RE: Re: RE: Re: Roach on Asia

[Davies, Daniel]

>Also, name one economist who worked for the IMF
>and went to an investment bank who would be
>discussing anything on this list.

>CJ  

(raises hand sheepishly)


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RE: uh oh

[Davies, Daniel]

which ones are the republicans?  are they the goodies or the baddies?

-Original Message-
From: Ian Murray [mailto:seamus2001@;attbi.com]
Sent: 06 November 2002 08:09
To: pen-l
Subject: [PEN-L:31924] uh oh


Across the Nation 
GOP Gains Control of Congress 
Republicans Keep Reins in House, Recapture Majority in the Senate 

By Dan Balz
Washington Post Staff Writer
Wednesday, November 6, 2002; Page A01 



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RE: Re: Sociobiology in the Nation Magazine

[Davies, Daniel]

grr

>To me, it comes down to the fundamental question of whether you think
>evolution shaped our brains in ways that still affect our behavior. If the
>answer is yes, then anyone interested in shaping human society should be
>interested in finding out what those ways are.

Psychology is the study of the behaviour of individual human beings.

Sociology is the study of human beings in large groups.

Sociobiology is the unsupported assertion that one particular theory of
psychology can be made to work as a theory of sociology.

Evolutionary psychology is (in defense, and in legitimate journals) a theory
of psychology.

Evolutionary psychology is (in attack, and in pop science books),
sociobiology.

This is the fundamental piece of bad and/or dishonest thinking from which
the rest of what is bad about sociobiology flows.

I would note, speaking as an economist of neoclassical training, that there
is at least one kind of social theory which hopes to "shape society" without
having any theory whatever of what motivates individual people's desires.
To be honest, the more I read Pinker and his mates, the more it strikes me
what a fundamentally decent human being Gary Becker is, and that's got to be
f'cked up.

dd

PS:  As I've said before in re: Pinker, his main argument against
conventional sociology is that it's carried out by sociologists.  (In actual
fact, his argument against sociology is that it's carried out by
postmodernists, but I'm reconstructing him along the principle of
epistemological charity)


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RE: RE: Re: RE: Sweezy's occ

[Davies, Daniel]

 > BTW, does anyone know of any decent (or half-decent) measures of capital
*advanced* or *invested*, in flow- 
> of funds terms, as opposed to quasi-physical measures of the value of the
"capital stock"?   Or if it is feasible to  
> construct such measures?  What is needed is essentially the running total
of capital spending minus the  
> running total of depreciation charges and write-offs. 
 
Not sure what you mean here ... surely if you're looking for a measure of
capital advanced in flow-of-funds terms, then including the depreciation
charge is exactly what you don't want to do?  Nobody advances the
depreciation charge; it's purely an accrual item meant to try to smooth the
capital advanced along the lines of a quasi-physical model.  "Depreciation
is not a cash item" was about the first thing they taught us in business
school; that was behind the whole sorry EBITDA saga.
 
I think that what you need is a cumulated version of the Gross Fixed Capital
Formation series, but I suspect that you may mean something by "advanced"
other than what I think you mean
 
dd 

 
Andrew Kliman



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RE: RE: real economics

[Davies, Daniel]

check out the actual paper, it's a beaut.  No use of OLS regression to
demonstrate "analytical rigour", but two classic traits of the genre:
 
1)  "the best available science" is defined as the contents of Bjorn
Lomberg's book.  I gave up counting at the 30th citation of Lomborg.
 
2)  the argument appears to be that environmentalists are interested in the
environment, so the environment is one of their interests, so they're
interested in one of their interests, so they're self-interested, so they're
not *really* interested in the environment. 
 
I love George Mason University.
 
dd
 
 

-Original Message-
From: Devine, James [mailto:jdevine@;lmu.edu]
Sent: 30 October 2002 16:08
To: '[EMAIL PROTECTED]'
Subject: [PEN-L:31683] RE: real economics



so, if an environmentalist group doesn't follow a hard-core neoclassical
perspective (points 1, 2, & 3 below), it's a "special interest group"? 

do the George Mason University Law School and Economics Department analyze
themselves in these terms? are they rent-seeking? 

 
Jim Devine [EMAIL PROTECTED] &  http://bellarmine.lmu.edu/~jdevine
  


>   This article provides a first effort at testing the 
>   implications of public interest versus private interest models 
>   of environmental interest groups. In particular, it specifies 
>   three testable implications of a public interest model of the 
>   activities of environmental interest groups: (1) a desire to 
>   base policy on the best-available science; (2) a willingness to 
>   engage in deliberation and compromise to balance environmental 
>   protection against other compelling social and economic 
>   interests; and, (3) a willingness to consider alternative 
>   regulatory strategies that can deliver environmental protection 
>   at lower-cost than traditional command-and-control regulation. 
>   On all three counts, it is found that the public-interest or 
>   "civic republican" explanation for the activities of 
>   environmental interest groups fails to convincingly describe 
>   their behavior. On the other hand, the evidence on each of these 
>   three tests is consistent with a self-interested model of the 
>   behavior of environmental interest-groups. Their activities can 
>   be understood as being identical to those of any other interest 
>   group - namely, the desire to use the coercive power of 
>   government to subsidize their personal desires for greater 
>   environmental protection and to redistribute wealth and power to 
>   themselves. 



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RE: Morgan-ists Ride On

[Davies, Daniel]

>"Going for perfection was something I always thought you should do,"=20
>said the 74-year-old Dr. Watson, peppering his radical perspectives=20
>with trademark humour. "You always want the perfect girl."

It was the prevalence of "trademark humour" on this level that convinced me
that academic life was not for me.  The witticisms of a man who has not made
a joke to anything other than a lecture hall for forty years can be
tolerated by some, but not me.

dd


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following our recent conversations on "unemployment"

[Davies, Daniel]

One for strong stomachs, and definitely not for reading for breakfast:

http://www.nytimes.com/2002/10/20/fashion/20BANK.html

I'd hasten to point out that none of this should be taken at face value; one
does not necessarily hear the truth if you talk to people in nightclubs.
But there is an underlying moral truth to it; there are lots of different
ways in which to be unemployed.

dd


Daniel Davies
Cazenove Global Equities
European Banking Research
Direct Line: +44 (0) 20 7825 9985
Email: [EMAIL PROTECTED]




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RE: Mark Jones replies to Edward George on Welsh nationalism

[Davies, Daniel]

Pobol Annwn!  Sut fath o lol 'di hyn, 'te?  Be wnawn ni efo'r tomen o
sbwriel gordeimladwy 'ma, rwan?

As an actual (as, in Welsh-speaking) Welshman and a native of Ynys Mon, I
cannot quite put words to what it was that made the local farmer lie to
Mark, although if he was one of the bollockheads I went to school with, I
can hazard a guess.  Herewith, three poems; two by our national bard RS
Thomas and one by Harri Webb.

Twll din pob sais

dd

A Peasant

Iago Prytherch his name, though, be it allowed, 
Just an ordinary man of the bald Welsh hills, 
Who pens a few sheep in a gap of cloud. 
Docking mangels, chipping the green skin 
>From the yellow bones with a half-witted grin 
Of satisfaction, or churning the crude earth 
To a stiff sea of clods that glint in the wind - 
So are his days spent, his spittled mirth 
Rarer than the sun that cracks the cheeks 
Of the gaunt sky perhaps once in a week. 
And then at night see him fixed in his chair 
Motionless, except when he leans to gob in the fire. 
There is something frightening in the vacancy of his mind. 
His clothes, sour with years of sweat 
And animal contact, shock the refined, 
But affected, sense with their stark naturalness. 
Yet this is your prototype, who, season by season 
Against siege of rain and the wind's attrition, 
Preserves his stock, an impregnable fortress 
Not to be stormed, even in death's confusion. 
Remember him, then, for he, too, is a winner of wars, 
Enduring like a tree under the curious stars.  

Iago Prytherch

Iago Prytherch, forgive my naming you. 
You are so far in your small fields 
>From the world's eye, sharpening your blade 
On a cloud's edge, no one will tell you 
How I made fun of you, or pitied either 
Your long soliloquies, crouched at your slow 
And patient surgery under the faint 
November rays of the sun's lamp. 
Made fun of you? That was their graceless 
Accusation, because I took 
Your rags for theme, because I showed them 
Your thought's bareness; science and art, 
The mind's furniture, having no chance 
To install themselves, because of the great 
Draught of nature sweeping the skull. 

Fun? Pity? No word can describe 
My true feelings. I passed and saw you 
Labouring there, your dark figure 
Marring the simple geometry 
Of the square fields with its gaunt question. 
My poems were made in its long shadow 
Falling coldly across the page. 



Ianto Rhydderch: Tch Tch 

One day while I was docking swedes
With a slow moronic grin
And all my ancestors' misdeeds
Wrought their sour death within. 

Suddenly there came into view
A figure gaunt and tall.
He said, Forgive me naming you.
I made no sound at all. 

He carried on at tedious length
About my life so grim,
It took all my idiot peasant strength
To be polite to him. 

At last he ceased and strode away,
The cold Welsh rain came down,
In puddles in that barren clay
I watched my country drown. 

Then, indistinguishable from mud,
I started my old car,
The sickness of my tainted blood
Inclined me to a jar. 

And oh what festering itch of sin
Brought this damp thought to me
As I fuddled in a squalid inn:
Un bain't much help to we. 
 


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RE: Recapitulation

[Davies, Daniel]

>I think that the thread on unemployment data was very useful if you can
>filter out the unnecessary nastiness.  Whether the United States or
>Canada has the best statistical agencies, I leave to others.

I cheerfully admit that I have never really had any interaction with
Statistic Canada other than filling in the extraordinarily detailed
questionnaire they sometimes inflict on air travellers, and would not at all
want to argue that they weren't better than the US agencies against someone
who seemed to know what they were talking about.  Apologies to all patriotic
Canadians, who may consider this particular seal well and truly clubbed.

dd


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RE: Re: employment (apologies: long)

[Davies, Daniel]

-Original Message-
From: Charles Jannuzi [mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED]]
Sent: 09 October 2002 15:13
To: [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Subject: [PEN-L:31148] Re: employment


>best you could say it was an argument from
>previously established authority

Absolutely, because I have no real specialist knowledge of the subject of
unemployment statistics and no real prospect of having the time to get any.
But look at it this way:

What's the knock-down argument to say that people who only skim want ads
*should* be counted as "actively looking for work"?  I haven't heard it.
Same with the long term sick.  I don't even understand the argument about
the unemployment rate which seems to be arguing that people who have jobs in
the armed services ought to be counted as unemployed.  What I do know is
that there are a lot of people doing good, honest work on this subject,
trying to measure what effect various kinds of non-worker populations have
on the operations of the labour market, and that the most and the best of
them work for the BLS.  So in the absence of anyone making a contrary
argument to me, I'm going to assume that the inclusion of these groups makes
the BLS number worse, rather than better, as a measurement of what it's
meant to measure.  My understanding of what the BLS unemployment rate is
meant to measure is this:  it's meant to measure the number of people who
would be employed if the labour market were to clear at the current
prevailing wage rate, but who are not employed.  It's a measure of labour
market disequilibrium.

There are, I think, two further important questions which arise from this,
and part of the reason why we're all talking past each other is that we're
taking these two questions out of order.  The questions are:

1) Assuming that "unemployment" is used by the official statisticians to
measure the extent to which the labour market has failed to clear, should it
be measuring something else?

and -- and this can most likely only be answered conditionally on a specific
answer to 1) above --

2) Can adjustments be made to the official statistics in order to transform
the BLS number into something which works well as a measure of whatever it
is that the unemployment rate ought to be naming?

Taking these questions in order, I'm much less sure of my ground than I was
when I decided to stick my oar in.  There's a whole menu of different things
which could be reasonably regarded as being named by the words "the
unemployment rate":

a) the number of people not employed due to the labour market not clearing
at the current wage rate and rate of profit
b) the number of people who would be unemployed due to the labour market not
clearing at some other level of the wage rate and rate of profit
(presumably, one which we would regard as "fairer"
c) the entire population of those who could conceivably be press-ganged into
the labour force, minus the employed
d) c) , but minus people who would genuinely choose leisure rather than work
given the current level of social benefits
e) c), but also minus the people who would choose leisure rather than work
given some other (lower or higher) level of social benefits
f)  d) or e), but assuming people who "would choose leisure rather than
work" if they were in some Rawlsian state of maximally rational reflective
equilibrium, rather than the choices they might contingently happen to make
-- I think that this is what we're thinking about when we start adding back
"disenchanted workers".
g) any of the above, but adding back in people who have enough non-labour
income not to need to work

-- the above six are all more or less quantifiable people; I would guess
that you could twitch the BLS numbers to give you any of these, albeit that
b),  e) and f) would require the making of some fairly tendentious
adjustments and would give you a number useless for discussion with anyone
not already disposed to agree with you.  But there is also

h) the number of people who regard their lack of a job as being a bad thing
for them
i) the number of people who regard their lack of a job as being a harm
caused to them by outside agency
j) the number of people who would be better off if they were given a(ny) job
tomorrow
k) the number of people for whom there is some specific job which they could
do, and which it would make them better off if they were given it tomorrow
l) k), but with the constraint that the job must be one which could be
offered to them under some organisation of the economy which meets some
criterion of fairness relative to the currently prevailing organisation
m) variants of all of the above, but defining "job" in a way which does not
necessarily imply participation in the wage economy.

