists is himself a terrorist, says Jonathan Moyo, Mugabe's mouthpiece. We, too, will not make any difference between terrorists and their friends and supporters. Bush's words are reverberating around the world. They are most obviously echoed in Israel. You in America are in a war against terror, Ariel Sharon said after he left the White House following suicide bombings in Haifa and Jerusalem. We in Israel are in a war against terror - it's the same war. They have been repeated by the Indian premier, Atal Bihari Vajpayee. Both our countries have been familiar with the ugly face of terrorism long before September 11, he said recently in London, referring to violence from Kashmiri secessionists. We have to go beyond al-Qaida in our war against terrorism and target all sponsors who finance, train, equip and harbour terrorists. And the words have found currency far closer to home. What happened in America is the same as that which has been carried out in the UK, and in particular in Northern Ireland, argued David Trimble and Iain Duncan Smith in a joint article two weeks ago. Osama bin Laden and his followers are no different from those who planned and carried out Omagh, Warrenpoint, Hyde Park, Enniskillen or other atrocities during 30 years of terrorism in Ulster. Impressively, for a man not known for eloquence or erudition, Bush is about to find an entire, holistic approach to international affairs has been coined in his name. The Bush doctrine is being evoked as a template for conflict resolution worldwide. As Pentagon hawks hover, hunting for more enemies, the Bush doctrine threatens to extend beyond a response to September 11 and become a rule for dealing with the US's global pariahs. Others are finding the rule convenient to appropriate to deal with local difficulties. Relying exclusively on the use of force, the Bush doctrine maxim is: To every action there should be an unequal and disproportionate reaction. Its success or failure hinges not on the moral value of its execution nor the long-term consequences of its application but on its ability to produce military results. A considered response does not mean considering a range of responses. It means waiting a few weeks and then doing what you said you would do on day one. According to the Bush doctrine, the war in Afghanistan has been vindicated because it has militarily removed the Taliban. That it has killed hundreds of innocents, exacerbated a humanitarian disaster threatening millions of lives and provoked regional instability by polarising and alienating the Muslim world in a way that will produce a new generation of terrorists is neither here nor there. The doctrine's logic suggests that the problem with the Vietnam war was not that it sent thousands of young Americans to their deaths in a bid to prevent a poor country choosing an ideological path opposed to US geopolitical interests. The problem was that the Vietnamese won. One of the great benefits of the theory is that it is very simple. Unencumbered by context, causality, proof or persuasion, you need to understand nothing about your enemy but the fact that it must be eliminated. So long as you are convinced of its guilt, you do not need to prove it to anyone else. There should be no negotiation or mediation, no distinction between those who commit acts of political violence and those who support them. As a response to September 11 some may think this reasonable - the Bush doctrine is defined by military results not political ramifications. But apply it to any other conflict and its faults are immediately apparent. Morph Gerry Adams into Osama bin Laden and west Belfast into Kandahar, carpet bomb, and see what happens to the peace process. Defining a terrorist under the Bush doctrine is entirely dependent on the balance of forces at any time. Those the Americans once financed they now seek to execute. In Zimbabwe, terrorists means journalists who question the
Re: Re: Re: Stupid profit rate question
Yes, the criterium that you suggest is appropriate, but mark-ups can be misleading. William S. Lear wrote: I guess I should say that what I'm interested in is a measure of which markets are good candidates for public investment. It seems that if you have high profit *margins*, low unit costs, and high capital investment costs (as with drugs), the public would win big-time --- of course in more ways than one --- by paying the investment costs. I'm just wondering with which markets we should start our program of public ownership. Bill -- Michael Perelman Economics Department California State University [EMAIL PROTECTED] Chico, CA 95929 530-898-5321 fax 530-898-5901
the Euro
The house of cards that Jacques built Larry Elliott Monday December 10, 2001 The Guardian The house that Jacques built is almost ready. In three weeks time, crisp euro notes and shiny euro coins will be replacing francs, marks, pesetas and all the other currencies of the nations that joined monetary union. As the last lick of paint is applied, there are wistful looks from this side of the channel. Tony Blair, we are told, would like to live in the house that Jacques Delors built. He feels he has rather outgrown his cosy little semi and wants to move into something bigger. Like any potential homebuyer, Tony knows that it is one thing hankering after a new pile, quite another being able to afford the asking price, however. The sums, in other words, have to add up. And that's where the difficulties begin. Although it has been more than a decade in the planning, the house that Jacques built already looks passé, the economic equivalent of a 1960s tower block. Back in 1988 when the Delors