NPR blurb on Swedish taxes
Just at 8:30 CST this morning, I heard (I think) Bob Edwards on NPR blurt out something about Swedish tax rates that smelled rather unsavory. He claimed that several Swedish executives (I think he cited three examples) had to paid over 100% taxes on their wages. This sounds outrageous, of course, because as we all know, Sweden is a tax-and-spend hell-hole, and this just goes to show you that limited government is best, and the market should allocate income, blah blah blah. What was fishy of course was that there was no mention of whether perhaps these executives had to pay this money this year because of lower payments in previous years, or because of some accounting trick, or perhaps most likely because they had income other than wage income that was not taxed at a high rate. Does anyone know more about this story who could shed some light on the details? Bill
Safire on Arthur Andersen
Andersengate http://www.nytimes.com/2002/01/14/opinion/14SAFI.html?todaysheadlines . . . "The dozen or so investigations may turn up something to embarrass the White House, especially if Bush pulls another "executive privilege" when Congress wants facts. But the scandal I see in this corporate debacle is non- political; it's professional. "This affair shows the accounting profession all too often to be in bed with the oldest profession. Accounting standards have been frequently prostituted by the new Uriah Heeps: these are executives in ever-merging firms afraid to challenge their clients' phony numbers and secret self-dealing because they might lose fees in the lucrative consulting business they run on the side. "These no-account accountants seem to forget that the "p" in C.P.A. means "public." The Big Five are silent about Andersengate because they are eager to become the Big Four by carving up their competitor's carcass. That's why it's harder to find a major bean-counter willing to condemn publicly the failures of Arthur Andersen Co. than to find a top Muslim cleric willing to criticize Osama bin Laden. "Although Andersen executives may try to cop a plea by ratting on the client they so supinely and profitably enabled, they must explain why, as the biggest bankruptcy in history loomed, their supervisors were so eager to remind those working on the Enron account to destroy records. "Self-dealing; asset-hiding; insider stock-dumping all these were supposedly beyond the ken of an audit committee and legal counsel blindly reliant on the ethics and standards of "professional" accountants." . . . Tom Walker
NPR on financial journalism
I forgot to tell the list that last week, the folks at US National Public Radio were interviewing Ian Buruna and some other fellow (whose name I've forgotten) about their analysis on 911 etc. that was published in the NEW YORK REVIEW OF BOOKS. Anyway, Buruna made the comment that all the best financial journalists were Marxists. No comment from NPR on this revelation. Jim Devine [EMAIL PROTECTED] http://bellarmine.lmu.edu/~jdevine
WTO FSC case
http://www.wto.org/english/tratop_e/dispu_e/108abrw_e.p df
Legal status of prisoners.
Legal status of prisoners. by Ian Murray 13 January 2002 00:03 UTC CB: I agree that the Bush military tribunal faces the legal dilemma mentioned by George Fletcher .. I believe I suggested it in earlier posts. I had tried to get at some of these issues with this old post: It's a war. by Charles Brown 26 November 2001 15:05 UTC Thread Index It's a war. What's a war ? Is it politics by other means, other violent means ? Does the Geneva Convention apply ? May you shoot prisoners in secret ? Do the Nuremberg principles apply ? Does the UN Charter and Conventions apply ? Do the lessons of WWII and WWI and The Civil War etc, etc. having a bearing or has history ended along with the market ? Is the Constitution suspended in its entirety when a war is declared ? Is the Constitution suspended one iota when a war is declared or, what is habeas corpus and other gnomes and queries ? Has Congress declared a war pursuant to the Constitution ? Does war mean you can do anything you want or does due process and especially criminal procedure, trial by jury, right to be represented by counsel, right to know the charges against you, presumption of innocence, persist in effect EVEN IF IT IS A GODDAMN WAR ? Is it's a war a joker phrase that allows dictatorship of whoever controls the military in the United States of America . (That's a rhetorical question ) What's peace ? clip- War and the Constitution George P. Fletcher The Supreme Court first used the term in 1942 in Ex parte Quirin to solve a particular problem that arose when eight German spies landed in civilian clothes on the beaches of Long Island. The FBI arrested them before they executed any of their planned acts of sabotage. President Franklin D. Roosevelt was resolved to prosecute them for something, and it turned out that there was a suitable law on the books -- a provision of the U.S. Code prohibiting spying in wartime near or around American military installations. That statute required trial by either court-martial or military tribunal and imposed an automatic penalty of death. Roosevelt quickly established the military tribunal that the statute authorized, but the constitutional dilemma remained. To see it, we have to concentrate on one horn at a time. The first problem was that these spies were members of the German army. We were at war with Germany and therefore the eight captives were arguably just like soldiers who might have crossed the Canadian border in tanks. And if they were combatants, then by the rules of international law we were not entitled to try them for acts committed in the pursuit of legitimate aims of war. As Chief Justice Harlan Fiske Stone wrote for the Supreme Court in Quirin: Lawful combatants are subject [only] to capture and detention as prisoners of war by opposing military forces. The reason for this rule lies in the general understanding that a soldier is simply a servant of the state. He does not do anything in his own name. He cannot be held personally liable for the ravages of war. Now, admittedly, there are various ways around the rule. One is to deny that the military engagement is a war and call it instead some kind of police action. But the danger of trying too hard to deny the combatant status of those engaged in military battle is that we then encounter the second horn of the dilemma: If these are merely criminals who have committed crimes against the United States, they must be tried in a federal district court. That is the holding in the 1866 decision Milligan. In fact, it seems to be the tack taken by Harvard University law professor Anne-Marie Slaughter, who argued against Bush's tribunals in The New York Times, saying that al-Qaeda members fighting in Afghanistan are really just common criminals and shouldn't be dignified with the status of combatants.
