RE: Re: Yugoslavia again

[Lisa Ian Murray]

 I'm sorry to see Milosevich go.

 In God's name, why? Don't *ever* be sorry to see nationalist thugs
 go. Were you sorry to see Tudjman go? Were you sorry to see Mobutu
 go? Were you sorry to see Galtieri go?



 Brad DeLong
==

Then  we shouldn't be sorry to see the nationalist thugs at the CIA, DOD,
NSA etc go too.Once we figure out how to get rid of them of course

Ian

ECB raises rates

[Lisa Ian Murray]

[full article at http://www.iht.com/IHT/TODAY/FRI/FIN/ecb.2.html ]

Paris, Friday, October 6, 2000
ECB Raises Key Rate Amid Signs of Slowing
Move Isn't a Risk to Growth, Duisenberg Insists


By John Schmid International Herald Tribune

FRANKFURT - The European Central Bank surprised markets Thursday by raising
interest rates just as fresh evidence was pointing toward a slowdown in the
11-nation economy.
The president of the European Central Bank, Wim Duisenberg, said the move
had been aimed at containing inflationary pressures and insisted that the
economy could withstand tighter credit conditions.

''We see no threat to growth'' from this rate increase, Mr. Duisenberg said.
He said the euro-zone economy was at ''cruising altitude.''

The bank raised its benchmark money-market rate a quarter of a percentage
point to 4.75 percent, its seventh increase in less than a year. Since
November, the bank has lifted rates by 2.25 percentage points.

The move stunned economists who feared the euro zone's recovery had grown
fragile.

''They keep raising rates into a slowing economy,'' said Thomas Mayer, chief
European economist at Goldman, Sachs  Co. ''It is hard to see why they
would have done it today other than to try to prop up the euro.''

If the rate move was aimed at shoring up the euro, its benefits were
short-lived. The currency rose briefly as high as 87.86 U.S. cents but by 4
p.m. in New York, it fell to 86.91 cents, down from 87.46 cents Wednesday.
Its record low is 84.92 cents, reached Sept. 20.

Many economists say higher growth, not higher rates, will prove the best
support for the euro.

The rate increase comes in the roughest operating environment for the
European Central bank since it was created along with the euro in January
1999. The currency has failed to respond to previous rate moves that
theoretically should have given it a lift by enhancing euro-denominated
yields. Now the bank has tightened the money tap again just as oil prices
and the earlier tightenings have crimped economic confidence and possibly
capped the region's recovery.

''There are cracks in the recovery,'' said Adolf Rosenstock, European
economist at Nomura International PLC.

France this week reported its biggest single-month slump in consumer
confidence in five years, dropping its index to its lowest level in 14
months. In Germany, business confidence fell for the third consecutive month
in August.

Two weeks ago, major central banks joined the European Central Bank to
intervene in the open markets and buy the euro out of a shared concern that
the devalued currency could adversely affect the world economy.

Mr. Duisenberg said: ''While the possibility cannot be ruled out that the
increase in oil prices as such may temporarily dampen growth dynamics over
the short run, the forces underlying solid growth in the medium term remain
in place.

The ECB seems intent on crushing any inflation that stems from high crude
oil prices and the weak euro. It cannot afford to appear soft on inflation,
analysts said, when its own credibility is on trial and the euro under
pressure.

''Today's decisions continue to aim at ensuring that upward pressures on
consumer prices stemming from oil prices and the foreign-exchange rate of
the euro do not translate into more permanent inflationary tendencies.''

The largest euro-zone economies, Germany, France and Italy, have little
reason to want higher rates, economists suggest. But several others, such as
Ireland, Portugal, Finland and the Netherlands, all have brisk growth and
rising inflation.

Still, Mr. Duisenberg said, ''We had the maximum possible degree of
consensus on today's decision.''

In other trading, the dollar fell to 109.12 yen from 109.37 yen but rose to
1.7505 Swiss francs from 1.7367 francs. The pound fell to $1.4465 from
$1.4592.

RE: de Soto

[Lisa Ian Murray]

 I'm interviewing Hernando de Soto, the Peruvian libertarian
 propagandist, on the radio tomorrow. Any ideas for questions?

 Doug
+++
How many acres of trees have been exported to Japan since Fujimori's been in
power? How much of Peru is owned by Japan? Does he see that as a form of
colonialism or does he feel the Westphalian system is an anachronism [itself
a form of colonialism]?

Ian

New data on investment flows

[Lisa Ian Murray]

[full article at http://www.iht.com/IHT/TODAY/WED/FIN/fdi.2.html ]

Paris, Wednesday, October 4, 2000
Investment Flow Grew in 1999, But Takeovers Took Big Share


By Tom Buerkle International Herald Tribune

LONDON - Flows of foreign direct investment to developing countries bounced
back dramatically in the aftermath of the emerging-markets crisis to hit a
record $208 billion last year, but the investment remains concentrated in
only a handful of countries, the United Nations Conference on Trade and
Development reported Tuesday.
The report highlighted the extent to which foreign direct investment is
being driven by a worldwide takeover boom rather than by so-called
green-field development, such as going into a country and building a plant.
It also underscored the extent of investment flows from Europe to the United
States that have lifted the dollar against the euro.

Direct investment flows into the United States, increasingly the hunting
ground of choice for acquisitive multinationals, surged last year to $275
billion, or 31.8 percent of global foreign direct investment, compared with
$186 billion, or 27.4 percent, in 1998. Although inflows to the European
Union rose 23 percent to $305 billion, the bloc sent $510 billion of direct
investment abroad. A record 60 percent of investment flowing out of EU
countries went to non-EU members, principally the United States.

Investment flows to developing countries, which stagnated in 1998 because of
the financial crisis that rippled from Asia to Russia and parts of Latin
America, rose nearly 16 percent to $208 billion in 1999, with most of the
gains occurring in Asia and Latin America. But developing countries' share
of global foreign direct investment declined to 24 percent from 26 percent
the previous year.

Globally, foreign direct investment surged 27 percent last year to $865
billion

The value of completed cross-border mergers and acquisitions increased an
even greater 35 percent last year to a record $720 billion. That was nearly
four times the level of $187 billion seen in 1995. The UN body forecast that
the total would exceed $1 trillion this year. Takeover activity is dominated
by the United States and other large industrial countries, however, and only
10 percent or so involves developing countries.

Gabriele Koehler, head of Unctad's investment division, said green-field
investment was preferable in developing countries because it created jobs
and productive capacity and enhanced the skills of local work forces. But
the experience of the past year showed that foreign takeovers can help
developing countries by providing fresh finance for troubled companies such
as South Korea's chaebol and by generating higher proceeds for governments
selling state assets.

How to kill anti money- laundering bills

[Lisa Ian Murray]

Money Laundering Measure Near Dead
WASHINGTON (AP) _ Bipartisan legislation designed to fight money laundering
appears doomed in Congress, while the United States and its economic allies
complain that Russia, Israel and 13 other countries are failing to crack
down on such illegal commerce.

Following heavy lobbying against the bill by bankers, especially from Texas,
the Senate Banking Committee chairman has pronounced the measure dead.

``I think the clock's run out on that,'' Sen. Phil Gramm, R-Texas, said
recently in response to a question about the bill's prospects.

With Congress racing toward adjournment for the year and only a few work
days remaining, the money-laundering legislation has not been scheduled for
a vote in the House or Senate _ despite overwhelming approval by the House
Banking Committee in early June.

``This is an important piece of legislation needed in the continued
crackdown on illegal drug cartels and other international criminal
syndicates,'' Rep. Jim Leach, R-Iowa, chairman of the House banking panel,
said Monday. ``Unfortunately, it has ... been the subject of ... quiet but
effective interest-group opposition.''

The legislation, a result of cooperation between the Clinton administration
and key Republican lawmakers, would allow the Treasury Department to ban
some transactions between U.S. banks and offshore havens in an effort to
combat laundering of dirty money.

``I think it's too much power to give the secretary of the Treasury,'' Gramm
said.

As time was running out on Capitol Hill, U.S. representatives began meeting
Monday in Madrid, Spain, with counterparts from the 29-nation task force
that created in June the ``blacklist'' of 15 countries and territories
deemed uncooperative in the fight against money laundering.

The list was published in July, and followed by an advisory from the United
States and other countries to their domestic banks, warning they could
inadvertently make illegal transactions with the named countries and
territories.

And last week, European Union finance ministers agreed on rules
strengthening anti-money-laundering regulations by requiring accountants and
lawyers to report suspicious activities by their clients to authorities.

U.S. officials are disappointed they don't have the new legislation in hand
in time for the meeting of the task force, part of the Organization for
Economic Cooperation and Development, which is expected to review progress
by the 15 countries and territories.

``Let me be clear: without the passage of this bill, the U.S. will have a
much weaker hand when dealing with recalcitrant money-laundering havens,''
Deputy Treasury Secretary Stuart Eizenstat said in a recent speech to an
international group.

He noted that the legislation had been drafted earlier this year in
consultations among the administration, lawmakers and the banking industry.

Treasury officials weren't immediately available for comment Monday.

Texas bankers ``let their feelings be known'' to lawmakers because, among
other things, they fear the legislation could increase the regulatory and
reporting burden on smaller banks, said Christopher Williston, president and
chief executive officer of the Independent Bankers Association of Texas.

Because they are in a border area with a history of money-laundering
problems, many Texas bankers already have had to file numerous reports to
regulators on suspicious activities of customers, he noted.

``Community banks already know their customers so well,'' Williston said in
a telephone interview.

Most money laundering involves illicit profits from drug trafficking,
prostitution or other criminal activities, which are moved through a series
of bank or brokerage accounts to make them appear to be proceeds of
legitimate business activity.

Money laundering is estimated to absorb nearly $600 billion annually, or up
to 5 percent of the world's gross domestic product. Public attention focused
on money laundering after it was revealed last year that the Bank of New
York, one of the nation's largest, had served as a conduit for an
astonishing $7 billion in Russian money, some of it believed to be from
criminal activities.

The 15 countries and territories named by the international task force are
the Bahamas, the Cayman Islands, the Cook Islands, Dominica, Israel,
Lebanon, Liechtenstein, the Marshall Islands, Nauru, Niue, Panama, the
Philippines, Russia, St. Kitts and Nevis, and St. Vincent and the
Grenadines.

Finance after Banks

[Lisa Ian Murray]

[full article at

http://www.chicago.tribune.com/business/businessnews/article/0,2669,ART-4722
1,FF.html ]

Notion of traditional bank becoming obsolete

By Melissa Allison
Tribune Staff Writer
September 30, 2000
The record-setting economy that has lifted personal incomes and enriched the
business world is leaving behind a sector that usually thrives when times
are good: banks.

What might seem like isolated pratfalls, such as Bank One's credit card
problems or Bank of America's sorry record with acquisitions, are beginning
to look like warning signs for the entire industry.

Even as the economy continues its dazzling expansion, banks are losing their
share of consumers' financial assets, and concerns are growing about the
quality of loans they make. Those twin weaknesses could put banks in
frightening straits if the economy falls fast.

Already bank stocks are hurting. After months of volatility, overall bank
share prices are at the same levels they were in July 1998, and not even
last month's Chase Manhattan-J.P. Morgan deal could inspire new optimism
about the sector's future.

"All bets are off in a downturn," said Michael Mayo, a bank analyst for
Credit Suisse First Boston in New York. "If we hit a recession, run for the
hills."

Part of the problem is that shareholders expect more. The merger frenzy of
recent years, sparked by deregulation, has raised expectations for strong,
consistent returns, even as bankers struggle to cope with bigger, often
unwieldy enterprises.

The stereotype of consistently profitable, community institutions has been
replaced by the slick corporate conglomerate, run by executives more
concerned about Wall Street than the local chamber of commerce. With
increasing speed, the traditional notion of a bank is becoming obsolete,
experts say.

As pressure from investors builds, bankers could be tempted to take more
chances, making riskier loans to keep generating income—even as a slowing
economy argues for caution.

Although banks have long had a hallowed place in the U.S. economy, the
reality is that if banks do begin to falter, the effect on the nation's
financial system would be less dramatic than ever. In short, banks are less
important than ever.

Indeed, banks are losing market share with deposits and, in many cases, with
loans, still a vital source of their income. By 1999, U.S. banks' share of
consumers' financial assets had fallen to 9.9 percent—from 25.2 percent in
1975 and 19.2 percent in 1990—as the security of bank accounts lost out to
dreams of better returns in stocks, mutual funds and other investments.

The last time customers pulled their money out of banks that fast was amid
the catastrophic bank failures of the Great Depression. Ironically, it's the
good times that have spoiled business for banks this time.

Besides putting their money where the returns are better, consumers and
companies are borrowing elsewhere, sapping traditional banks of what used to
be their only revenue stream. Consumers have turned to mortgage lenders,
credit card firms and finance companies for loans. Meantime, businesses of
all sizes have embraced the capital markets for their financing needs.

Banks are trying to adapt, partly by entering new lines of business, but
they have not moved fast enough to keep pace with the strong economy.

They continue to receive regular warnings from regulators, including Federal
Reserve Chairman Alan Greenspan, about deteriorating loan quality. Bankers
insist that regulators are overdramatizing the situation.

Yet, even in economic clover, banks are posting surprising loan losses.
Wachovia Corp., one of the country's most conservative lenders, earlier this
year shaved hundreds of millions of dollars from earnings to compensate for
bad loans it made.

Hits like that have turned most analysts sour on the industry. Among the
first was Mayo, who two years ago began eliminating "buy" recommendations on
all the bank stocks he followed.

He and others emphasize that, even if banks' deposits and loans deteriorate
further, they are protected now by more capital and geographic diversity
than ever—factors that could see them through an economic disaster without
the massive failures of the 1930s and the early 1990s.

"Banks can withstand some pretty strong negative shocks and still survive,
unlike during the savings-and-loan period and the early '90s, when there was
a thin capital cushion against losses," said Randall Kroszner, a professor
of economics at the University of Chicago Graduate School of Business.

The most recent threat to the U.S. banking system was the collapse in 1998
of a big-league borrower, the Long-Term Capital Management LP hedge fund.

Kroszner and others say the system could have weathered the fund's massive
loan defaults. That prediction was never tested because the Federal Reserve
stepped in to orchestrate the firm's rescue by a group of 14 banks to the
tune of $3.6 billion.

Capital is stronger now because banks stockpiled it at the 

can you say hedge funds

[Lisa Ian Murray]

full article at
http://www.chicago.tribune.com/business/columnists/barnhart/article/0,1122,A
RT-47225,00.html

Hedge funds' popularity in full bloom
The stock boom has made more individuals eligible for the unconventional
investment partnerships

September 30, 2000

The near collapse of the private investment firm Long-Term Capital
Management, which seriously endangered world financial markets in 1998, did
nothing to quell demand among wealthy investors for offbeat investment
strategies known as hedge funds.

Assets managed by hedge funds total about $475 billion, up from $20 billion
in 1990, according to Chicago-based Hedge Fund Research. The market boom of
the 1990s has enlarged the number of individuals eligible and eager for
hedge funds, especially in the dot-com meccas of the West Coast. The number
of domestic and off-shore funds has jumped to 3,800 from 200 10 years ago.

Even if you consider unconventional investment strategies beyond your means
or desires, it's useful to understand a little about the mechanics and
psychology of hedge fund investing.

As we learned from the Long-Term Capital Management debacle, hedge-fund
investors often march to a different drummer than the normal
buy-low-sell-high pattern of owning stocks and bonds outright.

Nonetheless, trading sparked by complex hedge fund strategies—especially
when they go sour—can have an immediate and confusing impact on the
conventional investment climate. The bond market still has not recovered
fully from the Long-Term Capital debacle.

Hedge funds are defined generally as limited partnerships of a few wealthy
individuals that give professional managers far more leeway in their work
than traditional mutual fund managers enjoy.

Typically, individuals must ante $250,000, $500,000 or more and possess
sufficient net worth to pass regulatory muster to become a hedge fund
participant.

Mark Yost of Chicago-based Intrinsic Capital Partners says one distinction
between hedge fund investing and traditional investing through a mutual fund
is the difference between absolute returns and relative returns.

Most mutual funds attempt to beat or at least match the return on a
well-known market benchmark, such as the Standard  Poor's 500 index of
stocks. The fund's performance is measured relative to the index. Even when
the index is down, a mutual fund that is down less brags about its
achievement.

Yost, who resigned earlier this year from mutual fund manager Wanger Asset
Management to build a private investment fund business, said the goal of
most hedge funds is to achieve a consistent, positive investment return
greater than the return on Treasury bills, regardless of what the stock
market does.

With the SP 500 index virtually flat for the year after five years of
remarkable gains, earning an absolute return better than 6 percent on
Treasury bills seems a desirable goal.

Yost seeks to achieve about a 16 percent annual return over the next three
years after fees, or 10 points above the T-bill return.

He buys out-of-favor small-capitalization stocks expected to experience some
event—such as a takeover, a spinoff of a business unit or a substantial
share repurchase—that will boost share prices.

"These events can occur any time and are not dependent on what the stock
market does generally," Yost said. Beyond his event-driven investments, Yost
may take part of the portfolio out of the stock market.

Indeed, avoiding dependency on the stock market or bond market is the
principal feature of hedge fund investing. Most hedge fund strategies
describe themselves as "market-neutral"—that is, uncorrelated to the stock
market.

Yost says only about half of his portfolio's return can be explained by the
stock market, compared with 100 percent correlation for an SP 500 index
fund.

"You can't eat relative returns, but you can eat absolute returns," says
John McCarthy of Chicago-based Segall Bryant  Hamill.

McCarthy's firm offers a so-called fund-of-funds that has a diversified
array of hedge fund managers using different styles.

Joseph Nicholas, chairman of Hedge Fund Research and author of
"Market-Neutral Investing" (Bloomberg Press), emphasizes that market-neutral
investing is not risk-free investing.

"You can't make money unless you take some kind of risk," he said.

But the risks of market-neutral strategies tend to be different from the ebb
and flow of the stock or bond markets familiar to most investors.

A popular market-neutral strategy buys a security and sells short the same
or similar security (sells borrowed shares), hoping to profit on changes in
the relationship between the "long" (buy) position and "short" (sell)
position.

The hoped-for gains depend on unexpected variations in the difference, or
spread, between paired investment positions, not on the underlying direction
of either position or the market.

The idea has worked this year. Of four major hedge fund styles tracked by
Nicholas' firm, each had beaten the SP 500 return through August, 

FSC legislation gets deadline extension

[Lisa Ian Murray]

full article
http://cnews.tribune.com/news/tribune/story/0,1235,tribune-nation-77489,00.h
tml


U.S.-Europe deal averts Sunday deadline

By Martin Crutsinger
The Associated Press
September 30, 2000 5:27 p.m. CDT

WASHINGTON (AP) -- A last-minute agreement Saturday with the European Union
gives the United States until Nov. 1 to replace a $4 billion annual tax
break for American companies that sell goods abroad, from giants Microsoft
and Boeing to small businesses.

The Clinton administration was negotiating against a Sunday deadline for
bringing U.S. tax laws into compliance with an adverse ruling from the World
Trade Organization. The dispute involves the biggest case the United States
has lost before the Geneva-based arbiter of world trade rules.

Congress now has until Nov. 1 to pass the legislation. The EU agreed not to
impose any economic penalties until a WTO panel determines whether the new
tax system complies with WTO rules.

A top Senate Republican, Finance Committee Chairman William Roth of
Delaware, said he was hopeful Congress would approve the legislation "in
very short order."

At issue is a U.S. tax program that grants $4.1 billion in annual tax breaks
to 6,000 American companies which set up export subsidiaries in offshore tax
havens such as the Virgin Islands and Barbados.

The WTO in February ruled that it was an illegal export subsidy.

"The United States and European Union today demonstrated a commitment to
avoid escalating trans-Atlantic trade tensions and managing this WTO trade
dispute responsibly," U.S. Trade Representative Charlene Barshefsky said in
a statement.

In a separate statement, Pascal Lamy, Europe's top trade negotiator, said,
"Our priority is to resolve disputes, not exacerbate them."

Lamy, however, repeated the EU position that the legislation, which has
passed the House, still would violate international trade laws.

The Foreign Sales Corporation program was created in 1984 to enable U.S.
companies, including Microsoft, Boeing, General Motors and United
Technologies, to reduce U.S. corporate income taxes by 15 percent by
creating export subsidiaries.

The program was intended to offset an EU tax rebate given to European
companies for products sold overseas. The replacement legislation would
create new tax breaks that would apply equally to U.S. exports and to
products the companies manufacture in their overseas plants.

The extension gives Congress more time to complete work on the replacement
legislation and helps to defuse trade tensions between the United States and
the EU, the world's two largest trading partners.

Groundwork for the compromise was laid last month when President Clinton
agreed to a request by British Prime Minister Tony Blair to delay penalties
against some European products, possibly including British cashmere.

That dispute with the EU is over barriers the Europeans have erected to sale
of bananas from American-run plantations in the Caribbean and South America
and the import of American beef treated with growth hormones.

The United States has imposed $308 million in penalties on a variety of
European luxury goods -- Danish ham, German chocolate, French mustard,
Roquefort cheese -- in an effort to get Europe to drop its barriers and
comply with the WTO rulings in those cases.

To increase pressure, Congress this year ordered the administration to
rotate the target list periodically.

Efforts to bring the replacement tax legislation for debate were blocked
last week by Senate Democrats. The dispute centers on Republican efforts to
limit amendments and Democrats' insistence on their right to offer them --
even those dealing with unrelated topics such campaign finance reform or the
minimum wage.

A senior U.S. trade official, speaking on condition of anonymity, expressed
optimism that Congress would approve the legislation by the new deadline.

A challenge by the EU would take at least six months. If the EU were to win
its case against replacement legislation, only then could it push for
clearance to file for penalties.

That would mean that any penalties on U.S. imports would not appear until
next summer at the earliest. The EU, however, is expected to publish a
preliminary target list by late November.

That list is likely to include a far larger amount of U.S. exports from
which the EU will later choose items totaling the $4 billion in economic
harm it claims to be suffering.

Copyright 2000 The Associated Press

New Gilded Age was Re: FBI helps Czech cops silence dissent

[Lisa Ian Murray]

JD
speaking of which, I've noticed that the media make a lot of comparisons
between the last 20 years or so and the US "gilded age" of the late 19th
and very early 20th centuries. I think there's a lot of validity to these
comparisons (though no analogy is perfect). In the last gilded age, the US
saw a transition from the prevalence of local monopolies or oligopolies to
the prevalence of nation-wide monopolies or oligopolies in manufacturing,
along with a radical increase in the degree of wealth and income
inequality. Now, not only do we see the latter, but there's a transition
from nation-wide monopolies or oligopolies in many countries to world-wide
monopolies or oligopolies in manufacturing. (Inside the US, we see a shift
from monopoly/oligopoly banking on the local level to similar on the
national level, inexorably creating a small number of super-banks that will
all be "too big to fail," so the Fed will prop them up. Likely, the
international concentration and centralization of banking will happen
later. The differences in banking laws between countries slows the process.)
===
Goes hand in hand with increasing monopsony in [towards] supply chain
management of factor suppliers, greatly facilitated by software and computer
architectures?

Ian

RE: Re: (Fwd) US savings rate drops to record low

[Lisa Ian Murray]

  Is this a sign?  If so of what?

 Remember Keynes. If savings=investment, then the US economy is eating
 its own future.

 Néstor Miguel Gorojovsky
 [EMAIL PROTECTED]

 The equivalence elides the "direction" of causality. If investment drives
growth and profitability [a la Minsky's profits=investment] and is capable
of generating wage income and profits at a level capable of inducing a
sufficient propensity to save then the virtuous circle kicks in. So, while
the US consumers are currently eating their own future, they are at least
doing it in the hope [probably futile, but who knows] that they can grow
their way out of debt. Maybe that's why AG is letting the unemployment rate
dip to its current level, he looks into the Marianas Trench of debt, gets
vertigo and says "keep 'em working or we're fucked."