commission started laying the foundations for monetary union, it seemed natural that the central bank charged with setting interest rates should be based on the German Bundesbank. Germany was the most successful country in Europe and, together with Japan, seemed to have all the answers to the economic problems of the day. Even had this not been the case, the Bundesbank would still have been the template for the European Central Bank. Everyone knew that without Germany there would be no monetary union, and the German people needed reassurance that a single currency would not involve the dilution of their beloved mark. Doing things the German way meant not just setting up the ECB as a carbon copy of the Bundesbank, but creating an institution that would be even more dedicated to fighting inflation. Balanced budgets Nor was this the end of it. While the German government was happy enough about the arrangements for monetary policy, there was always the danger that some of the more profligate members of the club - Italy, for one - would play fast and loose with fiscal policy. There had to be a mechanism for preventing governments running large budget deficits as a way of mitigating the effects of a centrally controlled monetary policy. As such, Theo Waigel, the German finance minister at the time, came up with the idea of adding an extension to the house that Jacques built, called the Stability and Growth Pact. All countries would agree to balance budgets over the medium term, with fines threatened for those whose deficits exceeded 3% of GDP. Warnings that this would make recessions worse by preventing fiscal policy acting as a shock-absorber during economic downturns were ignored. There are those in Paris - and even Berlin - who now wish that the advice had been heeded, because Europe's macroeconomic framework no longer looks like the latest in swish design and the obsession with fighting a war that was over long ago is amplifying the effects of the global downturn. German bankruptcies are up nearly 20% in the past year, unemployment has been rising for the past 11 months and is forecast to rise above 4m over the winter. The German economy contracted in the second and third quarters of this year and - judging by Friday's dire figures for industrial output - will contract even more rapidly in the fourth. We have particular concerns over Germany, said the City firm ABN Amro last week. The ECB is explicitly setting monetary policy for the euro zone in aggregate. This means that interest rates will remain far too high for Germany. In addition, the permanent fixing of the nominal exchange rates rules out the option of a sizeable depreciation of the mark and EMU also means there is limited scope for fiscal stimulus. ABN Amro believes that Germany could become the next Japan. In fact, the medium-term outlook could be even worse, since Japan at least has the ability to apply the remedies necessary for recovery. Germany does not. The one-size-fits-all policy means it is impossible to regulate the central heating system in the house that Jacques built; some rooms are too hot, some too cold. Germany is too cold. The ECB's obsession with inflation and its failure to be act pre-emptively means that it is keeping interest rates too high for too long. Inflation in the eurozone is 2.1%, above the ECB's ceiling, but pressures are abating fast. Prices have risen by an annualised 1.2% in the past six months, and with Europe's economy weakening, rates should be coming down fast. Delay means another grim year ahead. Faced with the consequences of a deflationary monetary policy, the sensible thing for Germany would be to ease fiscal policy, even though that would mean breaching the 3% limit set by the stability and growth pact. Not possible, said Didier Reynders, Belgium's finance minister last week. Rules are rules. The world has moved on. Inflation is no longer the only problem facing policy makers. Central banks that go in
Re: Afghanistan class
comments on ObL as a young Saudi educated into a strict Wahabi system both in schools and at the Mosque where Qur'an is learned. As with any royals, the Saudis are a paradox, tied to ultra orthodox literal interpretations of Islam, which legitimates power, while modern in terms of financial gains and power enforcement. Having been both student and teacher in the Saudi higher educational system, i can comfortably say that ObL is not as extreme as many others of his generation. He lacks the one most important ingredient to be a leader for the most hardline ultra-orthodox Saudi youth, and that is bedouin tribal lineage. An ethnographic profile of his followers with Saudi passports would show them to be like him, although not wealthy like his family, alienated newly urbanized villagers from the south, with family roots stretching across borders with Yemen. None of his followers, if we can call them that, were from the old Wahabi tribes of Nejd. In short, ObL represents a noveau bourgeoise form of born again charismatic from a puritanical background, such as the Waco cult with its origins in American Southern Baptist Evangelical Bible Belt neo-fundamentalism, and his (sic) followers, declasse new urbanites from rural backgrounds with low tribal status. Of course, the newly christened Bush doctrine, itself a very bible belt, redneck construct, cares nothing for such subtleties of anthropological or sociological analysis of ethnicity or other factors that go into the making of the Tim McVeighs or ObL's. Bush's aim is not to understand but to crush all in the way of a newly resurgent American Juggernaut, and were he not so well integrated into the power