--- it's probably one of the above that one would want to be thinking of
in order to support intuitively attractive propositions like "even one
person unemployed is too much"; it's also what I was twittering on about
when I was talking about the misery of unemployment.  I would 

RE: Re: employment

[Davies, Daniel]

-Original Message-
From: Charles Jannuzi [mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED]]
Sent: 09 October 2002 12:08
To: [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Subject: [PEN-L:31141] Re: employment


>I know some people are probably sick of the
>topic, but reading through all those posts, I
>can't help but think at least two individuals
>mucked it up more than added to it (not Daniel's
>recent post, which did add considerably).

Thanks, but hang on a minute.  If by "two individuals" you mean Jim and
Doug, then it is important that we be absolutely clear that on the purely
factual aspects of the argument, they are *right* and their interlocutors
are wrong.

I have never, ever, in any series at all, been aware of a single area of
macroeconomic statistics in which the USA is not head and shoulders above
the rest of the world in terms of timeliness, comprehensiveness and
accuracy.  This is really quite important to understand; the BLS has a much
bigger budget than any other statistics agency anywhere in the world, spends
it well, and is admirable in its independence of mind.  Doug was absolutely
right to praise the staff of the BLS.  The UK's statistics used to be as
good (they're still not bad), but the guts were ripped out of them in the
Thatcher years.

Therefore, any debate on the statistics has to take place from the starting
point that the USA's stats are best, and other countries' are worst.  In
particular, I've never had to deal directly with Japanese employment
numbers, but I've found all the Japanese statistics I've had to deal with in
other areas (mainly money supply) to be of abominable quality, out of date
and subject to massive revisions.  It is really quite difficult to take
seriously any position which relies on the USA not having the best-collected
statistics.  Furthermore, I'd go out on a limb and argue that it is very
likely that, on any question of definitions of labour force participation
and similar matters, the BLS will have devoted more time and effort to the
question of which definition most accurately reflects slack and tightness in
the labour market, and will be right.  This should certainly be the
presumption.

Second, playing around with international comparison numbers in an attempt
to find something interesting to say which makes it look as if the USA's
unemployment record is much worse than it looks is probably a waste of time.
The GDP per capita numbers and the employment rate all, until very recently,
were telling exactly the same story; the USA in the 1990s did very well at
putting people into jobs, including good jobs, and for much of that time,
most other economies which followed policies different from the USA did not
(not necessarily for that reason, and solely against that specific
performance criterion).  Up until about the beginning of last year, this
statement would not have been remotely controversial; the whole interesting
point in my view is that since that point, the picture painted by the
unemployment numbers has been sharply at variance with anecdotal evidence,
and (in my view), we should not necessarily jump from this to the conclusion
that the anecdotal evidence is wrong.  I'm probably shaped in this view by
my own background at the Bank of England; the BoE famously missed the early
1990s recession by putting too much reliance on official statistics and not
enough on the reports from its Agents.

Then we have the more metaphysical debate, which should not be confused with
either of the other two, except to say that it is highly unlikely that
anyone will be able to make a case that the statistical agency of any
country other than the USA has a really good handle on the misery of
unemployment ...

In unrelated news, and hopefully more heartening to PEN-L members, whoever
forwarded that article about the longshoremen's strike three months ago when
it was just about the expiry of the contract, played an absolute blinder.
Huge amounts of thanks for this one; I found it incredibly useful, and PEN-L
was way ahead of the mass media.

dd




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RE: Re: Re: employment

[Davies, Daniel]

god damn ...  like the fall of the rupee, the Pen-L discussion of
unemployment statistics will probably have to be censored from a young
lady's education for being too sensational.  But for a' that, I think that
there were a lot of deep, important issue discussed in this thread, though
perhaps at an excessive casualty rate.  Random thoughts of my own:

Michael wrote:

>Several times in the past, I mentioned that the unemployment rate should
>include something to adjust for the quality of available jobs.  My idea
>never resonated.  I am sure that it could not be calculated with any
>exactitude, but I agree that an unemployment rate of 1% with everyone
>flipping burgers might not be better than a rate of 5% with better jobs.

which is certainly toward the point, but raises problems of its own in
looking at the representativeness of statistics.  One might suggest that a
really great society would be one in which it was not such a terrible thing
to flip burgers, which is after all an important occupation for all of us
who like their burgers cooked on both sides.  Which goes deep into the heart
of the problem; what is the badness of unemployment -- the quality which
distinguishes "unemployment" from "leisure"?  It's clearly some sort of,
highly complicated, social property which, for the time being, defies
simplification.  Unlike everyone else on the side of this binary opposition
which I appear to be occupying, I *am* a reductionist, at heart, and I do
hold out some sort of hope that (perhaps only in principle), it might be
possible for somebody who thought about the problem enough to create a
number which could be updated weekly and which was an acceptable proxy for
what we don't like about unemployment.  On the other hand, I'm less
convinced than Doug, Jim and Christian that the data needed to create such
an index are available in the supplementary BLS data, or that adjusting the
headline unemployment rate is even necessarily progress in the right
direction.  I've spent enough of my life working with exactly precise
measurements of things not worth measuring to become terribly cynical ...
when I have some spare time, I'll rant long and hard about how even such a
"hard" number as, say the price of a share of General Electric, is
incredibly difficult to pin down without making vast and restrictive
assumptions about what it is you're trying to measure.

On the other hand, Jim brings us all back to earth with a bump with his
reply to Carl:

>so we shouldn't care about the number of unemployed individuals, even when
this number is measured accurately, because it peniciously 
>objectifies the individual? so if I refer to the high unemployment rate of
1933 in the United States, I am objectifying people (and doing so 
>perniciously)? 

Or in other words, you play the hand you're dealt, not the one you wanted.
It's obvious that there is a reality which the unemployment statistics
describe and that, with suitable adjustments, it's the same as the reality
that they puport to describe.  This is absolutely invaluable for historical
purposes, when we're trying to explain facts (the deprivation and despair of
the 1930s) by use of quantitative, measured opinion.  What I think Tom,
Sabri, me, and others are worried about is that by focusing on the
quantitative measures, it's quite easy to find yourself explaining things
*away*, particularly when you're dealing with contemporary rather than
historical events.  The original post which started off this whole brouhaha
was when Michael asked where the new jobs were coming from as "employment
has held up very well".  With all respect to our esteemed moderator, I do
think that there's a danger when discussing this kind of question that one
ends up taking the statistical measures as the fixed point, simply because
they're there.  Which is not to accuse anyone on this list of having done
that, or to suggest that the personal criticisms were justified, but there
is an important issue here; it's a while since we discussed the
fetishisation of measurement in modern management, but I suspect that's
because everyone agrees with it.

Finally, Christian wrote:

>But pointing out that this statistical
>measurement is missing from a statistical data set is different (and more
>germane) than saying that statistics don't capture suffering and therefore
>can't be trusted or are incomplete. The latter amounts to beating your head
>against the wall.

Which might be true but  anyone who wasted their youth in attempting to
become a poor man's Bruce Lee will know that beating your head against a
brick wall is not quite the apogee of pointlessness that it is usually
claimed to be.  The ringing sensation becomes quite pleasurable after a
while, there is little risk of damage if you do it right, and it makes your
head and neck get stronger.  And sometimes, the wall breaks.

cheers

dd


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RE: Re: "left" discourse

[Davies, Daniel]

>I hate to keep quoting Michael Kinsley, but he got it dead right: 
>people on the right are always looking for converts; people on the 
>left, for heretics.

is Kinsley a heretic or a convert?

dd


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RE: Re: employment

[Davies, Daniel]

> I hope you're not saying that "it's a Turkish thing;
> you wouldn't understand it."

More like "it's a Turkish thing: you couldn't pronounce it."   :-)

I would confess to be unsure about what Sabri's point actually is, but then
I realised that this gives me a wonderful opportunity to put words into his
mouth and rely on the time zone to avoid being called on it.

But I think that there is certainly a question of what we are trying to
measure using the unemployment rate and whether it is the sort of thing that
better statistics are going to help us with.  If we're interested in the
extent to which job insecurity is affecting peoples' lives, giving them
erectile dysfunctions and shortening their lifespans, or it (to be a bit
less resolutely grim) we care about the extent to which unemployment is
restraining workers' militancy in demanding higher wages or for that matter
provoking revolutionary sentiment, then it's not obvious to me that moving
between the ILO, official US and adjusted US definitions is going to help
us.  Or to put it another way, I'm worried about my job and so is everybody
else, so the very fact that the statistics are telling us that employment is
holding up and remaining robust, suggests that there's something funny about
that statistic, whether or not it is in fact describing the reality it
purports to describe.

ach, these are only tuesday morning thoughts, pre my first cigarette, and
should be discounted as such.


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RE: Re: PK's the man with the plan

[Davies, Daniel]

>PK's the man with the plan
>- Original Message -
>From: Devine, James
>[Pen-l alumnus Brad deLong used to deny the possibility of over-investment,
>even though it's the subject of my Ph.D. dissertation! (UC-Berkeley Econ.,
>1981.) does he still do so?]

>

>I don't think so; he made some comments regarding the issue on his blog a
>week or two ago..

>Ian

I believe that the politically correct point of view on this topic among the
relevant crowd is that the economy as a whole cannot have over-investment,
but that individual industries can.  Quite how this squares with an
aggregative view of capital I cannot say, but then I am not a theologian ...

dd


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RE: FED HEAD SAYS BUMF TRUMPS BUBBLE

[Davies, Daniel]

oh ye conservative Americans!  100 times monthly rent would be a rental
yield of 12%, wouldn't it?  Mug punters in London are still stepping up to
the plate to buy investment properties at yields of 5-6%!

dd

>As if refuting the bubble once and for all was not enough, the bumf goes on
>to "put this issue to rest", declare "no such thing" as a house price
bubble
>and note that a pop of the bubble "simply isn't in the cards". If the mixed
>metaphors don't get you, the repetition repetition repetition will. In
other
>words, as my bro says "DO NOT BUY an existing duplex, triplex or fourplex
if
>they are selling at more than 100 times the monthly rent... Your entire
>investment could be wiped out."


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RE: Re: Piracy?

[Davies, Daniel]

>The editor of the new book on the Grateful Dead says that they owed much of
>their popularity to bootleg tapes that spread the word about the band.

That's referring to the tapes recorded at concerts, which they encouraged
...  the good ol' hippie capitalists were as aggressive as anyone else in
defending the copyright on their studio albums, and for that matter, on
controlling the use of their copyrighted artwork.

dd


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RE: mansion glut

[Davies, Daniel]

not usually at the $50m end of the market; it's axiomatic in London that
Kensington and Knightsbridge were the only postcodes to come through the
last property slump without a blip.  Houses at this end are not typically
bought with mortgages  

-Original Message-
From: Michael Perelman [mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED]]
Sent: 20 September 2002 22:53
To: [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Subject: [PEN-L:30421] mansion glut


The Wall Street Journal today has a story about the glut of manisions ($50 
mill. and more).  Where would a housing bubble first start to deflate?
-- 
Michael Perelman
Economics Department
California State University
Chico, CA 95929

Tel. 530-898-5321
E-Mail [EMAIL PROTECTED]


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RE: IMF's plan for bankruptcy gaining favour

[Davies, Daniel]

thanks for this Chris ... two points from me.



Ms Krueger said she expected the fund's ministerial steering committee to
instruct it to draw up changes to its constitution to allow bankrupt
governments to negotiate with their debtors  [sic] . " 
 
bankrupt governments can, of course, already negotiate with their creditors.
It's always important to remember that the Krueger proposals are aimed at
_preventing_ bankrupt governments from negotiating defaults with their
creditors unless they do so by going through the IMF.  As Chris correctly
points out, these proposals look less like a reputable bankruptcy procedure
and more like a creditors' cartel every day.
 
Ms Krueger said Brazil's macroeconomic situation was "clearly sustainable",
but she warned that the high interest rates on its bonds might require
policy to be tightened if they did not fall. 
 
o Goddd!  for crying out loud.  People have been alternately
laughing and crying at the IMF for this sort of statement since 1995 and
they still haven't got the message.  The policy of "deflate your way to
success" and "investors love to see a destroyed real economy" has been tried
in Mexico, Thailand, Indonesia, Russia and Argentina and hasn't worked once.
Count me in the "est delenda" camp these days 
 
 
dd 



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RE: Re: RE: Re: sale and lease back of land and buildings

[Davies, Daniel]

shamefully, usually to either avoid tax (NHS Trusts are big players in the
industry) or to subvert restrictions on their ability to make large capital
purchases by substituting for a capital outlay (which might be subject to
some restriction, or possibly the debt raised to buy it might be) for a
stream of lease payments (which can usually be dressed up as current
expenditure).