re: the profit rate recession
Fred, thanks for your thoughtful comments. (For those who haven't been paying attention, we are discussing only the United States in this thread, using the BEA data.) 1. I said: I should acknowledge that if I recalculate the trend profit rate in a few years, the trend will probably be different, maybe even falling down in 1997 or so. That would change my view. But I'm trying to give the best interpretation I can given the information I have. Fred writes: We already have a good idea of what the rate of profit will be in 2001 (based on the first three quarters) and even a pretty good idea for 2002. So we don't have to wait for two years to do at least a preliminary reexamination of the data. My reply: the problem with bringing in 2001 and 2002 in order to figure out the trend is that they bring in the realization crisis (recession, slowing circulation of commodities falling capacity utilization rates) of 2001 and after as part of the trend, while I'm trying use the trend to figure out the historical origins of that crisis (the era up to and including 2000). (I presume that the fall in the profit share during recessions isn't due to successful working-class resistance as much as realization problems.) To truly figure out the trend, we'd want to bring in data from 2003, 2004, etc., especially if these involve a recovery of capacity utilization rates (and thus of profit shares). If the Wall Street Wonks are right that a recovery is just around the corner, then we might be able to get some idea of the trend rate of profit in the near future (though I doubt we will). (This is a similar to issues of the new economy: was there an upward ratchet in the rate of growth of labor productivity in the 1990s of the sort that occurred in the late 1920s -- or was the productivity surge merely a cyclical phenomenon? or was it a statistical fluke? We won't know until the recession is over, just as we couldn't be sure whether the surge of the 1920s was permanent until after the 1930s.) The trend profit rate (or profit share or K/Y ratio) was calculated to try to iron out the wiggles due to temporary demand-side recessions and supply-side squeezes on profits (bottlenecks, temporary cyclical wage hikes). It is thus similar to, though not the same as, the estimates in my RRPE paper on stagflation, in which I calculated the full capacity profit rate (r*) by dividing the actual profit rate by the rate of capacity utilization. This effort to figure out the trend is part of an effort to glean what's going on beneath the surface statistics. Unfortunately, it's iffy and will always be so. The problem is the two-way feed-back (dialectic, if you will) between the cycle and the trend, with both helping to determine each other. Dialectical processes are inherently hard to pin down using quantitative methods. Fred continues: Assuming that the share of profit falls from 0.17 in 2000 to 0.14 in 2001 (as discussed in my last post) and that the capital-output ratio remains the same (a conservative assumption, since the capital-output ratio usually increases in a recession, which would further depress the rate of profit), then the rate of profit will decline from 0.086 in 2000 to 0.071 in 2001. For 2002, since the rate of profit will almost certainly continue to decline in the first half of the year, it is unlikely that the rate of profit will increase for the year as a whole, and more likely that the it will fall further in 2002. But assume that the rate of profit in 2002 stays the same as in 2001. Jim, would you please add these two additional data points to your regression equations, in order to see what is left of the upward trend in the rate of profit [ROP] from 1980 to the present. I looked at the graph, and it's true that it ends the upward trend in the ROP goes away as I calculated it before (using a fifth degree polynomial regression). In fact, the trend ROP peaks in 1996, strangely before the 1997 peak in the non-trended data. However, the upward trend since the 1980s re-appears if we do a second- or third-degree polynomial to calculate the trend. This isn't conclusive but instead indicates the difficulty of the project. Adding these two years is also a more appropriate way to estimate the trend, because the beginning and end points of the time period [since the 1980s] are at roughly the same point in the cycle - the bottom. Your estimates through 2000 compare the bottom of the cycle with a mid-point between the peak and the bottom, which biases the estimates upward. No matter what the regressions say, the fact remains that the rate of profit today is only slightly higher (at best) than it was in the trough of the early 1980s (0.071 compared to 0.062). This is, in general, a valid point. However, whether 7.1% is slightly higher than 6.2% or not depends on one's perspective. For many, 15% higher is not slightly: I can imagine that during a recession, capitalists grasp at any penny of profits they can receive.
Re: NPR on financial journalism
Devine, James wrote: I forgot to tell the list that last week, the folks at US National Public Radio were interviewing Ian Buruna and some other fellow (whose name I've forgotten) about their analysis on 911 etc. that was published in the NEW YORK REVIEW OF BOOKS. Anyway, Buruna made the comment that all the best financial journalists were Marxists. No comment from NPR on this revelation. Hmm. According to JK Galbraith's memoir, Henry Luce believed pretty much the same. Doug
Evil genius?