The big ? over the next 20 years is whether wages and profit levels will be
enough to sustain both the outlays for the retiring boomers while workers
and firms generate enough innovations worth investing in or whether the debt
level takes on a black hole-like structure that no amount of innovations of
financial instruments can overcome if there aren't a suitable number of
technological, process [or other] innovations worth investing in.

"For there is no sense in building up a new enterprise at a cost greater
than that at which an existing asset can be purchased; whilst there is an
inducement to spend on a new project what may seem an extravagant sum, if it
can be floated off on the stock exchange at an immediate profit." [K, GT in
DH page 144]

Given the hefty costs for new technologies [esp. the green ones we
desperately need] Can the "speed" of innovation accelerate or are we heading
"though the looking glass" where we have to run harder and harder just to
stay in the same place, let alone grow?


TGIF,

Ian

gated communities

[Lisa Ian Murray]

JDI tell my students that national defense, a clean environment, and the
legal system are "public goods." Because they can't be divided up into
individual bundles, because you can't exclude someone from the consumption
of them, and because one person's consumption of the good does not detract
from others' consumption of them, they cannot be sold on the market, unlike
"private goods" (like food), which can be sold on the market.
==

"The law" is the ultimate contested commodity [can you say campaign
contributions]. Spend a year in a law firm, or read Robert Hale or Duncan
Kennedy and you'll let go of the notion it's a public good.

Ian

Re: re warning signs

[Lisa Ian Murray]

[apropos, Thurow on the stock market; full article @
http://www.crn.com/sections/news/top_news.asp?RSID=CRNArticleID=20154#RESTO
FSTORY



CRN_ The tech sector is only 8 percent of GNP but plays a much larger role
in the stock market. How much of a danger is that to the economy, especially
if earnings fall short of estimates and tech stock prices take a dive?

THUROW_ If you look at the dot-com stocks, they collapsed and nothing
serious happened. They're all one-third or one-quarter of what they were in
March. And nothing serious has happened because, in fact, 90 percent of the
stock market is owned by the top 10 percent of the population.

Stock markets are kind of fluff on the top. They're the whitecap, so to
speak. It's kind of nice when you've got a rising tide, and it's not so nice
when you've got a falling tide. But they don't bring economies down. We saw
it in 1987. The stock market went down like 40 percent in two days, and you
wouldn't have known it in 1988.

Globalizing competition policy update

[Lisa Ian Murray]

[full article http://www.iht.com/IHT/TODAY/THU/FIN/cartel.2.html ]


Paris, Thursday, September 28, 2000
EU Proposes Broad Overhaul of Competition Oversight

By Barry James International Herald Tribune

BRUSSELS - That dawn knock on the door in the future may not be the local
police but a man from the European Commission.
In a move that is certain to anger those Europeans who think the Brussels
bureaucracy already has enough power, the commission proposed Wednesday that
its inspectors be given the right to search private homes for evidence of
cartel and price-fixing activity.

''It is ever more difficult to find evidence of infringements,'' said Mario
Monti, the commissioner in charge of antitrust policy, explaining why the
measure was thought necessary.

The commission, the executive agency of the European Union, already has the
right to search business premises. But Mr. Monti said it had been noticed
that companies ''have an increased tendency to ask their managers to take
home certain incriminating documents, particularly when cartels are
involved. The exercise of the power to search at home would naturally be
subject to the control of a national judge.''

At the same time, the commission proposed what Mr. Monti called the most
important reform of its competition policy since 1990, when new regulations
on mergers were introduced. While some may complain about centralization,
these broad changes head in the other direction, and would hand over to
national and local courts and antitrust authorities the routine application
of the EU's competition laws. The commission would concentrate on dealing
with the hardest-core antitrust cases.

This was a recognition of the fact that the commission, with limited
resources, can no longer cope with a welter of routine competition
investigations, let alone megadeals such as the proposed mergers of America
Online Inc. and TimeWarner Inc. or EMI Group and Time Warner.

It also fits in with the philosophy of the commission that it should
concentrate on core activities, leaving to governments those jobs that can
best be carried out at the national level.

Mr. Monti said the problem of overload at the commission level clearly was
going to get worse with the admission of new members in coming years.

However, this does not mean the commission is giving up its legal
responsibility for administering antitrust regulations. Mr. Monti said the
commission's proposal, which is subject to approval by EU governments and
the European Parliament, would entail ''decentralization without
renationalization,'' giving national antitrust offices and courts
co-responsibility in enforcing a common set of EU rules.

Sharing the load with the national authorities would enable the commission
''to target the most serious restrictions and abuses,'' according to a
statement. ''The intention is to strengthen the means that the commission
has at its disposal to detect and punish cartels and other infringements of
the rules.''

Mr. Monti said the change also would mean less red tape for businesses. At
present, any restrictive agreement between companies in the EU are illegal
unless the commission grants an exception. Under the proposal, companies
would not in future be required to notify agreements to the commission, but
would themselves be responsible for assessing whether deals complied with
the laws.

Unlike the U.S. antitrust authorities, neither the commission nor national
courts will have the power to imprison people.

The U.S. can and has imprisoned foreigners for price fixing even when they
had not yet set foot in the United States.

The EU also claims a global reach in competition cases, but at the most can
impose a heavy fine.

Customizing price fixing.com

[Lisa Ian Murray]

[full article http://www.iht.com/IHT/TODAY/THU/FIN/netprice.2.html ]


Paris, Thursday, September 28, 2000
Web Asks, How Much Can You Pay?
Retailers' Experiments With Variable Pricing Ignite Consumer Wrath


By David Streitfeld Washington Post Service

WASHINGTON - Few things stir up a consumer revolt quicker than the notion
that someone else is getting a better deal. That is a lesson that Amazon.com
has just learned.
Amazon, the largest and most potent force in e-commerce, was recently
revealed to be selling the same DVD movies for different prices to different
customers. It was the first major Web test of a strategy called ''dynamic
pricing,'' which gauges a shopper's desire, measures his or her means and
then charges accordingly.

The Internet was supposed to empower consumers, letting them compare deals
with the click of a mouse. But it is also supplying retailers with
information about their customers that they never had before, along with the
technology to use all this accumulated data.

While prices have always varied by geography, local competition and whim,
retailers were never able to target individuals effectively until the Web.

''Dynamic pricing is the new reality, and it's going to be used by more and
more retailers,'' said Vernon Keenan, a San Francisco Internet consultant.
''In the future, what you pay will be determined by where you live and who
you are. It's unfair, but that doesn't mean it's not going to happen.''

With its detailed records on the buying habits of 23 million consumers,
Amazon is perfectly situated to employ dynamic pricing on a massive scale.
But its trial ran into a snag early this month when the regulars discussing
DVDs at the Web site www.DVDTalk.com noticed something odd.

One man recounted how he ordered the DVD of Julie Taymor's ''Titus,'' paying
$24.49. The next week he went back to Amazon and saw that the price had
jumped to $26.24. As an experiment, he stripped his computer of the
electronic tags that identified him to Amazon as a regular customer. Then
the price fell to $22.74

''Amazon was trying to figure out how much their loyal customers would
pay,'' said Barrett Ladd, a retail analyst with Gomez Advisors. ''And the
customers found out.''

A number of DVD Talk visitors were particularly distressed to find that
prices seemed to be higher for regular customers. ''They must figure that
with repeat Amazon customers they have 'won' them over and they can charge
them slightly higher prices since they are loyal and 'don't mind and/or
don't notice' that they are being charged 3 to 5 percent more for some
items,'' wrote a user whose online handle is Deep Sleep.

Amazon says the pricing variations, which it stopped as soon as the
complaints began coming in from DVD Talk members, were completely random.

''It was done to determine consumer responses to different discount
levels,'' said a spokesman, Bill Curry. ''This was a pure and simple price
test. This was not dynamic pricing. We don't do that and have no plans ever
to do that.''

But an Amazon customer service representative called it exactly that in
e-mail to a DVD Talk member.

''I would first like to send along my most sincere apology for any confusion
or frustration caused by our dynamic price test,'' the Amazon
representative, Galen Sather, wrote. ''Dynamic testing of a customer base is
a common practice among both brick  mortar and Internet companies.''

Indeed, physical stores have always had varied pricing. Prices might be
higher in an affluent neighborhood or lower, depending on the goods being
sold. A stereo system or camera purchased in certain neighborhoods of
Manhattan would almost always be cheaper than in a small town with only one
electronics store. Industries as basic as airlines and automobiles routinely
adjust their prices because of the consumer's negotiating skills and general
savvy.

Still, these traditional methods used to calculate prices are sledgehammers
compared with the Internet's scalpel. For one thing, the Web provides a
continuous feedback loop: The more the consumer buys from a Web site, the
more the site knows about him or her, and the weaker the customer's
bargaining position is. It is as if the corner drugstore could see you
coming down the sidewalk, clutching your fevered brow, and then doubled the
price of aspirin.

''Any retailer would love to do dynamic pricing if they could,'' Mr. Ladd
said. ''If you could make the optimum amount of money from a consumer who's
willing to pay more, that's a beautiful thing.''

Last autumn, in a real-world example of dynamic pricing, Coca-Cola Co. was
reported to be testing a vending machine that increased prices for soft
drinks when the weather was hot. The company's chairman, Douglas Ivester,
noted that people who were watching, say, a sports championship in summer
heat would naturally develop a powerful craving for a drink. ''So it's fair
that it should be more expensive,'' he was quoted as telling a Brazilian
magazine. ''The machine 

RE: the labor theory of value

[Lisa Ian Murray]

 By Chapter One of _Capital_, both Nature and human labor are
 sources of use-values. Only human labor is a source of exchange-values.
=
I know that. My question was trying to get at whether Marx was saying that
even though nature is the source of use-values, it "in-itself" does or does
not have value? In other words was he still operating within Lockean
premises that nature has no value until somebody mixes her/his labor with
it? Is the source of use-value [then on to exchange value] itself valuable
and what kind of value, if so, is it? Do we have to expand the taxonomy of
values given to us by M.? I ask because it is the source of a big rift in
the green "movement" which needs to be ameliorated in some form different
from the ick given by deep ecology.

Ian

RE: RE: Warning Signs

[Lisa Ian Murray]

 CB: So do you not feel that there will inevitably , eventually
 be a danger
 to the economic system as a whole ?  Are you saying that
 capitalism might be
 eternal, permanent, unending ?


 yup.

 mbs
===
But Jean-Luc Piccard says that in the 24th century material gain and
economic prerogatives will no longer be the driving force of "civilization"
:-) We won't even go into how that show has warped peoples technological
expectations of abundance; ever notice they rarely go to earth but when they
do it's been fixed?

Duck Dodgers...

RE: Re: RE: the labor theory of value

[Lisa Ian Murray]

JD
 I think that for Marx, as with Locke, nature has no value _in society_
 unless someone mixes labor with it. Both present theories of society when
 they present their labor theories.

 Locke's labor theory is a theory of property, BTW. That is, it's a (poor)
 theory of why some people have property and some people have more than
 others in society. Every few years I try to convince people to change the
 name of Marx's "labor theory of value" to his "labor theory of property."
 His theory is much better than Locke's. In fact, I think Marx's
 is more of
 a critique of Locke's theory (which was accepted implicitly by the
 political economists of his day) than it is of Ricardo's labor theory of
 price. However, a heck of a lot of people assume that Marx simply
 presented
 a gloss on Ricardo...

===
Yes! I would second that need to change the terms to the labor theory of
property and agree that Marx is way better than Locke on the issue. My sense
is that this would be somewhat helpful in developing Marxian theories of
enterprises [not Marxian theories of capitalist firms]which took legal
factors into account. It is alternatives not more critique that needs to be
done now.  For the last ten months the critiques have hit the streets and
will continue, especially if the [US] landing is hard.

This would mean looking a lot harder at "the state of the industrial arts",
as it was the hidden abode of production that was, in Marx' view violating
democratic norms of self-governance, not exchange per se.

 Is the source of use-value [then on to exchange value] itself
 valuable and
 what kind of value, if so, is it? Do we have to expand the taxonomy of
 values given to us by M.? I ask because it is the source of a
 big rift in
 the green "movement" which needs to be ameliorated in some form
 different
 from the ick given by deep ecology.

 I don't think that there's a big conflict between Marx's law of value and
 ecological thinking. See, for example, my article, "The Law of Value and
 Marxian Political Ecology" In Jesse Vorst, Ross Dobson, and Ron Fletcher,
 eds., _Green on Red: Evolving Ecological Socialism_(Socialist
 Studies/Études Socialistes, vol. 9, 1993), Winnepeg/Halifax, Canada:
 Society for Socialist Studies/Fernwood Publishing, pp. 133-54.
 There are a
 lot of good articles in that volume.
===
Thanx 4 the ref. To the extent that "ecological thought" can serve as a
check on letting instrumental values - Habermas' technological rationality -
continue to run rampant via Capital' "accumulation for it's own sake" [an
intrinsic value theory if ever there was one] I would suppose that we would
need one very different than DE or the variants on critical theory, yet
doesn't fall to the sort of hierarchical subsumption of one term to the
other as I understand Ken H. to be alluding to. Perhaps talking directly to
biologists and ecologists would help in this regard.

Ian

Morally Bankrupt economists on their way to becoming financially so...

[Lisa Ian Murray]

[full article http://www.nytimes.com/2000/09/27/national/27HARV.html ]

September 27, 2000


U.S. Seeks Millions in Suit Against Advisers to Russia
By CAREY GOLDBERG
BOSTON, Sept. 26 — Federal prosecutors today filed a civil suit contending
that two Harvard University advisers who helped mold Russia's economic
reforms in the mid-1990's misused their government-financed positions in
pursuit of personal gain for themselves and their wives.

The two advisers, Andrei Shleifer, a prize-winning economics star and
tenured Harvard professor, and Jonathan Hay, a former Harvard legal expert,
deny any wrongdoing. Harvard University, too, rejects the accusation that it
failed in its obligation to supervise the advisers.

Today the univerity's general counsel called the request for damages — up to
$120 million from Harvard and the defendants — far out of proportion to any
harm possibly done.

The case, which has been under investigation for more than three years,
concerns advisers who worked for the Harvard Institute for International
Development, which spearheaded American efforts to help Russia make the
transition from Communism to a market economy in the 1990's, and received
more than $40 million in government grants to finance its efforts.

United States Attorney Donald K. Stern, who announced the suit today, said
in a statement: "The United States paid Harvard for impartial and unbiased
economic advice, both in fact and in appearance. Despite clear prohibitions
against investing in Russia, Harvard advisers abused their positions and
attempted to tip the playing field to their own private financial
advantage."

The main accusations concern the advisers and their wives — Nancy Zimmerman,
Mr. Shleifer's wife, and Elizabeth Hebert, who was then Mr. Hay's girlfriend
and is now his wife. Both women are financial professionals and were
actively working on investments and funds in Russia.

The four are accused of making prohibited purchases that include investments
of hundreds of thousands of dollars in Russian companies and the creation of
a real estate company. Prosecutors also accuse the advisers of using the
staff and offices financed by the United States Agency for International
Development money to make private investments.

Mr. Hay's lawyer, David M. Zornow, issued a statement on Mr. Hay's behalf
today, saying: "Mr. Hay's actions were lawful and proper. Indeed, at the
time Harvard's program was in effect, the highest levels of the U.S.
government recognized that it was enormously successful."

In fact, prosecutors are not asserting that the Harvard advice given the
Russians was bad. But, Mr. Stern said today, the situation was something
like an investment counselor who has promised a client unbiased advice and
then pushes stock in a company in which he owns shares. The client may make
money, but a contract has been broken.

Harvard's general counsel, Anne Taylor, emphasized today that the advisers
did not simply have a contract from the aid agency; they were working in
cooperation with it, and under its supervision as well.

In any case, "all the services the government contracted for were
delivered," Ms. Taylor said. "The government's own evaluation of the project
over the years rated it extremely highly."

Furthermore, Ms. Taylor said, the government's complaint against the
advisers said they worked to conceal their private investing, adding: "If
there's active concealment, it seems to us unreasonable to expect that we
could have caught this. Nobody with administrative authority knew about
this. Nobody."

Professor Shleifer appears to be taking a different tack in his defense; his
lawyer, Earl H. Nemser, issued a statement today saying that Dr. Shleifer
and his wife were glad the matter was finally going to court and that the
accusations against them "are meritless as a matter in law."

"In the main," it said, "the complaint proceeds from the false premise that
Professor Shleifer and his wife were prohibited from investing in Russia."
But "as a consultant to the project, as opposed to an employee of the
project, Professor Shleifer had a specific consulting contract which did not
restrict his investment activities or those of his wife."

Though prosecutors are not criticizing the Harvard advice given Russia, it
does seem clear that the accusations, which were first publicly raised by
American officials in 1997, harmed both the image of American aid in Russia
and the reformers whom the Americans were trying to help.

"When the accusations were first made, there were Russians who said, `You
see, the Americans said they would come and be a big help and be selfless,
and here they were just like everybody else, dipping in the pot,' " said
Marshall Goldman, associate director of the Center for Russian Studies at
Harvard, who has also challenged the wisdom of the substantive advice that
the Shleifer team gave. "That has caused deep harm."

Early this year, Harvard decided to disband the Harvard Institute for

RE: Re: the labor theory of value

[Lisa Ian Murray]

But Marx does not explicitly equate use-values with wealth in his opening
rebuttal sentence. Value, use-value and wealth are confused and entangled in
his retort. Is the source of use-values itself a use-value, a value or
wealth? Doug's query from a while back hits the last sentence below quite
hard; where and when does the society/nature / become
temporally/epistemically/ontologically  permeable?

Is value theory another word for politics?

Ian




 At 02:59 PM 9/25/00 -0400, you wrote:
  Wasn't Marx himself critical of the notion that only labor creates
  value? I recall something about nature being a partner in the
  enterprise.

 for Marx, labor and nature both create use-values, whereas only labor
 creates value. Use-values refer to the relationship between
 commodities (or
 non-commodities) and people, whereas values are societal by nature.

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

RE: Re: RE: Re: Re: the labor theory of value

[Lisa Ian Murray]

 
 If a reproducible commodity ain't scarce, it has no value. We can 
 make oxygen out of water and electricity, but no one would say that 
 the cost of air is determined by its cost of reproduction...
 
 Brad DeLong
===

So math has no value?

Ian

Re: The commerce of dating

[Lisa Ian Murray]

ah, yes, we're in that "place" Marcuse called "repressive desublimation"
where sexual permissiveness has been to work in the service of the
established economic order Michael Hoover
==

What's sexual permissivenss? The recent posts on this thread look like the
popularization of Gary Becker iiik!

Ian

Re: Contradictions abound

[Lisa Ian Murray]

Conveniently failing to notice that this same spread of real-time
information adds exponentially to the variables and the dynamic relations
between 'em all.  I mean, Greenspan has a point if you define 'information'
as a 'lessening of uncertainty', but that'd mean you have to call stuff
that's (inter alia) wrong, polysemic, irrelevant, and decontextualised
something other than 'information'.  Also, as more information becomes more
available, more information needs to be processed and cross-referenced,
because everybody else's state of information has been altered, too.  And,
anyway, institutions are all about market share in these good times, no?  I
mean, until things go pear-shaped, the bank manager is accountable to the
boss on the criterion of aggregate loans made, not how closely the loans
authorised approximated some degree-of-confidence calculus.  After all, a
bank'd go bust being responsible in America right now ... else you'd neverf
be able to get stock speculation loans at 10% down, or margin-call deals on
VISA cards ... and I'm given to believe those are not at all hard to get
right now.

Cheers,
Rob.

G'day Rob,


You been reading Peter Albin lately? Or perhaps Joseph Tainter's ideas on
diminishing returns to complexification?

"I think recent work in computational complexity theory raises the
possibility that there may be another "critical mass" for a knowledge
representation, a maximum size threshold above which belief systems must in
effect disintegrate. For a representation to qualify as being understood by
an epistemic agent, the agent must be able to perceive an adequate
proportion of the interrelations among elements of a set. Otherwise, the
agent will not be a ble to identify and eliminate enough of the
inconsistencies that arise...The range of intractability results leads one
to wonder in turn whether knowledge systems of some finite size may be so
computationally unweildy in this way as to shatter...[Christopher Cherniak
"Minimal Rationality"]


At the same time we should avoid looking for contradictions behind every
bushlest we metacontradict ourselves,

Ian

It's getting weirder and we're not even in October yet

[Lisa Ian Murray]

[Asian leaders are probably foaming at the mouth over this shit]
[full article http://www.iht.com/IHT/TODAY/SAT/FPAGE/traders.2.html ]

Paris, Saturday, September 23, 2000
Banks Catch Traders on Wrong Foot


By Tom Buerkle International Herald Tribune

LONDON - Like many of the world's currency specialists, Russell Jones, a
foreign-exchange analyst at Lehman Brothers International, had just told
clients in his latest advisory note that there was virtually no risk that
central banks would intervene to defend the euro this week.
After all, leading nations had shown no sign of consensus ahead of the
meeting of the Group of Seven in Prague this weekend, and the odds seemed
negligible that the U.S. Treasury would agree to action that would depress
the dollar just weeks before a presidential election.

So when news broke just after noon here Friday that the U.S. Federal Reserve
had joined the European Central Bank, the Bank of Japan, the Bank of England
and the Bank of Canada in buying euros, traders in Lehman's dealing room
were stunned.

''It started off shocking people,'' Mr. Jones said. ''An awful lot was
said - I don't think you could print any of it.''

The scene was repeated at dealing rooms across the City of London and around
the world. The intervention Friday, the biggest concerted action since
central banks stepped into the markets to rescue the dollar from record lows
five years ago, caught bankers and investors almost totally by surprise. As
a result, the euro, which had been trading at around 86 U.S. cents, surged
within minutes to a peak of 89.92 cents.

''The element of surprise was definitely there,'' said Alan Collins, global
head of foreign exchange at J.P. Morgan  Co. ''The fact that it was the Fed
leading the charge - the market had to stand back and take notice.''

The frenzy did not last long, however, and that pointed to a real challenge
for the central banks. Unlike the dollar's dark days in 1995, or the turmoil
that broke apart the European Monetary System in the early 1990s, the euro
has been driven lower in recent months by genuine investment flows, rather
than speculation by hedge funds or other short-term players. After it failed
to catch speculators short, the intervention started to lose some of its
impact late in the day.

''It was one of the most lively days'' since the euro was introduced in
January 1999, said Jim O'Neill, currency strategist at Goldman Sachs
International. But he added that it was ''nothing like the Plaza and Louvre
accord days.''

The Plaza and Louvre accords were G-7 agreements that helped bring the
dollar down from its sky-high levels in the mid- to late 1980s.

''It's hard to say there's a lot of blood on the street,'' Mr. Collins said.

The euro also suffered a bit late in the day when Treasury Secretary
Lawrence Summers explained U.S. support for the intervention - but then
added his habitual refrain that a strong dollar was in Washington's
interest.

''My boss is saying, 'What the heck do they want?''' Mr. Jones said.

Still, the action by the central banks did succeed in shaking the market out
of its complacency that selling the euro was a one-way bet. The banks also
have put the credibility of the G-7 on the line, a high-stakes gamble but
one that could shift investor sentiment toward the euro.

''What they've done here is draw a line in the sand,'' Mr. Collins said.
''Once you do that, you've got to defend it.''

Mr. Jones said the experience of 1995, when financial authorities intervened
repeatedly over two months to help the dollar recover from record lows
against the yen, suggested that the central banks may have to act several
times in coming days and weeks.

Perhaps more important than its effect on the euro, the move on Friday also
sent a signal that the authorities were determined to take action to
preserve market confidence and sustain global growth.

Bob Sinche, currency strategist at Citibank in New York, said there appeared
to be more than a coincidence between the intervention and Vice President Al
Gore's call Thursday for a drawdown from the U.S. strategic petroleum
reserve to bring down oil prices.