-Original Message-
From: Michael Perelman [mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED]]
Sent: 04 September 2002 15:27
To: [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Subject: [PEN-L:30025] Re: RE: Re: sale and lease back of land and
buildings


Why do public agencies engage in sale and leasebacks?
-- 
Michael Perelman
Economics Department
California State University
Chico, CA 95929

Tel. 530-898-5321
E-Mail [EMAIL PROTECTED]


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RE: Re: sale and lease back of land and buildings

[Davies, Daniel]

>Now, the reason why I ask this question is that I started to
>think about an empirical study on the influence of lease for
>long-term debt swaps on stock returns and possibly more. Since it
>is a very fresh idea, just got triggered by Chris' question, I
>cannot get more specific than that at this point.

remember that whatever their effect on the reported balance sheet (I am
personally unconvinced that the finance lease loophole remains open rather
than having been closed in the 1980s, but am open to be convinced), the
primary purpose of a sale and leaseback transaction is to avoid or minimise
a tax liability.

dd


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RE: Re: RE: Greenspan at Jackson Hole

[Davies, Daniel]

Very interesting.  Of course, the citation of "research" here is somewhat
disingenuous; the research AG is referring to here is usually focused on
"volatility" as measured by daily standard deviation of log changes in stock
prices (or worse, in stock index values) and has really very little to do
with bubbles.  It certainly doesn't support the implicit theory that use of
margin is driven by demand rather than supply, and that people would be just
as happy taking out a big bank loan to buy more equities.

-Original Message-


...the preponderance of research suggests that changes in margins are not an
effective
tool for reducing stock market volatility. It is possible that margin
requirements inhibit
very small investors whose access to other forms of credit is limited. If
so, the only
effect of raised margin requirements is to price out the very small investor
without
addressing the broader issue of stock price bubbles.

If a change in margin requirements were taken by investors as a signal that
the central
bank would soon tighten monetary policy enough to burst a bubble, then there
might be the
appearance of a causal effect. But it is the prospect of monetary policy
action, not the
margin increase, that should be viewed as the trigger. In a similar manner,
history tells
us that "jawboning" asset markets will be ineffective unless backed by
action.


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RE: Re: Bushies say NAIRU is 4.9

[Davies, Daniel]

>I'll admit as much as "more coherent" or "more systematic" but "more
>scientific?" That's like saying one astrologer is more scientific than
>another.

I maintain that these slurs against astrology are misplaced; the Popperian
definition of a science is that a field of study makes testable predictions,
and the science of astrology gives me twelve testable predictions, every
day, free with my daily newspaper.

dd


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RE: Re: Re: No Brains, No Revolution Re: Who Make the revolution?

[Davies, Daniel]

>This may be an instance of offering as an explanation what in fact is
>itself in need of explanation. Why should there be so much more binge
>drinking, for example, in the last 20 years than in the 1940s? 1950s?

for the same reason that a dog licks its bollocks?

(apologies to all; this message is written more to see if the word
"bollocks" will get through my corporate firewall than anything else)

dd


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RE: RE: PK endorses populism?

[Davies, Daniel]

 



 >> My impression (at a long distance) is that PK is happy with the role of
as a pundit for the newspaper he's always admired. I would guess that (on a
semi-conscious level) he imagines himself as the next Keynes, writing
"essays in persuasion" and leading a new policy revolution... <<
 
Oh yeh yeh yeh.  I certainly hope that Krugman is happier now that he's got
a bit off the academic economist treadmill, because he certainly appears to
be a better person for it ... thinking about it, one can probably date the
change in PK's writings to the month in 1998 when "Economics Nobel Laureate"
had its brand value tarnished by the LTCM debacle! 

 



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RE: Re: Re: PK endorses populism?

[Davies, Daniel]

>"If one follows this line of thought one might well be led to some 
>extremely radical ideas about economic policy, ideas that are completely at

>odds with all current orthodoxies.  But I won't try to come to grips with 
>such ideas in this column. Frankly, I don't have the time. I have to get 
>back to my research - otherwise, somebody else might get that Nobel."

and since now, IMO, the Krugman Nobel is f'cked given that 1) the Great
Economic Geography project didn't pan out, 2) these days, he has made too
many enemies by being politically forthright and 3) in the final analysis,
it is hard to give him a Nobel Prize for applying other people's ideas to
new problems, he presumably is going to be more amenable to these more
radical ideas ...?


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___

RE: RE: Re: Re: Stiglitz

[Davies, Daniel]

I am only guessing, but "Jubilee" probably refers to the Biblical practice
of forgiving debts every seven years, and "Stochastic" probably means that
it would happen at random intervals, rather than at preordained seven-yearly
ones.  On the whole, I feel that Stiglitz, Krugman et al, might be a little
while in coming round to supporting this one ...

-Original Message-
From: Devine, James [mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED]]
Sent: 20 August 2002 14:46
To: 'Ian Murray '; '[EMAIL PROTECTED] '
Subject: [PEN-L:29639] RE: Re: Re: Stiglitz



 what is the "Scholastic Jubilee"? 

 
If Stiglitz is calling for scrapping the IMF maybe it's time to 
revive Peter Dorman's suggestion of the Stochastic Jubilee; clearly 
it would appeal to the more radical denizens of "information 
economics"? 

Smash the tragic tautology of debt. 

Ian 



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RE: Sliding into the dip

[Davies, Daniel]

Yes, although they usually do it by means of a "cashback" deal whereby you
get money up front when you drive the motor away.

-Original Message-
From: Eugene Coyle [mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED]]
Sent: 17 August 2002 16:36
To: Pen-L Pen-l
Subject: [PEN-L:29530] Sliding into the dip


Can the auto companies start charging negative interest on loans to keep
things going? 
  
  

  In a separate report, the Labor Department said U.S. workers suffered the

   biggest decline in inflation-adjusted average weekly earnings in
nearly 12

   years. The earnings decline of 0.8% reflected a 0.9% drop in average
weekly

   hours and a 0.2% increase in the CPI for urban wage earners and
clerical

   workers. That was partly offset by a 0.3% increase in average hourly

   earnings.


Gene Coyle 



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RE: Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Stalinophobia

[Davies, Daniel]

On Tue, Aug 13, 2002 at 10:53:55AM -0400, ravi wrote:
> 
> goodwin's law?
> 

what has processor speed doubling every two years got to do with this?

dd


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RE: convergence?

[Davies, Daniel]

[comments?}
 
Sala-i-Martin is a good lad; he's a Catalonian Nationalist and thus familiar
to me from my short Welsh Nash period as a writer of tracts on the economic
viability of small European nations.  But the obvious point is that this is
a piece of doublespeak from the Economist; the trick is to refer to South
Korea and Indonesia as "Globalisers", and then not to say a word about the
progress of the neoliberal agenda in China and India.  In actual fact,
Sala-i-Martin's piece could be read as saying that, after a couple of
decades, the only reason that the neoliberal policy mix hasn't had
absolutely horrendous effects is that the two largest developing countries
had the good sense to reject it.
 
as the world spins ...
 
dd


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RE: Re: Re: liberalism

[Davies, Daniel]

>As I said, almost everyone. jks

Almost everyone  is right; as far as I can tell, yer man Posner is not in
favour of representative government or of "extensive civil rights and
liberties" in as much as these can't be derived from property rights.
What's your argument against his utopia of a small system of autarchic
medieval Icelandic households living without any laws and arbitrating their
disputes privately?  I only ask because this particular version of
libertarian society seems quite close to the aspirations of some of the
Left.

dd


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RE: Re: Expertise and Vanguard Parties

[Davies, Daniel]

>I thought you were a bourgeois liberal. I'm confused. How do you 
>reconcile a collectivist philosophy with a radically individualist 
>one?

>Doug

dialectic?


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RE: Re: The size of the bubble?

[Davies, Daniel]

At 09:16 AM 07/30/2002 -0400, you wrote:
>4] To what degree has the bubble (aka "new") economy been nothing more than
>an elaborate and calculated scheme to steal money from employees and middle
>class investors, or was it more fortuitous accident of history for those
who
>got rich at every one else's expense?

ach.  Was it Phineas T Barnum who pointed out that "you can't con an honest
man", or someone else?  Charles MacKay's "Extraordinary Popular Delusions
and the Madness of Crowds" records exactly these sorts of suspicions
surrounding tulipomania, the South Sea Bubble and the Mississippi scheme.

If charging $300 for VA L:inux stock, or giving eToys a larger market cap.
than Toys-R-Us, were con games, they weren't exactly subtle ones.  At the
end of the day, the worst you can accuse the dot.com billionaires of is
George Washington Plunkitt's epitaph "He Seen His Opportunities, And He
Took' Em".


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___

Horrendous abuse of mailing list

[Davies, Daniel]

Abject apologies in advance for this breach of etiquette, but I promised I'd
help out a pal ...

If anyone knows of any research assistant/office admin level vacancies which
might suit a hard-working, seemingly able recent political science graduate,
in the general area of North America, please email me offlist, and I will be
grateful enough to promise a small bounty, and possibly even grateful enough
to pay it. 

Thank you very much.

In unrelated news, I note that Uruguay has declared a bank holiday in
response to the collapse of the Bank of Montevideo, and the wires are full
of stories that O'Neill's team are eating crow and trying to say he never
said what he said about "needing to be sure controls are in place" before
supporting IMF loans to Brazil "so that the money doesn't all flow out into
Swiss bank accounts".

sorry

dd


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RE: Re: RE: Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Drudgery

[Davies, Daniel]

>The question isn't so much technology for the moment, but what kind 
>of developmental path to follow. I suspect that lots of advocates of 
>appropriate technology would like to keep the technological level 
>fairly static, and social structures oriented around the very local - 
>and those in the First World (where I bet most of them are) wouldn't 
>mind seeing several steps taken in the backward direction.

fair enough that we're now in the land of suspicion rather than anything
definite.  I have to say that all the windmill people I've ever met haven't
been like this.  Most alternative technology people are very keen on the
idea of the First World taking a few steps backward in terms of their use of
manufactured goods, which surely has to be an absolute prerequisite for any
sort of global equality.

>Are all hydropower schemes bad? Do South Asia and Africa need more 
>electricity, or is that a bad idea?

Like situation comedies, hydroelectric dams come in good and bad varieties
and also like sitcoms, the good kind is massively outnumbered by the bad.
Assuming that all hydropower schemes are bad is a reasonable heuristic for
folks like us with busy lives who don't have the time to scrutinise the
plans of individual schemes.

dd


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RE: Expertise

[Davies, Daniel]

>You don't have much choice, do you? Any more than I have a choice in 
>trusting my physician or carpenter because s/he's an expert. I mean, sorry,

>guy, that's what expertise means, other people know more than we do about 
>something. 

A quick tip to Pen-L members; if your doctor sounds anything like this when
talking to you, get a new doctor.

dd



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___

RE: Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Drudgery

[Davies, Daniel]

No fair.  The EF Schumacher crowd are pretty non-judgemental on this sort of
issue.  "Appropriate technology" basically just means "technology that can
be maintained and repaired without requiring an already existing industrial
society"; those wind-up radios certainly count.

I worry that you may be reinventing World Bank development theory circa 1970
here; the point at which to start worrying is if you find yourself
supporting a hydroelectric power scheme.

dd

-Original Message-
From: Doug Henwood [mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED]]
Sent: 27 July 2002 21:15
To: [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Subject: [PEN-L:28685] Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Drudgery


Michael Perelman wrote:

>The Wall Street Journal article does not say that the grinder represented
>particularly modern technology; nor was it a commercial product.  I think
>most people would regarded as an example of appropriate technology.

Don't you find something a touch patronizing about the notion of 
"appropriate technology"? Should it end there? Should they want farm 
equipment too? A TV? Or will that corrupt their prelapsarian 
innocence?

Doug


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RE: Re: rejecting a school

[Davies, Daniel]

> Can someone name the main achievement of one author who has been
> dubbed "post-structuralist"? 

the lads at http://www.adequacy.org had a go at claiming that Luce Irigaray
anticipated Stephen Wolfram's "New Kind of Science": (I have added a couple
of question marks to words which do not get through my firewall)



We don't pretend here at adequacy to understand the French feminist
philosopher and critical theorist Luce Irigaray in any great depth. Since
male life expectancy is only 74.5 years in the USA, and what with
maintaining this website, keeping up with the newspapers and trying to read
some of the classics of Western literature, we frankly doubt that we're ever
going to have the spare time to get into her work. Maybe perdida, with the
extra five years' life expectancy her gender brings, will give it a crack
some time. 