QUOTE OF THE DAY (NYTIMES)="Companies come and go. It's part of the genius ofcapitalism."-PAUL O'NEILL, treasury secretary, on the collapse of Enron. The banality of O'Neill's comment obscures a deeper confusion. It is not simply the collapse ofEnron that is noteworthy but the timing, magnitude and agency of that collapse. Ah, so many geniuses, so little time. Here's a sampling from Google: The genius of capitalism, as Lenin might have pointed out, is that it develops its own rope, for hanging as much as for other purposes. The genius of capitalism consists precisely in its lack of morality. Few people will deny that the genius of capitalism lies in its ability to produce goodscommodities for people to buy and consume. The production of both specific intelligence and generalised stupidity are, to my mind, the most outstanding expression of the genius of capitalism. The genius of capitalism is its ability to capture the genius of everything else. Bernstein recognized from the outset that the evil genius of capitalism is its ability to take anything resembling dissent and quash it. The genius of capitalism is in coping with failure, writes the founder of Grant's Interest Rate Observer in this book. Once again, the genius of capitalism at work: Create a problem, then come up with a new product to deal with the consequences. It took the genius of capitalism to make a valuable commodity out of thoughts, opinions, teachings. It is the genius of capitalism that chaff like the Loman's are ruthlessly winnowed. A genius of capitalism has been to transform the ancient vice of avarice into a modern virtue of acquisitiveness, with the belief that when each one acts in economic self-interest, the greater good of all will result. The genius of capitalism is that thus far it has proven democratic when under threat. The genius of capitalism is its simplicity of motive. A major genius of capitalism is the emphasis on diffusion of economic -power This is the true genius of capitalism, the seduction of offering us yet another new toy as the answer to the quest for human happiness. The genius of capitalism, its magic, its alchemy, transform the lead of repression into the gold of stimulus. It is part of the genius of capitalism that it recognizes this selfish tendency and harnesses it to generate change in society. I would cheerfully argue that the genius of capitalism is that everything is tried and sometimes businesses get lucky and in effect roll 20 straight passes. Tom Walker
Re: Evil genius?
- Original Message - From: Tom Walker To: [EMAIL PROTECTED] Sent: Monday, January 14, 2002 11:57 AM Subject: [PEN-L:21360] Evil genius? QUOTE OF THE DAY (NYTIMES)="Companies come and go. It's part of the genius ofcapitalism."-PAUL O'NEILL, treasury secretary, on the collapse of Enron. The banality of O'Neill's comment obscures a deeper confusion. It is not simply the collapse ofEnron that is noteworthy but the timing, magnitude and agency of that collapse. Ah, so many geniuses, so little time. Here's a sampling from Google: The genius of capitalism, as Lenin might have pointed out, is that it develops its own rope, for hanging as much as for other purposes. The genius of capitalism consists precisely in its lack of morality. Few people will deny that the genius of capitalism lies in its ability to produce goodscommodities for people to buy and consume. The production of both specific intelligence and generalised stupidity are, to my mind, the most outstanding expression of the genius of capitalism. The genius of capitalism is its ability to capture the genius of everything else. Bernstein recognized from the outset that the evil genius of capitalism is its ability to take anything resembling dissent and quash it. The genius of capitalism is in coping with failure, writes the founder of Grant's Interest Rate Observer in this book. Once again, the genius of capitalism at work: Create a problem, then come up with a new product to deal with the consequences. It took the genius of capitalism to make a valuable commodity out of thoughts, opinions, teachings. It is the genius of capitalism that chaff like the Loman's are ruthlessly winnowed. A genius of capitalism has been to transform the ancient vice of avarice into a modern virtue of acquisitiveness, with the belief that when each one acts in economic self-interest, the greater good of all will result. The genius of capitalism is that thus far it has proven democratic when under threat. The genius of capitalism is its simplicity of motive. A major genius of capitalism is the emphasis on diffusion of economic -power This is the true genius of capitalism, the seduction of offering us yet another new toy as the answer to the quest for human happiness. The genius of capitalism, its magic, its alchemy, transform the lead of repression into the gold of stimulus. It is part of the genius of capitalism that it recognizes this selfish tendency and harnesses it to generate change in society. I would cheerfully argue that the genius of capitalism is that everything is tried and sometimes businesses get lucky and in effect roll 20 straight passes. Tom Walker == And what would Wittgenstein say about all those sentences? :-) Ian
the profit rate recession