structure, however many failures he has under his belt, he could well be a maverick, born again political radical ensnarled in Texas' biblically chaotic politics. jb -Original Message- From: Rakesh Bhandari [mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED]] Sent: Friday, December 07, 2001 4:40 PM To: [EMAIL PROTECTED] Subject: [PEN-L:20457] Re: RE: Re: RE: Re: RE: Re: Afghanistan class Jim writes: the US southern slave-owners didn't fight for their independence in order to tighten control over their slaves. Rather, they did so to _defend_ their control over slaves. It's quite possible for oppressors to be reactionary. Jim, this is a weird analogy. It's enough that 9/11 is Pearl Harbor and al Qaeda Imperial Japan. Does the royal family have to become the slavocracy? It's possible that they did it also to buy off ObL. (The German richies thought they could buy off Hitler, after all, so he'd become reasonable like Mussolini.) buy him off to do what? perhaps the private capitalist class in Sa'udi Arabia is not as worried about popular discontent as the royal family forcing their way onto the boards of private company? i am just guessing, so are you. is the hitler analogy getting us anywhere especially if there is resistance among private businessmen to the priviliges of the House of Sa'ud which is multiplying as a result of polygamy and thus has to encroach on private business in order to enjoy their luxurious lifestyles? hitchens is always talking about facing new realities, but the whole discourse is overburdened with anachronistic analogies. I have yet to read anything penetrating by Hitchens or you about the nature of the conflicts within Saudi Arabia. I responded to the rest in the other post. Rakesh
RE: Baker on external debt
I have yet to hear a Bushie express anxiety about the trade deficit. The fact that foreigners own more U.S. assets might mean little to the Bushies if they own the foreigners. mbs A paranoid thought: what if George Bush's efforts to create a US-dominated world government is an effort to change this? Now that the US external debt is increasingly gigantic, if the US government can get taxing power over the rest of the world... it would be a little like when the various states joined the US union back in the 1780s and were able to get the Federal government to help them with their debts. On the other hand, the US already the ability to reduce its external debt via inflation, since that debt is almost entirely denominated in dollars. Another question: do pen-l people agree with Baker that The cause of the [2001 U.S.] recession was the collapse of the stock market bubble? I'd say that the popping of the bubble was only the _proximate_ cause, as in 1929, but that the U.S. economy was riding for a fall. Jim Devine [EMAIL PROTECTED] http://bellarmine.lmu.edu/~jdevine
Re: Re: Re: Stupid profit rate question
Title: Re: [PEN-L:20537] Re: Re: Stupid profit rate question Bill wrote On Monday, December 10, 2001 at 17:31:20 (-0800) Michael Perelman writes: Bill, turnover rates are an important factor. If a supermarket sells a loaf of bread each day. The bread costs $1 and it sells for $1.01. But it makes $3.65 per year on the bread. I guess I should say that what I'm interested in is a measure of which markets are good candidates for public investment. Though Mattick Sr was interested in a different facet of so called public investments, I thought that I would mention his argument that debt or tax financed public expenditures are not in fact *investments* (that is, a moment in the valorization of capital) but rather hidden state appropriations that over time diminish, rather than enlargen, the sum of surplus value. Here are a couple of quotes: The government increases effective demand through purchases from private industry, either financed with tax money or by borrowings on the capital market. In so far as it finances its expenditures with tax money, it merely transfers money made in the private sector to the public sector, which may change the character of production to some extent but does not necessarily enlarge it. If the government borrows money in the capital market, it can increase production through its purchases. Capital exists either in liquid form, i.e. as money, or in fixed form, that is, as means and materials of production. The money borrowed by government puts productive resources to work. These resources are private property, which, in order to function as capital, must be reproduced and enlarged. Depreciation charges and profits gained in the course of government-contracted production--are 'realized' out of money borrowed by the government. but this money, too, is private property--on loan to the government at a certain rate of interest. Production is thus increased, the expense of which piles U.S. as government indebtedness. To pay off its debts and the interest on them, the government has to use tax money, or make new borrowings. The expense of additional, government contracted production thus carried by private capital, even though it is distributed over the whole of society and over a long period of time. In other words, the products which the government 'purchases' are not really purchased, but given to the government free, for the government has nothing to give in return but its credit standing, which in turn has no other base than the government taxing power and its ability to increase the supply of credit money. We will not enter here into the intricacies of this rather complex process, for, however, the credit expansion is brought about and however it is dealt with in the course of expanding government-induced