Because of our ignorance about what Irigaray actually wrote, we're reduced
to getting our information third hand, via people like Alan Sokal and Jean
Bricmont. They wrote a book called " Intellectual Impostures " in order to
tell us, at mind-numbing length, that Irigaray and other French critical
theorists were Very Bad People and Not Worth Reading. Indeed, so many people
are of this opinion, and so many of them are folks (like Richard Dawkins and
William Safire) who have turned out to be utter a??eholes on every other
subject, that I at least among the Adequacy staff had come to the conclusion
that if literally the entire
inflated-self-esteem-hard-science-equals-hard-d?ck-know-it-all community
hated Irigaray enough to write a whole big book about how stupid she was,
there was almost certainly something to be said for her. 

What I didn't expect was that one of the greatest mathematical geniuses of
the last twenty years would prove this view to be crashingly and
resoundingly right. 

For those of you with better things to do with your time than keep up with
the Science vs Sociology wars, the rap sheet against Irigaray boils down to
one specific charge; that she did recklessly or with malice aforethought
suggest that there might be some connection between 

1)  the way in which classical mechanics concentrates for the most part on
the motions of medium-sized rigid objects, and 

2) the fact that most scientists in history have been men, and therefore for
the most part obsessed with the motions of a particular kind of object, an
object which is often decidedly less rigid and decidedly more medium-sized
than its owner would like, but which could charitably be assumed to tend
asymptotically toward the Newtonian ideal. 

Specifically, the great sin which got Irigaray into the Black Book of
Postmodernism was to suggest that mathematics was not as value-independent
and Platonic a field of inquiry as one might think. In an attractively
adventurous quote, she speculated that things would have been different
(specifically, our view of which classes of applied maths problem are easy
and which difficult) if women had been in charge of the whole enterprise 

"The Newtonian break has ushered scientific enterprise into a world where
sense perception is worth little, a world which can lead to the annihilation
of the very stakes of physics' object: the matter (whatever the predicates)
of the universe and of the bodies that constitute it. In this very science,
moreover [ d'ailleurs ], cleavages exist: quantum theory/field theory,
mechanics of solids/dynamics of fluids, for example. "

Or as American writer Katherine Hayles puts it... 

" The privileging of solid over fluid mechanics, and indeed the inability of
science to deal with turbulent flow at all, she attributes to the
association of fluidity with femininity. Whereas men have s?x organs that
protrude and become rigid, women have openings that leak menstrual blood and
vaginal fluids... From this perspective it is no wonder that science has not
been able to arrive at a successful model for turbulence. The problem of
turbulent flow cannot be solved because the conceptions of fluids (and of
women) have been formulated so as necessarily to leave unarticulated
remainders. 

Hard questions 

So, to sum it up, male maths is obsessed with h?rd-ons, while women's maths,
if it existed, would be able to solve problems of turbulent flow because
women are more interested in it. Not, one might have thought, all that
outrageous a piece of speculation about the sociology of mathematicians. But
apparently this small mention of our old pal the pen?s was enough to bring
out a long parade of male academics absolutely eager to spell out exactly
where Luce Irigaray had gone wrong. So we have... 


Irigaray, in sum, does not understand the nature of the physical and
mathematical problems posed in fluid mechanics, " -- Sokal & Bricmont,
Fashionable Nonsense 
" You do not have to be a physicist to smell out the daffy absurdity of this
kind of argument (the tone of it has become all too familiar), but it helps
to have Sokal 

RE: market socialism -- an offer

[Davies, Daniel]

Do we have to promise not to discuss it on Pen-L?

-Original Message-
From: Michael Perelman [mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED]]
Sent: 25 July 2002 17:43
To: [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Subject: [PEN-L:28479] market socialism -- an offer


For people who are interested, here is a one-day offer.  I have an
excellent pdf article (not mine) which I can share with interested
people.  This is a one day offer only.

--

Michael Perelman
Economics Department
California State University
[EMAIL PROTECTED]
Chico, CA 95929
530-898-5321
fax 530-898-5901


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RE: Re: Re: RE: Market correction

[Davies, Daniel]

h careful ... the finance academics who believe that technical analysis
is literally nonsense, the equivalent of astrology, are very much the old
guard, and are clinging to the principle in the face of mounting evidence
that there is something to it.  Andrew Lo and Craig McKinlay of MIT have
even published a book entitled "A Non-Random Walk Down Wall Street".  This
sort of phenomenon has now been pushed down into "microstructure theory",
the idea being that the push and pull of supply and demand, the stuff which
tape-reading is made of, can be quarantined as being equivalent to a
tatonnement process which does not affect the conclusion that stock market
investors in general set prices rationally.

dd

-Original Message-
From: Doug Henwood [mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED]]
Sent: 25 July 2002 16:42
To: [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Subject: [PEN-L:28473] Re: Re: RE: Market correction


Michael Perelman wrote:

>Doesn't the term "market correction (rebound) work like the description of
>the Middle East "peace process"  -- suggesting a hope rather than
>information?

No. As DD pointed out, a "correction" is a move counter to the larger 
trend. A correction in a bull market is a downdraft of up to 10%; in 
a bear market, an updraft of no more than 10%. When the move exceeds 
10%, you start thinking about redefining the trend.

This is all demotic market-speak; many finance academics view this 
stuff as little better than astrology.

Doug


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RE: Market correction

[Davies, Daniel]

h ... "correction" has a pretty precise meaning in this context, which
technical analysis bores like me would agree is overused, but was probably
appropriate in this case.

The point is that part of the reason for the fall was that there had been
short selling.  By yesterday, the shorts had committed almost all of their
capital to the market (ie; they had maxed out their margins) and thus
couldn't add to their positions any more.  They thus have the incentive to
close out positions, realising some gains, increasing the equity in their
account, and thus increasing the amount of margin and the amount of short
positions they can take out next time.  To call a sharp rally in a downtrend
a "correction" is actually a very bearish thing to say.

That's my understanding of the term "correction" anyway, but there are
considerable differences between US and UK jargon and I suspect the looser
use of "correction" meaning "any sharp countertrend movement" is the one in
general usage.

dd

-Original Message-
From: Karl [mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED]]
Sent: 25 July 2002 07:33
To: PEN
Subject: [PEN-L:28463] Market correction


The market rebound. Now they are saying that the market was overdue a
correction. What rubbish. When they dont know our experts drag out the
correction word. A code for we dont know.
Karl Carlile
Communism Site:
http://homepage.eircom.net/~beprepared/


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RE: Re: RE: Re: RE: Re: progressive Archbishop of Canterbur y

[Davies, Daniel]

Church of England not founded until three Henries later my friend.

In related news, the current A of C is apparently of the opinion that "any
invasion of Iraq should be carried out by an international force rather than
unilaterally by the USA", which suggests to me that I'm not as good at
understanding scholastic casuistry as I thought I was.

dd

-Original Message-
From: Justin Schwartz [mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED]]
Sent: 23 July 2002 15:49
To: [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Subject: [PEN-L:28350] Re: RE: Re: RE: Re: progressive Archbishop of
Canterbur y


In Henry V, Shakespere has  King Hal insist that he is Welsh. jks


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RE: Re: RE: Re: progressive Archbishop of Canterbury

[Davies, Daniel]

I certainly wasn't aware that it was legal for the Prince of Wales to be
Welsh!

twll din pob Sais.

dd

-Original Message-
From: Justin Schwartz [mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED]]
Sent: 23 July 2002 15:22
To: [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Subject: [PEN-L:28344] Re: RE: Re: progressive Archbishop of Canterbury





>From: "Davies, Daniel" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
>Reply-To: [EMAIL PROTECTED]
>To: "'[EMAIL PROTECTED]'" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
>Subject: [PEN-L:28342] RE: Re: progressive Archbishop of Canterbury
>Date: Tue, 23 Jul 2002 15:19:43 +0100
>
>I wasn't even aware that it was legal for the Church of England to be led 
>by
>a Welshman.
>
>dd

When the heir to thethrone is the Prince of Wales? jks

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RE: Re: progressive Archbishop of Canterbury

[Davies, Daniel]

I wasn't even aware that it was legal for the Church of England to be led by
a Welshman.

dd

-Original Message-
From: Carl Remick [mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED]]
Sent: 23 July 2002 15:17
To: [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Subject: [PEN-L:28341] Re: progressive Archbishop of Canterbury


>From: Chris Burford <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
>
>Today in our antiquated UK system Tony Blair is to declare that the next 
>Archbishop of Canterbury will be Rowan Williams.

Williams was savaged in a Wall Street Journal opinion piece last week -- 
which is certainly a point in his favor -- by, as I recall, the chaplain of 
the London Stock Exchange.  That the LSE would have a chaplain isn't 
antiquated so much as timelessly funny.

Carl

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RE: Re: query

[Davies, Daniel]

On Fri, 19 Jul 2002, Devine, James wrote:

> What's a good synonym for autism or dereism? I'm looking for the word
> that means that one believes that something doesn't exist after one
> shuts one's eyes (a belief of many very young children) *or that only
> one's own perceived reality exists.*

Berkeleyian idealism has been caricatured as having this implication.  It's
a pretty nasty thing to do to poor old Berkeley, but if the cause is good,
you could wheel out the old limerick:

There was a young man who said "God, 
I find it exceedingly odd 
That this very tree 
Should continue to be 
When there is no one about in the quad."

dd


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RE: Brad DeLong still upbeat

[Davies, Daniel]

> "If
>information technologies really are information technologies, then
>inventories should behave better in the future," Mr. DeLong says, echoing
>an argument Mr. Greenspan often makes. Wal-Mart knows almost instantly
>what's selling and what's not, and adjusts orders accordingly.

As I've said to Brad on numerous occasions, **ahem** Cisco **ahem**

In fairness, oor Brad has an article on his website in which he takes a bit
of this back 

http://www.j-bradford-delong.net/movable_type/archives/000365.html

dd


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RE: Re: RE: Larry Elliott/Dr Doom

[Davies, Daniel]

I wouldn't wish my organs on anybody, or for that matter, the vast majority
of my body on fish.

-Original Message-
From: Carl Remick [mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED]]
Sent: 16 July 2002 18:39
To: [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Subject: [PEN-L:28085] Re: RE: Larry Elliott/Dr Doom


>From: "Devine, James" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
>
>can't we put the stock analysts and
>pundits to doing some productive labor instead?

Doubtful.  It would be best just to harvest their organs for transplants and

use the rest of 'em for fish bait ;-)

Carl

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RE: Query on Larry Elliott/Dr Doom

[Davies, Daniel]

>Three "facts" 1) stock fall 2) poll on consumer confidence 3) Fraud at
>WorldCom.

>And the author confidently links them together. Perhaps they are linked
>-- but is there any necessary reason to think so?

>Carrol

Very good reason to think that they aren't.  For all the blood and thunder,
the Dow actually ended the week of the WorldCom revelations flat on the
week, and the FTSE has substantially underperformed the Dow.  Lots of UK
journalists wrote stories in the Sunday press about "American Stocks in
Free-Fall" illustrated with charts which proved that they hadn't.

OTOH, I'd note that when I was touring the States last week, I couldn't help
but notice that your news bulletins mention the words "investor confidence"
more or less every four minutes.  Funny, because all the confident people I
know spend surprisingly little time talking about how damnably confident
they feel today 

dd


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RE: Re: Re: The Repugs vs. Bush

[Davies, Daniel]

Healey was also a founder member of the Bilderberg Group, for those who care
about such things .

-Original Message-
From: Michael Perelman [mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED]]
Sent: 15 July 2002 04:44
To: [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Subject: [PEN-L:28034] Re: Re: The Repugs vs. Bush


The same Denis Healey that coined sado-monetarism.  Pretty good wordsmith.

On Sun, Jul 14, 2002 at 10:52:57PM -0400, Michael Pollak wrote:
> 
> On Sun, 14 Jul 2002, Michael Perelman wrote:
> 
> > Who compared the courage of the dems. with that of a dead sheep?
> 
> I believe it was that being attacked by them was like being ravaged by a
> dead sheep -- a line a swift google search suggests was originally coined
> by Dennis Healey in the 60s or 70s and used in numerous contexts ever
> after to mock weak opposition.
> 
> Michael
> 

-- 
Michael Perelman
Economics Department
California State University
Chico, CA 95929

Tel. 530-898-5321
E-Mail [EMAIL PROTECTED]


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RE: Re: Re: Re: Market Socialism - an apology already

[Davies, Daniel]

>I appreciate that we have avoided a rehash of the market socialism debate.
With
>regard to the surplus, many traditional societies consumed the surplus in
the
>form of a ceremony at the end of the year rather than engaging in
accumulation.

In the investment banking community we used to call this ceremony "bonus
time".

dd


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RE: Test, test, and a big smooch to LP

[Davies, Daniel]

>Yo Eco-freaks.  Am I here yet?