''The markets were saying, 'We've got a collapsing currency in the euro and
soaring oil prices, and I'm not so sure anyone's in charge,''' he said. ''In
a sense, in 24 hours we've addressed two of the big issues that were
threatening financial stability. We have more confidence that there is some
leadership, that the big risks are being addressed.''

RE: RE: The simple/elementary form of value considered as a whole (was Re: Charlie Andrew's book)

[Lisa Ian Murray]

 "...the common substance that manifests itself in the exchange-value of
 commodities, whenever they are exchanged, is their value.  The
 progress of our
 investigation will show that exchange-value is the only form in
 which the value
 of commodities can manifest itself or be expressed.  For the
 present, however,
 we have to consider the nature of value independently of this, its form."
 (_Capital_, Vol. 1, International, 1967, p. 46).

 I don't see either one as short-hand for the other. Exchange-value is the
 expression of value.

 I remember Shaikh's T.A., Salim Khan, had a quote from Descartes
 about candles
 and wax that was a good analogy for the relation between value
 and exchange
 value (and use-value?).  Anybody know if Marx used this and/or
 what the quote is
 or where it's from?


Well, they flubbed because the quote above is pure Aristotle and Descartes
was into an Augustinian/Neoplatonist approach. Labor ain't a substance,
neither is value.

Ian

Minsky zones ahead

[Lisa Ian Murray]

full article at http://www.iht.com/IHT/TODAY/FRI/FIN/banks.2.html


Paris, Friday, September 22, 2000
As U.S. Economy Surges, Banks Make Riskier Loans


By Kathleen Day Washington Post Service

WASHINGTON - Troubled loans to U.S. businesses have more than doubled in two
years, to $100 billion, despite the robust economy. This has raised concern
that banks are using lax credit standards to compete for market share,
according to banking regulators.
At the same time, consumer-lending standards have fallen in some key areas,
particularly home-equity loans, the U.S. Office of the Comptroller of the
Currency said Wednesday in an annual report on banks' lending practices.

The percentage of consumer debt now held in home and home-equity loans is at
its highest level since 1995, the agency said.

The combination of these trends has regulators worried that if the economy
falters, banks will be unprepared for the losses they could face.

Bank regulators used the release of the survey to criticize what they say is
an environment that forces banks to focus on quarterly profit increases
rather than on long-term stability.

In the present competitive banking world, financial institutions'
willingness to make more risky loans reflects their emphasis on bringing in
more business to meet Wall Street's earnings expectations, banking
regulators say.

''Earnings pressure is a major issue in banking,'' said David Gibbons, head
of the credit-risk division of the OCC, which regulates nationally chartered
banks. ''I just don't think it's fair to expect banks to perform like
dot-coms.''

The $100 billion in troubled business loans makes up 5.1 percent of the
commercial loans surveyed, which were limited to loans of $20 million or
more made by three or more banks, also known as syndicated loans. The new
numbers are up from $45 billion, or 2.5 percent, in 1998. Though that is far
below the 15.9 percent in troubled commercial loans found in 1991, when bank
loan losses were at their highest level in recent memory, regulators say the
current trends are worrisome.

Banks are better capitalized than they have ever been, giving them a large
cash cushion to absorb possible losses, regulators say. But in the past
several years, as the economic boom has continued, they have already found
and made the best and safest loans, according to economists.

So now they are having to move into riskier territory to keep their loan
business growing.

''If the economy slows down abruptly,'' said Robert Litan, director of
economic studies at the Brookings Institution, a Washington research
organization, ''we could see a much sharper increase in troubled loans
because so many borrowers appear to be overextended.''

Re: Re: Charlie Andrews' book

[Lisa Ian Murray]

JD  I wish Marx had been clearer about this. Andrews is, though he
presents the
issue very differently than I do here. One of the great things about
Andrews' book is that he seems to say everything that Marx said, but in a
different order that makes everything clearer. Following the 20th century
fashion (unlike Marx), Andrews tells us what level of abstraction he's
working at and what's to come in future chapters and sections. I understand
that Marx was quite unhappy with his own method of presentation and rewrote
CAPITAL many times. He should have been unhappy. Luckily Marx does much
better after chapter 1.


Blame Hegelagain. If Marx had known LISP his circuits of capital models
would've been even more beautiful and rigorous.

Ian

This is cool...

[Lisa Ian Murray]

[full article at
http://www.independent.co.uk/news/World/Europe/2000-09/strike210900.shtml ]

New EU charter toughens 'right to strike'

By Stephen Castle in Brussels

21 September 2000

Europe's new charter of citizens rights has been toughened to enshrine the
explicit right to strike and union consultation "at all levels", on key
decisions affecting workers.

A new draft of the document ahead of next month's summit of EU leaders in
Biarritz was causing a bitter row last night between employers and unions.

The latest version of the Charter of Fundamental Rights was welcomed by
trade unions, but its emphasis on workers' entitlements flies in the face of
opposition from the British Government, which has sought to minimise social
and economic rights.

The Confederation of British Industry also said the charter could lead to
cross-border strikes between EU states and secondary industrial action. It
could also call a halt to the liberalisation of European economies.

The division between employers and unions presents Tony Blair with a stark
political dilemma, ahead of the first debate over the document by EU
leaders. Mr Blair may even refuse to sign the charter at a later summit in
December, angering unions and risking alienating old Labour supporters.

Earlier this year, Mr Blair and other more sceptical EU prime ministers
insisted that the charter of fundamental rights should not be
legally-binding. However, some believe the document will be referred to in
legal judgments from the European Court of Justice, gaining a quasi-legal
status, or form the basis of a future European constitution.

The latest draft, produced by a convention of European politicians and
government representatives, is expected to be approved next week as the
basis of the text which goes to Biarritz.

Far from being watered down, as the Government hoped, the text has been
strengthened. Added to the new version is a stipulation that workers or
their representatives must "at all levels" be guaranteed information and
consultation in good time on matters which concern them".

That is an embarrassment for the Government, which is opposing plans for a
European directive which would extend the right of information and
consultation throughout the EU.

Earlier drafts had stated that workers should have the right to take
"collective action to defend their interests", but the latest document adds
the words "including strike action" and that this must apply "at all
levels".

British officials point out that both clauses give the Government some form
of get-out by adding that entitlements are "in accordance with Community law
and national laws and practices". They argue that drafting will continue and
that the finished product will not create new rights or be in conflict with
the law in any member state.

A spokesman for the European Trade Union Confederation said the draft was
"moving in the right direction". Giampiero Alhadeff, secretary general of
Solidar, an umbrella group of unions and non-governmental organisations,
said the charter had been "pulled back from the brink".

But the CBI's deputy director general, John Cridland, described the latest
draft as "even worse" in some areas and claimed it will "create confusion
and ambiguity for employers".

In a statement, the CBI said the rights to strike "would raise the
possibility of cross-border industrial action when secondary strike action
has been illegal in the UK since the 80s".

Accounting politics of the new economy

[Lisa Ian Murray]

[full article at http://www.iht.com/IHT/TODAY/THU/FIN/rules.2.html ]

Paris, Thursday, September 21, 2000
New Accounting Rules For the New Economy?
Changing U.S. Business Climate Spurs Shift


By Albert B. Crenshaw Washington Post Service

WASHINGTON - A clash of cultures has set off a heated debate among U.S.
accountants, technology firms, Wall Street analysts and even old-economy
industries over concerns of proposed changes in accounting rules.
The disputes cover issues ranging from mergers to stock options to revenue
recognition, with technology firms arguing that wrong or inappropriate rules
could derail one of the major engines of U.S. economic growth.

Many technology specialists say the accounting rules that applied in an
industrial economy are out of date in today's fast-paced marketplace and
need to be changed. But they say the accounting hierarchy is not listening
to their concerns.

They cite the Financial Accounting Standards Board, the private group that
writes the rules, and especially the board's Emerging Issues Task Force,
which studies new problems and recommends solutions.

''Generally among those in the tech community, '' said Mark Gitenstein, a
Washington attorney with a number of high-tech clients, ''there is worry
about where accounting policy is moving,'' particularly with respect to
intellectual property, such as computer programs, and other intangible
assets.

Some of the efforts to adapt rules to what high-tech companies are doing
have alarmed old-economy companies, either because they, too, are moving
into high technology or because the proposed rule changes have implications
for the way they have traditionally accounted for parts of their business.

''These are no longer just new-economy issues,'' said Paul Brownell of the
National Venture Capital Association in Arlington, Virginia. The distinction
between the new and old economy is quickly blurring.''

Even steadfast old-economy companies have reason to be concerned. For
example, a rule on accounting for shipping and handling costs that might be
appropriate for makers of computer disk drives could have unexpected
ramifications for makers of giant steam turbines.

The accounting standards board and the task force are looking at more than a
dozen issues applicable to technology companies, but most of the issues stem
from two practices that these companies have pushed to levels all but
unknown in the past:

-

The use of stock as currency for both corporate acquisitions and employee
compensation.

Manipulation of income and expense items, especially by companies that have
little or no profit and thus are often valued by analysts on the basis of
sales or revenue.

The top issue for high-tech companies remains the ''pooling of interests''
treatment of merger deals - a stock-as-currency dispute.

Under current U.S. rules, if a company complies with certain requirements in
purchasing another company for stock, it is allowed to simply add the book
value of the acquired company's assets to its own and disregard any
additional costs of the transaction. This is called a pooling-of-interests
transaction.

The accounting standards board has proposed to eliminate this device and
instead require ''purchase accounting'' in mergers: Any amount the acquirer
paid beyond the book value of the target company would be considered
goodwill and would have to be placed on the books of the acquirer and
written off over a period of years.

In effect, such write-offs would be subtracted from earnings, creating a
substantial drag on profit for years.

This rule, if adopted, would all but end high-tech mergers, where
acquisitions for stock are common and where much of the acquired companies'
assets are intangible and thus would have to be written off.

The real issue, technology companies say, is that accounting for intangibles
is out of date and needs to be overhauled. If intangibles were properly
valued, the problem would be manageable, but so far the accounting standards
board has not undertaken such a fundamental review, they say.

Meanwhile, the technology industry has launched a wide-ranging lobbying
campaign to try to persuade the standards board to back off. ''Pooling
remains A-1 for us'' among current issues in accounting, said Mr. Brownell.

Also high on the list is the treatment of stock options. Currently, U.S.
companies may include the cost of options granted to employees as a footnote
to their financial statements, and most do. Critics say this conceals the
true cost and presents a misleading picture to shareholders.

Options allow the purchase of stock at a certain price. That may or may not
be the market price when the option is granted, but the assumption is that
the share price will have risen by the time the option is exercised. For
example, an option granted at a share price of $50 is a big benefit if the
share price goes to $100

But when the share price goes to $10, which is something that has happened
to many companies, especially 

Kakistocracy update

[Lisa Ian Murray]

[full article at http://www.nytimes.com/2000/09/21/world/21KORE.html ]

September 21, 2000


South Korean Aide Resigns Over Loan Accusations
By SAMUEL LEN


SEOUL, South Korea, Sept. 20 — In the latest scandal involving high- ranking
members of the South Korean government, a close aide to President Kim Dae
Jung who was a key player in the government's reconciliation efforts with
North Korea resigned today after being accused of using his position to help
businessmen obtain substantial bank loans.

While the latest scandal was not expected to affect talks between the two
Koreas, the accusations against the minister of culture and tourism, Park
Jie Won, and his resignation were a reminder of the collusive ties between
businessmen and politicians that plagued South Korea during its pre-reform
days. The scandal also meant lost credibility for the administration of Kim
Dae Jung in its efforts to get South Korean businesses to adopt management
standards.

"The main issue is that many people are linking Minister Park with a scandal
that is hindering political affairs, which in turn is slowing down economic
reforms," said Kim Il Young, a political science professor at Sungkyunkwan
University.

The popularity of the president has surged since his summit meeting in June
with North Korea's leader, Kim Jong Il. But at the same time, the president
has had to replace a premier and five ministers because of scandals
involving money since his inauguration in February 1998. Less than a month
ago, South Korea's education minister was forced to resign when he was
accused of buying shares of Samsung Electronics at discounted prices while
serving as an outside auditor for the company.

Mr. Park's close relationship with the president, which dates from the
1980's, was demonstrated by his appointment as Seoul's top envoy to help
prepare for the summit meeting.

But Mr. Park has faced mounting pressure during the past several weeks to
resign after several news reports accused him of forcing Hanvit Bank, the
recipient of government funding, to extend loans to a businessman.

At a news conference announcing his resignation, Mr. Park denied the
accusation and said he will face an investigation by prosecutors.

"I apologize for the concerns I have caused for the president and the
people," Mr. Park said. "There must be no more incidents to make the public
lose confidence in the government."

Senate hearings on Castro

[Lisa Ian Murray]

[from http://www.senate.gov/legislative/legis_legis_committees.html
tomorrow.]


2:30 p.m.
Foreign Relations
 To hold hearings to examine issues relating to
 Fidel Castro.
  SD-419

Walden Bello at Melbourne S11

[Lisa Ian Murray]

[Bello is the consummate trade "deadhead", a master of jet lag. Full article
at http://www.tni.org/ under "What's New"


Globalization Unravels III: The Debacle in Seattle Freedom, said Hegel, is
the recognition of necessity. Freedom, the proponents of neoliberalism like
Hegel’s disciple, Francis Fukuyama, tell us, lies in the recognition of the
inexorable irreversibility of free market globalization. Thank god, the
50,000 people who descended on Seattle in late November 1999 did not buy
this Hegelian - Fukuyaman notion of freedom as submission and surrender to
what seemed to be the ineluctable necessity of the World Trade Organization
(WTO). In the mid-nineties, the WTO had been sold to the global public as
the lynchpin of a multilateral system of economic governance that would
provide the necessary rules to facilitate the growth of global trade and the
spread of its beneficial effects. Nearly five years later, the implications
and consequences of the founding of the WTO had become as clear to large
numbers of people as a robbery carried out in broad daylight. What were some
of these realizations?

By signing on to the Agreement on Trade-Related Investment Measures (TRIMs),
developing countries discovered that they had signed away their right to use
trade policy as a means of industrialization.
By signing on to the Agreement on Trade-Related Intellectual Property Rights
(TRIPs), countries realized that they had given high tech transnationals
like Microsoft and Intel the right to monopolize innovation in the
knowledge-intensive industries and provided biotechnology firms like
Novartis and Monsanto the go-signal to privatize the fruits of aeons of
creative interaction between human communities and nature such as seeds,
plants, and animal life.
By signing on to the Agreement on Agriculture (AOA), developing countries
discovered that they had agreed to open up their markets while allowing the
big agricultural superpowers to consolidate their system of subsidized
agricultural production that was leading to the massive dumping of surpluses
on those very markets, a process that was, in turn, destroying
smallholder-based agriculture.
By setting up the WTO, countries and governments discovered that they had
set up a legal system that enshrined the priority of free trade above every
other good - above the environment, justice, equity, and community. They
finally got the significance of consumer advocate Ralph Nader’s warning a
few years earlier that the WTO, was a system of 'trade uber alles.'
In joining the WTO, developing countries realized that they were not, in
fact, joining a democratic organization but one where decisions were made,
not in formal plenaries but in non-transparent backroom sessions, and where
majority voting was dispensed with in favor of a process called
'consensus' — which was really a process in which a few big trading powers
imposed their consensus on the majority of the member countries.
The Seattle Ministerial brought together a wide variety of protesters from
all over the world focusing on a wide variety of issues. Some of their
stands on key issues, such as the incorporation of labor standards into the
WTO, were sometimes contradictory, it is true. But most of them, whether
they were in the streets or they were in meeting halls, were united by one
thing: their opposition to the expansion of a system that promoted
corporate-led globalization at the expense of justice, community, national
sovereignty, cultural diversity, and ecological sustainablity.

Seattle was a debacle created by corporate overreach, which is quite similar
to Paul Kennedy’s concept of 'imperial overstretch' that is said to be the
central factor in the unraveling of empires. (7) The Ministerial’s collapse
from pressure from these multiple sources of opposition underlined the truth
in Ralph Nader’s prescient remark, made four years earlier, that the
creation of global trade pacts like the WTO was likely to be 'the greatest
blunder in the history of the modern global corporation.' Whereas
previously, the corporation’s operating within a more or less 'private
penumbra' made it difficult to effectively crystallize opposition, he argued
that 'now that the global corporate strategic plan is out in print... gives
us an opportunity.' (8)

RE: A real rip off

[Lisa Ian Murray]

Does California have decent co-op/worker ownership laws like Oregon's so a
health services for seniors co-op could be set up.

Also, there is a pretty major direct action against Labor Ready that is
going to go down soon at multiple sites in the Seattle Tacoma area.

Ian

 -Original Message-
 From: [EMAIL PROTECTED]
 [mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED]]On Behalf Of Michael Perelman
 Sent: Tuesday, September 19, 2000 12:58 PM
 To: [EMAIL PROTECTED]
 Subject: [PEN-L:2055] A real rip off



 My mother-in-law is not been doing very well.   She lives in San
 Francisco, so we need to have somebody come in and do some chores.  The
 companyies in San Francisco typically charge $22 and more per hour.  The
 workers, I assume make the minimum wage.  It sounds like a variant of
 Labor Ready.  Wouldn't this world be an ideal opportunity for a
 charitable agency to do some good?  Charge the elderly less and give
 more to the workers?

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

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

growth in India

[Lisa Ian Murray]

[full article at http://www.timesofindia.com/today/20indi6.htm ]

India will continue its growth trend: UNCTAD
The Times of India News Service

NEW DELHI: The Indian economy will continue its growth momentum this year on
top of a near 7 per cent growth in 1999 achieved despite a sharp slow-down
in agriculture, UNCTAD projected on Tuesday.

The 2000 Trade and Development Report of UNCTAD, however, has pointed out
that fiscal imbalances will continue to be a ``cause for concern'' in India.

The report noted that the economic performance of the countries in South
Asia in 1999 was mixed. The acceleration in GDP growth from 4.5 per cent in
1998 to 6 per cent in 1999 for South Asia was primarily a reflection of the
``strength'' of the Indian economy.

The acceleration in growth in India was accounted for by industry and
services, where faster growth more than offset the sharp slowdown in
agricultural growth to less than 1 per cent from 7.2 per cent in the
previous year.

The poor agriculture growth was mainly due to erratic monsoon in some areas
and serious damage caused by the cyclone that struck Orissa coast in October
1999, it said.

The report said the economies of developing Asia turned strongly upwards in
1999, growing on an average by more than 5 per cent. ``The big economies of
China and India continued to sustain their above- average performance, but
it was the sharp recovery in East Asia which attracted most attention,'' it
said.

The rebound in South Korea was spectacular. Malaysian growth reached
double-digit figures in the first month of 2000. While balanced growth is
expected in 2000, there remain downslide risks for some countries like
Indonesia in the region.

RE: Re: RE: A real rip off

[Lisa Ian Murray]

  Does California have decent co-op/worker ownership laws like
 Oregon's so a
  health services for seniors co-op could be set up. 

 Tell me more about the Oregon laws. --jks
=

From the horses mouth call; 503-986-2200 or
http://www.sos.state.or.us/corporation/corphp.htm
I couldn't find the part of the Oregon State Code that shows the specific
laws, but the above is a great place to start, or you can talk to the folks
at http://www.fullsailbrewing.com/fsbcourstory.htm possibly the best worker
owned enterprise in the country if you let your tastebuds be the judge :-)

Ian

AG talks to the American Bankers Association today...

[Lisa Ian Murray]

full speech at
http://www.federalreserve.gov/BoardDocs/Speeches/2000/2918.htm


...The subsequent evidence appears persuasive that the combination of a
lender of last resort (the Federal Reserve) and federal deposit insurance
have contributed significantly to financial stability and have accordingly
achieved wide support within the Congress. As has often been the case in our
long financial history, such significant government intervention has not
been without cost. The federal safety net for banks, which clearly
diminishes both the incentive for, and the effectiveness of, private market
regulation, creates perverse incentives for some banks to take excessive
risk. Indeed, the safety net has required that we substitute more government
supervision and regulation for the market discipline that played such an
important role through much of our banking history.

Although the safety net necessitates greater government oversight, in recent
years rapidly changing technology has begun to render obsolete much of the
bank examination regime established in earlier decades. Bank regulators are
perforce being pressed to depend increasingly on greater and more
sophisticated private market discipline, the still most effective form of
regulation. Indeed, these developments reinforce the truth of a key lesson
from our banking history--that private counterparty supervision remains the
first line of regulatory defense. This is certainly the case for the rapidly
expanding bank options and swaps markets and other off-balance-sheet
transactions. The speed of transactions and the growing complexities of
these instruments have required federal and state examiners to focus
supervision more on risk-management procedures than on actual portfolios.
Indeed, I would characterize recent examination innovations and proposals as
attempting both to harness and to simulate market forces in the supervision
of banks.

The impact of technology on financial services and therefore, of necessity,
the way it will affect supervision and regulation as we move into the
twenty-first century is the critical issue that frames the supervisory
agenda now before us. The acceleration in the growth of technology that has
so greatly affected our economy in general has also profoundly expanded the
scope and utility of financial products over, say, the past fifteen years.
The substantial increase in our calculation capabilities has resulted in a
variety of products and ways to unbundle risk. What is particularly
impressive is that there is no sign that this process of acceleration in
financial innovation is approaching an end. We continue to move at an
exceptionally rapid pace, fueled by both computing and telecommunications
capabilities.

How should the Federal Reserve, as the functional regulator of
state-chartered member banks and, more importantly, as an umbrella
supervisor of both bank holding companies and the financial holding
companies forming under the Financial Modernization Act, react to this
ongoing wave of innovation? The ability to answer that question rests on an
understanding of how information technology has changed the nature of your
business.

The explosion in the quantity and quality of information is reducing
uncertainty, and that is particularly important because the banker's stock
in trade, the basis of an institution's franchise value, is information. The
knowledge of the potential viability of their customers is all that prevents
bankers from the equivalent of lending on the outcome of a roulette wheel's
spin.

To the extent that the newer technologies have opened up vast new areas of
information, the banker's knowledge of the borrower's capacity to repay a
loan is significantly enhanced. Risk premiums, internal risk classifications
and modeling, and credit scoring are becoming ever more finely tuned.

But the same advances in information innovation and communication are
available to all of a banker's competitors as well. Thus, although increased
information lowers the risk of lending, competition inhibits those
advantages from translating into longer-run enhanced profit margins.

Moreover, the quickened pace of market adjustments resulting from the newer
technologies has significantly shortened the interval over which a debt can
move from investment grade to default. This delimits the capacity of a bank
to adjust its exposure to a failing borrower before the bank is confronted
with default.

Uncertainty is the creator of risk premiums, the creator of higher funding
costs throughout the financial system and indeed throughout the economy
generally. The increasing availability of accurate and relevant real-time
information, by reducing uncertainty, is over time reducing the cost of
capital. That is important to financial holding companies and financial
institutions generally in their roles of both lender and borrower.

It is important in their role as borrower because their funding costs are
critically tied to the perceived level of 

RE: Re: BLS Daily Report

[Lisa Ian Murray]

 Is this Black hole a metaphor , or is it mathematically exact analogy ?

 CB

In either the July or August Federal Reserve Bulletin, they do sound pretty
scared about the trade deficit. Also the latest issue of Foreign Policy has
a piece by Martin Wold titled "The Mother of All Meltdowns"
http://foreignpolicy.com [the essay ain't on the site unfortunately]. Also,
does the Krueger report go into the whole ergonomics controversy over carpal
tunnel and repetitive strains [litigation that was first broughtforward by a
NYTimes writer if I recall correctly]?