production, one thing is clear, namely, that the national debt, and the interest on it, cannot be honored save as a reduction of current and future income generated in the private sector of the economy... Because government induced production is itself a sign of a declining rate of capital formation in the traditional sense, it cannot be expected to serve as the vehicle of private capital expansion effective enough to assure conditions of full employment and general prosperity. It rather turns into an obstacle into such expansion, as the demands of government on the economy, and old and new claims on the government, divert an increasing part of the newly produced profit from its capitalization to private account. Of course, claims on the government, which make up the national debt, can be repudiated, and 'profits' made via government induced production are thus revealed for they actually are, namely, imaginary profits. Mattick also wrote: The money capital utilized by the government is not invested as capital and so preserved but disappears into ìpublic consumption.î If the state debt is ever paid off--which may well not happen--it can only be paid out of new surplus value freshly created in production. And this would in no way alter the fact that the surplus value represented in the national debt has vanished without a trace instead of adding its volume to the accumulation of capital. It follows that the stateís use of increased public spending to fight crisis ends by consuming capital. This consumption of capital appears as a growth of production and employment, but due to its unprofitable character, it is no longer capitalist production and really amounts to a hidden form of expropriation by the state. The state uses the money of one group of capitalists to buy the production of another group, with the intention of satisfying both groups by assuring for one the interest on and for the other the profitability of its capital. But the incomes that appear here as interest and profit can only be paid out of the total social surplus value actually produced, even if the reckoning can be deferred. As a result, from the standpoint of the system as a whole the
RE: Re: RE: Re: Afghanistan class
Rakesh, agreed, in the byzantine political mazes of late 20th century trans-cold war LDC's, religion is used as a reactionary tool by most secular politicians, hmmm, what differes from the US moral majority? . Anyway, progressive religious figures, especially those who are socialists and stand up for social justice, whether Ali Shariati or Camillo Torres, are soon gunned down by one faction or another of power brokers or their pawns. jb -Original Message- From: Rakesh Bhandari [mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED]] Sent: Friday, December 07, 2001 4:54 PM To: [EMAIL PROTECTED] Subject: [PEN-L:20459] Re: RE: Re: Afghanistan class Jamil, i cannot comment on your historical analysis of the struggles of the moro people and the chechnyans, but your point against hasty aggregations is surely correct and important. It seems to me that sadat achieved a rapprochment with egyptian jehadi because they (like say the shiv sena in bombay) were effective thugs against organized labor. It is true of course that they later assassinated him, but i would argue that al qaeda with which the the Egyptian jihad seems to have merged are clearly forces of reaction. this political islam of the arabs is a dead end from the perspective of emancipated labor. even if there are anti imperialist elements to al-Qaeda, it promises only the same long night for the working class who in this battle is only being trampled on. Rakesh
RE: Re: Re: Stupid profit rate question
Don't own; just tax. Fewer headaches. -- mbs I'm just wondering with which markets we should start our program of public ownership. Bill
Re: RE: Baker on external debt
Title: Re: [PEN-L:20542] RE: Baker on external debt I have yet to hear a Bushie express anxiety about the trade deficit. The fact that foreigners own more U.S. assets might mean little to the Bushies if they own the foreigners. mbs good point, max. Robert Gilpin has made it as well: : America's cold war allies, fearing that a collapse of the dollar would force the U.S. to withdraw its forces from overseas and to retreat into political isolation, agreed to hold overvalued dollars. Also, such export-oriented economies as West Germany and, at a later date, Japan wished to keep access to the lucrative American market. Throughout the postwar era the U.S. always had one primary partner helping it to defend the dollar and hence the U.S. international position. In the early postwar period, the American position and support for the dollar were based on cooperation with the British; this ``special relationshipíí begun between the First and Second World Wars had been solidified by wartime experience. The Anglo-Saxons worked together to frame the Bretton Woods System and reestablish the liberal international economy. By the late 1960s, however, the relative decline of the British economy forced Great Britain to pull away from its close partnership with the U.S. West Germany then replaced Great Britain as the foremost economic partner of the U.S. and as the main supporter of the dollar. Throughout the Vietnam War and into the 1970s, the Germans supported American hegemony by holding dollars and buying American government securities. Inflationary and other consequences of this new special relationship weakened it in the mid 1970s and eventually led to a fracture in the late 1970s when the Germans refused to support President Carter's economic policies; the Germans then joined the French