CEOnistas make a run for it.
CEO's On The Run... REMAINING U.S. CEOs MAKE A BREAK FOR IT-- Band of Roving Chief Executives Spotted Miles from Mexican Border San Antonio, Texas(Rooters) Unwilling to wait for their eventual indictments, the 10,000 remaining CEOs of public U.S. companies made a break for it yesterday, heading for the Mexican border, plundering towns and villages along the way, and writing the entire rampage off as a marketing expense. They came into my home, made me pay for my own TV, then double-booked the revenues, said Rachel Sanchez of Las Cruces, just north of El Paso. Right in front of my daughters. Calling themselves the CEOnistas, the chief executives were first spotted last night along the Rio Grande River near Quemado, where they bought each of the town's 320 residents by borrowing against pension fund gains. By late this morning, the CEOnistas had arbitrarily inflated Quemado's population to 960, and declared a 200 percent profit for the fiscal second quarter. This morning, the outlaws bought the city of Waco, transferred its underperforming areas to a private partnership, and sent a bill to California for $4.5 billion. Law enforcement officials and disgruntled shareholders riding posse were noticeably frustrated. First of all, they're very hard to find because they always stand behind their numbers, and the numbers keep shifting, said posse spokesman Dean Levitt. And every time we yell 'Stop in the name of the shareholders!', they refer us to investor relations. I've been on the phone all damn morning. YOU'LL NEVER AUDIT ME ALIVE! The pursuers said they have had some success, however, by preying on a common executive weakness. Last night we caught about 24 of them by disguising one of our female officers as a CNBC anchor, said U.S. Border Patrol spokesperson Janet Lewis. It was like moths to a flame. Among former and current CEOs apprehended with this method were Computer Associates' Sanjay Kumar, Adelphia's John Rigas, Enron's Ken Lay, Joseph Nacchio of Qwest, Joseph Berardino of Arthur Andersen, and every Global Crossing CEO since 1997. ImClone Systems' Sam Waksal and Dennis Kozlowski of Tyco were not allowed to join the CEOnistas as they have already been indicted. So far, about 50 chief executives have been captured, including Martha Stewart, who was detained south of El Paso where she had cut through a barbed-wire fence at the Zaragosa border crossing off Highway 375. She would have gotten away, but she was stopping motorists to ask for marzipan and food coloring so she could make edible snowman place settings, using the cut pieces of wire for the arms, said Border Patrol officer Jennette Cushing. We put her in cell No. 7, because the morning sun really adds texture to the stucco walls. While some stragglers are believed to have successfully crossed into Mexico, Cushing said the bulk of the CEOnistas have holed themselves up at the Alamo. No, not the fort, the car rental place at the airport, she said. They're rotating all the tires on the minivans and accounting for each change as a sale. Stephen F. Diamond School of Law Santa Clara University [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Re: Anti-Bush protest at Ohio
But could Yoshie or someone else post the core paragraph of a leaflet or press statement about the political content of the protest. What I want to see is how the line places the conflict in the context of a wider appeal which in principle with a fair hearing ordinary working and progressive people of the USA could sympathise with or even support. Otherwise the central terrain of battle is lost. Chris Burford London You can download the press release at http://www.osu.edu/students/sif/14June2002.doc. Here's the website for the protest: http://www.turnyourbackonbush.com/. -- Yoshie * Calendar of Events in Columbus: http://www.osu.edu/students/sif/calendar.html * Anti-War Activist Resources: http://www.osu.edu/students/sif/activist.html * Student International Forum: http://www.osu.edu/students/sif/ * Committee for Justice in Palestine: http://www.osu.edu/students/CJP/
Dollar Hits a 2-Year Low Against Euro
The NYT on the decline of the U.S. dollar. Dollar Hits a 2-Year Low Against Euro June 21, 2002 By RICHARD W. STEVENSON WASHINGTON, June 20 - The dollar, after rising sharply in value for years in a reflection of American economic might, is weakening markedly, mirroring concern about the fragility of the economic recovery and the nation's financial condition. The dollar fell to a two-year low against the euro today and also edged down against the Japanese yen, continuing a months-long slide. The decline came after new data showed that the United States trade deficit had widened to what some economists said was a worrisome level. The monthly trade deficit in goods and services rose in April to $35.9 billion, a record, as rising exports were swamped by an even bigger increase in imports. A broader measure of the country's international financial standing - the current account balance, which measures investment flows as well as trade in goods and services - also posted a record deficit of $112.5 billion for the first quarter, the Commerce Department reported. In late trading today, the euro was worth 96.52 cents, up from 95.67 cents a day earlier. The dollar was worth 123.37 yen, down from 123.82 yen. Since January, the dollar has lost 7.8 percent of its value against other major currencies, according to an index compiled by the Federal Reserve, after rising 33 percent since the mid-1990's. While the dollar is still strong or even overvalued by some measures, its downturn has become pronounced enough that many economists judge it to be at the start of a correction that could continue for some time. A declining currency would have both positive and negative effects. It would help American manufacturers by making their products less expensive in foreign markets, thereby increasing exports, and could allow domestic manufacturers to recapture sales in the United States by making competing imports more expensive. But a steady fall in the dollar could put upward pressure on inflation by pushing up import prices, and would make foreign travel more expensive. If the fall in the dollar led investors from abroad to stop putting their money into stocks and bonds in the United States - and there is already evidence of such a pullback - interest rates could rise and stock prices could fall further. Analysts said the dollar's decline appears to have been driven in large part by concern among investors that the United States is not bouncing back as strongly as first hoped from last year's recession. But they said it was accelerated by other factors, including fear of terrorist attacks and concern after the Enron scandal that more companies will turn out to have overstated their earnings and hidden their liabilities. The Federal Reserve's decision to hold interest rates at very low levels has also held down returns on dollar-denominated investments. While sticking to its official position that it supports a strong dollar, the Bush administration has shown no inclination to intervene in currency markets to support the dollar's value. As a result, investors have concluded that the administration is content to allow the currency to slide, at least for a while. The crucial question for the economy is whether the erosion in the dollar, should it continue, will be gradual and orderly, as it has been so far, or whether it will turn into a rout that could destabilize the financial markets and endanger the recovery. We're probably going to see a substantial decline in the dollar over the next 12 months, said Robert D. Hormats of Goldman Sachs International, the investment firm. A gradual decline in the dollar shouldn't be surprising and shouldn't be disruptive, he said. It would be helpful in improving the outlook for the U.S. economy by boosting U.S. exports. But a very sharp decline would induce foreign investors, and indeed U.S. investors, to get out of U.S. financial assets. When countries run large trade and current account deficits - in effect consuming more than they produce - they must make up the gap by borrowing and attracting investment from abroad. History suggests that no country can go on financing an expanding trade deficit forever. And though there is a spirited debate among economists about when the United States might reach that point, the dollar's current slide suggests that foreign investors are already scaling back the flow of capital into the United States and putting more of their money into stocks, bonds and business ventures elsewhere. One outcome, economists said, is a cycle in which a growing current account deficit spurs an exodus by nervous foreign investors, pushing up inflation and interest rates and putting the already weak economy into a stall. But even a more benign result, in which the dollar remains under pressure but does not collapse in value, could still leave Wall Street on edge. Let's be clear: the ballooning trade deficit is reason to sell the greenback, said Kenneth T.