Ian
==
 __The current account deficit -- the broadest measure of the U.S.
 trade gap
 -- hit yet another record high last quarter.  But there is little evidence
 so far that it is hurting the U.S. economy or the dollar, according to The
 Wall Street Journal (page A2).  The Labor Department said that over-all
 import prices climbed 0.2 percent in August, after remaining unchanged in
 July.  The price of petroleum imports rose a moderate 0.6 percent
 in August,
 after dropping 1.6 percent in July and soaring 10.6 percent in June.
 __Lurking in the middle of an otherwise perfect American economy
 is a black
 hole in the form of an enormous trade deficit -- more than $400 billion (4
 percent of the gross domestic product) and still rising, as the Commerce
 Department reports.  In astrophysics, a black hole sucks everything,
 including light, into them, and nothing ever gets out.  Everyone
 -- from Fed
 Chairman Alan Greenspan to public and private analysts in the rest of the
 world -- worries that, like a real black hole, the trade deficit
 will cause
 America's current economic success to simply disappear.  In fact, Congress
 is so worried that it established a U.S. Trade Deficit Review
 Commission to
 investigate the dangers and how they might be avoided.  The commission

  [EMAIL PROTECTED] 09/18/00 03:33PM 
 BLS DAILY REPORT, THURSDAY, SEPTEMBER 14, 2000:

 Today's News Release:  "Producer Price Indexes -- August 2000", indicates
 that the Producer Price Index for Finished Goods decreased 0.2 percent in
 August, seasonally adjusted.  This index showed no change in July and
 increased 0.6 percent in June.  The index for finished goods other than
 foods and energy edged up 0.1 percent in August, the same rate as in July.
 Prices received by manufacturers of intermediate goods fell 0.2 percent,
 following a 0.2 percent advance a month earlier.  The crude goods index
 decreased 1.5 percent, after falling 1.1 percent in July.

 With little fanfare, the workplace has become a safer place to be, writes
 Alan B. Krueger, Bendheim Professor of Economics and Public Affairs at
 Princeton University, writing the "Economic Scene" in The New York Times
 (page C2).  Since 1992, the number of work-related injuries and illnesses
 has fallen 25 percent, to 6.7 per 100 full-time workers from 8.9.  This
 unexpected improvement translates to at least a $125 billion
 annual lift for
 the economy.  The decline in injuries is remarkable because it reverses a
 historical pattern discovered by Robert S. Smith of Cornell in 1972:
 Injuries usually rise when unemployment falls because work intensity
 increases and many inexperienced workers are hired.  Yet the
 tightest labor
 market in a generation has coincided with the lowest work-related
 injury and
 illness rate since the Bureau of Labor Statistics started
 tracking it.  The
 decline does not appear to be a mere reporting phenomenon.
 Although studies
 have found that employers tend to under report injuries about 10 percent,
 the under reporting appears constant over time.  Also, the Bureau of Labor
 Statistics' Census of Fatal Occupational Injuries -- which are unlikely to
 be underreported -- indicates a 13 percent drop in the fatality rate since
 1992.  In response to escalating costs, some states tightened eligibility
 standards for benefits and restricted employees' choice of
 medical providers
 in the 1990's.  But a new study by Leslie Boden of Boston University and
 John Ruser of the Bureau of Labor Statistics suggests that only a small
 share of the decline in injuries and illnesses can be traced to these
 factors.  Probably a more important effect of ballooning workers'
 compensation insurance costs is that many managers recognized that
 occupational injuries had a significant effect on the bottom
 line.  Instead
 of viewing injury costs as unavoidable, they developed safety programs to
 cut risks.  The 1990's investment boom in new and safety plants and
 equipment probably abetted this effort.

 The United States current account deficit the broadest measure of foreign
 trade, widened to a record in the second quarter as imports outpaced
 exports, the Commerce Department says.  The deficit rose 4.6 percent, to
 $106.14 billion in the second quarter, surpassing the earlier record of
 $101.51 billion set in the previous quarter.  The widening was driven
 primarily by a rise in the deficit for goods.  

Can scientific discoveries crimp economic growth?

[Lisa Ian Murray]

full article at http://www.iht.com/IHT/TODAY/TUE/IN/cern.2.html


Paris, Tuesday, September 19, 2000
Glimpse of 'God Particle' Reported
Atom-Smasher Upgrade on Hold as Physicists Pursue Object


By Curt Suplee Washington Post Service

WASHINGTON - Officials at the European Laboratory for Particle Physics, the
giant European atom-smasher center outside Geneva, have decided to delay the
start of construction on the $6 billion Large Hadron Collider - to be the
most powerful particle accelerator ever built - because scientists there may
already have observed one of the phantom objects the new project was
designed to find.
That entity is so important that a Nobel physics laureate, Leon Lederman,
calls it ''the God particle.'' It lies at the heart of one of the most
important mysteries of modern science: What mechanism in nature confers the
property of mass on all the stuff in the universe?

Robots seek Capital

[Lisa Ian Murray]

[full article at http://www.iht.com/IHT/TODAY/MON/FPAGE/robot.2.html ]

Paris, Monday, September 18, 2000
The Robot Revolution Is on the Way
From Cyberpooches to Nursebots, Devices Are Entering Everyday Life

By Curt Suplee Washington Post Service

WASHINGTON - In Cambridge, Massachusetts, a larger-than-life-size android
named Cog locks its video eyes on the faces of visitors while smoothly
slithering a Slinky toy from hand to hand.
At the Smithsonian Institution in Washington, a gregarious, self-propelled
gizmo that looks like a glorified vacuum cleaner has taken visitors on tours
of the museum.

In Pittsburgh, a faceless but matronly ''nursebot'' named Flo briskly
answers questions, such as ''Hey, Flo! What's on NBC tonight?''

After decades of promises, hopes and disappointments, it appears that the
long-awaited ''robot revolution'' may at last be under way.

Around the globe, quasi-autonomous devices have become increasingly common
on factory floors, hospital corridors and farm fields. Scores more are in
development or for sale.

Physicians can use robotics to aid in ultraprecise bone and brain surgery.

Affluent parents can pick up a Sony cyberpooch to amuse the kids or an
ottoman-sized, video-equipped ''AmigoBOT'' to follow and monitor them while
they play. The Pentagon is researching a dozen ways to put robots in the
battlefield, from self-driving vehicles to swarms of tiny surveillance
robots that would pool their information to create a comprehensive,
multiangle view of combat zones. And this autumn, the first interactive
robot baby dolls will hit toy stores.

Just last month, researchers at Brandeis University announced a major
milestone: a computerized system that automatically creates, evolves,
improves and builds a variety of simple mobile creatures without any
significant human intervention.

The rise in robot technology has been fueled by several factors, including
spectacular advances in computer power, miniaturization of components, the
availability of inexpensive sonar, infrared or laser sensors, improvements
in speech-recognition and voice-generation technology, and - perhaps most
important - the emergence several years ago of a new paradigm for designing
quasi-autonomous objects.

''For 30 years, we've had no results to speak of,'' said Hans Moravec, a
pioneer in artificial intelligence at Carnegie Mellon University in
Pittsburgh. ''But that's all going to change in the next 10 years.''

In the near future, it is not unreasonable ''to imagine multiple robotic
devices in every business, home and office,'' says James Hendler, head of
the University of Maryland's Autonomous Mobile Robotics Laboratory who is
now working at the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency.

Mr. Moravec and several other experts are convinced that exponential growth
in computing power may soon put robotic systems within reach of the kind of
brainpower that could ultimately put humanity out of business.

''Over the next several decades, machine competence will rival - and
ultimately surpass - any particular human skill one cares to cite,'' wrote
Ray Kurzweil, inventor of computerized speech-recognition, reading and music
systems, in his new book, ''The Age of Spiritual Machines: When Computers
Exceed Human Intelligence.''

The emergence of these new creatures, Mr. Kurzweil wrote, ''will be a
development of greater import than any of the events that have shaped human
history.''

Whether sheer computer power can translate into genuinely human capability,
however, is a hotly debated matter. A true android of the R2D2 variety
featured in the Star Wars films - that is, an autonomous robot that can make
lots of decisions for itself, handle unfamiliar surroundings and situations,
and converse usefully with people - may be a very long way off.

One major obstacle is that scientists have not yet created a device that can
do what any young child does automatically: recognize grandma when she's
wearing sunglasses, has a new haircut, and is standing in a crowd with her
face turned aside.

By the age of 2, any human can see the difference between a hole in the
floor and a black spot painted on the floor.

Thanks to miniaturization of the kinds of infrared, laser-light and
ultrasound sensors widely used as range finders for consumer cameras,
today's robots can discern the distance to the object accurately. But so
far, robots have no dependable way to tell a hole from a spot, much less a
boy from a girl.

Another impediment to rapid progress, experts say, is that until the late
1990s, the price of components has been so high that few have been able to
do the kind of creative, blue-sky research that often produces
breakthroughs.

That is changing. Small muscle-like motors and miniaturized joints are
becoming less expensive all the time, and the spread of video cameras, laser
devices and ultrasound range-finder technologies has driven down the cost of
items once thought exotic.

''I feel like we're on the cusp,'' said Rodney 

Natural Gas and unrest in Western China

[Lisa Ian Murray]

[full article at http://www.iht.com/IHT/TODAY/MON/IN/han.2.html ]


Paris, Monday, September 18, 2000
In China's Wild West, a Face-Off Between Development and Unrest
Beijing's High-Stakes Gamble /Who Will Reap Gains?

By John Pomfret Washington Post Service

URUMQI, China - It is boom time here in China's Wild West. Planes packed
with officials roll into this once sleepy Central Asian capital. Bureaucrats
and businessmen make deals over lunches of abalone and shrimp flown in from
the ports around Guangzhou, 4,000 kilometers to the south.
''We're booked up,'' said Abulait Abuderexit, governor of the Xinjiang
autonomous region, referring to the delegations jetting in to this
far-northwestern corner of China to discuss investment plans. ''We are busy
day and night and afternoon. Xinjiang is stable and developing well.''

With a huge propaganda campaign and millions of dollars, Beijing has
launched a high-stakes gamble to develop Xinjiang and the rest of the
Chinese west. Faced with persistent and sometimes violent ethnic unrest and
a widening gap between the booming east coast and the poverty-stricken
hinterland, China's leaders are pouring cash and expertise into an area
largely left behind by two decades of economic reforms that have transformed
such cities as Shanghai and Beijing.

The goal is to poultice the growing fissures between China's rich and poor
regions, and in the process halt any idea that the remote, poor areas could
one day spin off into independent states. Odds for success are unknown;
China's rulers have been promising to develop the western regions for
decades, and many people in Xinjiang ask whether this time will be
different.

A weeklong trip through a large part of Xinjiang - from its capital, Urumqi,
to the verdant but rebellious Yili Valley, rocked by an anti-Chinese revolt
three years ago - revealed a region that is desperate for capital, ideas and
people. It also showed a region simmering with muffled discontent.

In town after town, government officials pointed to a development model that
seemed written to aid Han Chinese, the country's dominant ethnic group but a
still minority here, and to encourage their immigration into the region. The
plans often did not seem aimed at Xinjiang's 8 million Uighurs, a
Turkic-speaking ethnic group some of whose members have conducted a campaign
of bombings, demonstrations and killings for independence from China.
Uighurs outnumber Han Chinese in the region by 1.2 million despite huge Han
population gains.

China's ''Western Big Development'' project encompasses 5.2 million square
kilometers (2 million square miles) and 300 million people spread across
nine provinces and autonomous regions - Gansu, Guizhou, Qinghai, Shaanxi,
Sichuan, Yunnan, Ningxia, Tibet and Xinjiang. Together, they occupy well
over half of China's area and account for most of its oil and mineral
reserves, borderlands and strategic military installations - and almost all
of its restive minority regions.

The project includes construction of roads, airports, railroads and a $14
billion pipeline linking Xinjiang's natural gas fields to Shanghai, 4,000
kilometers (2,500 miles) to the southeast. President Jiang Zemin recently
declared the project crucial to China's stability, the Communist Party's
hold on power and the ''revitalization of the Chinese people.''

Xinjiang and Tibet, home to China's two most restive ethnic minorities, the
Uighurs and the Tibetans, are the linchpins. If the program fails here,
analysts contend, Beijing's hold on these regions could weaken

OPEC whines.....

[Lisa Ian Murray]

I guess this means Bill G. and a whole 'lot of folks'll be lining up for
waah waah handouts when their commodities go belly up a la Schumpeter...

[full article at http://www.nytimes.com/2000/09/16/science/16CLIM.html ]

September 16, 2000

OPEC States Want to Be Paid if Pollution Curbs Cut Oil Sales
By ANDREW C. REVKIN

At the latest round of international talks aimed at shaping a treaty on
global warming, delegates from oil- producing countries insisted that any
final accord include a commitment to compensate them if efforts to cut
emissions of heat-trapping gases resulted in a drop in the use of oil.

The position of Saudi Arabia and other members of the Organization of
Petroleum Exporting Countries at the two weeks of talks, which wound up last
night in Lyon, France, was supported by many developing countries and by
China. But it prompted strong criticism from other participants at the
United Nation-sponsored talks, particularly because the move occurred
against a backdrop of widespread protests and transportation disruptions in
Europe over spiking oil prices.

"It's pretty ironic that while OPEC is raising oil prices, they're here
asking for compensation," Jennifer Morgan, who heads the climate change
program of the World Wildlife Fund, said from Lyon in a telephone interview.

The talks were aimed at resolving many differences among countries that have
signed the Kyoto Protocol but have not yet ratified it. The 1997 treaty is
aimed at cutting emissions from industrialized countries of carbon dioxide
and other heat-trapping greenhouse gases to levels about 5 percent below
1990 levels.

The overwhelming source of carbon dioxide is the burning of oil, coal and
other fossil fuels.

Since the first rounds of talks on a climate treaty — in Rio de Janeiro in
1992 — Saudi Arabia, Nigeria and other OPEC members have repeatedly pressed
for compensation for countries that produce or sell oil and coal. Those
countries have often used other tactics to stall progress, critics said,
including making frequent objections over negotiating procedures that have
stalled sessions.

They continued such efforts in Lyon, participants said, despite fuel
shortages and protests that disrupted taxicab and bus service for a few days
at the peak of the conference. Some representatives of industrialized
countries said they were determined to fight language that would provide
payments to oil producers.

OPEC members said they, too, were prepared to fight. Muhammad al-Sabban,
head of the Saudi delegation and senior economic adviser to the Saudi Oil
Ministry, said the movement toward a climate treaty was a clear sign that
the world continued to accelerate its shift away from fossil fuels.

"We are assuming that only for another 15 years, maximum, will we have oil
as a big share of the energy mix," he said. "We are very concerned about
this."

For all its prosperity, he said, Saudi Arabia will still need help in
developing new industries and job sources for its growing population.

Mr. Sabban said a large coalition of developing countries was ready to
reject the treaty language if industrialized nations rejected the idea of
compensating countries whose economies were harmed.

"I'm surprised to see that developed countries expect they can get away with
the things they want without giving equal treatment to what we want," he
said in a telephone interview.

The dispute over whether oil-rich countries should be compensated if the
world weans itself off petroleum was just one of many sharp splits among
participants. The group focused on refining language in the proposed treaty
before foreign ministers convene in November in The Hague to negotiate final
points. Participants and observers from some environmental groups said some
progress had been made on streamlining language so that ministers would have
fewer points to negotiate.

But strong divisions persist over how to damp the greenhouse effect, with
the United States, Russia and other large forested countries pressing
recently to receive credit not just for cutting emissions of gases, but also
for sopping them up by growing more trees or changing farming methods in
ways that pull carbon dioxide from the air.

Europe has opposed that strategy, instead seeking firm commitments to reduce
the output of gases from smokestacks and tailpipes. Other points of
contention include proposed mechanisms through which wealthy countries could
lead poor countries to avoid sharp rises in emissions as their economies
grow, and ways to create a fair system to measure cuts and enforce an
agreement.

Over all, many negotiators and observers at the conference said in telephone
interviews that they felt confident that a meaningful document would emerge
by November.

110K Dow

[Lisa Ian Murray]

September 16, 2000

Forecaster Sees Dow Going to 110, 000 by 2025


By REUTERS
Filed at 8:55 p.m. ET

BEAVER CREEK (Reuters) - While day trading captures the headlines and
investors check their portfolios daily on the Internet, others are looking
further down the road to see where the Dow Jones industrial average will
head.

One of them, Roger Ibbotson, of Yale University and Ibbotson Associates of
New York and Chicago, forecasts the Dow will rise to, hang on to your hats,
110,000 by 2025.

Crazy, you say?

Ibbotson was the same man who in 1974, when the Dow stood at 851, forecast
the index would reach 10,000 by 1999. The Dow closed on Friday at 10,927.

``Over the long run stocks will out perform money markets or bonds,''
Ibbotson said after giving the key note address Friday night at a conference
of investment professionals and university professors sponsored by the
Burridge Center for Security Analysis and Valuation at the University of
Colorado's College of Business.

But Ibbotson was quick to add that his 2025 forecast was ''just a
probability -- it's not guaranteed.''

He bases his estimate on stock market gains of about 12 percent a year --
far short of the 20 percent plus returns some investors have gotten used to
and think is their due.

``It was sort of hard to comprehend. They were all asking when it was going
to go to 1,000 and I said it would go to 10,000,'' Ibbotson said, looking
back at his forecast of 25 years ago right after a big stock market decline.

He points out 25 years isn't an eon away when it comes to planning for
retirement. ``That's you -- that's your planning -- 25 years.''

Ibbotson's forecast should make it easier for investors who have not taken
advantage of the current bull market to jump in.

``The game isn't over. It's as good to start now as anytime. The next 25
years is going to be a lot like the last 25 years,'' he said.

NOTE OF CAUTION

But for the investor who wants to put everything in stocks Ibbotson has a
note of caution. ``You need to diversify. If you can afford the risk -- go
more into stocks.''

Age, wealth, cash flow needs and the ability to take risk all go into the
percentage of stocks a person should have in a portfolio along with real
estate, cash and bonds.

Ibbotson isn't expecting a straight line up and he noted that his forecast
model, which uses the past 75 years of data, includes the Great Depression.

``Nothing steady about it -- that's the key. If it were steady growth it
wouldn't grow that fast.''

For instance, an investor in 1967 who was 15 years from retirement, saw the
real return on his portfolio fall to zero, Massachusetts Institute of
Technology economics professor James Poterba told the group on Saturday.

Financial planners fret that investors, especially young ones, who have no
experience of a bear market, think it will be easy as pie.

``Unrepresentative'' is how Ibbotson describes the big returns of the past
few years. Yet investors think the bull market will continue at its present
rate.

``When you poll individual investors that seems to be what they think,'' he
said. ``They should be terrified. They shouldn't be complacent,'' Ibbotson
said, adding that stocks do better than bonds because they carry a greater
risk.

RE: Re: Re: Gas prices

[Lisa Ian Murray]

 I doubt this would reveal much. In my experience, the role of
 oligopoly or
 monopoly in gas prices mostly causes asymmetry: gas prices rise
 quickly in
 step with oil prices, while they fall slowly following oil prices
 down. The
 high gas prices have to do with high oil prices internationally, low
 refining capability in some places, and not enough pipelines in others.

 Conservative (and some would say "crackpot realist") Edward
 Luttwak argued
 in yesterday's LA TIMES that prices of oil need to stay high. Low oil
 prices cause severe problems for the high-cost producers. He's onto
 something. I think that a key reason why Iraq invaded Kuwait was
 because of
 low oil prices...

What duration and combination of high oil prices and low interest rates
would induce a significant level of investment to get rid of the internal
combustion engine and reduce energy use by a factor of 8-10 per unit of
output? Any guesses being made in the econ. world?

Ian







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

From Wall Street to Mob Street

[Lisa Ian Murray]

[full article at http://www.iht.com/IHT/TODAY/FRI/FIN/mob.2.html ]
Paris, Friday, September 15, 2000
The Mob in the Markets: FBI Sees Bigger Presence


By Sandra Sugawara Washington Post Service

WASHINGTON - Organized crime's presence on Wall Street is growing and there
are increasing signs that foreign mobsters are trying to penetrate U.S.
stock markets, according to a top FBI official.
Thomas Fuentes, senior chief of the FBI's organized-crime section, said
Wednesday at a House of Representative hearing that organized crime's
involvement in the U.S. financial and securities markets ''has become
significant,'' although it has mainly been limited to low-priced, thinly
traded stocks that are not listed on major stock exchanges.

But he said the FBI was seeing a number of cases that involved
organized-crime groups from Eastern Europe and Russia that were trying to
raise money on major stock markets. Mr. Fuentes said after the hearing that
the FBI and the Securities and Exchange Commission were working on some
international cases that were complicated by conflicting laws and national
jurisdictions.

The suspected mob companies generally have manufacturing facilities in a
number of different countries, making it difficult to check their financial
statements. They often can get accounting companies to give them ''a clean
financial bill of health,'' Mr. Fuentes said.

''But we have inside information those books are fraudulent,'' he said. ''In
some cases, we have reports that the audit teams are being bribed in the
millions or that they are being threatened overseas not to do due
diligence.''

In addition, some countries do not have money-laundering statutes, and in
others the police are prevented from using undercover operations or
wiretaps, which Mr. Fuentes insisted were critical in these cases. So far,
Asian organized-crime groups have shown little interest in the securities
business, Mr. Fuentes said.

''For whatever reason, the Russians and Eastern Europeans are the ones who
are doing it,'' he said. ''They were already heavily involved in major
financial schemes to defraud their state back home. So they decided to apply
those same techniques globally, I guess.''

Few of the American crime families have tried to infiltrate securities
markets overseas, he added. ''This is a generational thing,'' Mr. Fuentes
added. ''The younger members of these groups are more Internet
knowledgeable. They are going to recognize the global opportunities. Right
now the bosses of the crime families don't.''

Representative Michael Oxley, the Ohio Republican who is chairman of the
House commerce subcommittee on finance and hazardous materials, said the mob
push was no surprise. ''I know from my own experience as a special agent in
the FBI that the mob will go where a dollar is being made,'' he said.
''Today that's Wall Street, so it's really not surprising that organized
crime is trying to suck some of the life out of the blossoming securities
market.''

Bradley Skolnik, president of the North American Securities Administrators
Association, said, ''Traditional weapons to sanction firms and brokers who
violate market regulations - such as administrative fines and suspensions -
have little effect on these criminals.'' The only deterrents are criminal
charges and prison, he added.

Richard Walker, the Securities and Exchange Commission director of
enforcement, said one reason the mob began focusing more on the securities
market was that it was ''driven from certain of its traditional havens, such
as garbage-hauling cartels.'' But he said aggressive enforcement actions
have closed some of the most notorious operations fraudulently selling
microcap stocks.

Kakistocracy update...

[Lisa Ian Murray]

[full article at http://www.iht.com/IHT/TODAY/THU/IN/beijing.2.html ]



Paris, Thursday, September 14, 2000
Secret Trials of Chinese Officials Begin

Agence France-Presse

XIAMEN, China - Trials in the biggest corruption scandal in Communist
China's history opened Wednesday with senior officials facing the death
penalty for taking bribes and kickbacks in a multibillion-dollar smuggling
scam.
Court officials in the coastal cities of Xiamen, Fuzhou, Quanzhou, Putian
and Zhangzhou in the southern province of Fujian confirmed that trials
linked to the scandal had opened.

But a veil of secrecy has been drawn over proceedings and officials refused
to give details about defendants or charges, and they also declined to say
exactly how many people would face trial.

The police imposed heavy security around the Xiamen People's Intermediate
Court, blocking all roads around the building and turning away anyone
without an official pass.

The scandal is centered around the Hong Kong-based YanHua (Farewell) Group,
which allegedly operated a smuggling web out of the port of Xiamen by
greasing the palms of police, customs and Communist Party officials.

YanHua, run by Lai Changqing, a businessman, is alleged to have smuggled
more than $10 billion worth of diesel fuel, tobacco, cigarettes, rubber and
other products over a decade.

Hong Kong press reports have implicated between 200 and 600 government
officials, including the families of some of China's most senior leaders.

President Jiang Zemin has ordered an all-out war on corruption within the
Communist Party, and in the latest high-profile case Cheng Kejie, a vice
chairman of Parliament, was sentenced to death in July for taking nearly $5
million in bribes.