to sponsor the European Monetary System. Creation of this ``zone of stabilityíí in West Europe was the first of many efforts to isolate the European economies from the wild fluctuations of the dollar. In the 1980s, the Germans were replaced by the Japanese when, through their investments in the U.S., the Japanese provided financial backing for Reaganís economic and military policies. In the 1990s, sporadic informal cooperation among American, German, and Japanese central banks supported the international role of the dollar. This cooperation continued largely due to fear of what would happen to the international economic and political system if the monetary system were to break down (The Challenge of Global Capitalism: The World Economy in the 21st Century [Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2000]: 61-62 hey speaking about about foreigners, i am looking forward to a good populist review of the following (say by Lind if he's not too intoxicated with secular religion of so called liberal nationalism) so I don't actually have to read it. Operation Gatekeeper: The Rise of the 'Illegal Alien'and the Remaking of the U.S.-Mexico Boundary by Joseph Nevins From Publishers Weekly In 1994 the Clinton administration upped the neo-protectionist ante by doubling the budget for fences and trained agents along the border between Mexico and the U.S. Journalist Joseph Nevins's Operation Gatekeeper: The Rise of the `Illegal Alien' and the Remaking of the U.S.-Mexico Boundary explores this concerted effort to prevent illegal border crossings in the context of the mid-90s economic boom and the hundreds of thousands of legal Mexican immigrants. Examining physical, political and economic attributes of the Border culture often abstracted in postmodern literary and cultural criticism, Nevins argues that Clinton's program has done little to keep undocumented immigrants from entering but has increased the dangers for them as well as inflamed anti-immigrant tendencies in the U.S. Mike Davis's introduction will help draw attention to this astute book. Book Description By 1994 American anti-immigration rhetoric had reached a fevered pitch, and throngs of migrants entered the U.S. nightly. In response, the INS launched Operation Gatekeeper, the centerpiece of the Clinton administration's unprecedented effort to regain control of our borders. In Operation Gatekeeper, Joseph Nevins details the administration's dramatic overhaul of the San Diego-Tijauna border-the busiest land crossing in the world-adding miles of new fence and hundreds of trained agents. This crackdown came, paradoxically, at a time when borders were becoming increasingly irrelevant. Even as new fences were built, the border was enjoying enormous growth and integration, with nearly 300,000 workers crossing legally into the U.S. to work. However, proponents of the project successfully presented the immigrant not only as a lawbreaker, but as a threat to national sovereignty and American society. Nevins shows how this imagery resonated in a country with a history of racist anti-immigrant sentiment. Years later, Operation Gatekeeper has failed to significantly reduce
RE: Re: Ankara supports strike on Iraq
Ozal was too clever to be a IMF trainee, he was just a simple merchant from Malyata, where clever business grows on trees along with their well-famed apricots. (Sabri bey) What is good for the goose should be twice as good for the gander, may work as a metaphorical translation. Ozel's rise was as much a process of regional patronage as it was US patronage. His cronies made good use of his power to carve out a significant niche in the national arena for Malatya, and prepared the way for the so-called Anadolu kaplans (Anatolian Tigers), that far fetched light industrial faux miracle in the middle of the arid margins adjacent to Turkey's grain belt. Bottom line: cheap labour, cheap cotton, zero innovation, clever traders with Ozel era patronage = fast fading bloom that never matched even the lowest levels of productivity in Turkey's Izmit-Istanbul-Edirne industrial core. But here i would dig deeper for reasons to reclaim the old Ottoman province of Mosul(Northern Iraq), which was Ataturk's bitterest loss in negotiations for new frontiers to protect the fledgling nation-state of Turkey. Not only oil, but a heritage of Turkoman and Kurdish mountain marches, understood in geopolitical terms in relation to Iran and the Fertile crescent. Ataturk was a superb military tactician and political strategist who envisioned a turkey that was above all militarily and economically defensible. Even if it did not cross Ozel's forebrain, the seed of strategic boundaries encompassing both Hatay Mosul was implanted deep into the Turkish geopolitical subconscious. One last note regarding Cyprus. Ataturk never wanted any of the islands, which as a military man he knew to be too fractuous and difficult to defend and supply, nor would they provide adequate bases for marshalling forces to attack the mainland, neither that of Turkey or of Greece. The greatest geopolitical blunder of post-Ataturk military-political elites ruling Turkey was the invasion of Cyprus. Ataturk even sacrificed his home province of Salonika and accepted the necessity of accepting enormous numbers of Turkish refugees, rather than hold on to non-defensible territory. He may be rollig around in his grave over that blunder of the military Ecevit's social democratic but nationalist party. jb -Original Message- From: Sabri Oncu [mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED]] Sent: Friday, December 07, 2001 5:15 PM To: PEN-L Subject: [PEN-L:20460] Re: Ankara