Web future
Web Thinkers Warn of Culture Clash Internet May Be Stunted By Business, Government By Anick Jesdanun Associated Press Friday, June 21, 2002; Page E05 The Internet's potential for promoting expression and empowering citizens is under threat from corporate and government policies that clash with the medium's long-standing culture of openness, some leading Internet thinkers warned. At the annual Internet Society conference this week in Arlington, the engineers who built the Internet and many of the policymakers who follow its development urged caution as governments try to exert control and businesses look to maximize profits. We're at a turning point in the evolution of the Internet, said William J. Drake, a fellow at the University of Maryland. A wrong turn means robbing it of its real democratic potential. Vint Cerf, co-developer of the Internet's basic communications protocols, worries that big, traditional businesses could gain unprecedented control through manipulating the high-speed services that are delivered over cable and phone networks. Companies are inhibiting innovation, Cerf said, by letting users receive information faster than they can send it. That leads to a lot of peculiar effects, he said. Two people could each receive high-quality video but can't send it. They can't have high-quality videoconferencing. Cerf is a co-founder of the Internet Society, an international, nonprofit organization of Internet architects and professionals devoted to maintaining the Internet's viability and addressing the issues it confronts. With governments and businesses taking a growing interest in the Internet, the conference's theme is Internet Crossroads: Where Technology and Policy Intersect. The TCP/IP communications protocols that Cerf and Robert Kahn developed in the 1970s favored open standards, neutrality and flexibility over proprietary techniques, a development that later allowed personal computers to connect and innovations such as the World Wide Web to devel op. That openness is increasingly threatened by profit motives of corporations and control issues of governments, said Eric E. Schmidt, chief executive of Google Inc. He pointed to the current balkanization of instant messaging, where a lack of standards prevents America Online users from communicating with people on rival services. Steve Crocker, an Internet pioneer who promoted open protocols at the standards-setting Internet Engineering Task Force, said today's decisions could stunt the Internet to where it becomes a mechanism for delivering entertainment, ads and conducting consumer-oriented business for large players. Meanwhile, proposals by some service providers to adjust access fees based on broadband consumers' data traffic volume could inhibit the development of video and other data-intensive applications, said David J. Farber, a University of Pennsylvania professor and former chief technologist at the Federal Communications Commission. Farber is hopeful, though, that consumers will resist -- even if a monopoly high-speed service provider tries to abandon long-standing flat-rate pricing. In terms of government regulation, Stanford University law professor Lawrence Lessig warned of making knee-jerk decisions without fully understanding their impact. His chief complaint: Copyright protections aimed at combating theft that also curtail legitimate uses. Reed E. Hundt, former FCC chairman, said government could kill short-range wireless networking through rules such as banning retail sales of products that use unlicensed portions of the spectrum. He said Taiwan and other countries already restrict such sales. But many participants said government agencies and businesses can't afford to wait on issues such as privacy, junk e-mail and copyright controls. Until we reach a major breakthrough [on privacy protections and authentication], I wonder how much real progress we can make in using the Internet as a trusted vehicle for commerce, said Keith Besgrove, a manager at Australia's National Office for the Information Economy. Marian Grubben of the European Union, whose parliament has passed legislation requiring companies to obtain permission before sending marketing e-mail to Europeans, said a failure to act would impede mobile services, to which spam is migrating. One issue governments are still grappling with is how to apply national laws to a medium that knows no boundaries. Policymakers need to tread carefully, said Wolfgang Kleinwachter, professor of international communication at the University of Aarhus in Denmark. Going too far one way could restrict freedom and choice, he said, while the opposite could foster organized crime. Michael Nelson, an executive with International Business Machines Corp. who is conference co-chairman, said bad policy decisions today could stunt the Internet's growth. We are actually at a point where we can make some very wrong decisions, and the Net will just kind of become like any
RE: Satanism of debt (reply to Jim)
Title: RE: [PEN-L:27084] Satanism of debt (reply to Jim) yeah, I agree that there's too much debt in the US economy at this point. But I think that there are better sources, such as Godley and Izurieta (Keynesians of a sort, see http://www.levy.org/). I like the Austrian school's emphasis on dynamics (cf. Haberler's book on business cycles) the valid parts of their analysis seem to come from Marx (as Schumpeter, an Austrian so good that many of the school don't want him) admitted. I just want to mention a further point: the von Mises-type analysis that Steve posted also was very upset about the fact that banks are being replaced as financial intermediaries by GE Capital and Fannie Mae the like. I don't like GE Capital, but this criticism contradicts another part of the Austrian perspective: it used to be that the Austrians were upset because under the fractional reserve banking system, banks could create money by lending some of our deposits in them -- instead of holding 100% reserves to back up deposits. They used to point to the resulting credit inflation (which could occur without actual inflation, as in the 1920s) that would allow the interest rate to fall below its natural rate, with baleful effects. Lionel Robbins, for example, blamed the Great Depression on the credit inflation of the 1920s and argued that we should just let nature take its course rather than doing anything about the Depression. Anyway, neither GE Capital nor Fannie Mae can create money (i.e., credit) the way that banks can, since they don't take deposits. Instead, they raise money by issuing and selling bonds. So, even though these institutions have their problems, they don't have the same problem that the Austrians used to be so upset with banks about. If the economy turns even sourer, both of these would likely find that a lot of their assets have also become nonperforming -- encouraging a Federal bail-out -- but there can't be runs on these institutions. Jim Devine [EMAIL PROTECTED] http://bellarmine.lmu.edu/~jdevine -Original Message- From: Steve Diamond [mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED]] Sent: Thursday, June 20, 2002 10:34 PM To: [EMAIL PROTECTED] Subject: [PEN-L:27084] Satanism of debt (reply to Jim) Of course, the Hayekians have an obsession about fiat money, but I think it is very helpful to keep track of their analyses. I am not a gold bug but I think it is interesting that they want to anchor money to value. Of course debt, and all forms of fictitious capital, is not intrinsically bad but there sure is an awful lot of it today. In the late 80's Salomon Bros. economist Henry Kaufman wrote a kind of memoir complaining about the massive amount of debt the economy was piling up - it stood at about 7 trillion then. Well, now it stands at 30 trillion. Are we 400% wealthier? And that does not include US$ obligations like T-bills. In the wake of, for example, the near trillion dollar destruction of paper claims to wealth in the telecom sector alone over the last eighteen months I think it is perfectly reasonable to at least pose the question that there is something seriously wrong here. I would be the first to suggest that it is unfortunate that we have to look to the Mont Pelerin society for some answers, but at least it helps highlight the issues. Stephen F. Diamond School of Law Santa Clara University [EMAIL PROTECTED]