But critics say Mr. Jiang has stopped investigations reaching into the top
echelon of the party and the most senior officials linked to the Xiamen scam
are not expected to stand trial.

The Beijing Youth Daily said this week that about 10 officials would be
sentenced to death for accepting 5 million yuan ($600,000) each in bribes

Previous media reports have said that at least four officials will face the
death penalty for receiving bribes exceeding $12 million. They include the
former Xiamen customs head, Yang Qianxian, and a former provincial deputy
director of police, Zhuang Rushun.

Also allegedly implicated are the deputy head of Xiamen's public security
department, the head of state security in Xiamen and the city's deputy
Communist Party secretary.

Xiamen's new vice mayor, Chen Conghui, declined to give details of the
trials, but insisted the city was shaking off its reputation as a center of
corruption.

''One thing I would like to stress is that Xiamen is not relying on
smuggling to get rich,'' he said. ''If you cut off a branch infected with
insects the health of the whole tree improves.''

Colombia top Union killer again...

[Lisa Ian Murray]

[full article http://www.iht.com/IHT/TODAY/THU/FIN/union.2.html ]

Paris, Thursday, September 14, 2000
Colombia Tops Unions' Peril List

The Associated Press

GENEVA - At least half of the more than 140 union members who disappeared or
were killed last year came from Colombia, making it the world's most
dangerous place for organized labor, a labor group said Wednesday.
In its annual survey of violations of union rights, the International
Confederation of Free Trade Unions found that 676 death threats were issued
against Colombian union members last year. At least 69 were killed, down
from 91 the previous year, and 22 were kidnapped.

Bill Jordan, general secretary of the confederation, cited ''ruthless
repression in Latin America, attacks and interference in Asia, arrests and
imprisonment in Africa, severe restrictions and nonpayment of wages in
Eastern Europe and a growing trend to union-busting in industrialized
countries.''

The report said 90 union members were killed in Latin America last year. The
region also accounted for 70 percent of the 3,000 arrested worldwide for
union activity. More than 1,500 union members worldwide were injured or
tortured, and at least 5,800 were harassed because of ''legitimate trade
union activities,'' the report said. It added that 12,000 were fired because
of union activity.

The survey said 37 unionists died during strikes in Asia and the Pacific. It
also found high levels of government interference in Eastern Europe. Across
Europe, seven unionists were killed, four of them in Russia, the agency
said. The group has affiliates in 145 countries representing more than 123
million workers.

Brit Unions foaming at the mouth on productivity..

[Lisa Ian Murray]

http://www.guardian.co.uk/politics/0,6957,,00.html

  Brown runs into a barrage of criticism from unions

Seamus Milne and David Gow
Wednesday September 13, 2000

Union leaders yesterday lashed out at Gordon Brown for failing to act over
"the disaster" overtaking British manufacturing and what one called "idiotic
ideas" about working harder and "half-baked lectures about effort."
As the Chancellor sat on the TUC conference podium GMB general union leader
John Edmonds hit back at yesterday's report of Mr Browns call for a national
productivity drive and told him: "Gordon, you just have to do something
about the monetary policy committee" of the Bank of England.

The committees decision about interest rates lay behind the high pound's
impact on manufacturing jobs, he declared: "It should spend less time
fretting about inflation and more time responding to the needs of producers
and ex porters".

"Why cannot we have at least one member who works in manufacturing industry,
or knows about manufacturing industry, or at least lives in a town that
understands the importance of manufacturing industry." He asked, demanding
treasury action to reduce the value of sterling.

Before Mr Brown rose to address the congress, Mr Edmonds said he had read in
the papers - a clear reference to the chancellor's trailed productivity
appeal - that one solution to the manufacturing crisis was that British
workers should work harder.

The union leader said that whoever thought up "these idiotic ideas" should
go and see women workers operating sewing machines on piece rate, who were
desperate to increase their productivity but instead face the sack.

He was echoed by Sir Ken Jackson, general secretary Amalgamated Engineering
 Electrical Union, who told Mr Brown that the over-valued pound was
"pricing British manufacturing out of the market, wiping out productivity
gains overnight and prevent the investment needed to compete in the Global
Economy."

The Chancellor, who used his speech to insist that there would be no
"short-term lurches" in tax policy in response to current protests, was at
pain to defuse union criticism by emphasising that he understood their
concerns about the exchange rate and manufacturing and by down playing his
trailed demands for wage restraint.

"We will continue to do more to support manufacturing." He pledged, wooing
his audience with the prize of "full employment sustained for a generation,"
built on growth and pro ductivity.

He appealed to unions and employers to work together with government to
close the productivity gap with Britain's competitors, arguing that this was
the foundation on which the country could "achieve full employment, abolish
child and pensioner poverty, build world class public services in education
and health."

But there could be "no short -term lurches in spending policy or tax policy,
no irresponsible spending increases or inflationary pay rises that put youth
jobs at risk, no quick fixes or soft options, that would put long-term
stability, public services and our policy for full employment at risk."

Mr Brown used his first speech as chancellor to the TUC to praise the
traditions and achievements of the labour movement, hailing the trade union
pioneers as "idealists not dreamers" who "knew it is easier to take your own
share that fight for everyone to have a fair share".

But his reiteration of plans for an increase in the minimum wage and promise
the ensure that pensioners gained more from Britain's rising prosperity left
TUC delegates demanding more details.

Union leaders were far less critical after they had heard the chancellor,
but never the less wanted to know more. Rodney Bickerstaffe, leader of the
public service union Unison, said he would have like to have heard more
about what the chancellor planned to do about public sector pay and union
concerns about the creeping privatisation of public services and need to
restore the pension-earning link.

Mr Edmunds said he hoped Mr Brown remarks about training opened the way for
legally binding obligations on employers to invest in skills, but ruled out
the chancellors suggestion that unions might move away from annual pay
bargaining to promote economic stability.

Prayin' for a warm Winter

[Lisa Ian Murray]

[wonder if these folks have seen chapter 6 of Paul Ekins latest book? Full
article at
http://www.iht.com/IHT/TODAY/WED/FPAGE/oil.2.html ]


Paris, Wednesday, September 13, 2000
Wider Cost Of Oil Rise: Chaos for Economies
By William Drozdiak Washington Post Service

VIENNA - For much of the past decade, an extraordinary windfall in the form
of cheap oil fueled unprecedented prosperity in the United States,
subsidized Europe's costly social welfare programs and helped much of Asia
recuperate quickly from a perilous financial meltdown.
But as crude oil prices continue their dizzying ascent - at $35 a barrel,
they have more than tripled in less than two years - there are harbingers
that the good times may be lurching toward a demise that could profoundly
reshape the nature and contours of the global economy.

The failure by OPEC ministers to stabilize volatile oil markets with their
latest decision in Vienna to raise output by 800,000 barrels a day has
compounded fears of economists who believe that a serious energy crisis
looms - and world leaders appear to have no clear ideas about how to cope
with it.

Unless oil prices drop suddenly and sharply - which analysts say seems
unlikely with fuel inventories at rock bottom and the cold weather season
approaching in the West - several negative factors appear to be converging
toward an ominous reckoning point by January. Regardless of whether Al Gore
or George W. Bush moves into the Oval Office, the next U.S. president may
discover that energy will become his most urgent policy priority.

Besides soaring crude prices that triggered sharp spikes in the cost of
gasoline and heating oil, natural gas prices have surged to all-time highs.
Those countries, such as the United States, that have shied away from
nuclear and coal-fired power plants for environmental reasons will almost
certainly face widespread electricity shortages by the end of the year,
energy experts say.

An inflationary jolt this winter delivered by an electricity price shock -
on top of a possible heating fuel crunch - could compel the U.S. Federal
Reserve and other central banks to drive up interest rates much more than
expected. That, in turn, could provoke the precipitous fall in equity
markets that many crash-minded Cassandras have been forecasting.

''Right now there is a lot of fear and a lot of uncertainty because few
people expected oil prices would rise so high and so fast,'' said Leo
Drollas, chief economist for the Center for Global Energy Studies, a British
research group. ''I think the only thing we can do is pray for a very warm
winter.''

In contrast to previous energy crises, many experts are baffled by the
recent turmoil in oil markets. During the 1970s, huge leaps in crude prices
could be attributed to supply interruptions caused by the Arab oil embargo
at the time of the 1973 Middle East War or the revolution in Iran in 1979.

This time, traders and analysts say, there seems to be plenty of oil
available for those willing to pay steep prices.

''There are no real shortages for crude, only for certain refined
products,'' said Mehdi Varzi, director of oil market studies for Dresdner
Kleinwort Benson. ''The cost of oil production has fallen dramatically over
the past two decades; and with new sources coming on line, it's hard to see
how prices can be sustained at anywhere near their current levels over the
long term.''

But other specialists say depleted reserves in many Western countries almost
guarantee that prices will remain chaotic for the next 18 to 24 months.

''The only way to create a stable balance is through price movements large
enough to bring demand in line with supply,'' said Steven Strongin, oil
research director at Goldman Sachs. ''We continue to see the current
situation holding until either a surge in new drilling produces significant
new oil supplies or until some event triggers a global recession.''

While the Organization of Petroleum Exporting Countries insists that it
wants to see oil prices drop about $10 - and hover at $22 to $28 dollars a
barrel - its efforts to calibrate the market have been a fiasco. After
announcing OPEC's third production increase for a total this year of more
than 3 million extra barrels a day, the cartel's secretary-general, Rilwanu
Lukman of Nigeria, said he still did not understand how much oil was needed
to stabilize markets.

''More than enough? Less than enough? Who knows?'' he asked with evident
exasperation.

What does seems clear is that higher prices have already caused a startling
shift in the economic fates of many countries over the past two years. When
prices plunged below $10 a barrel in December 1998, the sharp fall in income
threatened many oil states - from Saudi Arabia and Iran to non-OPEC
producers like Russia and Mexico - with dire financial and political
consequences.

The Saudis, who during oil's heyday had one of the world's highest per
capita incomes, were forced to borrow substantial sums of money and enact a

World Bank Development Report out today

[Lisa Ian Murray]

 [from
http://www.independent.co.uk/news/World/Americas/2000-09/worldbank130900.sht
ml ]


World Bank shamed by 2.8bn in poverty

Campaigners and street protesters force rewriting of rules to ease the
damaging effects of capitalism on Third World

By Diane Coyle, Economics Editor


13 September 2000

Displaying remarkable, and hitherto unnoticed, empathy with the 2.8 billion
people in the world living on less than $2 (£1.40) a day, the World Bank has
undergone a radical conversion in its anti-povertypolicies and
prescriptions.

However, this shift is not radical enough for some, including the main
author of the new report who resigned part way through its production. Ravi
Kanbur, an expert in economic development from Cornell University, was
unhappy when the World Bank's staff economists toned down the radicalism of
an early draft.

The influence of street protests – starting with Seattle last year – has
shifted the bank's analysis, but it is unlikely to be enough to keep
demonstrators off the streets of Prague at next week's International
Monetary Fund and World Bank meeting. In a foretaste of the antics expected
in Prague, demonstrators disrupted the Asia-Pacific Economic Summit in
Melbourne, Australia yesterday for the second day running.

The market-driven orthodoxy of recent years in which the bank advocated
structural reforms that left the poorest countries saddled with crippling
debt and crumbling health and education systems has been banished in favour
of "complementary" action at global and national level "to achieve maximum
benefit for poor people throughout the world".

The bank's annual World Development Report, published today, states that
international targets for the reduction of poverty by 2015 are unlikely to
be met without policy reforms.

The report places a new emphasis on the need to improve economic security
for people living in very poor countries, and to ensure that government
policies tackle inequality. Where the markets reigned supreme in the past,
this year the bank is calling for an "interaction of markets, state
institutions, and civil society" to harness the forces of economic
integration and serve the interests of poor people.

In the past campaigners have criticised the World Bank, sister institution
to the IMF, for ignoring the impact of its programmes on the very poorest
and most vulnerable people. The change in tone in this year's report marks a
response to the increasingly vocal demonstrations against globalisation and
the experience of the Asian financial crisis in 1997-98.

Michael Walton, the World Bank's director for poverty reduction, said: "The
crisis did have an important impact." He described it as a watershed in the
bank's approach. Mr Walton said the published version had merely changed the
emphasis to place the importance of economic growth ahead of theradical new
messages about equality and economic security. But the dispute has left
activists disappointed.

David Bryer, director of Oxfam, said: "I regret that some economists are
still refusing to abandon the discredited ideas of the past." Duncan Green,
of the relief agency Cafod, said the watering down of early drafts of the
report was shocking.

"The initial critique of conventional bank thinking has been replaced with
an apologia for business as usual," he said.

The report, "Attacking Poverty", puts market reforms to promote economic
growth at the top of the agenda. Nicholas Stern, the World Bank's chief
economist, said: "Expanding economic opportunities overall – that is,
promoting growth that directly benefits the poor – remains central."

However, it also presents a mass of depressing evidence showing that past
growth has not been enough to make inroads into desperate poverty.

At a time of unprecedented global wealth, almost half the world's population
lives on less than $2 a day, and 1.2 billion people live on less than $1. In
the poor countries one child in 20 dies before the age of five, and half of
children under five are malnourished. The tally makes it unlikely that
United Nation targets for poverty reduction and improvements in health and
mortality rates in the next decade and a half can be met.

The report therefore argues that growth must be supported by other reforms.
These would include institutional changes to tackle corrupt bureaucracies
and legal systems, reduce discrimination and ensure government policies aid
the poor rather than the middle classes or élites. The report documents the
vulnerability of the poor to inefficiency and corruption in many countries.
Its recommendations include, for example, the modernisation of police
forces, and the development of legal services organisations that can help
people to gain access to legal redress.

It also proposes financial safety nets and measures to tackle the effects of
natural disasters, as financial andnatural crises are much bigger
catastrophes for the poor. Examples include engineering projects such as a
flood relief scheme in 

Capital market fraud update

[Lisa Ian Murray]

Paris, Tuesday, September 12, 2000
[this one raises the specter of that age old social science question: do
events in history refute a hypothesis? full article
http://www.iht.com/IHT/TODAY/TUE/FIN/hot.2.html ]

U.S. Options Exchanges Censured in Competition Suit


The Associated Press

WASHINGTON - Four U.S. options exchanges reached an agreement Monday with
the Justice Department in a lawsuit alleging they had illegally stifled
competition in the $260 billion options market by refusing to list the same
stock options on more than one exchange.
At the same time, the four exchanges - the American Stock Exchange, part of
the Nasdaq Stock Market; the Chicago Board Options Exchange; the Pacific
Exchange, and the Philadelphia Stock Exchange - agreed to be censured by the
Securities and Exchange Commission for allegedly failing to enforce traders'
compliance with their own rules. Without admitting or denying wrongdoing,
they also agreed to spend $77 million on market surveillance and
enforcement.

The exchanges also agreed to a consent decree in the Justice Department's
civil antitrust lawsuit that, if approved by a federal judge in Washington,
would resolve the suit. Under the decree, the exchanges would be prohibited
from continuing their options listing agreement and from interfering with
exchanges that seek to list options already listed on another exchange. U.S.
regulators have been investigating alleged improprieties at the options
exchanges since last year.

Japan failing to imitate...

[Lisa Ian Murray]

[full article at http://www.latimes.com/business/2910/t85112.html ]

Sunday, September 10, 2000
Japan Giving Its Start-Ups a U.S. Education, With Limited Success
 Asia: It is sending fledgling firms to American incubators to learn
entrepreneurial ways. But applicant pool is thin, and cultural barriers may
be culprit.


By EVELYN IRITANI, Times Staff Writer
An innovative experiment by the Japanese government to unlock the secret
of America's entrepreneurial energies has gotten off to a rocky start.
 By placing a handful of their most promising high-tech start-ups in
American business incubators for several years of intensive parenting, the
Japanese hoped to pick up some tips on high-tech nurturing and, with luck,
grow the world's next technology giant-killer.
 "Maybe we can create the next Microsoft, Yahoo or Sony," said Shinya
Fujii, the former Sony Co. executive in charge of the TigerGate 2000
program, an undertaking of the Japan External Trade Organization, or JETRO.
 But six months after its launch, three out of five participating U.S.
technology incubators--including USC's popular EC2 Annenberg Center
Incubator Project--have yet to find a suitable Japanese start-up from a
disappointing number of applicants. With each passing day, the
entrepreneurial gap between Japan and the United States widens further.
 TigerGate's slow start raises doubts about Japan's ability to duplicate
the environment that has helped make the U.S. a leader in technology
innovation.
 Even supporters of Japan's good intentions question the wisdom of
trying to transplant America's high-tech sizzle to one of the world's least
hospitable climates for entrepreneurs.
 However, Japan's involvement in this effort illustrates just how badly
it fears being left behind as the technology revolution reshapes the way the
world lives, plays and does business.
 "JETRO may be a little clueless in implementation, but they're
certainly in the right arena, the right ballpark," said Jon Goodman,
executive director of the EC2 incubator. "They've just got to figure out
what the rules of the game are."
 Why should Japan, still the world's second-largest economy despite a
decade of stagnant growth, be worried?
 The answer lies in such countries as Ireland and Israel, which in less
than a decade have gone from being global laggards to shining lights,
propelled to a large degree by a burgeoning high-technology industry backed
by small-business-friendly government policies.
 And the link between entrepreneurship and economic well-being is
becoming more obvious by the day. Entrepreneurial activity accounted for as
much as one-third of the difference in growth rates among 10 countries, in a
recent study by Babson College, the London Business School and the Kaufman
Center for Entrepreneurial Leadership. The level of entrepreneurial activity
ranged from 8.5% in the U.S. to a meager 1.5% in Japan.
 "Entrepreneurship facilitates economic adaptation," said professor Paul
Reynolds of the London Business School, a co-author of the report. "The U.S.
is by far the most adaptive system there is."

The new theology of industrial relations

[Lisa Ian Murray]

[full article at
http://washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A42059-2000Sep9.html ]

Pastors Find Their Work With Workers

By Chris L. Jenkins
Washington Post Staff Writer
Sunday, September 10, 2000; Page A01



Sliding out of his red pickup, the Rev. Gerald Rodgers glances at his watch
and heads for a small warehouse owned by the company employing him, Herr
Foods. As he strides through the parking lot, he bumps into Gary Patton, a
company driver whose father died recently.


Time for the minister to go to work.


"Hey, Gary, good seeing you again. How are things at home?"


The two clasp hands.


"It hasn't been an easy stretch, but I think everybody's doing okay," Patton
says.


For several minutes, the sweating delivery truck driver and the Wesleyan
pastor chat about the death in the family, and then Rodgers hops back into
his Chevy S-10 to head for another of Herr's Springfield warehouses and,
possibly, more spiritual healing.


"Having somebody who actually seeks you out is a really good way to let you
know that your bosses are thinking about some of your needs," Patton says.
"I can't say I always talk to Gerald when he comes, but it's good to know
he's here if I need him."


Rodgers is one of an expanding number of clergy hired by companies looking
for different ways to support employees in times of crisis at home and work.
In the past, businesses used hot lines, in-house psychologists and other
methods to help workers cope, but chaplains have become popular for an
obvious reason: They can place everyday problems in the context of faith and
God.


"I think that businesses are finding that chaplains can potentially improve
their bottom dollar when they see that a happier work force can be a more
productive work force," said George Schurman, treasurer and a past chairman
of the American Association for Ministry in the Workplace Inc., a nationwide
chaplains group. "Not only can [chaplains] address emotional concerns, but
they are trained and specialize in talking about spiritual concerns as
well."


In particular, worries about workplace violence have motivated many of the
employers that use chaplains, said Gil Stricklin, president of Marketplace
Ministries, a Dallas company that has provided more than 800 Christian
chaplains to businesses in 26 states. Although family problems remain the
focus of the chaplains' work, Stricklin said there has been an increase in
requests from businesses that want to prevent job-related outbreaks of
violence.


"Employers are starting to . . . see what they can do about helping their
workers cope with things before they reach a boiling point," said Stricklin,
who founded Marketplace Ministries in 1984. "Employers are also realizing
that they have to address these issues if they want a healthy workplace
environment for all of their workers."


Ed Herr, vice president of Herr Foods

Argentina

[Lisa Ian Murray]

I have been reading and recording what is going on in Yugoslavia
and the US involvement in murder, genocide, torture, etc.  Is there
nothing that the US government will not resort to, is it totally
devoid of any human principles, are the American peoples  willing
to allow their governments to enact the most base practices of
torture and death?  Where have we come to?

No.

Yes.

Some are not. Others would prefer not to think about it. They're happy to
turn their strategies against us too, from chemical "attacks" on the
citizenry to the criminalization of just about everything that could
potentially undermine their capacity to engage in evil. But you know this
already.

Where are we going is the question. How can we help, in practice, those who
have struggled to put J18 N30 A16 and S11 on the edge of their pathetically
sick attention agenda. Leaflets anyone?

Ian

RE: Hume the Postmodern Grin without aCat(was Re: pomoistas)

[Lisa Ian Murray]

Do you think the folks who programmed the algorithms for all those special
effects in the film were being pragmatists or platonists or constructivists
with regards to induction etc.? Or were they merely wage labor?

Ian


 At 03:31 PM 09/09/2000 -0500, you wrote:
 Going down the road of hyperbolic
 doubt gets you to the malevolent demon and deep questions about
 whether we
 might not all be brains in vats. I doubt these questions are of great
 practical use as preparation for socialist revolution.

 Isn't that the premise of that movie with Keanu Reeves, THE MATRIX?

 Can't we dismiss all these questions about induction and epistemology and
 ontology in a pragmatic way, i.e., say that our doubts and skepticism are
 really irrelevant if they don't act as a guide to practice?

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

Re: anti-Pomo babble

[Lisa Ian Murray]

Any number of problems that Popper cited were rejected, and 
finally, when Popper turned to problems of moral justification, 
Wittgenstein asked for an example of a moral rule. Since Wittgenstein 
had happened to pick up a poker from the fireplace and was waving it 
around while making his points (was this, as analytic philosophers 
like to say, "hand waving"?), the example Popper offered was, "Not to 
threaten visiting lecturers with pokers!" Wittgenstein then threw 
down the poker and stormed out of the room, slamming the door (the 
rumor quickly spread that they had even come to blows).



Unlike Popper, who did physically assault one of his students.
[in WW Bartley "Unfathomed Knowledge Infinite Wealth, Open Court P.]

Ian

RE: Re: Re: pomo or the economy?

[Lisa Ian Murray]

Echelon is working overtime... and the latest econ. report of the prez. show
a big leap in nanotechnology investment. better, smaller "bugs" to put on
those plastic plants... :-)

Ian

 -Original Message-
 From: [EMAIL PROTECTED]
 [mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED]]On Behalf Of Michael Perelman
 Sent: Friday, September 08, 2000 5:30 PM
 To: [EMAIL PROTECTED]
 Subject: [PEN-L:1529] Re: Re: pomo or the economy?


 On Democracy Now today, Juan Gonzalez suggested that the money
 for Colombia
 may be in part a preparation to "Allende" Chavez.

 Yoshie Furuhashi wrote:

 
  Thomas Friedman is gearing up to blame it on Chavez  Hussein:
 
  *   NY Times 9/8/00
 
  FOREIGN AFFAIRS

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

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

RE: Re: RE: Re:realism

[Lisa Ian Murray]

 How are they like either of these or are you just being funny?
 The joy of greeting a loved one depends upon there being loved ones but I
 don't see how laws of physics depend upon this; also, they apply
 whether we
 see something beautiful etc. or not. I must confess that I am not
 sure what
 you are talking about in most of your posts on these matters.

Hilary Putnam used to ask; are the laws of physics themselves physical
objects? I was merely being suggestive in a free associative sense so as to
shake up preconceptions or neglect regarding the aesthetic status of
scientific statements and their relationship to the subjective/objective
puzzles handed down to us in history.  It sort of represents my attempt to
come to terms with Doug's query and challenge on the nature/culture issue
which is coincident with the realist/idealist subjective/objective pairings.