Jim D states his big idea: Rather, the idea is that if the growth process as a whole is more like a house of cards, i.e., more fragile, a fall in investment is more likely to have a big effect. I agreed that the direct, proximate, cause of the recession was a fall in fixed investment. Where I disagree is that I just don't think that the fall in the rate of profit caused the fall in investment. I don't think that the rate of profit as even the BEA measures it -- and they are clearly looking for a measure of the rate of return from the business point of view -- doesn't have that much of an impact on fixed investment. __ what matters is the return on the marginal investment, not average profit or the the statistical artefact of the BEA return. And new investments weren't paying; companies had thus been 'investing' massively in their own shares for some time; NASDAQ plunged because leading high tech companies did not this time support their own stock knowing full well that earnings were quite weak going forward, i.e., the refusal of buy back was the signal that profitability was collapsing; companies were simply hiding profitability problems by cooking the books (esp software companies and of course so called trading companies); and the effects of the Fed's cheap money after the Asia Panic were also petering out; New investments tapered off in the face of declining profitability on new investments and that declining profitability was then projected forward (Keynes so called marginal efficiency of capital). The demand for money and credit thus weakened, which added a dose of deflationary pressure which has had the effect of making enormous private debt unmanageable. At any rate, the crisis hit Dept I first. Consumption was not a problem. We also know Marx's famous vol II passge in which he criticizes underconsumption. Consumption will now give. Capital's way out of a crisis is only one: mutual destruction and annihilation and counter-revolution against the working class. If we don't like the news, then we're going to have make some of our own. __ Jim D writes: Anyway, all of this implies that it's possible that actual GDP (Y) could rise as fast as Y*, despite a stagnant wage bill, but that the growth of Y becomes increasingly fragile, susceptible to shocks. (It's sort of like having one's immune system deteriorate due to HIV, which makes one more likely to get sick and for sicknesses to be serious.) __ i don't think the analogy is helpful in understanding the cyclical health of the organism. Jim D writes: My theory is one of over-accumulation (or rather, over-investment, since I stress the importance of fixed capital). Like Marx, and unlike the underconsumptionists, I think that capitalist accumulation normally tends to drive ahead, pulling the economy along and trying to transcend all barriers in its path. In this view, an underconsumption undertow is just another kind of barrier, and like many others is created by capital itself. Like supply-side barriers (raw material shortages, rising mechanization not counteracted sufficiently by labor productivity growth, environmental destruction), the effort to surge beyond this kind of barrier creates imbalances which bounce back to hurt the accumulation process. __ Some imbalances are overcome in different and more painless fashion than others. So we need a typology of imbalances in terms of how they are overcome. _ Jim D writes: (According to Simon Clarke's 1993 book, _Marx's Theory of Crisis_ (London: Macmillan), both Marx and Engels dabbled in a kind of underconsumption theory that's similar to -- but cruder than -- what I advocate.) so you do advocate a less crude underconsumption theory? ___ Jim D writes: I said: From capital's point of view, we still haven't seen a return to the golden age of profitability seen in the 1960s. However, the profit rate's rise does represent the rational basis for the stock-market surge in the1990s, until it became a speculative bubble at the end of the decade. see grossmann for why a decline in profitability manifests itself as a speculative bubble. Jim D writes: They got the profit rate up, though not enough (by their standards). And this encourages the underconsumption undertow I discussed (though my emphasis was on a world-wide phenomenon), which dragged down the profit rate in 2001 and presumably 2002, when the countervailing factors that allowed the boom to continue to 2000 (private fixed investment, credit-based consumer spending) couldn't be sustained. _ why EXACTLY couldn't they be sustained? Jim D writes: The basic idea is that if potential GDP (Y*, measured at full capacity utilization, not full employment of labor, since it's from the capitalist perspective) rises relative to the wage bill, then workers' consumption (assuming that workers don't
Economic Reporting Review by Dean Baker, 1/14/02
Economic Reporting Review, 1/14/02 By Dean Baker You can sign up to receive ERR every week by sending a subscribe ERR email request to [EMAIL PROTECTED] You can find the latest ERR at http://www.tompaine.com/news/2000/10/02/index.html . All ERR prior to August 2000 are archived at http://www.fair.org/err/. All ERR after August 2000 are archived at www.tompaine.com Outstanding Stories of the Week Americans, Gradually, Feel Grip of Recession Louis Uchitelle New York Times, January 7, 2002, Page A1 This article examines how the impact of the recession is gradually being felt by an ever larger segment of the population. CBO Reports Rates Bush Economic Proposals Poorly Glenn Kessler Washington Post, January 5, 2002, Page A4 This article reports on a study by the Congressional Budget Office which evaluates the likely impact of various stimulus packages that have been put forward. The study found that the proposal being advanced by President Bush and Republicans in Congress would provide very little stimulus to the economy. All That Easy Credit Haunts Detroit Now Danny Hakim New York Times, January 6, 2002, Section 3 page 1 This article reports on the relatively high delinquency rates on new car loans that have been issued by the financing divisions of the major automobile manufacturers. The article reports that credit losses may significantly reduce profits in the next few years. December Employment Report Joblessness Rises, but Some Positive Signs Seen John M. Berry Washington Post, January 5, 2002, Page E1 Nation's Unemployment Rate Rises to 5.8 Percent Daniel Altman New York Times, January 5, 2002 These articles report on the Labor Department's release of employment data for December. Both articles note