RE: Re: An alternative to Micro$oft
Title: RE: [PEN-L:27083] Re: An alternative to Micro$oft Sabri asks. One last thing, at the risk of sounding silly: What is ideology? Is one's ideology independent from the class one belongs to? As every teacher knows, there is no such thing as a silly question, except for the one unasked.[*] There are at least three definitions of ideology. 1. one conservative but intelligent economist, Douglass North defines it as the subjective perceptions (models, theories) all people possess to explain the world around them. Whether at the microlevel of individual relationships or at the macrolevel of organized ideologies providing integrated explanations of the past and present, such as communism or religions, the _theories_ individuals construct are _colored_ by normative views of how the world should be organized. (INSTITUTIONS, INSTITUTIONAL CHANGE AND ECONOMIC PERFORMANCE, Cambridge U.P, 1990, p. 23n, his emphasis.) In this view, ideology could, in theory, be correct. NC economics fits this definition (including having a clear normative vision of the perfect market system), but I would guess that North sees that as the correct perspective. 2. some Marxists define ideology as false consciousness, e.g., workers who mistakenly look out for their own personal gains as opposed to the collective interests of their work-mates or of their class as a whole. Those with false consciousness don't see the world as it is (i.e., as _we_ see it). At least by implication, such ideology should be dumped, since its adherents are duped. 3. another Marxian tradition sees ideology as an incomplete or partial vision that arises from looking at the world from one's position in it. Looking at the world from the perspective of a commodity-seller (as neoclassical economics does), for example, gives one a vision that involves commodity fetishism. Note that this doesn't say that this ideology is _wrong_ and should be dumped one hundred percent. Rather, it says that the ideology is radically _incomplete_ and needs to be complemented by a societal vision. (NC economics isn't totally wrong. For example, within limits, the theory of supply demand is useful and revealing.) BTW, one of the best explanations of this third vision of ideology is seen in the first few pages of Edward Bellamy's LOOKING BACKWARD (1888). He presents the metaphor of capitalism as a carriage rushing ahead over a rocky road. Different people have different relations to the carriage (capitalists sitting on top, workers pulling it, etc.) and thus have different -- partial -- visions of the carriage. Like Marx, Bellamy argued that we needed to understand the carriage as a whole. Unlike Marx, he proposed a clear alternative. (He was a utopian, a self-described nationalist who would nowadays be labelled an authoritarian socialist. His utopia is like a cleaned-up, idealized, version of the old Soviet Union. I think it was very influential, including on the original Bolsheviks.) [*] actually, I recently received a really silly question from a student, who was nit-picking about my grammar. Jim Devine
Re: Re: Re: On tactic of revolution
On tactics of revolution 2. Today, tactics of permanent revolution lost its ground. How do means (What accounts for the) Russian revolution and its collapse? Lessons from Russian revolution results from analyzing the degeneration of proletariat dictatorship. Various factors existed, in today, we must be clear to abolish commodity and money due to dictatorship of proletariat. Reply The words "analyzing the degeneration of proletariat dictatorship" is pregnant with meaning and can only be unraveled once a Marxist - specifically Leninist, approach to party, class, masses and administrative system regulating public property relations in industry is made. Lenin's presentation of the relationship between leaders, masses and classes is summarized as a historical configuration in "Left Wing Communism An Infantile Disorder." I shall not repeat this formulation. I am somewhat familiar with the writings of J. V. Stalin because I read them and once owned his 13 Volume Collection. Perhaps twenty years ago I donated my collection to the comrades in the historic areas of slavery in the South of America - biggest mistake I have made in life. What can I say, being "South" with carpetbag and all and inescapably trapped in the logic of American history. We have a fundamental unity on a general line of march - approach, to this specific stage in the decay of capital. I agree with the specific delineation you make between the conception of "permanent revolution" and "uninterrupted revolution." The question of capitalist development in a country that did not know and experience concrete feudal relations are different or rather manifests Marxism of a different hue, due to a particular national development. National development without feudal economic relations and "national" consolidation based on the transition from manufacture to industry is unique. The "degeneration of proletariat dictatorship" should be presented as the "decay of the party and the subsequent overthrow of the dictatorship of the proletariat." You correctly point out the role of the peasantry as it evolves from feudal economic structures and eloquently speak of the exploitation of the peasantry when you state: Thus to exploit capital, it could achieve by proletariat, their conscious will and political power, but these unconscious collective action would be unable by human will, or in other word, political will. (Problem of translation in above two sentences.) If so, it become clear that NEP was a historical inevitability and the meaning of NEP under proletariat is a "Proletarian Cultural Revolution." NEP (New Economic Program) was to overcome economical deadlock, which resulted from war communism and exploited farmers. Thus NEP was a program to save the political revolution by reviving the commodity form of production or the social product. Lenin's government saw and understood NEP as a tactic of retreat from revolution. So if economical revival was achieved, to abolish money is premise. Today, NEP was not proved retreat from revolution rather the tactics inevitable to lead social revolution avoiding to intervene farmers. L! ater Lenin knew it, but already he lost powers. " Well, here is the point of difference. In a country (or countries) that did not experience concrete feudal economic relations, what is called the exploitation of the peasantry as such is called the "historic mechanization of agriculture." There was a class of slaves producing for the world market and their emancipation - May 1865, resulted in a spontaneous movement to parcel out the land of the large landowners who were slaveholders or the slaveholding class. "He