>smooches
>Paula

Yes.  Welcome to the land of thousand word essays on value theory.  My
advice would be to start off uncontroversially by expressing a strong view
on what Marx really meant by "production" and saying something nasty about
market socialism.  Bonus points if you can work in a few words on how the
URPE had it coming.

dd


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RE: Re: Re: Good analysis of WCOM and Credit Bubble

[Davies, Daniel]

At 11:19 PM 07/02/2002 +1000, you wrote:
>Sidgmore used his golden hour at the podium to complain about how much
>MCI WorldCom spends on marketing its network services. According to
>Sidgmore, an astonishing 49% of the telecom giant's service costs to
>customers can be traced to marketing. In contrast, 34% of cost stems
>from paying local-access charges, 6% for switching and transport
>equipment and 11% for operational support systems.

In context and in (a warped version of fairness), a probable reason why
marketing represented such a large proportion of WorldCom's expenses is that
at the time this speech was made, local line charges represented a very
small proportion of their expenses, due to having been inappropriately
capitalised.

dd


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RE: bad economics and the dot.com meltdown

[Davies, Daniel]

Very interesting that he writes a whole big paper on the subject of
"lock-in" and the dot com era without once mentioning branding as a source
of competitive advantage for first movers, despite that fact that this is
surely where most of those dot com dollars went, and is surely the big
difference between the success of Amazon and the failure of the wannabes.

I've always thought that the fact that neoclassical microeconomics doesn't
have anything even approaching a decent theory of advertising ought to be a
far bigger embarrassment for the profession than it actually is.  We're
talking about a pretty massive industry here, after all, which by NC
standards ought not to exist.

dd

-Original Message-
From: Michael Perelman [mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED]]
Sent: 11 June 2002 18:11
To: [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Subject: [PEN-L:26709] bad economics and the dot.com meltdown


Liebowitz has been a strong opponent of the lock-in thesis; also a
recipient of microsoft support for obvious reasons.

"Network Meltdown: A Legacy of Bad Economics"

   BY:  STAN J. LIEBOWITZ
   University of Texas at Dallas
   School of Management

Document:  Available from the SSRN Electronic Paper Collection:
http://papers.ssrn.com/paper.taf?abstract_id=309879

 Date:  April 19, 2002

  Contact:  STAN J. LIEBOWITZ
Email:  Mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED]
   Postal:  University of Texas at Dallas
School of Management
Mail Station JO51
P.O. Box 830688
Richardson, TX 75083-0688  UNITED STATES
Phone:  972-883-2807
  Fax:  972-883-2818

ABSTRACT:
  Why did the dot.coms burn and die? The answer is that they
  followed the advice given to them by a set of economists
  preaching that being first to market was the key to success
  thanks to lock-in effects. I explore these events and this
  thinking in this paper.

  Keywords: network effects, lock-in, dot.coms, ecommerce,
  internet


--

Michael Perelman
Economics Department
California State University
[EMAIL PROTECTED]
Chico, CA 95929
530-898-5321
fax 530-898-5901


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RE: RE: Re: RE: RE: Anti-globalization babe

[Davies, Daniel]

I thought it was "absolutely fabulous".

dd

-Original Message-
From: Max B. Sawicky [mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED]]
Sent: 11 June 2002 00:38
To: [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Subject: [PEN-L:26697] RE: Re: RE: RE: Anti-globalization babe


I thought it was a tour de force.
mbs



The book. It sucks (except for the author photo).

Doug


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RE: Anti-globalization babe

[Davies, Daniel]

> And I certainly looked as if
>I belonged there in my white, Bianca Jaggeresque trouser suit designed by
>the British design duo, Boudicca. Few who complimented me on my attire, of
>course, got the irony. Boudicca prides itself on being fashion's first
>anti-capitalist label. 

Thank you from the bottom of my heart for this one, Louis.  Whoever created
the "Noreena Hertz" character is clearly a satirist of the calibre of Mark
Twain.

dd


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RE: Re: RE: Re: RE: RE: Estimating Surplus

[Davies, Daniel]

One would also want to put insurance premia paid back into the surplus (they
are typically subtracted from profits) in order to treat insurance
symmetrically with self-insurance ...

-Original Message-
From: Doug Henwood [mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED]]
Sent: 05 June 2002 02:12
To: [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Subject: [PEN-L:26582] Re: RE: Re: RE: RE: Estimating Surplus


Eric Nilsson wrote:

>Doug wrote,
>>  Net interest is figured as what biz pays to households, right? It's
>>  an expense for business and an income for households.
>
>Yes indeed that is the case. I guess such a number doesn't add to
capitalist
>surplus.

No but it's a subtraction from it. The concept is that households are 
the ultimate holder of business debts - financial institutions are 
just intermediaries.

Doug


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RE: Sociobiology Again

[Davies, Daniel]

>>> Why ,then, did they do it? Segerstrale comes up with the
cleverest part of the book, the late Pierre Bourdieu's conception of
"moral capital". The critics wanted "moral capital" to help with their
personal struggles in academe for greater economic rewards and public
recognition as staunch anti-racists and egalitarians.<<<

I'd add to Sam's perceptive comments on this issue that the question "Why
then did they do it?" presupposes that they did, in fact, do it.  I'd
certainly not claim to have done vast amounts of rigorous sociological
research into this one, but I've done a fair bit of digging about in the
annals of the Sociobiology Wars for various purposes, and as far as I can
tell, the Lewontin/Rose axis were by no means the biggest noisemakers.  They
tended to make their attacks in the New York Review of Books, but that's not
exactly the world's most prominent forum.  The debate only went big-time
when it was picked up on by more mainstream media, and in general, the
newspaper stories tended to be triggered by Dawkins et al complaining that
the politically correct thugs were oppressing them by giving their books
shitty reviews in the NYRB.  I doubt I'll ever have time or resource to
prove this point, but I think it could be supported.

dd


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RE: Re: Re: gould dies at 60

[Davies, Daniel]

-Original Message-
From: [EMAIL PROTECTED] [mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED]]
Sent: 21 May 2002 18:42
To: [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Subject: [PEN-L:26130] Re: Re: gould dies at 60

>(Thus water after it is heated up gradually, 
>suddenly begins to boil. 

If you're going to show this book to people who are of a pedantic
disposition, you might want to find a different example.  This isn't true of
water, which gradually approaches boiling point along its boiling curve.
Boiling is the limit of a process whereby the heat lost from evaporation
increases as a liquid is heated; it's the point on the boiling curve at
which the heat loss from evaporation exceeds the heat applied, if I remember
O-level physics right.

The freezing of water as it is gradually cooled is much more like the
discontinuous process you want; supercritical liquids can freeze all in an
instant.  But liquids come to the boil gradually.

dd


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RE: Re: RE: Re: P.S.

[Davies, Daniel]

They were nominal rates, on a couple of short term bank deposit series, in
late 1998.  US T-Bill nominal rates went negative in the 1930s, according to
Homer's "History of Interest Rates".

NB that the interesting thing was that nominal rates, ex ante, were
negative.  Real rates, ex post, have often been negative and remained so for
long periods of time, as anyone who held T-Bonds in the 1970s, or for that
matter Weimar debt, will tell you.

dd

-Original Message-
From: Sabri Oncu [mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED]]
Sent: 12 May 2002 01:24
To: PEN-L
Subject: [PEN-L:25903] Re: RE: Re: P.S.


Jim writes:

> have _real_ interest rates really gone
> negative? Deflation boosts real interest
> rates.

Well. I know that "interest rates" went negative very briefly in
Japan a few years ago, as it was reported by a speaker at some
seminar. It must be before 1999 since after that I stopped
attending such seminars. Having never seen negative nominal
interest rates in my life, my assumption was that it must have
been the real interest rates. I will do some research to see
whether they were nominal or real interest rates.

Sabri


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RE: Re: Re: Million demonstrators in France

[Davies, Daniel]

On Thu, 02 May 2002 21:08:06 -0700, Sabri Oncu wrote:
>Louis,
>
>>Why should French socialists not work on
>>building the ranks of the left while sharpening
>>its understanding of class principles and vote
>>for Chirac at the same time to ensure that Le
>>Pen is stopped this time? If they vote Chirac on
>>May 5 does it mean that they support Chirac? Not
>>that if they abstain they will make much
>>difference but why take chances?

>Socialists must promote socialism. To advocate a vote for a bourgeois 
>party makes a mockery of socialist principles.

Two questions:

1)  How does one use one's vote to "promote socialism" in a two-candidate
race between a conservative and a fascist?
2)  Given (1), how is the decision to vote Chirac incompatible with the
promotion of socialism?

It is not as if the French socialists are actually supporting Chirac, or
making common cause; they continue to promote their own party as being a
better choice for the parliamentary elections and as Chris Burford pointed
out, "Vote for the crook, not the fascist" is hardly a ringing endorsement.
It seems to me that the current French election is a reductio ad absurdum of
the proposition that to advocate a vote for a bourgeois party is always and
everywhere a mockery of socialist principles.

dd



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RE: "how much profit did we make last year?" "It depends, how much would you like to report?"

[Davies, Daniel]

>Fortunately, the investor is not completely at the mercy of the corporate
money
>magicians. Often, when executives attempt to distort one measure of
financial
>performance, the problem shows up elsewhere. The authors offer a detection
kit for
>each area of earnings management - for example, if premature or fictitious
revenue
>is recognised, there will be a sudden increase in accounts receivable.

The author says this as if it were some sort of strange karmic influence.
The fact that attempts to manipulate the P&L account show up as anomalies in
the balance sheet is precisely the reason why double-entry bookkeeping is so
popular.

dd


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RE: RE: Capital Spending

[Davies, Daniel]

I'd be the last to claim I fully understood the distinction between capital
deepening and capital widening, but it strikes me that all you need to be
able to measure whether it is happening or not is to have in instrumental
variable which is locally monotonic in the (true, unobservable) amount of
capital.  I don't think you need the stronger assumption of being able to
actually measure the capital stock.

dd  

-Original Message-
From: Devine, James [mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED]]
Sent: 25 April 2002 03:35
To: '[EMAIL PROTECTED] '
Subject: [PEN-L:25387] RE: Capital Spending


Okay, but if you can't measure "capital," how do you measure -- or even
define -- "capital deepening"?  


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RE: Re: Re: RE: RE: Profit Rates -- From Michael Yates

[Davies, Daniel]

To be fair, although there are known serious problems with depreciation, the
WorldCom and Global Crossing affaires aren't really relevant to the
statistics Doug quoted.  The assets of WorldCom and Global Crossing are
worth exactly what they were worth before the meltdown, as stock market
movements don't mean much to cables in the ground.  The fact that the stock
market's assessment of the future excess returns to be earned from renting
out those cables no longer provide a viable basis for making interest
payments don't change the capital employed for the purpose of the BEA
numbers.

dd


>Gene, this is one of the great secrets of economics.  Of course, everyone
knows,
>as Jim mentioned, that we have no theory of depreciation, but we go on
pretending
>that out data is of good quality.

>Eugene Coyle wrote:

>> How do you adjust for the change in "capital" in telecom companies,
before and
>> after the melt-down?  What's the denominator?
>>
>> World Com
>> Global Crossing
>

--

Michael Perelman
Economics Department
California State University
Chico, CA 95929

Tel. 530-898-5321
E-Mail [EMAIL PROTECTED]



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RE: Re: RE: Profit Rates -- From Michael Yates

[Davies, Daniel]

-Original Message-
From: Louis Proyect [mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED]]
Sent: 18 April 2002 19:45
To: [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Subject: [PEN-L:25116] Re: RE: Profit Rates -- From Michael Yates



>What do you meant that poor countries accrue interest liabilities that they
>don't pay? I was under the impression that the need to pay off debts to
>imperialist funding agencies is convulsing the 3rd world right now. 

These statements aren't inconsistent if one takes into account the
difference between cash and accruals.  The Highly Indebted Poor Countries
have massive foreign debts that they can't pay.  Because of this, every
year, the IMF, World Bank and similar extend new loans to them which cover
the interest payments due on their old loans.  This is a cruel and stupid
game which keeps them in poverty forever, but its net effect is that, when
you factor aid and trade into the equation, the cash flow to most HIPCs from
the G7 is positive.  It's rather similar to the dot com business model where
operational losses were supported by positive cash flows from equity issues,
although the analogy is not so strong that I want to pursue it.


>Also
>(although I wouldn't dream of putting words in Michael's mouth) isn't the
>problem we are dealing with in the Argentina thread is exactly the need to
>get past surface impressions when discussing societies like Mexico? Of
>course, Mexico is not Tanzania but what sense does it make to categorize it
>(or Poland and Turkey) as a non-poor country just because it shares
>membership in the OECD? Mexico and Turkey are peripheral nations that will
>never join the front ranks of other OECD nations such as Norway or Austria.

I take your point here (that is, if I understand you correctly as saying
that we' re talking about imperialism rather than poverty per se here).  But
would you have said the same thing about Spain twenty years ago?