that the 124,000 decline in jobs measured by the establishment survey was less than many analysts had expected. Neither article noted that private sector employment fell by 187,000. For many purposes, the private sector jobs numbers probably give a better measure of the current state of the economy. At one point the Times article reported that the rise in the number of workers on temporary layoffs (176,000) was considerably larger than the rise in the number of workers who reported that they had permanently lost their jobs (60,000). It took this as an indication that firms were increasingly using layoffs to trim their workforce, rather than firing workers outright. This data is not seasonally adjusted -- the seasonally adjusted data actually shows a drop in both temporary layoffs and workers who have permanently lost their jobs. More importantly, this data is very erratic (for example, the seasonally adjusted number of workers who were temporarily laid off was reported as falling by 131,000 in November, a month in which close to 400,000 jobs were lost), so monthly changes are almost meaningless. December Retail Sales Sales Exceed Expectations Martha McNeil Hamilton Washington Post, January 11, 2002, Page E3 Data Now In, Retailers Say Merry Holiday Leslie Kaufman New York Times, January 6, 2002, page C1 These articles report on data on December retail sales in chain stores. The articles note that due to a strong last week, chain stores reported an increase of approximately 2.5 percent in year over year sales for the month. It is worth noting that the holiday season in 2000 was an especially weak one, with year over year sales increasing by just 0.3 percentage points. This means that 2002 holiday sales were less than 3.0 percent higher than 1999 sales, before adjusting for inflation. The Euro On the Road, Euros Smooth the Way Alan Cowell New York Times, January 6, 2002, page A8 This article reports on how the euro is facilitating travel across Europe, since people no longer have to change their currency when they cross a border. At one point, it suggests that it may produce a rush of bargain hunting, as consumers now recognize that lower prices are available in nearby regions across the border. The arithmetic needed to make currency conversions is simple division that is taught in most elementary schools in the United States in third and fourth grade. Students in European nations generally perform better on standardized math tests than do students in the United States. Therefore, it is unlikely that major price differences were concealed from European consumers by the use of different currencies. Also, under law, prices in the euro zone nations have been posted in both the national currency and euros since 1999. The Budget President Hits Back at Daschle's Criticism of Cut Mike Allen Washington Post, January 6, 2002, Page A1 Huge Decline Seen in Budget Surplus Over Next Decade Richard W. Stevenson New York Times, January 6, 2002, page A1 Partisan Politics Returns To Capital Dana Milbank Washington Post, January 7, 2002, Page A1 These articles discuss the current state of debate over the national budget. All three articles present partisan claims without giving readers the
Exorcism and neo-Malthusian management of crisis in Marx's French posterity
n°8, 14-01-02___http://www.edu-irep.org___ NOUVEAU, NEW: - Palais de l'UNESCO à Paris: la "culture scientifique et technique" commeexorcisme de la crise. "Scientific and technical culture" as an exorcism of crisis. http://www.edu-irep.org/actu.htm - Postérité de Marx en France: une famille recomposée autour du consensus sur la gestion néo-malthusienne de la crise. Marx's French posterity: a family reconstructed around the consensus on neo-Malthusian management of crisis. http://www.edu-irep.org/actu.htm#mar ___ 4, bd Jean JaurèsBP 2694267 Fresnes CedexFrance_tél/fax: 33 1 4091 9997
BLS Daily Report
BUREAU OF LABOR STATISTICS, DAILY REPORT, MONDAY, JANUARY 14, 2002: Led by a drop in energy costs, producer prices fell 0.7 percent in December, after a 0.6 percent decline in November, according to the Bureau of Labor Statistics. The Producer Price Index has fallen 3 months in a row. According to the latest BLS figures, the so-called core rate of wholesale inflation -- finished goods minus food and energy -- dropped 0.1 percent in December, following a 0.2 percent gain in November (Daily Labor Report, page D-1). Wholesale prices in the United States declined in December for the third consecutive month, making last year's drop in wholesale costs the biggest since 1986, government figures showed. The Producer Price Index fell 0.7 percent last month, more than expected, reflecting declines in costs for cars, energy, and food (Bloomberg News, The New York Times, January 12, page B16). Gasoline prices increased 3 cents in the past 3 weeks, ending a 15-week price crash that began with the September 11 terrorist attacks, according to a newly released industry analysis. Gas prices Friday at about 8,000 gas stations nationwide averaged $1.12 a gallon for self-serve regular, analyst Trilby Lundberg said Sunday (The Associated Press, http://www.nandotimes.com/business/story/218457p-2107014c.html). application/ms-tnef
Re: Re: NPR on financial journalism
I understand that David Rockefeller used to enjoy meeting with Stephen Hymer for much the same reason. On Mon, Jan 14, 2002 at 02:30:38PM -0500, Doug Henwood wrote: Devine, James wrote: I forgot to tell the list that last week, the folks at US National Public Radio were interviewing Ian Buruna and some other fellow (whose name I've forgotten) about their analysis on 911 etc. that was published in the NEW YORK REVIEW OF BOOKS. Anyway, Buruna made the comment that all the best financial journalists were Marxists. No comment from NPR on this revelation. Hmm. According to JK Galbraith's memoir, Henry Luce believed pretty much the same. Doug -- Michael Perelman Economics Department California State University Chico, CA 95929 Tel. 530-898-5321 E-Mail [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Re: the profit rate recession