brought the farm" is a historic popular saying in American history, indicating property and class relationships. One becomes a property holder at the point of death because ones "insurance money" can pay the mortgage - capitalist property relations pure and simple. The point is that peasants as such did not exist in America. Peasants are talked about because they existed as a class in the system of the dictatorship of the proletariat in Russia. No peasants in America but peasants existed in Japan and most countries on earth. No feudal economic relations existed in the former American colonies. None - Nada - Nathan - nuthing from nuthing! I shall not "nit-pick " - (become petty and seek very small points of difference). The basis for the overthrow of Soviet power was not a historic assertion ushering forth from the means of production, but rather decay in the subjective arena or rather the party; the infiltration of the bourgeoisie within the party as politics and this set the basis for the overthrow of Soviet Power. The corruption and decay in the administrative branches of the dictatorship of the proletariat is not a historically inevitable process but rather a historic consequence of "something else." This "something else" must be sought out and understood. I believe that the Marxist movement suffers
Ideology Re: RE: Re: An alternative to Micro$oft
Devine, James wrote: Sabri asks. One last thing, at the risk of sounding silly: What is ideology? Is one's ideology independent from the class one belongs to? As every teacher knows, there is no such thing as a silly question, except for the one unasked.[*] There are at least three definitions of ideology. There are, I suspect, many more than three. The practice I've arrived at is to accept the definition of whatever text I'm reading-- i.e., to derive the meaning of ideology from the text, and let that meaning control my understanding of the text. If context doesn't provide a clear meaning for it, I read it as merely meaning set of ideas as far as that text goes. To put it another way, I've resigned myself to the impossibility of ever having a generally shared understanding of it. In my own usage, I try to follow the usage of Barbara Jeanne Fields in her essay, Slavery, Race and Ideology in the United States of America, New Left Review, May/June 1990. I like it because (a) it offers a fairly clean distinction between ideology, propaganda, and theory and (b) it enables a quite powerful explanation of the relationship between the way people live/act and their spontaneous responses to that experience. (I think a crude but useful reduction of her view would be that ideology = common sense.) Her definition seems to overlap the first and third you offer, but does not quite coincide with either. I give the key paragraphs below. It leaves open the question of whether, in any give case, ideology can be equated with false consciousness. (Incidentally, Engels defined it as the belief that ideas have a history of their own. That is useful, for instance, in critiquing the history of ideas discipline. An immense amount of literary scholarship from, say, 1930 to 1980 made this assumption.) Carrol From Barbara Jeanne Fields: ** This is perhaps a good moment to say a few words abut what ideology is and what it is not; because without an understanding of what ideology is and does, how it arises and how it is sustained, there can be no genuinely historical understanding of race. Ideology is best understood as the descriptive vocabulary of day-to-day existencem through which people make rough sense of the social reality that they live and create from day to day. It is the language of consciousness that suits the particular way in which people deal with their fellows. It is the interpretation in thought of the social relations through which they constantly create and re-create their collective being, in all the varied forms their collective being may assume: family, clan, tribe, nation, class, party, business enterprise, church, army, club, and so on. As such, ideologies are not delusions but real, as real as the social relations for which they stand. Ideologies are real, but it does not follow that they are scientifically accurate, or that they provide an analysis of social relations that would make sense to anyone who does not take ritual part in those social relations. Some societies (including colonial New England) have explained troublesome relations between people as witchcraft and possession by the devil. The explanation makes sense to those whose daily lives produce and reproduce witchcraft, nor can any amount of rational evidence disprove it. Witchcraft in such a society is as self-evident a natural fact as race is to Richard Cohen of the *Washington Post*. To someone looking in from outside, however, explaining a miscarriage, a crop failure, a sudden illness, or a death by invoking witchcraft would seem absurd, just as explaining slavery by invoking race must seem absurd to anyone who does not ritually produce race day in and day out as Americans do. Ideologies do not need to be plausible, let alone persuasive, to outsiders. They do their job when they help insiders make sense of the things they do and see--ritually, repetitively--on a daily basis. So much ideology is. Here is what it is not. It is not a material entity, a thing of any sort, that you can hand down like an old garment, pass on like a germ, spread like a rumour, or impose like a code of dress or etiquette. Nor is it a collection of dissociated beliefs--attitudes is the favoured jargon among American social scientists and historians they have mesmerizedd--that you can extract from their context and measure by current or retrospective survey researh. (Someday the reification of conduct and demeanour in attitudes will seem as quaint and archaic as their reification in bodily humours--phlegmatic, choleric, melancholic, sanguine--does now.) Nor is it a Frankenstein's monster that takes on a life of its own. Ideology is not the same as *propaganda*. Someone who said, Anti-slavery *ideology* infiltrated the slave quarters through illicit abolitionist newspapers, would be talking rather about propaganda than about ideology. The slaves' anti-slavery ideology could not be smuggled to them in alien newsprint. People deduce and verify
Russia's Military Industrial Complex
EPW Commentary June 08, 2002 Russia's Military Industrial Complex Struggle for Revival The end of the cold war combined with the collapse in demand for industrial goods as a result of the sluggish economy have severely constrained attempts to change the production patterns of the military industrial complex towards the manufacture of products for civilian use. With Russia's improving relations with NATO, its military production and trade may get a boost. R G Gidadhubli Russia's military industrial complex (MIC) is archaic and does not correspond to contemporary military-political tasks. Russian president Vladimir Putin said at a joint meeting of the Presidium of the State Council and the Russian Security Council on October 30, 2001. He added that only 20 per cent of defence plants were functioning on modern methods and that many must be closed down. He was, in a sense, echoing views expressed by some key defence personnel of the country. For instance, General Mikhail Kornukov, the commander-in-chief of air force in an interview published in the well-known Russian military journal Krasnaya Zvezda (Red Star) on August 18, 2001 has observed, [The] no 1 headache is the aging of the fleet under his