>One of the indicators that we need to take into account is yearly
>emigration because of unemployment. There are Turkish (and Polish)
>streetsweepers, prostitutes, newspaper vendors and non-unionized
>construction workers in Norway and Austria but few Norwegian or Austrian
>guest workers in Turkey or Poland.

But this indicator is also unreliable over time; it has certainly flipped in
Ireland which is now full of Italian fund managers.

dd


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RE: Profit Rates -- From Michael Yates

[Davies, Daniel]

>>From Michael Yates

>In the discussion about profit rates, I am confused.  Doug Henwood
>suggests dividing profits by capital stock.  Wouldn't this involve
>dividing a flow (profits) by a stock (capital stock) and therefore
>making a not very meaningful calculation? 

Dividing flows by stocks is not always bad voodoo.  This calculation would
give a ratio equivalent at the macro level to "Return on Capital Employed",
which is always a useful thing to know in the context of companies and I
don't see a fallacy-of-composition type argument which would make it not a
useful thing to know about whole economies.  Or to put it another way, it's
a flow divided by a stock in the same way that the rate of interest is a
flow divided by a stock; it's a rate of return.

> And, in any event, why make
>such gross calculations which don't tell us much?  Just as life
>expectancies and GDP per capita are not good comparison measures in many
>cases, because they hide all the disparity within countries.

I agree much more with this, in that FDI into the Asian countries in
particular is going to span all sorts of non-comparable items, but what do
you do?  The aggregate numbers are all that's available

>In addition, shouldn't comparisons be made between truly comparable
>things.  For example, it would be meaningful to compare profitability
>between an engine plant in the U.S.and one in Mexico.  My guess is the
>rate would be higher in Mexico than in the U.S. as costs are lower and
>productivity is probably comparable.  Of course, profits are difficult
>to get good accurate measures on, so it would probably still be hard to
>make a good comparison.


>  Isn't it the case that  more money flows from the poor countries

>to the rich ones than vice versa?  Repatriated profits, interest, etc.
>are greater than than the inflow of money to the poor countries.

Vastly depends on your definition of a "poor country".  If you mean
non-OECD, then the answer is broadly no on a cash basis but yes on an
accounting basis (because poor countries accrue interest liabilities that
they don't pay).  But this definition would not count Mexico as a "poor
country" because it's OECD.

 
dd


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RE: US foreign investment

[Davies, Daniel]

Just to suggest that although the numbers are "nearly exactly the same",
these are returns on capital we're looking at, so they need about two more
decimal places.  To put it another way, although they're practically the
same, there is all the difference in the world between an investment which
earns 4.6% return and an investment which earns 7.5% return if you are
funding your investment with borrowed money at 6%.  In one case, you're
making a decent profit; in the other, you're slowly going out of business.

dd

>If there is any meaningful economic interpretation that can be gleaned from
>all this, I have no idea what it is. Just take a look at:
>http://www.marxmail.org/foreign_investment.htm and compare Nicaragua to
>Norway.

>Nicaragua:
 >(A) Number of Affiliates -- 8
 >(B) Total Assets -- 147
 >(C) Sales -- 260
 >(D) Net Income -- 11
 >(E) Employee Compensation -- 14
 >(D) divided by (B) -- 0.07
 >(E) divided by (B) -- 0.10

> Norway:
 >(A) Number of Affiliates -- 182
 >(B) Total Assets -- 19092
 >(C) Sales -- 12836
 >(D) Net Income -- 882
 >(E) Employee Compensation -- 1855
 >(D) divided by (B) -- 0.05
 >(E) divided by (B) -- 0.10




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RE: Re: The character of Argentine industrialization

[Davies, Daniel]

And ended in or around 1890, when the Argentine government defaulted on its
bonds and caused the First Baring Crisis.  NB that around this period, I
disagree that  British were very much in the business of sending gunboats to
enforce private debts; Sir John Simon issued the circular announcing the
"Palmerston Doctrine" in 1848:

"My predecessor in this post, Lord Palmerston, who cannot be regarded as
having been reticent in the defence of British interests, was of the opinion
that if investors choose to buy foreign bonds with a yield of 10 per cent
rather than British government bonds with a lower yield, they should not
expect as a matter of right that the British government would intercede on
their behalf in the event of a default"

dd

-Original Message-
From: Michael Perelman [mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED]]
Sent: 12 April 2002 16:39
To: [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Cc: [EMAIL PROTECTED]; [EMAIL PROTECTED];
[EMAIL PROTECTED]; [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Subject: [PEN-L:24860] Re: The character of Argentine industrialization


The big push for British financial investment in Latin America came after
the
early 1840s, when a number of states in the U.S. defaulted on their British
bonds, which have never been repaid.

--

Michael Perelman
Economics Department
California State University
[EMAIL PROTECTED]
Chico, CA 95929
530-898-5321
fax 530-898-5901


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RE: Nash equilibrium's relevance

[Davies, Daniel]

>If so, why is Nash's equilibrium used for all sorts of things, such as
>electricity regulation? (If I remember, the movie mentioned that.) Is it
>that Nash equilibrium is basically a normative concept and that it's
applied
>to improve the efficiency of electricity regulation (or what not) rather
>than to be an accurate description of the way the world works? 

In a nutshell, the answer to this is the reason why Nash's Nobel prize was
shared with Harsanyi and Selten.  They built on Nash's concept and developed
the theory of what happens in game-like interactions under less restrictive
assumptions about maximal, universal, recursive rationality.  When you allow
for certain kinds of departures from rationality, it's actually quite a good
descriptive tool.  Particularly given that the whole thing in its
application to electricity regulation has an element of the circle jerk to
it; the regulators employ game theorists to design the regulations, and the
companies know this, so they hire their own game theorists to exploit the
loopholes, which means that the regulators know that the companies are
likely to act in accordance with game theory, so they try to design
"incentive-compatible regulations" ... and so on.

dd


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RE: Re: Re: RE: Nash, Harsanyi and Selten

[Davies, Daniel]

-Original Message-
From: Ken Hanly [mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED]]
Sent: 21 March 2002 16:35
To: [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Subject: [PEN-L:24203] Re: Re: RE: Nash, Harsanyi and Selten


I thought that Hobbes was a  mathematical genius. He was the first to square
the circle. Of course this caused great jealousy among the established
mathematicians and the Royal Society..;.

Cheers, Ken Hanly


That would be *quadrature* of the circle (constructing a line equal in
length to the circumference of any given circle).  Squaring circles is
impossible.


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RE: Re: RE: Re: RE: Re: Re: Re: "Nobel" Prize

[Davies, Daniel]

>Well maybe, take it up with the architects of the PD, Taylor, Rapaport, vN
& 
>M, all of whom insist on the noncom condition, frankly,

Sorry mate; I'm clearly getting your back up here and I didn't mean to.

The fact that communication has to be more than "cheap talk" if it is to be
more than a wheel which doesn't turn anything in the mechanism, is pretty
well known in the literature, though it probably came later than von Neumann
and Morgenstern. In fact a lot of it is the reason why Harsanyi and Selten
shared the Nobel equally with Nash, although they didn't get a film written
about them.

I'd be wary of relying on Rapaport too heavily; as far as I know, his main
contribution to game theory have been a fallacy (the Symmetry Fallacy in the
one-shot PD) and joint responsibility for all the horrendous confusion
engendered by that book "The Evolution of Co-operation" (summarised at
http://jasss.soc.surrey.ac.uk/1/1/review1.html ).  Thomas Schelling's
"Strategy of Conflict" is lumps better as a text on game theory from a
political science point of view.

anyway, whatever.  I suspect that diminishing returns has set in on this by
now

dd


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RE: RE: Re: Alzheimer's disease

[Davies, Daniel]

I hope any relatives of sufferers will take cheer rather than offence in my
passing on that the motto of the Irish Alzheimer's Disease Society is:

"Remember those who can't".

dd


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RE: Re: RE: Re: Re: Re: "Nobel" Prize

[Davies, Daniel]

>The standard version of the story with the PD, as set forth in Taylor (the 
>inventor), Rapaport, von Neumann and Morgenstern, etc., is that the 
>prisoners cannot communicate. One reason for this is so that they cannot 
>change the payoff matrix by threatening _each other_. Otherwise the
dominant 
>strategy will be different. Of course mere promises will be worthless. But 
>promises are not the only things that can be communicated.
>

A threat is just another kind of promise; for a fully consistent game
theoretician, *no* statement of the form "If you play strategy X, I will do
Y", where Y is an action which is costly for the person making the
statement, is credible.  If you ever have the bad luck to be banged up with
a game theoretician, you might quite possibly tap on the waterpipes or
something to inform him that "If you defect and I get ten years, I'll come
after you and kill your family".  But he's just going to reply that since it
would be costly for you to do so (and you can't gain any pleasure from doing
it since this would mean that your utility and his were not independent as
required by the vN/M axioms), it would be strictly irrational for you to do
so, so he's going to regard it as just empty talk.  Leaving you back where
you started.

There are games in which communication makes a difference; if one prisoner
could prove that he was a member of a secret society that would expel him if
he failed to avenge a defection (in other words, could make his threat
credible), then that would make a difference.  But ordinary, garden-variety
communication is just "cheap talk" in most of these models.  That's the
classic, fully rational theory of games, anyway, wherein is had much fun in
deducing all the knowledge that each player might have.  Once you introduce
"bounded rationality", the whole business gets much more murky.

dd


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RE: Re: Re: Re: "Nobel" Prize

[Davies, Daniel]

>Well, hypothetically. But all the interesting cases that have been worked 
>out have noncommunication as a condition, so far as I know.

>jks

I don't know where you're getting this from, unless you mean something
radically different by "communication" from what I think you mean.  You can
have as much communication as you like in a one-shot or finite Prisoner's
Dilemma and it doesn't change the analysis at all, because "talk is cheap"
-- you can't credibly commit to keep your word.  Credibility and signalling
is one of the biggest bits of game theory.

dd


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RE: RE: Re: "Nobel" Prize

[Davies, Daniel]

-Original Message-
From: Devine, James [mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED]]
Sent: 19 March 2002 20:43
To: '[EMAIL PROTECTED]'
Subject: [PEN-L:24092] RE: Re: "Nobel" Prize


>you think? As far as I know, there's no reason to think that the Nash
>equilibrium applies in reality 

The success of the third-generation wireless auctions in Europe would
suggest that concepts derived from Nash's equilibrium do have some practical
use; in general, auction design is the big success story of game theory.  On
the other hand, it's hardly a clean experiment; all parties to big auctions
employ economists who analyse the structure of the auction using Nash's
toolkit, and things might be very different if they didn't.

dd


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RE: RE: RE: We are proud to be dinosaurs

[Davies, Daniel]

For the benefit of anyone else who has wasted the whole morning on this
question, this website:

http://abone.superonline.com/~user0001/turkish-pronunciation-guide.html

would have us believe that Sabri's surname is pronounced 

"Irnjyoo"

I don't believe a word of it myself

dd

-Original Message-
From: Sabri Oncu [mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED]]
Sent: 18 March 2002 10:14
To: PEN-L
Subject: [PEN-L:24055] RE: RE: We are proud to be dinosaurs


>>The poor fellow already has an impossible last
>>name to pronounce for English speakers: Öncü.

>>Why don't you give it a try?

>Oncyurr?  Enchway?  Ownkwer?  gimme some help here 

>in return I'm prepared to give a few tips on
>Llanfairpwllgwyngyllgogerychwyndrobwllantisliogogogoch :)
>
>dd

Good job Daniel. You don't seem to need any help. Your
pronunciation of my last name is perfect.

Best,
Sabri


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RE: RE: We are proud to be dinosaurs

[Davies, Daniel]

>The poor fellow already has an impossible last
>name to pronounce for English speakers: Öncü.

>Why don't you give it a try?

Oncyurr?  Enchway?  Ownkwer?  gimme some help here 

in return I'm prepared to give a few tips on
Llanfairpwllgwyngyllgogerychwyndrobwllantisliogogogoch :)

dd


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RE: RE: Re: marx's proof regarding surplusvalue and profit

[Davies, Daniel]

>If you want more specificity, consider another two-good economy.
>Sector A produces 10 units of A, using 9 units of A and 1 unit of
>labor.  Sector B produces 3 units of B, using up 2 units of A and
>1 unit of labor.  So there's a positive net product of B, 3 units,
>and a negative net product of A, 10 - 9 - 2 = -1 unit.  Now under
>the interpretation in question, the per-unit value of A is 1 and
>the per-unit value of B is also 1, so the total value of the net
>product is 2.  Imagine that workers' wages are *very* low, so that
>surplus-labor, the total value of the net product minus the value
>of wages, is very close to 2.  If, however, the relative price of
>A in terms of B is greater than 3, then profit -- measured
>simultaneously -- will be negative.  So we have surplus-labor but
>negative profit.