supports strike on Iraq On Wed, 5 Dec 2001, Sabri Oncu wrote: The losses caused during the Gulf War are still on the minds of Ankara, and the rhetoric of putting in one and gaining three, which was the slogan of former President Turgut Ozal during the Gulf War, is accepted as one of the biggest mistakes in Turkish history. Sabri, what did one and three refer to in Ozal's slogan? Was one Allow use of Turkish airbases where three was supposed to be gain in military strength vs. Iraq; and same vs. the Kurds; and gain international funds and support? Michael ++ Michael, It is a Turkish saying which I don't know how exactly to translate. I would argue that that bustard called Ozal meant 200% return in his investment in monetary terms, whatever this means. Possibly he was thinking about the Northern Iraqi oil. I never understood that son of a bitch anyway! Did you know that he was trained at World Bank, or was it IMF? Best, Sabri
RE: Re: Re: RE: Re: RE: Re: RE: Re: Afghanistan class
Wait a minute, are we not all mature adults and academics or at lest readers, thinkers writers? Why should we bed down with the unenlightened radical frings who dredge up the sobriquet Fascist to heap on every man in uniform or unsavoury political or plutocratic character? Fascism is a particular type of corporate socialism, whereby the three fascii (pillars), capital, labour government agree to run society according to a compact. Post WWII Italy's real organization seldom deviated from that model in practice despite various swings between communist and rightist parties in power. In Argentina under Peron it worked well for a while. But then Italians are the majority ethnic group in Argentina. With Spain (Franco) and Portugal (Salazar) you had a varient that involved the church as more the glue binding the three together than a fourth pillar, albeit a rightest glue. Of course National Socialist Germany was a failure compared to Italy as it was too mechanical in its formation, one might think or Wilhelm Reich's work on the Origins of German totalitarianism (exact title ???), which made a good sociological analysis of the authoritarian persona within the family structure where good German women nourished strong young warriors, like Sparta. Does anyone else see correlations between culture and Mediterranean politics, whether European, African or Asian? According to recent work in archaeology and anthropology, corporatist societies, hence politics, may have neolithic roots in Mediterranean and Western Asia worlds. jb -Original Message- From: Rakesh Bhandari [mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED]] Sent: Friday, December 07, 2001 5:25 PM To: [EMAIL PROTECTED] Subject: [PEN-L:20461] Re: Re: RE: Re: RE: Re: RE: Re: Afghanistan class when i was off the list jim made comments that make his position much more complex than i thought. i was going on the comments that were in my in box. so jim if have misunderstood you, i apologize. i guess the use of the word fascism is inflammatory...which of course as jim says doesn't mean we should not use it when justified even in a loose sense. Rakesh
Re: RE: Re: Re: RE: Re: RE: Re: RE: Re: Afghanistan c lass
Jamil, we were leaving this thread drop. On Mon, Dec 10, 2001 at 07:36:51PM -0800, Brownson, Jamil wrote: Wait a minute, are we not all mature adults and academics or at lest readers, thinkers writers? Why should we bed down with the unenlightened radical frings who dredge up the sobriquet Fascist to heap on every man in uniform or unsavoury political or plutocratic character? Fascism is a particular type of corporate socialism, whereby the three fascii (pillars), capital, labour government agree to run society according to a compact. Post WWII Italy's real organization seldom deviated from that model in practice despite various swings between communist and rightist parties in power. In Argentina under Peron it worked well for a while. But then Italians are the majority ethnic group in Argentina. With Spain (Franco) and Portugal (Salazar) you had a varient that involved the church as more the glue binding the three together than a fourth pillar, albeit a rightest glue. Of course National Socialist Germany was a failure compared to Italy as it was too mechanical in its formation, one might think or Wilhelm Reich's work on the Origins of German totalitarianism (exact title ???), which made a good sociological analysis of the authoritarian persona within the family structure where good German women nourished strong young warriors, like Sparta. Does anyone else see correlations between culture and Mediterranean politics, whether European, African or Asian? According to recent work in archaeology and anthropology, corporatist societies, hence politics, may have neolithic roots in Mediterranean and Western Asia worlds. jb -Original Message- From: Rakesh Bhandari [mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED]] Sent: Friday, December 07, 2001 5:25 PM To: [EMAIL PROTECTED] Subject: [PEN-L:20461] Re: Re: RE: Re: RE: Re: RE: Re: Afghanistan class when i was off the list jim made comments that make his position much more complex than i thought. i was going on the comments that were in my in box. so jim if have misunderstood you, i apologize. i guess the use of the word fascism is inflammatory...which of course as jim says doesn't mean we should not use it when justified even in a loose sense. Rakesh -- Michael Perelman Economics Department California State University Chico, CA 95929 Tel. 530-898-5321 E-Mail [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Re: Re: Re: Re: Stupid profit rate question