command. He also opined that due to funding problem, the number of planes in the Russian air force had fallen from several thousand to a few hundred in 2001. According to General Sergei Maev, the head of the defence ministry' s directorate responsible for tanks stated on September 6, 2001 only one in five Russian tanks could meet modern specifications. The situation with regard to Russian navy was quite similar. As reported in the Nezavisimoe Voennoe Obozrenie (Independent Military Review) (No 30 of 2001), the lack of funding for new construction and fuel shortages were hampering Russia's ability to maintain its navy and that if this situation continued, then by 2010 Russia will have only 100 ships of all classes, since more ships were falling into disrepair. According to the US magazine Defence No 32 of 2001, a half dozen Russian defence companies were represented in the 100 leading global weapon producers - Rosvooruzhenie 13th place; Sukhoi 35th place; Severnaya Verf 52nd place; MIG 88th place and Tula Rifles 90th place. There were reports that Russia had moved from 8th place among world largest arms exporters a few years back to 2nd place in 2001 next only to the US. In fact, Vladimir Putin himself stated at the MAKS-2001 air show held in Moscow in August 2001 where 34 countries and 512 companies participated that Russia was ready to compete in the international aircraft market. There are many news reports in Russia about new types of weapons being produced in the country. For instance, ITAR-TASS reported on August 23, 2001 that Russia had begun the production of new supersonic cruise missile - the X-22M, having a range of 400 km and speed of 3,600 km per hour. It was claimed that no military in the world had weapons to counter this new weapon. On September 10, 2001, a spokesperson of the Russian defence ministry announced the successful development of a new supersonic anti-tank missile 'Vikhir' which was capable of piercing up to 1,000 mm of armour and could also be used against airplanes 10 km away. It was also reported on September 10, 2001 by the State Research and Production Enterprise 'Region' that Russia began the production of KAB-500 Kr smart bombs that were without parallel in the world. Rosaviakosmos chief Yuri Koptev has said that Russia will launch mass production of Fifth-Generation fighter jet from 2009. There are then apparently contradictory reports concerning Russia's MIC which raise many questions. What is the state of Russia's MIC? What has been the impact of the Soviet collapse on Russia's MIC? What has been Russia's policy with regard to MIC? How did Russia's transition to market economy affect MIC? What is Putin's strategy with regard to Russia's MIC? These questions have significance in understanding contemporary developments in Russia. This is also important considering the fact that India has been one of the major importers of a wide range of defence equipments such as tanks, MIGs, submarines and so on from the former Soviet Union and from the post-Soviet Russia. The quantum of imports is expected to increase with the recent bilateral meetings at the highest levels and signing of agreements between India and Russia. India is to receive more Russian tanks, MIG fighter planes, 'somewhat controversial' Admiral Gorshkov naval ship which is being refitted to meet Indian needs and so on. But what has, however, caused concern is the fact that during the last decade about one hundred MIGs have met with accidents killing the pilots and what is more is the quick frequency with which these accidents have occurred during the last few years. Apart from investigations by the Indian side into the accidents, it is significant that in May 2002 a team of Russian experts arrived in India for
Re: Speed up!
I'm a bit slow in responding but it occurs to me that we've got a subtle post hoc ergo propter hoc fallacy in the obvious assumption that speed up and increased workloads are the cause of (or even contribute to) productivity increases. What if... Well, what if the productivity increases come from outside the dynamic of intensity and duration of labour, qua the old 1867 book? It is a what if scenario that was anticipated in a slightly older book called the Grundrisse. What if the speed up and increased workload is a RESPONSE to the productivity increases and moreover, what if it is a conditioned response -- a reflex -- that doesn't add anything to the productivity increase and perhaps dampens it? What if all that hard work is a cargo cult ritual performed to familiarize an otherwise incongruous phenomenon? I'm not about to offer evidence for these counter propositions because there is no evidence for either argument. We are not dealing with a double-blind control group experiment. There is simply a consensus for the conventional view and it is a consensus that spans right and left, with disagreement only about whether or not it is a good thing. I object. If we put aside the propter hoc fallacy it would be possible to entertain a very plausible explanation about the ideological need to explain social productivity gains in terms of individual effort. The less that productivity gains are a result of individual effort the greater is the ideological need to assert that they are. Need for Speed Has Workers Seething Labor: Production pace is emerging as a top health concern for low-wage employees. By NANCY CLEELAND Times Staff Writer June 19 2002 A decade-long obsession with productivity has been healthy for the corporate bottom line, but workers say they are paying for it with exhaustion and pain... http://www.latimes.com/business/la-fi-speedup19jun19.story Jim Devine commented: hey, didn't I read about this in some old book, published in 1867? Tom Walker 604 255 4812
re: Speed up!
Title: re: Speed up! Tom Walker writes: I'm a bit slow in responding but it occurs to me that we've got a subtle post hoc ergo propter hoc fallacy in the obvious assumption that speed up and increased workloads are the cause of (or even contribute to) productivity increases. What if... Well, what if the productivity increases come from outside the dynamic of intensity and duration of labour, qua the old 1867 book? It is a what if scenario that was anticipated in a slightly older book called the Grundrisse. It's true that the older book has more emphasis on intensity (speed-up), while CAPITAL emphasizes stretch-out. In terms of simple definition of labor productivity per year labor productivity = (output per year)/(sale of hours of labor-power per year) = Q/LP Q/LP = (Q/labor effort)(labor effort/LP) the LAT article is about the rise of labor effort per hour of labor-power sold (speed-up). Marx's main concern in CAPITAL was with the rise in LP relative to the total time available to workers (stretch-out). NC economics mostly concerns the rise of output per ounce of labor effort (the effectiveness of labor), emphasizing technical causes. What if the speed up and increased workload is a RESPONSE to the productivity increases I don't understand this. By the definition above, speed-up raises labor productivity. and moreover, what if it is a conditioned response -- a reflex -- that doesn't add anything to the productivity increase and perhaps dampens it? What if all that hard work is a cargo cult ritual performed to familiarize an otherwise incongruous phenomenon? I wouldn't think of this as a cargo cult but as a form of capitalist irrationality: capitalists have been known to speed up work in a way that actually hurts labor effectiveness (Q/effort). JD
where does money come from?