Why would anyone carry out production of a good worth half as much as its
inputs?  What you appear to have proved here is that if workers are employed
to destroy valuable items, then profit will be negative.  I suppose that
would be news to the analysts who covered boo.com or something, but probably
not to anyone else.  I'm probably being thick here, but I don't see how your
assumption about the relative prices of A and B is a legitimate one here;
unless the less stylised version of this argument has some compelling reason
why production of B would take place under these relative prices, I'm not
sure that this conclusion can be established

dd


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RE: Re: marx's proof regarding surplus value and profit

[Davies, Daniel]

-Original Message-
From: Michael Perelman [mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED]]
Sent: 14 March 2002 01:28
To: [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Subject: [PEN-L:23950] Re: marx's proof regarding surplus value and
profit

>.  So, let's call a halt to
>this.

sorry; ifI could withdraw my previous reply to it I would (catching
up with messages after a gruelling marketing trip)

dd


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RE: Re: Duesenberry

[Davies, Daniel]

>It is curious how little notice Duesnberry's book is given.  For mine, it
>destroys the whole neo-classical analysis once and for all.  (One of many
such
>destructions that have had no discernible result.) 

Only in so far as the NCs believe their own hype regarding the status of
neoclassical economics as an axiomatic theory based on von
Neumann/Morgenstern utility theory.  Most of the important results of
neoclassical economics were derived utterly independently of this
axiomatisation and don't depend on any homoeconomicus assumption, for all
that both defenders and critics say that they do.  Might I second Michael's
endorsement of "Machine Dreams" by Philip Mirsowski on this subject; I've
just started reading it and it's fantastic.

dd


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RE: Hitchens on the Axis of Evil

[Davies, Daniel]

very interesting article; two points, both regarding my personal obsession
with Iraq:

>I have sat on an unexploded Iraqi chemical bomb in the Kurdish town of
>Halabja, which was ethnically cleansed by fire and poison, 

This was no doubt very brave of Hitchens, but the Kurds in Halabja were
killed by the bombs which exploded, not the unexploded ones, and the
official reports on Halabja suggest that the dead bodies showed the symptoms
of poisoning with hydrogen cyanide, a chemical weapon which the Iraqis
didn't have and the Iranians did.

>I have also recently had dinner with Dr Khidir Hamza, who defected from
>Iraq's nuclear programme, and I don't disbelieve him when he says that
>Saddam is only a year or so away from acquiring the real thing.

If so, then Saddam has found either a way to conduct a nuclear power program
without electricity, or a way to supply massive amounts of electricity
without it showing up on satellite photographs.  In not disbelieving Khidir
Hamza, Hitchens is once more playing the contrarian.

dd


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RE: Re: Yen still overvalued

[Davies, Daniel]

Since Japanese banks report on a consolidated basis, how would moving their
assets from a correspondent account in New York to a nostro account in Tokyo
help them close their accounts?

dd

-Original Message-
From: Charles Jannuzi [mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED]]
Sent: 06 March 2002 03:01
To: [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Subject: [PEN-L:23565] Re: Yen still overvalued


> There used to be a speculation that Japanese banks may repatriate
> overseas funds to write off a part of their bad loans before they
> close their fiscal year account at the end of this month. Can you
> comment on the likelihood of this and its possible effects?
>
> Sabri
>

I hear this every year from those trying to encourage apocalyptic thinking
(like analysts for hedge funds and Swiss annuity peddlers).

I don't think it likely they all would repatriate everything all at once. It
would be suicide. I suppose if the gov't prompted a wave of foreclosures
(by, for example, letting the vulture funds take over the loans) and it
caused a panicked inrushing of funds to prevent mass foreclosures.  But the
loans were are always talking about are a lot more diversified and complex
than the vulture capital analysts always say.


Japanese firms more than other globalized ones have to balance their
investments all around the triad and they have to make currency movements a
major concern. Everyone thinks Japan=export concerns, but every export, no
matter how much value added, has a major input, and this is always imported.
The country imports all its resources except water. If you've ever run a
business in Japan, you know just how easily one thing happening in the world
markets can be your ruin.

Charles Jannuzi


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RE: Re: RE: Re: Rigor mortis?

[Davies, Daniel]

-Original Message-
From: Michael Perelman [mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED]]
Sent: 04 March 2002 16:43
To: [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Subject: [PEN-L:23467] Re: RE: Re: Rigor mortis?


Daniel, I don't disagree with you, although the PBS television show, Nova,
did
do a pretty good job.  I was asking about the examples of models that were
able
to teach something about the nature of the economy.  Obviously, mathematics
is
important in finance, but I'm not sure how much it can teach about how
financial
machinations affect the economy.
==

here beginneth the apologia 

I tend to think that option theory actually has a much wider application
than just in finance.  For example (to plug the only piece I've ever
published in anything even resembling an academic journal), you can model
the payoffs to the owner of a limited liability company as the equivalent of
the payoffs on a strip of put options.  The idea is that, if the firm's
assets are worth more than its liabilities on the next audit date, the owner
gets a payoff equal to the positive difference between assets and
liabilities (plus the ability to play the game for one more year), whereas
if the assets are lower in value than the liabilities, the owner's losses
are capped.

For this reason, owners of limited liability firms have an incentive to
maximise the volatility of their assets, and this incentive increases the
futher "out of the money" the option moves.  This explains the Nick Leeson
"gambling for redemption" phenomenon.  It's possible to put it in less
mathematical terms, but I don't think you get the feel of it unless you know
how to interpret vega (the sensitivity of the value of an option to a change
in the volatility of the underlying).

And that's not even touching the general issue of risk-neutral pricing,
which I am currently constructively proving my point by not being able to
give a sensible example of without using maths.  Basically, this is an issue
in the selection of the appropriate discount rate for a set of risky future
payments under particular assumptions about one's ability to manage the
risk.  

There are a knot of finance theory concepts here, but they're all terribly
important:

The CAPM tells me that if the risk of an investment I propose to make is
like that of a lottery -- it's more or less a completely random number, like
prospecting for opals in Australia --, then I ought to make an unbiased
forecast of the future payoffs, and discount these back to the present at
the *risk-free* rate.  I use the risk free rate in this case because if I
have enough of these projects, I can diversify this risk away and be more or
less certain of getting the actuarial expectation.

The CAPM also tells me that if my investment is correlated with the wider
economy, and if the nature of the project is that I basically invest my
capital now, and find out in the next time period whether I'm a winner or a
loser (say, I'm thinking about distilling Scotch, and once I've put it in
the barrels, there's nothing I can do except hope that people want to buy it
in fifteen years), then I should adjust my discount rate upwards according
to the *covariance* of the return on the project with my expected
consumption.  So if my Scotch is Johnnie Walker Black Label, then I should
want a higher discount rate, because the event under which I get rich out of
this business is one in which I'm rich anyway (a stock market boom in
Japan), whereas if it's rotgut hooch, then I'd be prepared to accept a lower
rate of return than Treasury bonds, because the rotgut hooch business would
make me a big winner exactly in the sort of recessionary economy in which
I'd need the money.  I'll assume that this sort of intuitive explanation
will do; in actual fact, to prove that covariance rather than variance is
the relevant measure of risk, you need some pretty hairy maths.

But risk-neutral pricing is something else.  It says that if the nature of
my business is one where I can make day-to-day changes to my output -- if I
can *manage* the risk -- I ought to be setting out a plan to manage this
risk, counting up the payoffs on various branches of the plan, and then
discounting these cashflows at the *risk-free* rate of interest.  The reason
for this is (I contend) impossible to describe without getting into some
sort of formalism, but it's got a lot to do with the fact that at any one
stage in my plan, I can be hedged against the next small movement, so each
node of my decision tree has me in a situation where (consistent with the
plan) I have no risk, so the whole plan should be treated as a risk-free
project.  Which sounds awfully like a fallacy of composition, and you need
the maths to prove that it isn't.

Broadly speaking, finance (and its close cousin actuarial science) is the
branch of economics which deals with uncertainty and time, so I don't see
how it can fail to be relevant to the central questions of economics.  Even
something as simple as compound inte

RE: Re: Rigor mortis?

[Davies, Daniel]

>I have little faith that formal models clarify much or avoid
misrepresentations
>of reality.  I have asked the list for examples of formal models that have
>taught them anything that they could not have learned by other means.  I
think
>Peter Dorman may have been the only one who responded.

I've yet to see a decent explanation of risk-neutral pricing (most normally
seen in the context of the Black-Scholes and/or Cox/Ingersoll/Ross options
pricing models, but a very powerful economic idea of very general
application) which didn't involve some sort of formalism.  I'm not saying it
can't be done, but I don't know how one would go about it.

dd


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RE: Re: Dornbusch: Argentina must surrender sovereignty on financial issues!!!!

[Davies, Daniel]

If I were Dornbusch, I would be keeping my mouth tightly shut on the subject
of Argentina and hoping that nobody remembered my previous breathless
advocacy of currency boards as a panacea.  There is certainly enough
incriminating stuff on the rest of his website that should form context for
his current proposal.

I think the worst part about Dorbusch's current brainwave is its pessimism.
There is no reason whaatever that it needs to take ten years for Argentina
to recover.  This was not the case in Mexico or Brazil.  If the experience
of Latin America tells us anything, it tells us that the solution of a
floating currency plus inflation target regime works there just as well as
if works everywhere else.

And as far as I can tell, Dornbusch's obsession with "having their money in
Miami" is patronising in the extreme, and seems almost calculated to give
the impression that all rich Latin Americans are coke smugglers.  In fact, I
would guess that rich Argentines are old money and thus much more likely to
have their money in Switzerland.

All I know about Austria between the wars is that the Credit Anstalt
collapsed really badly and took down the monetary system of half of Europe,
contributing to the UK going off the gold standard, and to the Weimar
hyperinflation.  So I would perhaps question whether whatever was done there
in 1918 was quite the rousing success Dornbusch claims it was.

dd

-Original Message-
From: Michael Perelman [mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED]]
Sent: 02 March 2002 22:29
To: [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Subject: [PEN-L:23387] Re: Dornbusch: Argentina must surrender
sovereignty on financial issues


I hope people read the piece.  Although the formatting on Alan's post is
not easy, the URL is clear.  They come right out an say that a committee
of central bankers should come in and run the place.

Does anyone here know about the Austrian experience that they discuss.
 -- 
Michael Perelman
Economics Department
California State University
Chico, CA 95929

Tel. 530-898-5321
E-Mail [EMAIL PROTECTED]


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RE: Some questions

[Davies, Daniel]

Both agreement and disagreement here.  Need to separate:

a) critiques of central planning per se

from

b) critiques of Stalin's version of it.

The Soviet Union for most of its life worked on the basis of Stalin's
version of a command economy, whereby, as Carrol puts it, production
decisions were made politically.  So the critique of planning based on
incentives is orthogonal to the case of the Soviet Union, as it only tells
us about a certain class of problem one would have in trying to optimise
production in a command economy.  Since Stalinist Russia didn't care about
optimising its output (Stalin was extremely suspicious of people who tried
to optimise production, referring to them as "cyberneticians"), this
critique isn't really all that relevant.  After all, you can't get lost if
you're not going anywhere.

On the other hand, Kantorovich and Novozhilov, the two greatest members of
the cybernetician school of Soviet economics, did tend toward the opinion
that market signals were needed in order to formulate an optimal plan (note
that we're referring to *goods* markets here, not capital markets). 

I don't think it's really necessary to take the incentives critique too
seriously; after all, if it were true, we would expect organisations like BP
and the US Army to be significantly less efficient than they in fact are.
The problem with the Soviet Union was that it specifically, intentionally
and for political reasons, decided that it was ideologically unsound to make
plans for the world as it was rather than the world as Stalin wanted it to
be.

dd

>Any social formation faces the need to allocate resources (including
>labour) here rather than there.  We've tried command economies and found
>that, sans market signals, it couldn't be done where and when it was
>tried - or at least, that it was so wasteful and inequitable that it
>couldn't survive as a system in the world of the time.  If we take away
>the hostile external environment, WW2 (which wiped out a generation in
>the SU), and poor calculation technology (computing power exists today
>that did not exist then), we're still left with one of the central
>planks of economic science: the balance of incentives.  As I see it, the
>misprojections, untrue inventory reports, uncoordinated transport
>systems, ridiculous quotas etc were a function of poorly coordinated
>incentive systems (there was fear, currying of favour and such). 


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RE: Re: RE: Question to Various comments in In Digest 77

[Davies, Daniel]

(hoping this will do as a tentative reply to Eric too)

>Recasting Marx in algebraic, mathematical, or precise numerical form, seems
a
>bit foreign to his overall project, which his understanding the nature of
>capitalist society and the weaknesses that will lead to the creation of a
>socialist state.

The idea was not so much to give a precise or numeric quantification of the
productive forces but rather to show that the phrase "productive forces"
could in principle be operationalised in some non-question-begging way.  I
say "non-question-begging", because my problem with Jim and Eric's idea of
the productive forces (set out extremely clearly in Eric's chained-GDP
concept of their measurement), is that if you're going to say that
"productive" means "productive of things which are desired by human beings
at that particular point in history", then I don't see how historical
materialism can get off the ground.  ie, if the state of the production
forces can only be given a meaning which is dependent on the state of
history, how can it be the basis of a theory of history?  And whatever else
one thinks about Cohen's work, I think he has to be right that Marx had a
theory of history, and that this theory of history was materialsit and based
on the productive forces.