Bill, go for the big drug take-over!!! Years ago Wassily Leontief (Nobelist?) took up a question in the Harvard Law Review -- whether the government ought to get the patents from research done with public money -- and concluded that it should. On Assignment of Patent Rights on inventions made under government contracts, Harvard Law Review, Vol 77, No. 3, January 1964. Reprinted in Essays in Economics: Theories and Theorizing. Oxford Univ Press 1966. A much better analysis than that Jackson Hole thing by Summers and DeLong that Ian put us on to a while back. Gene Coyle Michael Perelman wrote: Yes, the criterium that you suggest is appropriate, but mark-ups can be misleading. William S. Lear wrote: I guess I should say that what I'm interested in is a measure of which markets are good candidates for public investment. It seems that if you have high profit *margins*, low unit costs, and high capital investment costs (as with drugs), the public would win big-time --- of course in more ways than one --- by paying the investment costs. I'm just wondering with which markets we should start our program of public ownership. Bill -- Michael Perelman Economics Department California State University [EMAIL PROTECTED] Chico, CA 95929 530-898-5321 fax 530-898-5901
Re: Ankara supports strike on Iraq
Ozal was too clever to be a IMF trainee, he was just a simple merchant from Malyata, where clever business grows on trees along with their well-famed apricots. (Sabri bey) What is good for the goose should be twice as good for the gander, may work as a metaphorical translation. Dear Jamil, Why did I suddenly become Sabri Bey, instead of, Sabri. Because you disagree with me? Ozal was not a merchant, he was an engineer, like myself. I don't know if you were there on September 12, 1980, but I was there. He came to where he was with the September 12, 1980 miltary coup. And his policies, or as they are known back home, Ozalism, are the principal reason behind the ongoing decay of social fabric back home. By the way, he was nothing novel or anything. Whatever the Chicago Boys are to Chile, Ozal is that to Turkey. Even his well know phrase There is no alternative is not novel. It was stollen from our belowed iron lady of the UK. He was the principal agent of the installation of neoliberalism in Turkey. He and his family are well known theives who stole from my people to enrich themselves. And yes, he was trained at the World Bank. Check the records, Sabri
Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Stupid profit rate question
- Original Message - From: Eugene Coyle [EMAIL PROTECTED] Bill, go for the big drug take-over!!! Years ago Wassily Leontief (Nobelist?) took up a question in the Harvard Law Review -- whether the government ought to get the patents from research done with public money -- and concluded that it should. On Assignment of Patent Rights on inventions made under government contracts, Harvard Law Review, Vol 77, No. 3, January 1964. Reprinted in Essays in Economics: Theories and Theorizing. Oxford Univ Press 1966. A much better analysis than that Jackson Hole thing by Summers and DeLong that Ian put us on to a while back. Gene Coyle === Well it's one thing to assign the patent rights to the state and a *big* mess in terms of constructing contracts/incentives to insure the patents are turned into products that are capable of securing a growing stream of revenue to the public coffers. It will take a long time to undo the mischief Bayh-Dole has created. Right now, Livermore labs alone has stuff in the RD pipeline that will be worth billions in the future yet the US has legislation on the books that will make the stuff as easy to grab as mineral rights under the 1872 mining law. I queried Brad on the philosophical justifications for the origins of property rights after looking at his paper. All he said was that he didn't like the Lockean paradigm.even though his paper reeks of it. At the same time there has been some interesting lefty stuff on property rights that has relevance to these kinds of issues. I'll just list one below folks might be interested in. Entitlement by Joseph William Singer In this important work of legal, political, and moral theory, Joseph William Singer offers a controversial new view of property and the entitlements and obligations of its owners. Singer argues against the conventional understanding that owners have the right to control their property as they see fit, with few limitations by government. Instead, property should be understood as a mode of organizing social relations, he says, and he explains the potent consequences of this idea. Singer focuses on the ways in which property law reflects and shapes social relationships. He contends that property is a matter not of right but of entitlement--and entitlement, in Singer's work, is a complex accommodation of mutual claims. Property requires regulation--property is a system and not just an individual entitlement, and the system must support a form of social life that spreads wealth, promotes liberty, avoids undue concentration of power, and furthers justice. The author argues that owners have not only rights but obligations as well--to other owners, to nonowners, and to the community as a whole. Those obligations ensure that property rights function to shape social relationships in ways that are both just and defensible. The appearance of a book on property law from Singer--one of the most interesting and provocative legal theorists now writing on the subject--is an event of some importance, and this book lives up to expectations.--James Boyle, Duke Law School Joseph William Singer is professor of law at Harvard Law School.