The notion of the word law is what really concerns me. For instance, we say
the laws of nature are beautiful but many on this list would agree the laws
in societies are ugly and cruel.  The unlikeness should lead us to question
how the concept of law flowed from culture to a way of "mapping" nature; the
/ becomes malleable in potentially novel ways. Are invariance,
computability, information, redundancy, symmetry/asymmetry isomorphic to the
concept of law? The "nature as information" zeitgeist suggests different
ways of thinking about the economy/nature binarism and the potential for new
notions of property that we need to get a handle on soon, for the
privatization of knowledge and the privatization of nature are flip sides[of
a coin] of a potentially horrific attempt at a massive extension of social
Darwinism and Malthusianism.

If nature is irreducibly probabilistic [randomness at the Planck scale just
for starters] why would we wish to cling to the use of law? Again, how do
they connect with the subject/object nature/culture binarisms? If we say the
laws of nature aren't like anything else whether tables, stars or emotions,
why do we insist on a legal metaphor?  I would submit that it is because
scientists are developing new ways of uniting computer science and physics
we should let go of the idea of nature as obeying laws. In which case the
binarisms named above need substantive reappraisal just as Doug says. This
would seem to have enormous implications for the way we view political
economy, especially intellectual property.


Apologies for muddles,


Ian

"No, there is no patent on the polio vaccine. You wouldn't patent the Sun,
would you?" Jonas Salk

"The only law is there is no law" John Wheeler

Indian Telecom strike

[Lisa Ian Murray]

[full article at http://www.iht.com/IHT/TODAY/THU/FIN/indicom.2.html ]

Paris, Thursday, September 7, 2000
Indian Telecom Workers Strike, Seeking Job-Security Assurance


Compiled by Our Staff From Dispatches

NEW DELHI - More than 300,000 employees of India's state-run
telecommunications department began an indefinite strike Wednesday to
bolster demands for job security when the agency is turned into a
corporation in October.
Union officials said the impact of the strike by the three main unions at
the Department of Telecom Services would take about two days to show up
because networks are largely automated. But maintenance services were
expected to be hit early.

The strike began at 6:00 a.m., covering most of the country, but services in
New Delhi and Bombay, the financial capital, were not expected to be
affected since they are run by a separate state-controlled company,
Mahanagar Telephone Nigam Ltd.

K. Vallinayagam, secretary-general of the Federation of National Telecom
Organizations, said the workers, who include technicians and junior
administration staff, were not satisfied by government assurances Tuesday.
''How can we go by assurances?'' he said. ''For the past one year we have
been calling off strikes on assurances. Assurance has a meaning when there
is a time limit.''

The federation is one of the three unions which control 90 percent of the
325,000 workers in these categories.

''We are thankful the minister took pains to settle some of the issues but
important issues remain,'' said the secretary general of the federation, Om
P. Gupta.

The department, which will be turned into a government-owned company on Oct.
1, has more than 400,000 employees.

The communications minister, Ram Vilas Paswan, said after talks with the
unions Tuesday that workers were assured of job security, a flexible pension
plan and the financial viability of the new company. But 11th-hour
negotiations failed despite a fresh appeal to call off the protest.

The strike came as the government said it would end state-run Videsh Sanchar
Nigam Ltd.'s monopoly on overseas long-distance telephone calls from April
1, 2002, earlier than its original 2004 deadline.

The country's cabinet committee on economic affairs decided at its meeting
Wednesday to end the company's monopoly two years ahead of schedule, Mr.
Paswan said.

RE: Re: RE: Re: Pomotismo

[Lisa Ian Murray]

Uh, Jim,

I don't want to be a stick in the mud. But let's say you lived to 2060.
Would you really be able to say whether it was a super duper neural network
hooked up to an big ol' database of human knowledge you were conversing with
on the "other side" of your screen or a human person? Could you beat it at
chess played via a listserv? Natural Selection ain't done with epistemic
abilities yet. So maybe our categories regarding epistemology and ontology
will become increasingly problematic as time goes on. This would be grounds
for optimism and pessimism in my book.

Ian

US Labor shortage/brain drain debate continues

[Lisa Ian Murray]

September 6, 2000

http://www.nytimes.com/2000/09/06/technology/06LESS.html



LESSONS
Questioning the Labor Shortage
By RICHARD ROTHSTEIN


To alleviate apparent shortages of computer programmers, President Clinton
and Congress have agreed to raise a quota on H-1B's, the temporary visas for
skilled foreigners. The annual limit will go to 200,000 next year, up from
65,000 only three years ago.

The imported workers, most of whom come from India, are said to be needed
because American schools do not graduate enough young people with science
and math skills. Microsoft's chairman, William H. Gates, and Intel's
chairman, Andrew S. Grove, told Congress in June that more visas were only a
stopgap until education improved.

But the crisis is a mirage. High- tech companies portray a shortage, yet it
is our memories that are short: only yesterday there was a glut of science
and math graduates.

The computer industry took advantage of that glut by reducing wages. This
discouraged youths from entering the field, creating the temporary shortages
of today. Now, taking advantage of a public preconception that school
failures have created the problem, industry finds a ready audience for its
demands to import workers.

This newspaper covered the earlier surplus extensively. In 1992, it reported
that 1 in 5 college graduates had a job not requiring a college degree. A
1995 article headlined "Supply Exceeds Demand for Ph.D.'s in Many Science
Fields" cited nationwide unemployment of engineers, mathematicians and
scientists. "Overproduction of Ph.D. degrees," it noted, "seems to be
highest in computer science."

Michael S. Teitelbaum, a demographer who served as vice chairman of the
Commission on Immigration Reform, said in 1996 that there was "an employer's
market" for technology workers, partly because of post-cold- war downsizing
in aerospace.

In fields with real labor scarcity, wages rise. Yet despite accounts of
dot-com entrepreneurs' becoming millionaires, trends in computer technology
pay do not confirm a need to import legions of programmers.

Salary offers to new college graduates in computer science averaged $39,000
in 1986 and had declined by 1994 to $33,000 (in constant dollars). The trend
reversed only in the late 1990's.

The West Coast median salary for experienced software engineers was $71,100
in 1999, up only 10 percent (in constant dollars) from 1990. This pay growth
of about 1 percent a year suggests no labor shortage.

Norman Matloff, a computer science professor at the University of
California, contends that high-tech companies create artificial shortages by
refusing to hire experienced programmers. Many with technology degrees no
longer work in the field. By age 50, fewer than half are still in the
industry. Luring them back requires higher pay.

Industry spokesmen say older programmers with outdated skills would take too
long to retrain. But Dr. Matloff counters by saying that when they urge more
H-1B visas, lobbyists demonstrate a shortage by pointing to vacancies
lasting many months. Companies could train older programmers in less time
than it takes to process visas for cheaper foreign workers.

Dr. Matloff says that in addition to the pay issue, the industry rejects
older workers because they will not work the long hours typical at Silicon
Valley companies with youthful "singles" styles. Imported labor, he argues,
is only a way to avoid offering better conditions to experienced
programmers. H-1B workers, in contrast, cannot demand higher pay: visas are
revoked if workers leave their sponsoring companies.

As for young computer workers, the labor market has recently tightened, with
rising wages, because college students saw earlier wage declines and stopped
majoring in math and science. In 1996, American colleges awarded 25,000
bachelor's degrees in computer science, down from 42,000 in 1985.

The reason is not that students suddenly lacked preparation. On the
contrary, high school course-taking in math and science, including advanced
placement, had climbed. Further, math scores have risen; last year 24
percent of seniors who took the SAT scored over 600 in math. But only 6
percent planned to major in computer science, and many of these cannot get
into college programs.

The reason: colleges themselves have not yet adjusted to new demand. In some
places, computer science courses are so oversubscribed that students must
get on waiting lists as high school juniors.

With a time lag between student choice of majors and later job quests, high
schools and colleges cannot address short-term supply and demand shifts for
particular professions. Such shortages can be erased only by raising wages
to attract those with needed skills who are now working in other fields — or
by importing low-paid workers.

For the longer term, rising wages can guide counselors to encourage
well-prepared students to major in computer science and engineering, and
colleges will adjust to rising demand. But more H-1B immigrants 

Troublemaking professors

[Lisa Ian Murray]

September 6, 2000

650 Professors Strike
By THE ASSOCIATED PRESS
YPSILANTI, Mich., Sept. 5 (AP) — More than 650 full- time faculty members at
Eastern Michigan University went on strike today after contract talks broke
off.

The fall semester began last week for the university's 23,000 students. The
contract, covering tenured and tenure- track professors, expired on Friday
but was extended until midnight Monday, a spokesman for the professors said.

RE: Re: RE: Re: RE: Re: Pomotismo

[Lisa Ian Murray]

 
 I don't want to be a stick in the mud.

 why not?


Because given your next sentence, you're playing that role :-)

 you're right, _if_ I lived in the year 2060. But I'm currently
 living in 2000.

Thanks for missing my point.


 maybe, but at present we're stuck with what we've got at present.

No we aren't.


 BTW, epistemological realism says that the external world exists
 independently of our perceptions of it. But our actions -- based
 partly on
 our (mis)perceptions (and also on whose got the power) -- change that
 external world, often for the worse.

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

No, metaphysical realism says that the external world exists independently
of our perceptions. Epistemological realism is the claim that idea/theories
have causal efficacy in the world of which they are members. To the extent
that is true, then the world and our perception of it is malleable.  There
are multiple ways the world can be. The common world is loaded with
redundancy in the physicists and information theorists sense of the term.
Redundancy is the way contraints manifest themselves to beings with various
cognitive abilities. Beings with better theories can overcome constraints
that others may not. As far as we can tell no beings can overcome all
constraints. The world is not "transparent" to cognizers. The overcoming of
some constraints may simultaneously generate others. Redundancy is also that
which allows what consensus we have regarding the world of perceptions and
communication. One aspect of these disputes is whether or not the laws of
physics and the like are more like tables and chairs or ideas.  No one has
come up with a satisfactory answer to this yet, hence the debate between
idealists and realists continues and is unlikely to go away despite having
somewhat outlived it's usefulness. Regarding power and the issue of better
and worse, that, as you suggest, is clearly relative; meta-ethical
anti-relativists, neoliberals and conservatives notwithstanding.

Ian

"Reality is theory" John Wheeler

RE: Re: Argentina and the US

[Lisa Ian Murray]

 The big difference between capital imports to the developing US and the
 rest of the world was that we defaulted and got away with it.
 --
Ah, the pre-IMF Eden, how I miss it so..

Ian




 
 Michael Perelman
 Economics Department
 California State University
 Chico, CA 95929
 
 Tel. 530-898-5321
 E-Mail [EMAIL PROTECTED]
 

RE: Re:realism

[Lisa Ian Murray]

 Okay, so I've revealed myself as an amateur, self-educated, philosopher,
 since I confused metaphysical realism with epistemological realism.

 Though it may not be compatible with the received definition of
 "epistemological realism," I would amend the above to say that
 "ideas/theories have causal efficacy" _only_ if put into practice. Of
 course, ignorance (lack of ideas, theories) can also have an
 impact if put
 into practice. If epistemological realism doesn't fit with this
 conception,
 I'll go back to metaphysical realism.

No, no, you're right on target with the above. No need for the fall back
position strategy.


 Can't one say that the _perceived_ laws of physics are like
 ideas, whereas
 the _actual_ laws are like chairs?

Perhaps they're more like the joy we feel when greeting a loved one or
seeing something beautiful that moves us to appreciate the world despite its
tragedies.

Ian




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

Bank fraud update...

[Lisa Ian Murray]

Full article at
http://www.independent.co.uk/news/World/Europe/2000-09/nigeria050900.shtml

Major banks named in $3bn Nigeria fraud

By Imre Karacs in Berlin


5 September 2000

Swiss investigators searching for the loot of the late Nigerian dictator
General Sani Abacha yesterday launched a scathing attack on their country's
banking system, and accused Britain and the United States of being part of a
huge money-laundering operation.

In a separate aspect of the report, the Swiss arm of one City institution, J
Henry Schroder Bank, was among several banks criticised.

Switzerland's watchdog, the Federal Banking Commission, spent 10 months
trying to find an estimated $3bn pilfered by General Abacha, Nigeria's
President from 1993 to 1998. Switzerland had frozen $670m and returned $66m
to Nigeria, and Britain has also been asked formally to freeze funds.

The main banking regulator in Switzerland was shocked at the ease with which
General Abacha and his family were able to move their shady money across
frontiers. "The fact alone that significant funds of dubious origin from the
close entourage of the former Nigerian President Sani Abacha were deposited
in Swiss bank accounts is disturbing and damaging to the reputation of
Switzerland's financial sector," said the report.

But the Abacha affair "is not a problem of purely Swiss nature", it added.
"The funds came, as well as from Nigeria, also from countries such as the
United States, Britain and Austria. Funds were transferred from Swiss banks
to banks in the US, Britain, France, Luxembourg and Liechtenstein.

The watchdog cited the J Henry Schroder Bank and five others for "minor
infractions". Luxembourg has frozen about $650m, Liechtenstein over $100m.
The Swiss regulators said Britain, Germany and France were dragging their
heels finding General Abacha's money, which Nigeria claims was stolen from
the country's central bank.

But even the Swiss watchdog admits its banks were the worst offenders. "In
six banks, violations and organisational shortcomings were serious enough to
give rise to countermeasures on the personnel and the organisational level,"
the report said. Prosecutors in Geneva have begun a criminal investigation.

Switzerland has been criticised for providing a haven for the ill-gotten
gains of the former president of the Philippines, Ferdinand Marcos, and the
Haitian dictator Papa Doc Duvalier. Although the country claims procedures
have been tightened up, it is clear from the Swiss watchdog's report that
gaps remain.

General Abacha died in 1998, allegedly from a heart attack, but a year later
his two sons were still depositing large sums in Switzerland.

Credit Suisse Private Banking accepted $214m from General Abacha's sons,
accepting an introduction from a long-standing client and failing to note
they were "politically exposed" although it should have been alerted by
their age, their nationality and the sums involved, the report said.

A Geneva judge has indicted two people, including Abacha's son Mohammed, in
connection with a money-laundering investigation launched here. He is in
jail in Lagos charged with murder.

Foreign Sales Corporations update at WTO

[Lisa Ian Murray]

Friday September 1 3:51 PM ET
Administration To Push Tax-Breaks

By MARCY GORDON, AP Business Writer

WASHINGTON (AP) - Over European objections, the Clinton administration will
continue to push for enactment of legislation creating new tax breaks for
U.S. companies that export goods or make them abroad, a senior
administration official said Friday.

The remarks came soon after the European Union rejected the U.S. proposal as
failing to rectify a violation of World Trade Organization rules, raising
the specter of a potential trade war.

``We are disappointed with (the Europeans') response to our proposal, with
the continued unwillingness of the EU to negotiate with us and with their
unwillingness to provide any constructive suggestions,'' the official who
spoke on condition of anonymity told reporters in a conference call.

``It is critical'' to press ahead with the legislation to meet an Oct. 1
deadline for U.S. tax compliance set by the World Trade Organization, he
said.

That body ruled in February that the current U.S. program, giving $4.1
billion in annual tax breaks to some 6,000 American companies that set up
export subsidiaries in offshore tax havens, is an illegal export subsidy. In
making the ruling, the WTO agreed with the EU's earlier claims.

The Foreign Sales Corporation program, created in 1984, enables the U.S.
companies, including Microsoft, Boeing, General Motors and United
Technologies, to reduce income taxes by 15 percent by creating export
subsidiaries in offshore tax havens such as the Virgin Islands and Barbados.
It was designed to offset an EU tax rebate given to European companies for
products sold overseas.

The WTO gave the United States an Oct. 1 deadline to comply or face possible
EU retaliation in the form of higher tariffs or other trade sanctions.

To replace the offshore tax program, the Clinton administration and key
lawmakers came up with the new legislation, which would create new tax
breaks applied equally to exports by U.S. companies and products they
manufacture abroad.

The bipartisan proposal would satisfy the WTO's objections by creating a new
system of taxes to replace a special exception, lawmakers and administration
officials say.

It cleared the House Ways and Means Committee by a 34-1 vote on July 27, and
the administration wants to push it through the full House and the Senate in
the last few days of the congressional session. Lawmakers plan to adjourn
for the year early next month.

``It still remains a priority for the chairman,'' said Greg Crist, spokesman
for Ways and Means Committee Chairman Rep. Bill Archer, R-Texas.

But the Europeans aren't satisfied by the proposed alternative. In a
statement Friday from its headquarters in Brussels, Belgium, the EU said the
legislative proposal still violates WTO rules by improperly subsidizing U.S.
exports.

``The EU can't make it a subsidy by calling it one,'' the administration
official said a few hours later. ``We would be more than happy to negotiate
(with the Europeans) but ... we're left with no choice but to move forward
to meet the Oct. 1 deadline.''

``What we're trying to do is avoid a trade war. We're behaving
responsibly,'' the official insisted. ``If there's to be one, it will be in
their hands, not ours.''

European authorities are believed to be developing a list of $26 billion of
American products, or 17 percent of U.S. exports to EU member countries,
that would be targets of retaliatory sanctions, according to the European
American Business Council.

The proposed legislation would bring the U.S. tax system closer to those in
several European countries. By expanding the class of U.S. companies that
could benefit from tax breaks, it would cost American taxpayers $300 million
more a year than the current system, experts estimate.

-

Kohl sinking even faster...

[Lisa Ian Murray]

[Have to wonder how many offshore accounts the Republicrats have?]


http://www.independent.co.uk/news/World/Europe/2000-09/architect020900.shtml
Kohl's offshore funds architect 'laundered drugs cash'

2 September 2000

A close friend of Helmut Kohl, who helped set up the former German
chancellor's secret offshore accounts, is being investigated over alleged
links to a Latin American drug ring.

The authorities in Liechtenstein have confirmed that Herbert Batliner, one
of the central figures in Germany's slush funds scandal, is suspected of
money laundering. But officials in the principality's capital, Vaduz, did
not comment on a Swiss press report alleging that he laundered £17m for a
suspected Ecuadorian drugs baron, Jorge Hugo Reyes-Torres.

Mr Batliner is already being investigated in Germany for suspected
complicity in tax evasion. The accusation of a possible link to organised
crime has, however, put a far more sinister complexion on hisdealings, and
raises further questions about Mr Kohl's clandestine business activities.

Mr Kohl had met the Liechtenstein lawyer in Salzburg, Bonn, Berlin and
Vaduz. Earlier this year, he told the Bundestag's sleaze-busting committee
that he never discussed business with his friend.

Mr Batliner has been administering Christian Democrat slush funds for 40
years. In 1960, he set up the "Aspe" foundation, a tax-free hoard in
Liechtenstein containing undeclared donations from German business. In the
1970s and 1980s, he was the trustee of two other foundations used to stash
more secret money abroad.

The CDU's two biggest transactions – thus far unexplained – passed through
his hands. Mr Batliner says he dealt not with the CDU, but with its
disgraced financial wizards, Uwe Lüthje, the former CDU treasurer, and Horst
Weyrauch, the party's financial adviser.

The latest allegations come as Liechtenstein tries to clean up its image.
Stunned by German reports, leaked by the German intelligence agency BND,
portraying the principality as a "money-laundering haven", Liechtenstein has
hired the Austrian prosecutor Kurt Spitzer to investigate the charges.

In a report earlier this week, Mr Spitzer rejected most of the allegations,
but his inquiry has led to the arrest of eight people in Liechtenstein,
including two judges, an MP, and the brother of the Deputy Prime Minister.

RE: Re: RE: WTO hypocrisy

[Lisa Ian Murray]

 I would guess bananas and GM foods, not Echelon.
 

Michael, yes those cases pissed the EU off, but the "fines" only come to
191million$$ or so a year. Attacking the US FSC' laws was a massive
escalation of rivalry, around 3billion$$ a year. I'm no conspiracy theorist
but something tells me there's more to it than bananas and beef.  I can't
wait to see them try t sort out agriculture subsidies.

Ian

American Political Science Association meetings in DC

[Lisa Ian Murray]

Max,

If you hear any juicy gossip on multilateral governance issues blah blah can
you ill us in?

Ian

Queen Victoria's connection

[Lisa Ian Murray]

The question came up a while ago on this list as to who gave Queen Victoria
the evil weed.  An article in today's USA Today states that it was one Sir
John Russell Reynold.

Full article at http://usatoday.com/life/health/doctor/lhdoc000.htm

Ian

Chinese mutual funds

[Lisa Ian Murray]

full article http://www.iht.com/IHT/TODAY/FRI/FIN/chifund.2.html

Paris, Friday, September 1, 2000
China Plans to Introduce Western-Style Mutual Funds


Bloomberg News

HONG KONG - China will try to spur its mutual-fund industry as early as next
year by introducing pilot open-end funds, according to government officials
and advisers.
China is tapping foreign companies for advice on the Western-style open-end
mutual funds because its closed-end funds, which trade like stocks, are
proving too volatile.

''The government is looking for aggressive financial reform,'' said Tina So,
a director at Schroder in Hong Kong, which is advising Industrial 
Commercial Bank of China, the nation's biggest bank, about opening an
open-ended fund.

Ms. So said it was not yet clear whether foreign investors would be allowed
to enter the market, which had 29 closed-end funds with about 80 billion
yuan ($9.5 billion) invested at the end of June. She said a lack of clear
investment fund laws would slow the opening of the market.

China will also impose tough new regulations on its domestic financial
industry, which is riddled with corruption, according to Shi Ming Cai,
director-general of the social insurance fund supervision department at
China's Ministry of Labor and Social Security.

Chinese citizens deposited more than 6.3 trillion yuan in savings this year
through the end of July, up 6.3 percent from a year earlier, according to
the People's Bank of China.

With a population of about 1.3 billion, that puts the per-capita deposit
rate at 4,846 yuan.

Swiss struggle with money laundering

[Lisa Ian Murray]

[full article at: http://www.iht.com/IHT/TODAY/THU/FIN/launder.2.html]

Paris, Thursday, August 31, 2000
Swiss Discord on Money Laundering


By Elizabeth Olson International Herald Tribune

GENEVA - Two top officials responsible for tracking money laundering in
Switzerland resigned this week on grounds the government lacks a
comprehensive approach to tackle the problem.
Daniel Thelesklaf, head of the federal Money Laundering Reporting Office,
had sought the government's permission to strengthen the power and personnel
of the two-year-old office, but Swiss officials turned him down. Reached at
his office, the 36-year-old lawyer declined comment on his reasons for
resigning the post he has held since February 1998.

However, in a speech last week, Mr. Thelesklaf said the government's policy
toward combating money laundering lacked ''clear direction.''

Mr. Thelesklaf's No. 2, Mark Van Thiel, also resigned.

Folco Galli, the federal police department spokesman, said the resignations
were a logical consequence of a disagreement over how to approach the fight
against money laundering. In Geneva, Bernard Bertossa, a prosecutor, told
Swiss radio that the resignations were a blow to the country's effort to
combat money laundering because it was the only office receiving information
from financial intermediaries, which are largely unregulated nonbank asset
managers.

Mr. Bertossa also said the resignations would hamper efforts to coordinate
information among cantons, which are individually responsible for
prosecuting money laundering.

Some analysts surmise that the Swiss banking business, the country's most
important industry, has been putting behind-the-scenes pressure on federal
and local authorities to ease up on reform because it is frightening away
prospective customers.

Privately, some bankers bitterly remark that Switzerland's new openness goes
much further than necessary, and is more intrusive than policies of many
other countries, including Austria and Britain. Banking critics cited as
excessive a Geneva court order this summer requiring that $500,000 in
damages be paid to a Russian man acquitted after he was tried as part of the
city's effort to show that laundering questionable funds would no longer be
tolerated.

Switzerland has been under serious pressure from the United States and its
European neighbors to abandon banking secrecy on grounds that tax evaders as
well as money launderers can abuse the system. The European Union is
pressing Switzerland to agree to exchange information on nonresident savings
accounts to prevent tax evasion.