'course, I never understood dialectics, so I may be talking out of my hole.

dd


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RE: Re: Question to Various comments in In Digest 77

[Davies, Daniel]

>But, in any case, I believe that attention in recent years by economic 
>historians has been given to the role of countless thousands of very small 
>innovations each year (rather than focus on the big-deal innovations) as 
>having been key for technological progress in capitalism. I tend to go
along 
>with this, in part because the big-deal innovations appear randomly and, if

>Schumpeter is to be believed, due to the efforts of the heroic individual.
Not 
>much consistent with Marx here. 

This may or may not be true, but I don't think it's what Scumpeter said;
IIRC, a "Schumpeterian" theory of innovation is one in which innovations are
institutionalised and brought about by the R&D departments of big
corporations.  Bell Labs, not James Watt, are the classic Schumpterian
innovation story.

dd


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RE: Question to Various comments in In Digest 77

[Davies, Daniel]

This does seem like an interesting fundamental disagreement on the meaning
of the "productive forces".  We've basically got two views here:

1)  Charles' and mine, that production is a physical process.  As Charles
said, one measure of the productive forces which allows the term to be given
sense independently of any assumptions about social relations would simply
be the physical concept of "work" (roughly speaking, the ability to transfer
energy). You could envision a theory in which state of development of "the
productive forces" was measured by the highest temperature to which one
million randomly selected members of the human race, socially organised in
any which way, could raise a metric tonne of water from 0 degrees Centigrade
in one hour; this would obviously be a bit of a strange definition, but it
has the advantage of, as far as I can tell, being monotonically increasing
in whatever the underlying variable of "human development" might be.  On
this view, the invention of fire would be a big step forward for the
productive forces, the wheel, inclined plane and lever a few more,
electricity another one, and nuclear energy another big one (anything that
helps you get energy from one place to another basically).

My half-baked ramblings about "the complexity of arbitrary physical objects"
were an attempt to suggest that it's possible to keep the flavour of the
energy transfer view of the productive forces, while making it a bit more
realistic in terms of matching actual human development.  On this view,
precision tools would have been a step forward, as would computers, etc.  If
the development of the productive forces is at the level where the most
complex object you can produce is a cell-phone (with "complex" hopefully to
be defined in some objective way along the lines of Shannon's information
theory; one measure might be the maximum surface area of an object which
could be repeatably produced and placed into a one foot cube.), then an
improvement in silicon technology which allows you to produce a *smaller*
cell-phone is an increase in the productive forces (because you could also
use this increase to produce non-cellphone objects which were previously
inaccessible if you wanted to), whereas the use of economies of scale or a
more efficient cellphone design which allows you to produce *cheaper*
cellphones is not an increase in the productive forces (because it doesn't
allow you to change your mind and produce anything you couldn't produce
before).

I like this view because it allows the questions of technology, organisation
of production and consumption to be separated analytically.  But I also see
the case for:

2)  Eric's (and Jim's?) view, that technology, organisation of production
and consumption can't be separated in this way, and that because production
has to be production of goods that people want, it can't be measured outside
the context of a particular social organisation.  I think (would be
interested in comments) that this might actually go so far as to imply that
measurement of the state of the productive forces might only be possible
using market prices, along the lines of Kuznets' GDP concept.  This
emphasises the idea that the value of an "arbitrary physical object" is
determined socially.

So it all seems to come down to the question of whether "the productive
forces" are to be understood as "the forces producing value" or "the forces
producing things".  I don't know enough about Marx to be sure about this
one, but I think Cohen's version of historical materialism is based on
something like 1) above.

dd


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RE: RE: RE: Productive Forces

[Davies, Daniel]

 

Jim D. writes

 

 > Eric N. writes: >I would go further. It could be argued that no
"objective" measure of the level of productive forces  > can exist.
Presumably a productive force is considered productive because it leads to
some good or service that  > >people want and/or need. But, as Smith and
Marx recognized, wants and needs are (partly) socially/historically  >
>determined <

 

 > I agree. 

 

I'm not sure I do.  I think it would be possible in principle to come up
with a mathematically rigorous definition of "the productive forces" in
terms of the ability to produce arbitrary physical objects of a given
information-theoretic complexity of structure, and then carry the analysis
on from there.  I realise that this is making information theory do an awful
lot of work, but I'm not yet quite ready to give up on the separation of
physical production from demand and exchange as an analytical tool.

 

dd

 

 



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FW: Re: Dallas Smythe student

[Davies, Daniel]

-Original Message-
From: Yoshie Furuhashi [mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED]]
Sent: 26 February 2002 08:48
To: [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Subject: [PEN-L:23239] Re: Dallas Smythe student


Tom says:

>The anxiety isn't over pleasure and sensuality per se, but over the
>commodification of pleasure and sensuality -- a process that is no doubt so
>far advanced that it becomes hard to conceive of pleasure and sensuality in
>any other terms.

[snip a lot of very good points made by Yoshie]

But more broadly, why all the fuss about "commodification" of pleasure and
sexuality?  Isn't it enough zat zey be pleazant and zexy, without also
demanding that they be politically correct?  And what if commodified
products are actually *nicer* than their non-commodified equivalents?  This
is certainly true of the brewing industry, and quite possibly of many
others.

dd


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RE: Re: Re: Question about "dutch disease"

[Davies, Daniel]

Dutch disease was an absolutely massively fashionable topic when I was at
university, mainly because Nickell and Muellbauer had declared it to be
interesting.  The idea is that, if you've struck natural gas or some such,
then you're very likely to be running a massive current account surplus for
the foreseeable future (cf: the UK and North Sea Oil).  Because you're
running a current a/c surplus in the whole economy, the likelihood is that
you're going to be running a deficit in the non-oil economy; you're paying
for some overseas goods with oil rather than manufactures (it's easiest to
make this argument by assuming an exchange rate model, but it can be done
using only accounting identities and flow of funds).  The argument then ran
that there is path-dependency in manufacturing production ("hysteresis" was
the then popular term), and that for this reason, if manufacturing
production was run down during the oil period, it would find itself in a
weakened, under-invested state when the oil ran out, and your economy would
have "Dutch disease".  NB that this is a one-sector argument and entirely
consistent with striking oil being a Good Thing for the economy as a whole
-- Nickell viewed the idea as actually laughable that it could be bad to
strike oil.  

I'm showing my age, aren't I?

dd


-Original Message-
From: Bill Lear [mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED]]
Sent: 25 February 2002 12:55
To: [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Subject: [PEN-L:23185] Re: Re: Question about "dutch disease"


On Sunday, February 24, 2002 at 20:40:53 (-0800) Eugene Coyle writes:
>Why wouldn't the cheaper natural resource, as an input to the productive
>process, lower the cost of manufactured goods and make them MORE
>competitive with other nations?

Exactly my question.  As I understand it, the US has benefited very
much from having cheap natural resources, which it has (had?) used
primarily to fuel its industrialization.


Bill


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RE: RE: Re: On the necessity of socialism

[Davies, Daniel]

>Any forecasts on when we will be able to solve this
transformation problem?<

I have a most marvellous solution to this one, but it will not quite fit
into this margin ...

dd 


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RE: Promises, promises in UK health care...

[Davies, Daniel]

>Why is it Scotland can afford personal health care for the elderly but
>England can't? 

Potentially, because Scotland is the heart disease capital of Europe,
meaning that its citizens can be actuarially expected to die earlier with
less of the long-term care which is the real driver of health budgets.

dd


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RE: Double tax on savings

[Davies, Daniel]

Dividends (under a classical rather than imputation system) are paid out of
income on which corporation tax has already been paid, but are counted as
taxable income to the stockholder.

-Original Message-
From: Eric Nilsson [mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED]]
Sent: 18 February 2002 18:39
To: Pen-l
Subject: [PEN-L:22970] Double tax on savings


Does anyone know the origin of the phrase "double tax on savings." I'm
teaching public finance and must address the issue of double taxation on
savings as the textbook makes a big deal out of it.

For the life of me I don't see how taxing income and then taxing capital
gains/interest constitutes "double taxation." Was the phrase "double
taxation on savings" invented to justify tax cuts for investors? If so, does
anyone know when this idea first appeared?

Thanks for any leads on this.

Eric Nilsson
Economics
CSUSB


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RE: O Joy -- another sign of recovery

[Davies, Daniel]

>CB: So, does it look like the topic of The New Economy is troughing too ?

On the subject of which, I would imagine that Enron has pretty much put the
kybosh on those ideas about capitalising "human capital" which we heard so
much about the year before last.  The process by which (eg) Baruch Lev
proposed to recognise intangible assets was exactly what caused the problems
in Enron; the practice of projecting future profits, capitalising them
through some sort of DCF model and treating them as an asset today.  I don't
see how Baruch could honestly have claimed that he had a problem, in
principle (perhaps with the specific projections), with the Blockbuster
Video joint venture transaction whereby Enron claimed to have generated
earnings of $114m simply by having the idea to rent videos over the
internet.

dd


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RE: IMF, USAID, & Afghanistan (by George Monbiot)

[Davies, Daniel]

>...On January 29, the IMF's assistant director for monetary and 
>exchange affairs suggested that the country [Afghanistan] should abandon
its 
>currency and adopt the dollar instead. 

My alternative proposal -- that Argentina should peg its currency to the
Afghani -- met with but scant support :)


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RE: Re: Review of Radical Political Economics statement

[Davies, Daniel]

>URPE spent something like $15,000 defending itself against Kliman's 
>lawsuit, which has very nearly bankrupted the organization. But hey, 
>it's important to get those value theory papers out there if we want 
>to overturn bourgeois rule.

I'm just amazed that the Union of Radical Political Economists had net worth
of U$15K to begin with.  Who says Marxism doesn't pay?


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RE: Enron question

[Davies, Daniel]

almost certainly yes.  My screen tells me that they won out over Citigroup
in a "hotly contested auction", so presumably some payment will be
forthcoming to the bankruptcy trustees.  NB that what they've bought is the
trading platform ie the computers, and probably first dibs on some key
staff.  They didn't take over any of Enron's old positions.

dd

-Original Message-
From: Michael Perelman [mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED]]
Sent: 12 February 2002 01:03
To: [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Subject: [PEN-L:22723] Enron question


Can anybody explain how Enron was able to give its trading operation to
UBS Warburg for a share of its profits?  Did the creditors have to agree?
-- 
Michael Perelman
Economics Department
California State University
Chico, CA 95929

Tel. 530-898-5321
E-Mail [EMAIL PROTECTED]


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RE: Re: Re: Re: Wishful thinking

[Davies, Daniel]

>-Original Message-
>From: Justin Schwartz [mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED]]
>Sent: 11 February 2002 21:16
>To: [EMAIL PROTECTED]
>Subject: [PEN-L:22714] Re: Re: Re: Wishful thinking

>In the heyday of Keynesian, Hayek was a _young_ fossil; when he was an old 
>fossil, he triumphed.

>jks

Over Keynes?  I think not.  An Austrian critique of Soviet-style central
planning is much more defensible than an Austrian critique of Keynesian
demand management.  I was not aware that your Austrianism reached such
heights, jks!

How would you explain the recent conniptions in the NASDAQ in a manner
consistent with Austrian theory?  The best I've seen the Austrians do seems
to be to do utter violence to their own concept of "malinvestment".

dd


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RE: Re: Re: Wishful thinking

[Davies, Daniel]

>-Original Message-
>From: Ken Hanly [mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED]]
>Sent: 11 February 2002 20:57
>To: [EMAIL PROTECTED]
>Subject: [PEN-L:22713] Re: Re: Wishful thinking


>By the way the 150,000  or so Zoroastrians who actively practice the
>religion will be surprised to learn of their death. Perhaps Pugliese can
>provide some links for your enlightenment ;) Who knows it may sweep through
>California soon...

>Cheers, Ken Hanly

Speaking of Zoroastrian deaths, this week's copy of Private Eye informs me
that the Towers of Silence (the cliffs above Mumbai where the Parsis
traditionally leave their dead) are becoming a fairly serious biohazard.
Since the numbers of the vultures which traditionally picked the bodies
clean have been depleted by pollution over the years, and since strict
Zoroastrianism regards it as a sin to bury, cremate, or basically do
anything with a dead body other than leave it on the Towers of Silence for
the vultures, things are getting really rather unpleasant up there.  The
Zoroastrians are being told by the city that they're going to have to either
change their customs or start breeding vultures.

No doubt there is some sort of allegorical significance for modern Marxism
in their predicament, but I'm buggered if I'm going to work out what it is
at 7 o'clock in the bloody morning.

cheers

dd


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