Jim wrote: neither GE Capital nor Fannie Mae can create money (i.e., credit) the way that banks can, since they don't take deposits I don't think this is the way that money works. I think that Fannie Mae creates money (or, if you prefer, paper claims to wealth) by creating a market for mortgages (i.e. flooding the market with cheap mortgage rates and then deals) THEN repackaging them as Asset-Backed securities and then selling those into the capital markets (thus offloading them from their balance sheet) and taking the cash from institutional investors from the ABS sale to finance a new round of mortgages. Meanwhile the recipient of the home loan gives the money to the seller of the house so that they in turn deposit the money into a MMF or CMA or bank account for the inevitable multiplier effect. Doug Noland at prudentbear.com has written quite persuasively of this process. Also see a book called The Grip of Death which is a leftwing approach to the same problem. This may be a matter of semantics about broad v. narrow money but I think deposits are created after money is created not the reverse. The key question I think is who is the mover of the process and I think it is not the depositor but the creator of the original relationship that allegedly has value in it (whether in real estate or manufacturing) i.e. a capitalist (whether financial or production). In this case it is Fannie Mae or GE Capital (in the latter case, e.g., 40% of GE profits come from financing, similar numbers for GMAC/GM). Stephen F. Diamond School of Law Santa Clara University [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Fraudulent profits
Last night Frontline aired an excellent documentary on Enron. (http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/pages/frontline/shows/regulation/) It stated, among other things, that Enron's growth came mostly as the result of purchasing companies. This was what explained the earnings explosion of many Fortune 500 companies in the past ten years, including Rite Aid apparently. === The Plain Dealer, December 3, 1995 Sunday, FINAL / ALL PROFIT MARGINS DRIVE TAKEOVERS BY DRUGSTORES By BILL LUBINGER; PLAIN DEALER REPORTER It wasn't long ago that drugs were sold at the corner pharmacy by professionals concerned more about the needs of their customers than complex issues like economies of scale. But today, instead of walking to the neighborhood drugstore and buying prescriptions with cash, more and more customers simply whip out their plastic insurance card, which brings them convenience and lower costs. The card represents not only a different method of payment, but also an ongoing overhaul of the nation's health care system. Prescription plans offered by health insurers and managed-care companies simply won't pay high prices for drugs, driving profit margins so low that only the largest and most savvy stand a chance. It was that pressure - the increasingly present squeeze on profits - that was the driving force behind last week's announcement that Rite Aid Corp. was acquiring Twinsburg-based Revco D.S. Inc. in a $1.8 billion deal. It was a move to grab a bigger and more profitable piece of the $65 billion retail pharmacy business, which is growing 10 percent to 12 percent annually because of inflation, the medical needs of an aging population and the introduction of new drugs. In a nutshell, while Rite Aid was already the nation's No.1 drugstore chain in terms of sales, it wasn't big enough. If you don't get bigger, you are going to die, explained Martin L. Grass, Rite Aid's chairman and chief executive officer. Managed-care companies are looking for the lowest cost provider and the very best quality service. The bigger you are, the more muscle you will have. Former Rite Aid Executives Charged With Defrauding Investors By THE ASSOCIATED PRESS HARRISBURG, Pa. (AP) -- The former chairman and two other past senior executives of Rite Aid Corp. were indicted Friday in what authorities described as a far-reaching securities and accounting fraud that prompted the largest restatement of corporate earnings in American history. One current executive was also charged in a 37-count federal indictment related to the financial reporting and accounting practices at the nation's third-largest drugstore chain. ``The charges announced today reveal a disturbing picture of dishonesty and misconduct at the highest level of a major corporation,'' said Wayne M. Carlin, northeast regional director of the SEC. ``Rite Aid's former senior management employed an extensive bag of tricks to manipulate the company's reported earnings and defraud its investors.'' Martin L. Grass, 47, of Virginia Beach, Va., the former chairman and chief executive officer; Franklin Brown, 74, of Harrisburg, the former chief counsel and vice chairman; and Franklyn Bergonzi, 57, of Hummelstown, a former executive vice president and chief financial officer, face the most serious charges. The charges include conspiracy to defraud, fraud in connection with the purchase or sale of securities and making false statements to the Securities and Exchange Commission. Grass and Brown also are accused of tampering with witnesses and obstructing various investigations. full: http://www.nytimes.com/aponline/business/AP-Rite-Aid.html Louis Proyect Marxism mailing list: http://www.marxmail.org
Re: where does money come from?
- Original Message - From: Steve Diamond [EMAIL PROTECTED] . Also see a book called The Grip of Death which is a leftwing approach to the same problem = The one by Michael Rowbotham? Or is there another title by the same name with a different author? Ian
Re: RE: Satanism of debt (reply to Jim)
Jim, Doesn't GE Capital raise a lot of cash in the commercial paper market? This is very short term borrowing. The Fed can impact the availability of funds from this source and potentially could squeeze GE severely. It wouldn't be "run" but GE nevertheless might have to stop lending, stop renewing loans, etc. This exposure is what caused a bond analyst to attack GE a few months ago. Gene Coyle "Devine, James" wrote: yeah, I agree that there's too much debt in the US economy at this point. But I think that there are better sources, such as Godley and Izurieta (Keynesians of a sort, see http://www.levy.org/). I like the "Austrian" school's emphasis on dynamics (cf. Haberler's book on business cycles) the valid parts of their analysis seem to come from Marx (as Schumpeter, an "Austrian" so good that many of the school don't want him) admitted. I just want to mention a further point: the von Mises-type analysis that Steve posted also was very upset about the fact that banks are being replaced as financial intermediaries by GE Capital and Fannie Mae the like. I don't like GE Capital, but this criticism contradicts another part of the "Austrian" perspective: it used to be that the "Austrians" were upset because under the fractional reserve banking system, banks could "create money" by lending some of our deposits in them -- instead of holding 100% reserves to back up deposits. They used to point to the resulting "credit inflation" (which could occur without actual inflation, as in the 1920s) that would allow the interest rate to fall below its "natural" rate, with baleful effects. Lionel Robbins, for example, blamed the Great Depression on the credit inflation of the 1920s and argued that we should just let "nature take its course" rather than doing anything about the Depression. Anyway, neither GE Capital nor Fannie Mae can "create money" (i.e., credit) the way that banks can, since they don't take deposits. Instead, they raise money by issuing and selling bonds. So, even though these institutions have their problems, they don't have the same problem that the "Austrians" used to be so upset with banks about. If the economy turns even sourer, both of these would likely find that a lot of their assets have also become "nonperforming" -- encouraging a Federal bail-out -- but there can't be "runs" on these institutions. Jim Devine [EMAIL PROTECTED] http://bellarmine.lmu.edu/~jdevine > -Original Message- > From: Steve Diamond [mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED]] > Sent: Thursday, June 20, 2002 10:34 PM > To: [EMAIL PROTECTED] > Subject: [PEN-L:27084] "Satanism of debt" (reply to Jim) > > > Of course, the Hayekians have an obsession about fiat money, > but I think it > is very helpful to keep track of their analyses. I am not a > gold bug but I > think it is interesting that they want to anchor money to > value. Of course > debt, and all forms of fictitious capital, is not > intrinsically bad but > there sure is an awful lot of it today. In the late 80's > Salomon Bros. > economist Henry Kaufman wrote a kind of memoir complaining > about the massive > amount of debt the economy was piling up - it stood at about > 7 trillion > then. Well, now it stands at 30 trillion. Are we 400% > wealthier? And that > does not include US$ obligations like T-bills. In the wake > of, for example, > the near trillion dollar destruction of paper claims to wealth in the > telecom sector alone over the last eighteen months I think it > is perfectly > reasonable to at least pose the question that there is > something seriously > wrong here. I would be the first to suggest that it is > unfortunate that we > have to look to the Mont Pelerin society for some answers, > but at least it > helps highlight the issues. > > > Stephen F. Diamond > School of Law > Santa Clara University > [EMAIL PROTECTED] >
RE: where does money come from?