Recognizing that its reputation as a haven for shady assets was damaging its
international image, Switzerland has been making very public efforts in
recent years to stem illegal money flows. It has passed tough laws requiring
banks and other financial intermediaries to report suspicious money
movements.

Those efforts have coincided with an increasing international determination
to ferret out countries that harbor money gained from questionable sources,
including tax evasion and bribery. In June, an international task force
published a blacklist of 15 countries accused of failing to adequately curb
money laundering, and the Paris-based Organization for Economic Cooperation
and Development named 35 countries and territories with lenient laws on tax
evasion.

Although Switzerland's banking industry is estimated to manage as much as
one-third of the world's offshore wealth, the country avoided being included
on either list. In June, Swiss authorities announced that last year they had
frozen almost $1 billion in suspicious money, almost five times as much as
the year before, which was the first period during which banks were required
to report dubious transactions.

Embarrassingly, new cases of troublesome deposits have continued to turn up,
including funds linked to the Bank of New York, which is accused of
laundering billions in Russian funds. And two-thirds of the suspicious
deposits reported was $670 million connected with the late Nigerian dictator
Sani Abacha, his families and associates. This was the largest sum of
apparently ill-gotten funds uncovered in Switzerland since the discovery
more than a decade ago of $550 million deposited here, through a series of
foundations, by Ferdinand Marcos, the former president of the Philippines,
who died in 1989.

Farm riots in China

[Lisa Ian Murray]

[full article http://www.iht.com/IHT/TODAY/THU/IN/china.2.html

Paris, Thursday, August 31, 2000
Farmer Unrest Erupts in China
Rioters Protest Heavy Tax Burden and Corruption


By John Pomfret Washington Post Service

BEIJING - Tens of thousands of farmers in a southern Chinese province have
rioted, attacked government buildings and looted the homes of government
officials in a protest against fees and taxes, local officials confirmed
Wednesday.
The rebellion, which pitted farmers armed with sticks and tools against
government security forces early this month, underscored the troubles of
China's farmers, their heavy tax burden and the fact that rural incomes in
China - after years of increases - have fallen for four years in a row.

Uprisings and riots are now common in China's cities and countryside alike
as workers and farmers come face to face with a slowing economy and a
government that is trying to extract more taxes and fees from a shrinking
economic pie.

Corruption, also rampant, plays a role, too, as many local officials use tax
revenue practically as a private bank account.

Officials from Fengcheng, a city in Jiangxi Province, confirmed that farmers
from several townships rioted for five days this month. They said the riots
had been quelled without any fatalities.

Officials confirmed a report by a Hong Kong-based human rights organization,
issued Tuesday, that the rebellion had started in the village of Yuandu and
spread to neighboring towns.

In Yuandu, 2,000 farmers ransacked offices of the township government Aug.
17, and some also attacked homes of government officials and party leaders,
according to the Center for Human Rights and Democracy in China. The center
said the disorder had spread to neighboring townships and involved about
20,000 farmers.

Temp work growth at 577%......!

[Lisa Ian Murray]

[full article at
http://washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A51364-2000Aug30.html ]


Temporary Workers Win Benefits Ruling

By Frank Swoboda
Washington Post Staff Writer
Thursday, August 31, 2000; Page A01



Recognizing the changing nature of the American work force, the National
Labor Relations Board has voted to make it easier for millions of temporary
workers to join unions and win benefits on the job.


The ruling released yesterday comes as the nation's employers increasingly
rely on temporary staff to trim costs and gain flexibility. Temps,
contractors and consultants who are not attached to a company's core work
force make up as much as 25 percent of the nation's employment base by some
estimates, or nearly 35 million workers.


The number of temporary jobs in the United States rose 577 percent from 1982
to 1998, according to the General Accounting Office, while overall
employment grew 47 percent. Manpower Inc., a temp agency, is now the
nation's largest employer.


Analysts said the 3 to 1 ruling by the labor board will have its most
immediate impact on employees of Manpower and other temporary agencies,
which send an estimated 3 million people into the workplace on any given
day. Although these employees are hired by the temporary agency, the board
ruled that for the purposes of labor law they are considered employees of
the client company if they work side by side with full-time employees, doing
the same work under the same supervision.


The ruling is likely to apply not to temps who pop in and out of a clerical
pool, but rather to workers on longer-term assignments at companies that are
seeking to save money on benefits and training.


AFL-CIO President John J. Sweeney praised the labor board for recognizing
the "seismic shifts in employment relationships in the changing economy."
Sweeney called the ruling "an important step" in addressing the rights of
contingent workers, whom he said have often been "relegated to second-class
status and rights" because of their inability to join unions.


But Stephen A. Bokat of the National Chamber Litigation Center – which filed
a brief in support of employers – said the ruling would "complicate the way
employers deal with employees" and eliminate some of the cost advantages of
using temporary workers. He said that under the ruling employers would have
to treat temps "pretty much like regular employees."


Patrick Cleary of the National Association of Manufacturers said the ruling
would give union voting rights "to people with a much more casual attachment
to the employer." He said the decision would probably be tested in court in
future cases.


Some unions already were planning to act on the new rule. Judy Scott,
general counsel of the Service Employees International Union, said her group
would be able to boost its organizing in hospitals that often hire temporary
nurses on a long-term basis.


The board's move is "a great victory for workers," Scott said, because it
would no longer allow employees to artificially separate the two groups of
workers. "It doesn't open the floodgates," she said, "but it certainly will
open a window."


Challenges to the widespread use of temporary workers have also landed in
court in recent years. In one of the more celebrated cases, thousands of
current and former independent contractors and temporary workers sued
Microsoft Corp., essentially claiming that they deserved the same rights as
permanent employees. They won in a U.S. appeals court, and the U.S. Supreme
Court declined to review the case.


Under a 1990 ruling by the labor board, however, the only way temporary
employees could bargain with the leasing employer until now was if both the
temp agency and its client company agreed to let them do it. That seldom
happened, according to labor experts.


The ruling yesterday involved challenges to three employers – a marine
services company, a textile processor and a recycling firm – that the board
has been considering since 1996. In its decision, the board wrote that it
had reconsidered its 1990 ruling because of the "ongoing changes in the
American work force . . . including the increased use of companies that
specialize in supplying 'temporary' and 'contract' workers to augment the
work forces of traditional employers."


Many large technology companies also have come to rely on long-term temps,
but their work forces have been highly resistant to unions. Labor hopes to
use the new ruling to capture the attention of temporary workers in
companies and industries where it has had little success so far.


Some unions have begun trying to organize temporary workers in the
technology industry. The Washington Alliance of Technology Workers, a
Seattle-based union funded by the Communications Workers of America, has
been a major factor in the temps' suit against Microsoft.


David Larson, who has worked on and off as a Microsoft temp for six years,
said he is not sure the younger temp workers realize how important
unionizing 

More on China's labor strife

[Lisa Ian Murray]

full article http://www.nytimes.com/library/world/asia/083100china-econ.html

August 31, 200
Factory Closings in China Arouse Workers' Fury
By ELISABETH ROSENTHAL



 TIANJIN, China, Aug. 29 -- The brick-walled Meite Packaging factory
compound is nearly deserted now, its managers and machines hastily
transferred in the last couple of days to a special development zone 30
miles outside this industrial city.
Although the closing had long been planned, the sudden departure was
prompted by an unusual event here, Last week, desperate Chinese workers
expecting layoffs seized six foreign managers from Meite's American parent
company and held them hostage in the factory for 40 hours.

In the space of a decade, the Meite plant was transformed from a state-owned
company making pipes to a beverage packaging firm jointly owned by the
Chinese and an American corporation -- and, just recently, to a factory
wholly owned by the foreign partner, the Ball Corporation of Broomfield,
Colo.

And so this sweltering summer, middle-aged workers who not so many years ago
were promised cradle-to-grave security by the state factory found their
livelihoods suddenly threatened by a capitalist corporate restructuring and
felt they had no where to turn.

"Every day since the beginning of August they were there at the gate,
protesting and trying to block deliveries and people from going in," said
Liu Qiuling, a retiree who lives next to the factory and knows many who
worked there. "But the managers didn't meet with them. I think that's why
the workers were so mad."

Taking foreign businessmen hostage is rare in China, despite the thousands
of often fractious business partnerships between Chinese and foreign
companies. But the workers' frustrations that touched off the incident are
commonplace, leading to hundreds if not thousands of protests in recent
years.

Under government orders to become economically self-sufficient, many
formerly state-owned factories have tried to transform themselves, often
with the help of foreign partners.

The sink-or-swim strategy promoted by Prime Minister Zhu Rongji, who
oversees economic policy, has no doubt rescued thousands of companies from
bankruptcy and prepared them to compete in the global market. It has also
often enriched many former state factory officials, who are often offered
lucrative positions in the revamped business.

But it has been painful and confusing for China's tens of millions of
workers, echoing similar privatization efforts in the former Soviet bloc.
The workers are unfamiliar with the intricacies of buyouts and severance
packages, generally lack effective labor unions and have little outlet for
their complaints against new, often absentee, bosses.

"Workers' rights are not protected much when this happens," said Anita Chan,
a labor expert at Australian National University. "These are people who
worked for the state and thought they would work and then retire and enjoy
certain benefits: health care, pensions, things like that.

"But then one day it's just finished. And they are 40 and have many decades
of life ahead of them. What will they live on?"

RE: WTO hypocrisy

[Lisa Ian Murray]

 Another Business Week gem.  Business Week says that the U.S. and Europe
 had a gentleman's agreement not to attack each other's tax systems in
 the WTO.  In other words, corporations and states would be free to
 dismantle environmental laws but the tax breaks were to remain
 untouched.  I haven't heard anyone mentioned anything about this in the
 WTO discussions, but it smacks of gross hypocrisy.

So, as a prisoner's dilemma problem Europe defected first [probably because
they were fed up with what they felt was industrial espionage via Echelon
etc.--just a hunch]

Ian

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

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

Marx and Von Neumann's dreams come true

[Lisa Ian Murray]

"Rather it is the machine which possesses skill and strength in place of the
worker, is itself the virtuoso, with a soul of its own in the mechanical
laws acting through it..." Grundrisse p.693
[substitute evolutionary algorithms for soul and mechanical laws and
presto...substitute evolution or evolvability for objectified labor etc. on
p. 694 and you'll get a hint of where we're headed]



full article
http://www.nytimes.com/library/tech/yr/mo/biztech/articles/31robot.html

August 31, 2000


Aping Biology, Computer Guides Automated Evolution of a Robot
By KENNETH CHANG

For the first time, computer scientists have created a robot that designs
and builds other robots, almost entirely without human help.

In the short run, this advance could lead to a new industry of inexpensive
robots customized for specific tasks. In the long run -- decades at least --
robots may one day be truly regarded as "artificial life," able to reproduce
and evolve, building improved versions of themselves.

Such durable, adaptive robots, astronomers have suggested, could someday be
sent into space to explore the galaxy or search for other life.

But the quest to create artificial life also revives concerns that computer
scientists could eventually create a robotic species that would supplant
biological life, including humans.

"Some things we probably can do we shouldn't do," said Bill Joy, chief
scientist at Sun Microsystems, who wrote a recent article warning of the
power of emerging technologies. "Just like we can kill things with DDT, but
we shouldn't."

Dump all you want, we'll take more

[Lisa Ian Murray]

Monday August 28, 11:48 am Eastern Time
WTO judges say U.S. should change anti-dumping law


GENEVA, Aug 28 (Reuters) - World Trade Organisation (WTO) judges on Monday
ruled that the United States must change a law which for 84 years has
provided for civil and criminal penalties on foreign firms which dump goods
on its markets.

The ruling, by the WTO's quasi-judicial Appellate Body, confirmed an earlier
finding against the law by a dispute panel set up at the request of the
European Union and Japan.

There was no immediate comment from the United States, which had appealed
against the panel ruling, insisting that the 1916 law was consistent with
WTO agreements.

But in a statement issued in Brussels, the EU's executive Commission said it
welcomed ``this clear-cut condemnation'' of a law it said had been invoked
several times against companies in the 15-member Union ``and is still used
against them''.

U.S. officials had argued that the law -- formally called the Anti-Dumping
Act -- was effectively obsolete.

The law provided for civil and criminal penalties, including fines and
imprisonment, for foreign companies found by a U.S. trade court to be
selling goods in the United States below their market value to undermine
U.S. competitors.

The original WTO panel found that these provisions were in violation of
global trade agreements which only allow member countries to impose import
duties against goods being dumped in their markets.

The EU, whose case was handled in parallel with that of Japan, went to the
WTO in 1998 following a complaint from the European Confederation of Iron
and Steel Industries (EUROFER).

This followed citation of the 1916 law in a complaint over steel imports
from the EU and Japan to the U.S. administration by the Wheeling-Pittsburgh
Steel Corporation, a subsidiary of WHX Corp (NYSE:WHX - news) of New York.

Sovereignty arbitrage

[Lisa Ian Murray]

TheStandard.com
Fast, Cheap and Out of Control
By Stewart Taggart


Care to bank from a Pacific Island, store your online data in Scandinavia
and pay taxes in Barbados? A nicer mix of financial secrecy, data privacy
and low government levies would be hard to imagine.

If this multijurisdictional legerdemain appeals to you, James Bennett could
be your man. He's in the business of providing, as he calls them,
"sovereignty services." For a fee, he'll slice and dice your business or
personal affairs to put them in the best mix of global jurisdictions to keep
the authorities off your back.

"Anguilla has nice privacy laws and low taxes, but they've had some scams
over there," Bennett says. "Meanwhile, Scandinavian countries aren't
financial tax havens, but they do have very strong data privacy laws and
good courts. It depends on what you're after."

Bennett, who has been mixed up in everything from commercial rocketry as
president of American Rocket Company to nanotech research as director of the
Foresight Institute, founded Internet Transactions Transnational in 1997. He
expects his Virginia-based company to be up and running by the end of this
year. Initially the company will focus on arranging the affairs of wealthy
individuals, but Bennett plans to branch out later into business services,
using virtual private networks, proprietary authentication and arbitration
methods and a system of global access points.

"The nice thing about the Internet is that it allows you to link - cheaply -
a number of jurisdictions with different characteristics," he says. "We just
aim to lower the threshold cost."

Like others, Bennett is an entrepreneur looking to make an Internet buck off
of one of our oldest activities: regulatory arbitrage.

Simply put, regulatory arbitrage involves exploiting differing rules in
different jurisdictions - for a profit. Think back to when you were a kid.
If Mom wouldn't give you a dollar, you asked Dad for one. If they both said
no, you asked your aunts and uncles when they visited. The system works in
childhood so we use it throughout our lives.

full article at http://biz.yahoo.com/st/000813/17365.html

Re: Econophysics

[Lisa Ian Murray]

Can anyone out there please point me in the direction of a bio of Pareto
wherein his relationship to fascism is spelled out?

Thanx

Ian

RE: The IMF and the Presidential Candidates

[Lisa Ian Murray]

Wall Street Journal - September 30, 1999

FEDERAL RESERVE OFTEN TOSSES OUT IMF ADVICE ON ECONOMIC POLICY

By Michael M. Phillips
Staff Reporter Of The Wall Street Journal

WASHINGTON -- Which country has received the worst economic advice 
from the International Monetary Fund over the past few years? South 
Korea? Russia? Brazil?

Think again. It might be the U.S.

Just as they do for every member nation from Mozambique to Pakistan, 
IMF experts give the U.S. economic team an annual once-over. Every 
year IMF chief Michel Camdessus sits down to lunch in the Fed's 
executive dining room and coaches U.S. Federal Reserve Chairman Alan 
Greenspan on interest-rate policy. Time and again in recent years, 
the IMF has laid out an aggressive game plan -- the Fed should boost 
interest rates to stave off the threat of inflation.

Time and again, the Fed has nodded politely and, for the most part, 
left interest rates alone. And for the last few years, the U.S. 
economy has continued to hum along.

Diplomatic Terms

"I wouldn't say" IMF advice "has a heck of a lot of weight -- I 
wouldn't say it's ignored either," one U.S. official observes 
diplomatically.

A less diplomatic version of the play: Camdessus to Greenspan to trash can.

The annual ritual highlights one reason the IMF, the international 
financial fireman, is in such political trouble in Washington these 
days. The IMF's track record, particularly in scandal-ridden Russia, 
has made it an irresistible target for Republicans jostling for 
position in the 2000 presidential race. Right or wrong, critics think 
the IMF gives bad advice. And, they say, if it can't give sound 
advice to the U.S., what hope is there for the poor countries that 
count on the IMF's steady hand?

"The prescriptions they recommend are almost uniformly bad," says GOP 
presidential hopeful Steve Forbes, who plans to call for the IMF's 
abolition on Monday in Bretton Woods, N.H., where the institution was 
born in 1944. "They're like Typhoid Mary. Wherever they go, riots and 
depression seem to follow."

Certainly, that's hyperbole. To be fair, many economists think the 
IMF has prescribed harsh, but necessary medicine, particularly during 
the global financial crisis that started in 1997. And the IMF hasn't 
been alone in urging the Fed to raise rates in recent years. Many 
Wall Street economists also believed that tight labor markets would 
eventually push up wages and prices and force the Fed's hand. At 
times it has seemed as if Mr. Greenspan was in the minority in his 
belief that technology had made workers so productive that companies 
could raise wages without jacking up prices.

In fact, the IMF has hit its share of bull's-eyes. Like when Mr. 
Camdessus pushed the U.S. Treasury -- as he began doing even when it 
made the Clinton administration uncomfortable -- to get rid of the 
federal budget deficit. And the Heritage Foundation, a conservative 
think tank, just completed a study showing that the IMF's economic 
forecasts for the U.S. have largely been on target.

"The advice with respect to the U.S. has been remarkably close to 
what the policy has been," says Michael Mussa, the IMF's chief 
economist.

Opposite Tracks

Perhaps. But at key junctures over the past few years, the IMF has 
urged the Fed to move in one direction, and Mr. Greenspan, following 
his instincts, has headed in the other.

Take July 1997, just weeks after the Thai baht collapsed and sparked 
what was to balloon into a full-fledged global financial crisis. On 
July 28, the IMF board of directors, including representatives of 
Russia, China and Japan, gathered at their Washington headquarters to 
discuss the U.S. economic outlook. Many of the directors advocated "a 
further, moderate and pre-emptive tightening" of credit policy to 
forestall inflation, according to an official summary of the meeting

[full article in LBO archives 9/30/99]


 -Original Message-
 From: [EMAIL PROTECTED]
 [mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED]]On Behalf Of Michael Perelman
 Sent: Monday, August 28, 2000 6:15 PM
 To: [EMAIL PROTECTED]
 Subject: [PEN-L:923] The IMF and the Presidential Candidates
 
 
 Stanley Fisher of the IMF has warned that the proposed tax cuts are too
 inflationary.  Which presidential candidate will buckle under?
 
 Do any poor countries not the hypocrasy of the US pushing the weak to
 follow IMF dictates.
 
 --
 Michael Perelman
 Economics Department
 California State University
 Chico, CA 95929
 
 Tel. 530-898-5321
 E-Mail [EMAIL PROTECTED]
 

Overfishing versus Conservation

[Lisa Ian Murray]

[Could an Aussie enlighten us on the property rights design on this one?]


A Tale of Two Fisheries
As New Englanders overfish their way to ruin, Australians have profited by
becoming conservationists.
By JOHN TIERNEY


John Sorlien, a lean, sunburned fisherman in rubber overalls, was loading
his boat along the wharf at Point Judith, R.I., not far from the spot where
the "Tuna Capital of the World" sign stood three decades ago. Back then, you
could harpoon giant bluefins right outside the harbor. Today, you would have
a hard time finding one within 20 miles. Since the early 1970's, the tuna
have declined -- along with cod, swordfish, halibut and so many other
species in the ruined fisheries of the Northeast. Sorlien, like the other
fishermen in this harbor just west of Newport, is surviving thanks to New
England's great cash crop, lobsters, but he wonders how much longer they'll
be around. "Right now, my only incentive is to go out and kill as many fish
as I can," Sorlien said. "I have no incentive to conserve the fishery,
because any fish I leave is just going to be picked by the next guy."

Like the men who wiped out the buffaloes on the Great Plains in the 19th
century, Sorlien is a hunter-gatherer who has become too lethal for his
range. He is what's known in the business as a highliner -- a fisherman who
comes back with big hauls -- but every season the competition gets tougher.
When he got started 16 years ago, at the age of 22, he used a small boat and
set traps within three miles of shore. These days, he doesn't even bother
looking in those waters, which fishermen now refer to as "on the beach." He
has graduated to a 42-foot boat and often goes 70 miles out to sea for
lobsters, which can mean leaving the dock at midnight and not returning
until 10 the following night. Each year, he has had to go farther and haul
more traps just to stay even.


Solien was starting the season on this May morning by loading hundreds of
the traps onto his boat, the Cindy Diane. The four-foot-long steel cages,
each baited with a dangling skate fish, would spend the next eight months at
sea. Sorlien would be tending 800 of them in all. On a typical day, he would
haul 300, sometimes 400, up from the ocean floor to remove lobsters and
insert fresh bait. As he stacked one 40-pound trap after another on deck, it
was easy to see why he and so many other lobstermen have back problems. "My
chiropractor says he can always tell when it's lobster season," Sorlien
said.

The chiropractor is treating the consequence of what fishery scientists call
"effort creep." Over the years, as Sorlien got a bigger boat and gradually
doubled the number of his traps in the water, other lobstermen were doing
the same. It was an arms race with no winners and some definite losers: the
lobsters. Their life expectancy plummeted. "Lobsters used to live for 50 or
75 years," recalled Robert Smith, who has been lobstering at Point Judith
since 1948. "When I started, it was not unusual to get a 30-pound lobster.
It's been 20 years since I got one that was even 20 pounds." Last year, the
biggest one he caught was four pounds, and that was an anomaly. Most
lobsters don't even make it to two pounds. Biologists estimate that 90
percent of lobsters are caught within a year after they reach the legal
minimum size at about age 6.






"If you translate that to the human population," Sorlien said, "it means
that our industry is relying almost entirely on a bunch of 13-year-olds to
keep us going. That doesn't seem too healthy. If we get some kind of
environmental disruption that interferes with reproduction one year, we'll
end up with nothing to catch for a whole season. We just go from year to
year not knowing what to expect. I don't have a clue what kind of year this
will be for me. It's like we're backing up to the edge of a cliff
blindfolded, and we don't know if we're 50 feet away or have two wheels over
the edge."

full article at
http://www.nytimes.com/library/magazine/home/2827mag-fisheries.html

offshore bank of the week

[Lisa Ian Murray]

full article at:


http://www.independent.co.uk/news/Business/Inside_Business/2000-08/ruby27080
0.shtml


'Ruby' bank collapses

By Paul Lashmar


27 August 2000

Grenada's government has taken over the controversial "$26bn" First
International Bank of Grenada in a further twist to one of the most bizarre
episodes in the history of Caribbean offshore banking.

"The Grenadian authorities have finally stepped in, too late, and are
effectively liquidating the bank, after everybody's money has disapp-
eared," says David Marchant, editor of the Miami-based Offshore Alert
newsletter, which claimed in January last year that the bank was suspect.

Only three weeks ago the Grenadian government was still standing by the bank
after a little-known chartered accountant from Yorkshire gave it a clean
bill of health after an audit. He was called in by a British barrister
acting for the bank. Mr Marchant says the accountant's report "triggered
disbelief".

The First International Bank of Grenada was set up by an American, Van A
Brink, in 1998. Before moving to Grenada he lived in Oregon under the name
of Gilbert Allen Ziegler, until going bankrupt in 1994. He then bought a
Grenadian passport and changed his name.

The bank was licensed solely on the capital asset of a red ruby, said to be
valued at $20m (£13m). The bank offered early investors returns of up to 500
per cent, one of the highest rates ever offered by an offshore bank. The
bank's first annual report claimed it had increased its capital from
$110,000 to $14bn in the first year of operation. The bank's reported net
income last year of $26bn would have made it the most profitable company in
the world, overshadowing Microsoft's $4.5bn profit.