Rakesh Bhandari wrote: At any rate, the crisis hit Dept I first. Consumption was not a problem. We also know Marx's famous vol II passge in which he criticizes underconsumption. Consumption will now give. We'll see. Wall Street's favorite economist, Ed Hyman, has a piece out today claiming the U.S. recession probably ended in November (citing, as most recent evidence, a decline in unemployment claims, higher-than-expected chain store sails, a 23% surge in DRAM prices over the last week, and several major positive profits surprises). And, he says, a synchronized global recovery is underway, citing higher Taiwanese exports, UK retail sales, Malaysian industrial production, and Canadian housing starts over only the last few weeks. Finally, in November, his composite leading indicator for the OECD had its biggest monthly increase in 18 years. For what it's worth, of course Doug
Re: Re: the profit rate recession
Rakesh Bhandari wrote: At any rate, the crisis hit Dept I first. Consumption was not a problem. We also know Marx's famous vol II passge in which he criticizes underconsumption. Consumption will now give. We'll see. Wall Street's favorite economist, Ed Hyman, has a piece out today claiming the U.S. recession probably ended in November (citing, as most recent evidence, a decline in unemployment claims, higher-than-expected chain store sails, a 23% surge in DRAM prices over the last week, and several major positive profits surprises). And, he says, a synchronized global recovery is underway, citing higher Taiwanese exports, UK retail sales, Malaysian industrial production, and Canadian housing starts over only the last few weeks. Finally, in November, his composite leading indicator for the OECD had its biggest monthly increase in 18 years. For what it's worth, of course Doug yes what the previous collapse in basic memory chips suggests is that constant capital had cheapened so considerably (esp relative to consumer goods as is almost the case, I believe) that the rate of profit on the lower value of this constant capital can now be greater even if the rate of surplus value is not going to vary much one way or another. So the demand for constant capital is picking up (and therewith the prices of memory chips) not because consumption is higher (as a crude and even sophisticated unconsumptionist may think) but because profitability is being restored. Doug, you know i am an autodidact but isn't this the ABC's of the Marxian theory of the business cycle? Rakesh
Re: Re: Re: the profit rate recession
Rakesh Bhandari wrote: yes what the previous collapse in basic memory chips suggests is that constant capital had cheapened so considerably (esp relative to consumer goods as is almost the case, I believe) that the rate of profit on the lower value of this constant capital can now be greater even if the rate of surplus value is not going to vary much one way or another. So the demand for constant capital is picking up (and therewith the prices of memory chips) not because consumption is higher (as a crude and even sophisticated unconsumptionist may think) but because profitability is being restored. Doug, you know i am an autodidact but isn't this the ABC's of the Marxian theory of the business cycle? You're too modest with the autodidact label. But I'm not speaking church Marxian - I was speaking vulgate, and bizcycle economics is about as vulgar as it gets. My only point was that if Hyman is right, then consumption won't be collapsing, and the recession is over, or almost over. And this recession had little to do with consumption - it was mostly profit and investment-led (at least in the U.S.). Doug
Re: Re: Re: the profit rate recession
Rakesh Bhandari wrote: At any rate, the crisis hit Dept I first. Consumption was not a problem. We also know Marx's famous vol II passge in which he criticizes underconsumption. Consumption will now give. We'll see. Wall Street's favorite economist, Ed Hyman, has a piece out today claiming the U.S. recession probably ended in November (citing, as most recent evidence, a decline in unemployment claims, higher-than-expected chain store sails, a 23% surge in DRAM prices over the last week, and several major positive profits surprises). And, he says, a synchronized global recovery is underway, citing higher Taiwanese exports, UK retail sales, Malaysian industrial production, and Canadian housing starts over only the last few weeks. Finally, in November, his composite leading indicator for the OECD had its biggest monthly increase in 18 years. For what it's worth, of course Doug let me rephrase for clarity (hope this helps): yes this form of constant capital (memory chips) had cheapened so considerably (esp relative to consumer goods as is almost the case, I believe) that the rate of profit on the lower value of this constant capital can now be greater even if the rate of surplus value is not going to vary much one way or another. So the demand for constant capital (memory chips) is finally picking up again (and therewith the prices of these memory chips) not because consumption is higher (as a crude and even sophisticated unconsumptionist may think) but because profitability is being restored. rb
RE: Re: Re: NPR on financial journalism
This is casual empiricism, but of all the long time econ profs at the new school, I think the one whose students most end up on or near wall st is Anwar Shaikh. mat -Original Message- From: Michael Perelman [mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED]] Sent: Monday, January 14, 2002 4:18 PM To: [EMAIL PROTECTED] Subject: [PEN-L:21366] Re: Re: NPR on financial journalism I understand that David Rockefeller used to enjoy meeting with Stephen Hymer for much the same reason.