Title: RE: [PEN-L:27096] where does money come from? I wrote: neither GE Capital nor Fannie Mae can create money (i.e., credit) the way that banks can, since they don't take deposits Steve Diamond writes: I don't think this is the way that money works. I think that Fannie Mae creates money (or, if you prefer, paper claims to wealth) by creating a market for mortgages (i.e. flooding the market with cheap mortgage rates and then deals) THEN repackaging them as Asset-Backed securities and then selling those into the capital markets (thus offloading them from their balance sheet) and taking the cash from institutional investors from the ABS sale to finance a new round of mortgages. Meanwhile the recipient of the home loan gives the money to the seller of the house so that they in turn deposit the money into a MMF or CMA or bank account for the inevitable multiplier effect This description fits my understanding of the issue. My argument was only that the Austrians were contradicting themselves if they were thinking that GE capital or Fannie Mae were somehow worse than banks by their standards. I wasn't saying that these institutions couldn't have the _indirect_ effect (via banks) of creating money. ... This may be a matter of semantics about broad v. narrow money but I think deposits are created after money is created not the reverse. The _way_ in which banks create money is by creating deposits (so the two are the same thing). They can't create currency, the other kind of money (only the Fed and the Treasury can do that). All they can do is creating bookkeeping obligations, i.e., bank deposits, which count as part of money no matter how you measure it (unless you think that money = currency). The key question I think is who is the mover of the process and I think it is not the depositor but the creator of the original relationship that allegedly has value in it (whether in real estate or manufacturing) i.e. a capitalist (whether financial or production). In this case it is Fannie Mae or GE Capital (in the latter case, e.g., 40% of GE profits come from financing, similar numbers for GMAC/GM). These days, the mover in the banking industry is the banks themselves. The textbook story of banks receiving deposits and then lending them doesn't work except in a limited way. New or entrepreneurial banking involves seeking out borrowers and _then_ drumming up funds to lend to them, sometimes by attracting deposits, but more often by selling commercial paper. When they do the latter, they're acting more like GE capital. Gene Coyle write:Doesn't GE Capital raise a lot of cash in the commercial paper market? This is very short term borrowing. The Fed can impact the availability of funds from this source and potentially could squeeze GE severely. It wouldn't be run but GE nevertheless might have to stop lending, stop renewing loans, etc. This exposure is what caused a bond analyst to attack GE a few months ago. you're right. But my point was only that GE Capital was different than banks. JD
Re: Speed up!
Papa Karl deals admirably with both duration and intensity in Capital, vol. I. Chris Nyland reviewed Marx's position back in the late 1980s. I won't recapitulate because it's somewhat beside my point. First of all, I would consider productivity to be something measured by a rubber yardstick. An hour of socially necessary labour time is an hour of socially necessary labour time is an hour of socially necessary labour time. Presumably increases in physical unit output per hour of labour time would be reflected in both the numerator and denominator of the productivity equation, with the difference being restricted to changes in the rate of surplus value. We know this is not the way it is done. Therefore let's suggest that productivity growth also involves a tacit comparison between a historical determination of value and a current one. Strictly speaking, productivity growth doesn't compare apples to apples (leaving aside the question of whether they are good apples or bad apples). Now that I've made THAT perfectly clear ;-)... what I want to say in my defense is that what I say may not be perfectly clear because the relationship we are talking about is itself not perfectly clear. I am simply trying to dispell an illusion of clarity. That illusion of clarity prevents us from even thinking about these matters. We speak about productivity AS IF it can be expressed by a simple equation, Q/LP that _assumes_ precisely what needs to be questioned. I don't have the answer to my what if question but I do have the question. At one extreme, the reported productivity gains of the last decade might be an expression of massive off-balance sheet accounting, including social and environmental externalities as part of the off-balance sheet. At the other extreme, the reported gains could represent a dividend from social infrastructure investments made decades ago like, say, flouridated water and SMSG math. Or they could be any combination of the two and some other things in between, not to mention the alignment of the planets. I'm not saying the issue is ultimately undecidable, I'm just say that there are not good grounds for jumping to the presumably obvious conclusion that speed up = productivity gains. A cargo cult is a form of irrationality, in this case perhaps capitalist irrationality. The equation of speed up with productivity gains expresses the metaphor, the economy is a machine. It's a lovely metaphor, but no more absolute than my love is a red, red rose. I wrote, What if the speed up and increased workload is a RESPONSE to the productivity increases Jim Devine wrote, I don't understand this. By the definition above, speed-up raises labor productivity. I wrote, and moreover, what if it is a conditioned response -- a reflex -- that doesn't add anything to the productivity increase and perhaps dampens it? What if all that hard work is a cargo cult ritual performed to familiarize an otherwise incongruous phenomenon? Jim Devine wrote, I wouldn't think of this as a cargo cult but as a form of capitalist irrationality: capitalists have been known to speed up work in a way that actually hurts labor effectiveness (Q/effort). Tom Walker 604 255 4812
RE: Re: Speed up!