Mr Brink, in an interview with the Grenada Broadcasting Network at the time,
said his bank was "doing legitimate business" and "acting lawfully". He has
now left Grenada for Uganda, living in a house once owned by the dictator
Idi Amin.

Mr Marchant says there is no evidence that the ruby even existed, and the
claims of capital and profits of billions of dollars, "are now clearly
fictitious".

Every month, First International Bank of Grenada paid for hundreds of
Americans to fly to the island and wooed them at upmarket beach resorts with
lectures on the evils of US taxation. Prospective customers were assured
their money would be insured by the International Deposit Indemnity Corp, a
small private operation which was closed down on the island of Nevis, and
also in Dominica, but now operates in Grenada. Some $100m is said to have
been deposited by gullible clients.

The Caribbean has recently come under political pressure from the US and
Europe to clean up the offshore market. "Grenada is a recent entrant in the
offshore banking market," says Mr Marchant. "There are believed to have been
at least 14 banks, perhaps twice that, affiliated to the FIBG and if they
are closed the number of banks based on the island will be at least halved."

Grenada's Ministry of Finance said in a statement that the government took
over the operations last week, appointing former accountant general Garvey
Louison, effectively to act as receiver. Finance minister Anthony Boatswain
told the Grenada Broadcasting Network he knew the bank was experiencing a
"shortage of funds", but he did not say how it would affect investors.

Government spokeswoman Nancy McGuire said recently that it was investigating
the bank with the US Department of Justice and the FBI.

AG groupies getting nervous

[Lisa Ian Murray]

Word is they wondered why the activists who've bothered everyone else for
the past nine months left them off the social calendar :-)


[full article at NYT]

August 27, 2000
ECONOMIC VIEW
Economic View: Global Calm Prevails, but Is It Deceptive?

By RICHARD W. STEVENSON
JACKSON HOLE, Wyo. -- When central bankers and economists from around the
world gathered here two years ago for the annual conference sponsored by the
Federal Reserve Bank of Kansas City, the worldwide economic outlook was
bleak.
Russia's finances were melting down. Asia was in a tailspin. Latin America's
stability was at risk. Though no one had yet noticed, one of the world's
biggest hedge funds was imploding. Even the ever-resilient American economy
was under threat.

In many ways, the atmosphere here over the last several days at this year's
Fed conference on global economic integration could not have been more
different. The global financial crisis of a few years ago has given way to
general stability and renewed growth. With the partial exception of Japan,
the big industrial nations are prosperous. Most of the developing world is
rebounding. Financial markets, while still bearing the scars of 1998, are
healthy if not robust.

Yet there was an undercurrent of nervousness in much of the discussion here,
and not because of the forest fires burning just a few miles away from this
scenic resort. It seemed driven by a sense that while the last crisis had
passed without much permanent harm, another might well be on the way, and
that there was still no clear prescription for dealing with it.

Paul Krugman of Princeton University presented a paper to the conference
saying that economists were suffering from "persistent if low-grade anxiety"
about the world economy, and said that one of the byproducts of increased
economic integration among countries would be more frequent financial
crises.

Michael Mussa, director of research at the International Monetary Fund, felt
compelled to ask whether the world was about to lapse back into isolationism
and nationalism. And although his answer was no, the very fact that he
raised the question suggested that policy makers had been shaken by the
widespread protests in the last year over free trade and the threat it posed
to labor and environmental standards.

When Alan Greenspan, the Fed chairman, bemoaned the lack of progress in
breaking down the remaining trade barriers among nations, and warned that
support for globalization could erode the next time the economy hits a rough
patch.


It was certainly not news to anyone here, including Mr. Greenspan, that
globalization carries risks and costs as well as undeniable advantages. The
issue is what we have learned from the experience of recent years about how
to minimize the chances of a problem erupting or to deal with it effectively
once it has.

Mr. Krugman, who also writes an Op-Ed Page column for The New York Times,
told the meeting that economists have not even come to any consensus about
what caused the troubles that began in Asia in 1997, much less worked out a
new global financial architecture or crisis-response playbook.

Most economists and policy makers here agree that high levels of short-term
borrowings in foreign currencies by companies contributed greatly to the
travails in Asian nations like Thailand. When local currencies collapsed,
the repayment terms of these loans rapidly became prohibitive. Companies
went bankrupt and economies spiraled downward in defiance of the beneficial
effects that a cheaper currency is usually expected to have on exports. With
the economy deteriorating, capital took flight, particularly as foreign
lenders refused to roll over loans and took their money home.

Why not try to block this kind of death spiral in the future by restricting
capital flight? The policy makers and economists gathered here, by and large
an avidly free-market bunch, could not quite swallow their distaste for
limiting the mobility of money across borders, although Charles Goodhart of
the London School of Economics suggested that there might be an
ideologically acceptable compromise in using bank regulation, rather than
outright capital controls, as a brake on the rapid withdrawal of funds from
an economy.

In any case, the last crisis may not hold any lessons for the next crisis,
whatever it might be.

Re: Directed Polymers and the Distribution of Wealth

[Lisa Ian Murray]

JBR Jr. wrote: I would note
more generally that the new "econophysics" movement is
full of a lot of people who don't know any economics and
think they are "rebuilding economics from the ground up,"
when all they are doing is exhibiting their ignorance of the
economics literature.

=
Not to mention their total avoidance of the history of property and labor
law...

Ian

FW: Re: Directed Polymers and the Distribution of Wealth

[Lisa Ian Murray]

oops wrong list..no caffeine yet...

 -Original Message-
 From: Lisa  Ian Murray [mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED]] 
 Sent: Friday, August 25, 2000 8:42 AM
 To: [EMAIL PROTECTED]
 Subject: Re: Directed Polymers and the Distribution of Wealth
 
 
 JBR Jr. wrote: I would note
 more generally that the new "econophysics" movement is
 full of a lot of people who don't know any economics and
 think they are "rebuilding economics from the ground up,"
 when all they are doing is exhibiting their ignorance of the
 economics literature.  
 
 = 
 Not to mention their total avoidance of the history of property 
 and labor law...
 
 Ian

Name that Economist...

[Lisa Ian Murray]

Who wrote this: "Economics is surely the only discipline in which a scholar
can win the Nobel Prize for proving the existence of that which plainly does
not exist."


Ian

RE: Re: Name that Economist...

[Lisa Ian Murray]

F.M. Scherer; referring to General Equilibrium in "New Perspectives on
Economic Growth and Technological Innovation"

Is economics a discipline where math is consciously used for fictive
purposes [as in GE] or is it just because economists have worse luck at
finding/creating math that refers to real world events?  Einstein remarked
that insofar as we are certain with our math, it does not refer to the real
world and insofar as it does refer it must remain uncertain.  Is the math
and physics envy of economics the result of an existential anxiety with
regards to uncertainty and does this lead to the desire to make the world
conform to the mathematical model? And would that go part of the way in
explaining what many perceive as arrogance [like PK making fun of "Seattle
Man"]?

Ian


 Albert Hirshman said somethin like that, but not quite:  I
 paraphrased it this
 way in my Natural Instability book.

 In the sciences, joint Nobel Prizes are given to collaborators, where in
 economics, the prize is sometimes split between two persons who
 have worked to
 disprove the other's work (Hirschman 1981, p. 8).

RE: increasing profit rates

[Lisa Ian Murray]

If, in the US, then

 
 If you were to estimate what caused the increasing rate of profit during
 the last decade, how much credit would you give to
 
 weakening unions [8%]
 globalization[6%] 
 lower environmental/regulatory standards [4%]
 financial shenanigans (i.e., manipulating pensions) [30%]  
 new technology [15%]
 better management [37%]

please tell me I'm wrong,

Ian
 
 --
 Michael Perelman
 Economics Department
 California State University
 Chico, CA 95929
 
 Tel. 530-898-5321
 E-Mail [EMAIL PROTECTED]
 

RE: RE: RE: increasing profit rates

[Lisa Ian Murray]

  The rest,
 including technology, is guesswork, IMO.
 
 mbs
===

What would need to happen to get adequate metrics for the other factors?

Ian 

RE: Re: RE: increasing profit rates

[Lisa Ian Murray]

  lower environmental/regulatory standards [4%]


Max,

I guessed at this being above zero on the odds that firms litigate their way
to exemptions which have a cumulative effect of hollowing out enviro. regs.
despite their being formally on the books.

Ian

Energy Market update

[Lisa Ian Murray]

[full article http://www.iht.com   Meanwhile, Hurricane Debby heads toward
St. Croix where the largest oil refinery in the western hemisphere is
located...]

Paris, Wednesday, August 23, 2000
Energy Crisis? Fuel and Power Shortages Worry U.S.


LOS ANGELES - For the first time in a generation, the United States finds
itself edging toward a possible energy crisis.
Although experts are divided on whether such a crisis will occur, Americans
are worrying seriously about their energy bills and energy supplies. Not
since the Arab oil embargoes in the 1970s have analysts, businesses and
consumers found so much to fear nearly everywhere they look.

In California, the electricity grid has narrowly dodged rolling blackouts.
The typical electricity bill in parts of Southern California has doubled,
prompting state regulators Monday to start limiting consumer rates.
Residents of the Northeast face high heating oil prices this winter and
possible shortages. Gasoline prices continue to inflict pain at the pump as
crude oil hovers around $32 a barrel, the highest since the Gulf War.

The crisis mentality even pervades the once-placid natural gas market, in
which already historically high prices rose 7 percent Monday in the wake of
a pipeline explosion in New Mexico on Saturday that killed 11 campers and
shut down one of eight gas mains feeding California.

Meanwhile, a tropical storm designated Debby ostensibly threatens
one-quarter of the nation's gas supply that comes from Gulf of Mexico
platforms. Analysts fear that the United States is so short of both natural
gas and heating oil that it faces a possible energy crisis this winter if
temperatures dip below normal - with rationing and industrial shutdowns very
distinct possibilities.

''It hasn't been like this since the late 1970s,'' said Edward Kelly,
director of natural gas research at Cambridge Energy Research Associates in
Houston. ''You could see some industrial users facing some real tough
choices about shutting down. And it wouldn't even take a severe winter for
it to come to that.'' The pipeline accident and the tropical storm provide
fresh examples of how the country's growing energy needs make it more
vulnerable than at any time in decades to market factors such as weather or
civil disturbances in producing countries.

The energy situation might not yet feel like a crisis to U.S. consumers who
remember the gasoline-station lines of the 1970s, when oil embargoes helped
cause some U.S. businesses to cut back economic activity. So far, the jump
in many energy prices has been absorbed by manufacturers, who do not think
they have the pricing power in today's market to pass their costs along to
consumers, said Rajeev Dhawan, director of econometric forecasting at the
UCLA Anderson Forecast Project.

That - and the fact that energy accounts for a much smaller portion of
economic output than 25 years ago - is why inflation is up only slightly in
the past six months, even as crude oil and natural gas prices have each
doubled.

RE: RE: Re: RE: Taiwan: 10,000 telecom workers protest (fwd)

[Lisa Ian Murray]

I wrote:
 US telecom corps are big pushers for privatization of state run telecom
 networks and are currently prepping to take Mexico to the WTO over the
 issue; with Taiwan in the WTO they'd have their wedge to gobble up that
 market too.

 Ian
===
Little did I know they were doing so as I spoke...

Friday August 18, 12:56 pm Eastern Time
U.S. takes Mexico to WTO over telecoms row

GENEVA, Aug 18 (Reuters) - The United States has formally launched a World
Trade Organisation (WTO) case which it hopes will force Mexico to open up
its domestic telecommunications market, diplomats said on Friday.

They said the U.S. complaint, in the form of a request for consultations
with Mexico on the row, was filed with the WTO on Thursday. It says Mexico
is breaking its obligations under the WTO's agreement on trade in services.

Earlier this month, U.S. Trade Representative Charlene Barshefsky,
apparently responding to pressure from U.S. companies like ATT Corp
(NYSE:T - news) and WorldCom Inc (NasdaqNM:WCOM - news), accused Mexico of
allowing former state monopoly Telefonos de Mexico SA, or Telmex, to
manipulate the domestic market.

The U.S. companies say they are forced by Telmex to pay unfairly high fees
for connections to the Mexican network and that it is barring them access to
bandwidths needed for provision of Internet services.

Telmex has rejected these accusations.

Under WTO rules, Mexico has 10 days to respond to the U.S. request and 30
days to begin consultations. If no agreement is reached within 60 days, the
United States can then ask the WTO to set up a panel to look into its
complaint.

RE: Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Wage Determination: wasCrapulism: a side bet

[Lisa Ian Murray]

 Missed Carrol's remark first time around. What do you make of this
 bit from the Grundrisse?

 "Money is therefore not only an object, but is the object of greed.
 It is essentially auri sacra fames. Greed as such, as a particular
 form of the drive, i.e. as distinct from the craving for a particular
 kind of wealth, e.g. for clothes, weapons, jewels, women, wine etc.,
 is possible only when general wealth, wealth as such, has become
 individualized in a particular thing, i.e. as soon as money is
 posited in its third quality. Money is therefore not only the object
 but also the fountainhead of greed Hedonism in the abstract
 presupposes an object which possesses all pleasures in potentiality."

 Doug
===

Very Aristotelian.  Wouldn't it perhaps be more accurate to say that
hedonism presupposes an object which mediates the transition from potential
to actual pleasure[s] in systems of generalized commodity production? So
that in addition to money being "the face of the boss", money is the flip
side of [or perhaps competitor with] the law, which also mediates the
production of pleasure[s]?

Ian

What page #?

--The Hedonic Marx

[Lisa Ian Murray]

Carrol wrote: Ian's emendation seems reasonable, except that he
leaves out something important in Marx's formulation, hedonism IN THE
ABSTRACT.
The worker (and I include most college students under this category)
essentially wants the things money can buy, not money as self-expanding
value.
==
As the student desirous of the MBA or whathaveyou internalizes M-C-M' and
goes on to desire stock options etc. insofar as these expand the potential
for acquiring forms and expressions of pleasure, will he/she not have those
abstract potentialities constantly reconfigured [in so far as they are
dispositions a la Aristotle-modal logic and all that] so that they are,
contra Marx [p 222], always already historical and thus, along pomo lines,
the nature/history / breaks down? "Hedonism in the abstract presupposes all
pleasures in potentiality." Hence $$ is both within and against the law
[cokeheads on Wall Street being just one example]? "It is itself the
community and can tolerate none other standing above it."  Money desires to
assume a claim to naturalness by eradicating or constraining "the mania for
possessions [] possible without money."

Ian

RE: testing

[Lisa Ian Murray]

please ignore this message.
 Jim Devine [EMAIL PROTECTED]  http://bellarmine.lmu.edu/~JDevine 

Is this a koan?

Ian

Energy 2050

[Lisa Ian Murray]

[From the latest Bulletin of Atomic Scientists. Full essay at:
http://www.bullatomsci.org/issues/2000/ja00/ja00fetter.html There is also a
larger essay by the author which can be reached from the link below the
excerpt]


July/August 2000
Vol. 56, No. 4, pp. 28-38


By Steve Fetter


Although the evidence for human-induced global warming is still the subject
of intense debate, the majority of the world's climate researchers believe
that the process is well under way.

The earth is a natural greenhouse. It would not be habitable if natural
greenhouse gases--chiefly water vapor--did not trap heat in the atmosphere.
But industrialization and rapid population growth have significantly
increased the concentration of greenhouse gases--especially carbon dioxide,
which is released by fossil fuel burning and deforestation.

In response to the belief that increasing concentrations of greenhouse gases
might lead to harmful changes in climate, the Framework Convention on
Climate Change was negotiated in Rio de Janeiro in 1992. Its objective: to
achieve "stabilization of greenhouse gas concentrations in the atmosphere at
a level that would prevent dangerous anthropogenic interference with the
climate system."

Most studies of climate change focus on the global impact of a doubling of
carbon dioxide in the atmosphere from the preindustrial level of 275 parts
per million to 550 parts per million. According to the Intergovernmental
Panel on Climate Change, the scientific body established to advise parties
to the convention, a doubling would, over the long term, increase the
average global surface air temperature by 1.5-4.5 degrees Celsius (2.5-8
degrees Fahrenheit), with a best estimate of 2.5 degrees Celsius (4.5
degrees Fahrenheit).

Uncertainties about how cloud cover, ocean currents, and vegetation would
change as the atmosphere warms are at the root of the wide range in
estimates. But even "small" changes could have big consequences. An increase
of 1.5 degrees Celsius, for example, would be greater than any change in the
last 10,000 years; one of 4.5 degrees would rival the increase that occurred
at the end of the last ice age.

The European Union argues that the increase in average global temperature
should not be allowed to exceed 2 degrees Celsius (3.5 degrees Fahrenheit)
and that greenhouse gas concentrations should be stabilized at less than an
"equivalent doubling" of carbon dioxide. (Equivalent doubling reflects the
fact that other greenhouse gases--methane, nitrous oxide, and
hydrocarbons--must be factored in.) This would require reductions in
greenhouse emissions far beyond existing commitments or proposals.

In particular, it would require a fundamental transformation of the global
energy system during the next half century. Traditional fossil fuels--mainly
coal, oil, and natural gas--would have to be largely replaced by energy
sources that emit little or no carbon dioxide.

The great transformation

Energy experts predict that total global consumption of primary
energy--energy used for space heating, transportation, and generating
electricity--will double or triple over the next 50 years, from about 400
exajoules (EJ) per year in 1998 to 800-1,200 EJ per year in 2050.

(An exajoule is a billion billion joules. One exajoule is about equal to the
energy content of 30 million tons of coal, or the gasoline consumed by a
million automobiles during their lifetimes, or the annual energy consumption
of West Virginia or Portugal.)

Fossil fuel consumption would have to be limited to about 300 EJ per year in
2050 to permit stabilization of anthropogenic greenhouse gases at an
equivalent doubling. Carbon-free energy sources would then have to supply
the difference: 500-900 EJ per year.

That's daunting. In 1998, carbon-free sources supplied less than 60 EJ.
Carbon-free energy would need to grow tenfold over the next 50 years--from
15 percent of the total commercial supply to 60-75 percent in 2050.

Possibilities and
improbabilities
Only two sources of carbon-free energy--hydropower and nuclear fission--
currently produce a significant fraction of the world's energy supply, with
each accounting for about 27 EJ per year (7 percent of the current energy
supply), virtually all of it used to generate electricity. All other
carbon-free sources-- geothermal, wind, solar, and commercial biomass
combined--supplied only about 4 EJ (1 percent) in 1998.

Carbon-free energy production has been growing recently at about 2 percent
per year--much less than the 5 percent rate needed to stabilize carbon
dioxide levels at an equivalent doubling. Moreover, most of the recent
growth has been caused by an expansion of nuclear and hydro capacity, both
of which are expected to taper off in the coming decades.

Further expansion of hydropower is limited by geography and people's
tolerance for dams. Hydropower's contribution might increase to about 60 EJ
per year by 2050, but even that is doubtful.

Among the other carbon-free sources of 

RE: Taiwan: 10,000 telecom workers protest (fwd)

[Lisa Ian Murray]

Title: SCMP.com - Asia's leading English news channel - FullText



No wonder the US 
supports Taiwan entering the WTO separate from China.

Ian

RE: Re: RE: Taiwan: 10,000 telecom workers protest (fwd)

[Lisa Ian Murray]

US telecom corps are big pushers for privatization of state run telcom
networks and are currently prepping to take Mexico to the WTO over the
issue; with Taiwan in the WTO they'd have their wedge to gobble up that
market too.

Ian

 -Original Message-
 From: [EMAIL PROTECTED]
 [mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED]]On Behalf Of Stephen E Philion
 Sent: Friday, August 18, 2000 9:23 PM
 To: [EMAIL PROTECTED]
 Subject: [PEN-L:685] Re: RE: Taiwan: 10,000 telecom workers protest
 (fwd)


 Ian wrote:
 No wonder the US supports Taiwan entering the WTO separate from China.
 Ian


 Steve wrote:
 Sorry Ian, what's the connection your making here with the article?

 Steve


 Stephen Philion
 Lecturer/PhD Candidate
 Department of Sociology
 2424 Maile Way
 Social Sciences Bldg. # 247
 Honolulu, HI 96822

exporting energy efficiency strategies to China

[Lisa Ian Murray]

http://www.nrel.gov/international/china/energy_efficiency.html

http://www.pnl.gov/china/

ian

What Brad's been up to

[Lisa Ian Murray]

[so Brad, did you get on a plane and do a sample of those in 49th percentile
and below in the countries listed below or did you just read some stats?]


Emerging Markets Are Back. Thanks, IMF
By J. Bradford Delong
Fortune
August 14, 2000

Just two years ago, emerging economies were in heaps of trouble. The light
at the end of the financial-crisis tunnel appeared to be a train barreling
the other way. Doomsayers like Charles Wolf, an analyst at Rand, claimed
that East Asia was suffering the fallout from a "perverse" development
model. Economists blasted the International Monetary Fund for being both too
lenient and too Scrooge-like. The agency and its ilk could do nothing right.

Yet without major domestic economic reforms or an IMF overhaul, the troubled
regions have recovered more dramatically and swiftly than anyone predicted.
In the past year, real GDP has grown by 13% in South Korea, 12% in Malaysia,
7% in Thailand, and 8% in Mexico. Of the emerging-market economies most
badly hit by the financial crises of the 1990s, only Brazil's and
Indonesia's are disappointing, with real economic growth of 3%.

Instead of the usual finger pointing, economists are in the uncustomary
position of asking "What went right?" Here are some ideas:


Economic gains from globalization have been enormous. Even in an economy as
prosperous and as developed as South Korea's, real-wage levels are only a
third of those in the US. This means that the potential for further growth
and development is very large. East Asia's fundamentals--a well-educated
labor force, good transportation and communications infrastructure, low
taxes, and a relatively honest government--make it easier to attain First
World levels of productivity.

Market economies are much more resilient and flexible than pundits believe.
Policymakers' expectations are still shaped by the memory of the Great
Depression: Panic breaks out, demand falls, unemployment rises, confidence
collapses, the economy stagnates, and it doesn't recover. But Great
Depressions are rare events--that is why we remember them. A more likely
scenario: As long as a nation's economy maintains a banking system that
channels savings from households and investors to businesses, it will likely
bounce back nicely from a recession; the deeper the recession, the higher
the bounce. Emerging economies have strong and resilient enough market
systems to make prolonged depressions unlikely.

Global financial institutions did a much better job of handling the crises
than they're given credit for. The recipe for alleviating a financial crisis
is more than 100 years old: Show up with a lot of money to restore
confidence, lend freely to fundamentally sound organizations that need cash,
close down and liquidate failing businesses. This formula restores
confidence and channels money from savers and investors to businesses that
need capital.
This is exactly what the IMF, the World Bank, the US Treasury, and G-7 did,
pouring about $20 billion into Mexico and $60 billion into East Asia. The
loans all look as if they'll be repaid with interest now that these crises
are over.

Critics blast these agencies for making all sorts of mistakes: The US
Treasury for demanding early repayment of its loans to Mexico; the IMF for
closing down some but not all of Indonesia's insolvent banks; the IMF
(again) for demanding that East Asian economies showing budget surpluses
raise taxes, thus shrinking demand and deepening the recession.

These are valid criticisms, but they miss the point: The IMF and company did
a number of little things wrong, but they did the big, necessary things
right.

What's the surest sign these organizations acted wisely? After the
depression of 1929, US unemployment remained well above normal for 12 years.
After the 1982 Mexican crisis, it took six years before growth resumed.
Eleven years after its crisis, Japan - which hasn't restructured its banking
system - is still stagnating. But Mexico's and East Asia's bad recessionary
years were followed by the resumption of economic growth in just a year or
two.

J. Bradford Delong is a professor of economics at the University of
California at Berkeley and co-editor of the Journal of Economic
Perspectives.