Enronomics: Bush has made himself flag-carrier in chief for the corporate welfare state
[Yet to see a piece that challenges the legal form by which corporations are constituted under the law as the real source of the problem] Bush, the corporations' flag-carrier Enron's collapse exposes the folly of his cash-for-influence policy Julian Borger Tuesday January 15, 2002 The Guardian The familiar paraphernalia of political scandal is being assembled in Washington. At the last count, two criminal inquiries and six congressional hearings were scheduled on the Enron scandal. In the legislature, reduced by the war on terrorism to the role of cheerleader, everyone wants to be a part of it. Both parties know how the rituals of scandal can define a presidency. Reagan managed to shrug off most of the damage caused by the Iran-contra affair, while Clinton was overwhelmed by the Monica Lewinsky saga and is unlikely to have an airport named after him. Now it is George Bush's turn. Enron, a gigantic Texan energy trading firm and the biggest single sponsor of his political career, collapsed dramatically last month amid allegations of fraud and insider trading. The inquiries will ask familiar questions: what did the administration know and when did it know it? Was there a cover-up and did the Bush team help? These are the staples of Washington scandal, but this time they may be the wrong questions. They focus on whether anyone in the administration broke the rules. The whole point of the Enron affair is that it discredits the rules of the game. It exposes the institutionalised corruption at the heart of US politics - a casual exchange of money and power that Bush has made his trademark. The seamy subject of campaign finance briefly captured the attention of the US electorate in the early months of the Bush presidency when it was apparent that big campaign contributors were being paid back one presidential decree at a time. Enron will bring it back into focus. Investigators are poring over Enron's contacts with the administration last autumn, when the company was fighting for its life, looking for signs of illegal meddling in the market. In fact, the big trade-off for the company's campaign contributions was made months earlier. Enron executives had six meetings with the vice-president, Dick Cheney, and his staff when he was drawing up the administration's energy plan in the spring, a fact that has surfaced only since the company went bust. The White House has refused to tell Congress which other industrial magnates it consulted in drawing up the plan, which is broadly speaking a polluters' charter. Few, if any, environmentalists were invited. This is precisely how Bush mixed business and politics when he was governor of Texas. The oil and gas companies who supported his candidacy were given free rein, at secret meetings with Bush officials, to write their own rules when it came to state policy on emissions control. They, not surprisingly, chose a voluntary scheme with equally unsurprising consequences for air quality in Texan cities. Governor Bush introduced sweeping tort reform, making it harder for ordinary Texans to sue corporations. And he appointed Pat Wood, nominee of Enron's chairman, Ken Lay, as head of the state's public utility commission, where he promptly pushed ahead with the deregulation the energy companies had been asking for. Last year, after Lay failed to persuade the head of the federal energy regulatory commission to agree to Enron's views, Bush gave Wood the chairman's job. Of course, this constant barter of cash for influence represents politics as usual. Some Democrats also took serious amounts from Enron, but as a party they are also beholden to other interest groups, like unions and minorities, tempering corporate control. In the president's case, corporate influence appears almost unmitigated. Bush has pushed through the biggest tax cuts in a generation, heavily weighted to the wealthiest 5%, and backed an economic stimulus package brimming with corporate tax breaks and amnesties. This was marketed along with the old palliative, the trickle-down effect: tax-breaks for corporations and the wealthy create jobs further down the economic food chain. Bush portrayed his policies as anti-recessionary before September 11, and as downright patriotic afterwards. The message was a familiar one. What's good for Enron (or insert your corporate name here in return for the appropriate campaign donation) is good for America. The Enron debacle is potentially so dangerous for Bush because it makes it painfully clear that the old equation does not hold. The Enron executives got rich even as their company was plunging into the abyss, taking its employees with it. It is the ultimate nightmare for the corporate welfare state, for which Bush has made himself flag-carrier in chief. The executives in this case have shown themselves to be anything but patriotic. They were revealed instead as rapacious asset-strippers. The Democratic party has to seize the Enron affair with both hands. With
FW: Self-Determination Conflict Watch
--- Original Message --- From: [EMAIL PROTECTED] (Chris Lowe) To: [EMAIL PROTECTED] Date: 1/14/02 5:53:25 PM [P.S. to those on the cc list, this is a letter to the editor of a new newsletter from Foreign Policy in Focus, a joint project of the Interhemispheric Resource Center and the Institute for Policy Studies. I wrote it and am cc'ing it because I am concerned about what the newsletter may portend about a shift in progressive approaches to Africa policy in the context of the war on terrorism. If you don't know what this is about but would like to, I will forward the newsletter in question. If it's not of interest, sorry for the spam. CL] Dear Tom Barry, A few years ago, I think while I was still at the African Studies Center at Boston University, we had some correspondence about FPIF. I saw today's (inaugural?) issue of Self-Determination Conflict Watch through a distribution on the NuAfrica listserv. I am considering whether to subscribe. However, I have to say that I was surprised and troubled by the content of SDCW. Nearly all of the pieces placed heavy uncritical reliance on the concept of failed state. This recent political science term of art in my view often is a code word for we don't know what the hell is happening. It is also a term with a great deal of potential, in its inexactness, for providing justifications for virtually any sort of intervention, as well as virtually any sort of refusal to intervene, and for blaming any bad consequences of either actions or inactions on those who are failing, to the exclusion of great power (and especially U.S. as global quasi-hegemon) responsibility for their own actions or inactions, or indeed the failure. Likewise I was troubled by the fact that nearly the only explanatory factors expressed overtly for African