speaking of ownership.......
Airline Agrees to Offer U.S. a Stake for Aid America West Is First to Apply for Help By Caroline E. Mayer and Frank Swoboda Washington Post Staff Writers Tuesday, December 11, 2001; Page A01 America West Airlines Inc. has agreed to give the federal government a potential stake in the company to win government approval of $400 million in loan guarantees -- a move that could set the pattern for other airlines seeking federal bailout funds. America West was the first airline to seek part of the $10 billion in loan guarantees approved by Congress to help the industry recover from September's terrorist attacks. The application has been closely watched as airlines calculate what they would have to promise in return for financial support. After several meetings with federal officials, America West raised its initial proposal, offering to give the government stock warrants and boosting the guarantee fee it would pay to $175 million from $100 million. The message was: You need to prove you have a viable business plan and need to be willing to pay taxpayers for the risk they are taking, American West's chairman, W. Douglas Parker, said in an interview yesterday. The government is still reviewing the application. A spokeswoman for the newly created Air Transportation Stabilization Board, which was established to distribute the loan guarantees, declined to comment on the revisions or say when a decision would be reached. Under the America West proposal, the government would get warrants that would give it the right to buy up to 10 percent of America West's stock if the stock hit a certain price. America West declined to say what that price was. If the stock price were to rise significantly, the government could make a substantial profit. The government signal that it would like a financial stake in carriers seeking loan guarantees will mean a greater role in the airline industry for the Bush administration, which came into office advocating a hands-off philosophy in business matters. The terrorist attacks and weakened economy, however, have led the White House to consider federal assistance for airlines and other industries, such as insurance and steel. America West was struggling before the Sept. 11 attacks. As a result of the hijackings, it has had trouble raising any money, according to the airline. The airline's cash reserve has been fast dwindling, at a rate of $1 million to $2 million a day, according to Parker, causing some analysts to predict the airline could go under by the end of the year without federal aid. America West is trying to negotiate nearly $1 billion in financial support to survive. It has asked the federal government for a repayment guarantee of $400 million to help it secure $445 million in commercial loans. It has also negotiated about $600 million in concessions and contributions, including reduced or stretched-out payments to aircraft lessors, creditors and vendors, as well as tax breaks from state and local authorities. The majority of these concessions, which America West says will help it regain profitability, are contingent on the loan guarantee. In return for the government support, America West would let the government buy about 3.4 million Class B shares in its parent firm, America West Holding Corp., which now has about 34 million outstanding shares. Class B shares are the shares traded on the New York Stock Exchange. Warrants are not new. When the government agreed to provide up to $1.5 billion in loan guarantees to Chrysler Corp. in 1979, it received stock warrants. The government made a $380 million profit from the warrants. Several other airlines are expected to apply for loan guarantees, according to lawmakers and analysts. The deadline for loan applications is June 28, 2002. Most airline executives declined to comment on the issue of stock warrants yesterday. An official at Delta Air Lines, one of the stronger carriers, which has said it would not apply for the loan guarantees, said that offering warrants is certainly not unusual. Private lenders also sometimes ask for stock warrants. Delta's major concern is that these government-guaranteed loans for other airlines not make it harder for Delta to raise money if it decides not to seek federal backing. The airline industry was struggling financially before the attacks and is now losing millions of dollars a day as passengers continue to shy away from air travel. Fare cuts to lure back passengers are expected to result in even bigger losses in the fourth quarter. American Airlines Chairman Donald J. Carty told employees yesterday that the company would have a very very big loss for the fourth quarter, but he did not say how much. In addition to the $10 billion in loan guarantees, Congress approved $5 billion in direct aid to the airlines to cover losses directly resulting from the government shutdown of airports immediately after the terrorist attacks. America West, the nation's eighth-largest airline, was