Title: RE: [PEN-L:27101] Re: Speed up! Tom writes: We speak about productivity AS IF it can be expressed by a simple equation, Q/LP that _assumes_ precisely what needs to be questioned. ... it's true that both Q and LP are hard to calculate -- especially the former (output), which consists of all sorts of things that are measured in different units and thus have to be added up using fixed prices (or calculated in some similar way). Among other things, the output at time t is different from that at time t-1, so we are indeed comparing apples and oranges, especially as the length of time between periods being compared gets longer. However, it's an effort to get _some idea_ of what's going on empirically rather than simply giving up on the effort to measure economic phenomena. At one extreme, the reported productivity gains of the last decade might be an expression of massive off-balance sheet accounting, including social and environmental externalities as part of the off-balance sheet. absolutely! I never weighed in on that issue. In fact, I've been skeptical about the US productivity gains of late 1990s for awhile... I understand recent re-estimates have downgraded the measured productivity surge of that period. At the other extreme, the reported gains could represent a dividend from social infrastructure investments made decades ago like, say, flouridated water and SMSG math. Or they could be any combination of the two and some other things in between, not to mention the alignment of the planets. I'm not saying the issue is ultimately undecidable, I'm just say that there are not good grounds for jumping to the presumably obvious conclusion that speed up = productivity gains. all I would say is that _all else equal_ speed-up _leads to_ productivity gains. A cargo cult is a form of irrationality, in this case perhaps capitalist irrationality. The equation of speed up with productivity gains expresses the metaphor, the economy is a machine. It's a lovely metaphor, but no more absolute than my love is a red, red rose. I don't know why the the idea that speed up leads to productivity gains expresses the metaphor the economy is a machine. If anything, it reinforces the point that the economy involves social relations of domination. Jim Devine [EMAIL PROTECTED] http://bellarmine.lmu.edu/~jdevine
Re: Re: Re: Re: On tactic of revolution
Title: Re: [PEN-L:27091] Re: Re: Re: On tactic of revolution Comrade Melvin P Thank you reply my argument Major difference between you and I is Stalin's argument My position is thoroughly anti-stalinist. It became my political experience and theoretical experience. Stalinist In Japan was organized people by old means, but it will fail I experience Stalinist killing my friends. MIYACHI TATSUO 9-10.OHTAI,MORIYAMA-KU NAGOYA CITY 463-0044 JAPAN [EMAIL PROTECTED]
The Chomsky Documentation Project
hey kids, won't this be fun . . . http://www.maxspeak.org/Hot_Buttons/chomsky.htm mbs * Max B. Sawicky http://www.MaxSpeak.Org BLOG: http://www.MaxSpeak.Org/gm/index.htm
1987 and all that...
Scandals, Profit Worries Send Stocks Near 9/11 Lows By Ben White Washington Post Staff Writer Saturday, June 22, 2002; Page E01 NEW YORK, June 21 -- Shaken by a scandal-du-jour business climate and concerned about the nation's underlying economic strength, investors dumped stocks again today, pushing the major indexes back near lows last touched after the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks. The Standard Poor's 500-stock index fell 17.15 points, or 1.7 percent, to close at 989.14, the first time the broad index has ended the trading day below 1000 since Sept. 21. And the Dow Jones industrial average dropped 177.98 points, to 9253.79, the worst close for the blue-chip indicator since Oct. 31. We are at maximum pain, said Stephen J. Massocca, president of Pacific Growth Equities in San Francisco. The dollar is declining, earnings estimates keep getting revised lower, corporate malfeasance and accounting scandals continue to erupt daily and the Middle East is still a tinderbox. All the big issues facing the market are negative. An upbeat forecast from wireless technology firm Qualcomm Inc. today could not overcome bad news about IBM and Merck and the indictment of three former executives and one current employee of Rite Aid on securities and accounting fraud charges. The indictments further unnerved investors already spooked by fresh scandals at conglomerate Tyco International and biopharmaceutical firm ImClone Systems. And they came as the collapse of Enron, recently written off by some observers as old news, sprang back into investors' consciousness this week with the conviction last Saturday of the energy trader's accounting firm, Arthur Andersen, on an obstruction-of-justice charge. Tepid second-quarter earnings reported by several companies also helped push stocks to their fifth straight down week as investors questioned whether the sluggish economic recovery will ever gain steam or simply putter out. People have been waiting for profitability to return for several months now, said Michael Obuchowski, a quantitative research analyst and portfolio manager at Ashland Management, which manages about $2 billion. But despite lower unemployment numbers and several leading indicators inching higher, not much is happening in terms of profits. . . . And because of all these scandals, people are really waiting for tangible results before they put money back in the market. For the week, the Dow fell 2.3 percent, the Nasdaq dropped 4.2 percent and the SP slipped 1.8 percent. Since May 17, the last time the indexes finished up for the week, the Dow and the SP have each lost 10.6 percent and the Nasdaq has dropped 17.3 percent. The Dow has had the best year so far of the major indexes and is still 12.4 percent above its Sept. 21 finish of 8235.81. The Nasdaq is just 1.3 percent above its Sept. 21 close, and the SP has only to drop another 2.4 percent to pierce its September low. Amid all the grim numbers, Qualcomm provided a lone bright spot today, announcing that increased demand for its wireless technology would improve third-quarter earnings. Its shares fell 21 cents, to $26.12. But IBM fell $2.83, or almost 4 percent, to $68.75, after Lehman Brothers Inc. lowered its earnings expectation on the stock. And investors sold shares in Merck after a Wall Street Journal report questioned the drug giant's accounting practices. Merck has denied wrongdoing. Both IMB and Merck are Dow components and helped drive the overall index down for the day. Market observers had expected hectic trading today on what's known as a triple witching day, when index futures and index and stock options all expire at once. The simultaneous options expirations occur only four times a year. Several academic observers and money managers said that despite recent drops, stocks remain expensive by historic ratios to corporate earnings and could fall even more if scandals continue to pile up and erode investor confidence. Something is true today which has been true only now and again in the past, said Harvard Business School professor Richard S. Tedlow. And that is that there is a spotlight on individuals. You see their pictures in the paper. You see them testifying before congressional committees. They have names. You can understand what they did wrong. Tedlow said the current market environment felt different from the events leading to the crash of 1987. It's hard to recall anyone particularly associated with that, he said. What's going on now has far more in common with the 1920s and 1930s, when a number of famous people went to jail. But Tedlow and several money managers cautioned that the underlying economy is far stronger than it was in the days of the Great Depression and that, should earnings finally pick up in the second quarter as many expect they will, stock prices could begin to recover late this year or early next year. In general, the economy looks reasonably solid, particularly housing and