conflicts were either personal ambitions of leaders, or ethnic conflicts. The only one which inched beyond that was the piece on warlordism. Its argument that key parties in various conflicts may have a stake in perpetuating conflict is an important one for progressives to grapple with. But as written, the piece's main implications seemed to be that the U.S. should wash its hands of such such conflicts, could in fact do so, and that the question of any historical U.S. responsibility should be ignored. As a more minor point on the same piece, unqualified increased trade liberalization is not a cherished goal for me when it comes to Africa, and I would not have thought for FPIF -- are you changing your views on this? The laundry-list of stated U.S. policy goals is exactly the sort of thing I normally look to FPIF to disaggregate and analyze for its internal contradictions. What does that absence of such critical analysis portend for your future? Frankly the pieces I saw in this issue did not strike me as progressive. They seemed to me to be pieces that could have been published comfortably in the New Republic. They advanced points that could be comfortably cherry-picked by Tom Friedman for opportunistic neoliberal purposes, by William Safire or others in support of narrow nationalist interventionist U.S. policies, or by Pat Buchanan and others for narrow national chauvinist isolationist purposes. In other words, they exhibit the same uncritical conceptual incoherence as the policy debates allowed in the op-ed sections of the quasi-official mainstream U.S. media. If the authors are in fact progressive, I urge you to encourage them to write more incisively critical pieces. Or give them space to express more complex ideas, if that is the problem. Or I urge you to find other writers, if these pieces do accurately reflect their approaches. Unless FPIF is changing direction. If that is so, please say so. I was surprised not to find more analysis of how it is that warlords in failed states manage to benefit from those conflicts. Where is mention, never mind analysis, of the open, black and gray markets in items such as weapons, conflict diamonds, oil and so on? Where is mention, never mind analysis, of the internal relationships of patronage, clientelism and exclusion/exploitation that draw or force peasants, workers, migrant peasant workers, and those utterly dispossessed by war to seek crumbs and protection in groupings articulated either through ethnic representations or personalistic ideological loyalties or both? And thus, by extension, where is analysis of how failed states articulate with the international state system and more particularly with global markets (especiallys since we are told that one of the features of so-called globalization is the decline of states and the autonomy of market actors/ corporations)? Why are ethnicity and personalistic politics treated as natural givens not requiring explanation, rather than dynamics that can be analyzed? Given the absence of those things, I was not surprised by the absence of any reflection on policy options that would address such problems, such as reining
Re: Japan---yet another kakistocracy update....
My mother's first cousin was one of the largest SL banker in California in the early 60s. After his bank collapsed in the mid 60s, my second cousin who remained with the bank claimed that the bank had lent money on virtually every brothel in San Francisco -- always lending far more than the worth of the real estate. -- Michael Perelman Economics Department California State University Chico, CA 95929 Tel. 530-898-5321 E-Mail [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Guantanamo Lease Agreement
It seems that the need for naval and coaling stations is in perpetuity. The lease itself is not in perpetuity. I wonder if the annual rental has been increased? For anyone interested the lease agreement and the terms are on line: http://www.yale.edu/lawweb/avalon/diplomacy/cuba/cuba002.htm#art2 http://www.yale.edu/lawweb/avalon/diplomacy/cuba/cuba003.htm Cheers, Ken Hanly
the emergence of Enronomics
http://www.blackwellpublishers.co.uk/images/Journal_Samples/CORG0964-8410~5~4~062/062.pdf
Argentina--how the asset stripping took off
Corporate Governance: An International Review Corporate Governance in Argentina: the outcome of economic freedom (1991-2000) Volume 9: Issue 4 Rodolfo Apreda: Universidad del Cema, Buenos Aires, Argentina Abstract: This paper develops and provides evidence for two statements: a) In Argentina, there has been a marked shift in ownership and control from big family-owned domestic companies towards foreign groups and investment funds, and b) While coping with governance issues, Argentina has been following the common law countries tradition, fostering a capital-market-based financial system and swapping its corporate governance practices outright. To ground these statements on facts, I survey corporate governance issues in this country before 1991, the underlying legal framework, the new rules of the game in capital structure and ownership as from 1991, largely due to a wave of privatisations, restructuring, mergers and acquisitions that took place through the last decade. Article Type: Original article Page range: 298 - 310 5 Table(s) 13 Page(s)
Re: Argentina--how the asset stripping took off
Isn't Brazil in a much worse position, macro accounting and socially. Th exposure is such that none the measures taken now in argentina can be implemented in Brazil. it is also possible that much more would have to stripped to bring half the population to live at below one dollar a day as is the case in Brazil. --- Ian Murray [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: Corporate Governance: An International Review Corporate Governance in Argentina: the outcome of economic freedom (1991-2000) Volume 9: Issue 4 Rodolfo Apreda: Universidad del Cema, Buenos Aires, Argentina Abstract: This paper develops and provides evidence for two statements: a) In Argentina, there has been a marked shift in ownership and control from big family-owned domestic companies towards foreign groups and investment funds, and b) While coping with governance issues, Argentina has been following the common law countries tradition, fostering a capital-market-based financial system and swapping its corporate governance practices outright. To ground these statements on facts, I survey corporate governance issues in this country before 1991, the underlying legal framework, the new rules of the game in capital structure and ownership as from 1991, largely due to a wave of privatisations, restructuring, mergers and acquisitions that took place through the last decade. Article Type: Original article Page range: 298 - 310 5 Table(s) 13 Page(s) __ Do You Yahoo!? Send FREE video emails in Yahoo! Mail! http://promo.yahoo.com/videomail/
