Re: WB-corruption
In Johannesburg, we drink water tainted by WB-supported corruption, which included a false promise to fund the investigation and prosecution into Lesotho Highlands Water Project dam-related bribery. A couple of years ago, the Bank even gave a green light to more work by Acres Int'l and Lahmeyer -- two big construction companies since convicted of bribery -- and at least ten others (including the biggie, ABB) are up for prosecution in coming weeks and months. So instead of debarring, the Bank actively sabotaged the attempts to stop the bribery on Africa's largest single project. You can imagine how incredibly difficult it will be when the WB is faced with pressure to debar ABB, it's largest contractor. This is yet another reason for us all to support this excellent campaign: http://www.worldbankbboycott.org If any of you have money in your academic pension fund routed through TIAA-CREF, you'll be happy to know that last week, they officially rid themselves of the last WB bonds on their books. If that is your money they were investing in the Bank, you can proudly say that you no longer profit from global apartheid via the World Bank. > Does anybody know if the WB publishes the blacklisted corporations? The > list is only "...nearly 100 companies and individuals .. " Pathetically > short list, but I'd like to see it. > > Gene Coyle > > Eubulides wrote: > > >World Bank Focused on Fighting Corruption > >Graft and Bribery, Once Tolerated, Punished by Blacklisting
Re: WB-corruption
- Original Message - From: "Eugene Coyle" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> > Does anybody know if the WB publishes the blacklisted corporations? The > list is only "...nearly 100 companies and individuals .. " Pathetically > short list, but I'd like to see it. > > Gene Coyle === Surf's up: http://www1.worldbank.org/publicsector/anticorrupt/
Re: WB-corruption
Does anybody know if the WB publishes the blacklisted corporations? The list is only "...nearly 100 companies and individuals .. " Pathetically short list, but I'd like to see it. Gene Coyle Eubulides wrote: World Bank Focused on Fighting Corruption Graft and Bribery, Once Tolerated, Punished by Blacklisting By Jonathan Finer Washington Post Staff Writer Friday, July 4, 2003; Page E01 Once upon a time, World Bank financiers viewed their mission in narrow terms: Lend money to poor countries to try to make them richer. The governments that borrowed the money might let a bribe determine who was awarded a contract, and money intended for new highways or hospitals was sometimes siphoned off for other purposes, such as buying weapons. But overall, bank officials said, a little bit of corruption was tolerable -- often necessary -- to make economic development work. They don't say that anymore. Responding to evidence that corruption impedes the progress of failing economies, the World Bank in the late 1990s began cracking down on the corrupt practices of its borrowers. "The one thing I'm proudest of is our work on corruption," bank President James D. Wolfensohn said recently. Before he took office in 1995, Wolfensohn said, the bank considered corruption "an issue of politics," as opposed to one of economic development. Now, "it is now central to what we do." Under Wolfensohn, the bank began participating in international efforts to fight corruption. It developed internal controls to audit its projects. It compiled a blacklist of nearly 100 companies and individuals banned from receiving bank-funded contracts because of bribery, theft or for breaking other rules. Since 1996, the bank has started more than 600 anti-corruption programs in nearly 100 countries, according to a published statement. Some observers of the World Bank -- which reported that it lent $19.5 billion of dollars in the year ended June 30, 2002 -- say it should be doing more to discourage the governments and companies it works with from misusing its money, which comes mostly from the governments of rich countries. The bank has continued to fund projects in countries where corruption is said to be rampant, such as Bangladesh. Only one country, Kenya, has been prohibited from receiving bank loans because of its government's corrupt practices, and that was temporary. Despite the blacklist, the bank sometimes has been reluctant to ban companies that violate its rules. Because many of the world's most corrupt countries are also among the poorest, the bank's new stance can force difficult choices between continuing aid to a country that needs it and cutting it to discourage corruption. Poor countries are also notoriously poor record-keepers, making auditing more difficult. "No one says this is easy. It's a trade-off," said Peter Eigen, founder and president of Transparency International, a corruption watchdog group. "You can't just have a simplistic link between the level of corruption and the level of funding. Some of these countries would really struggle without the bank's loans." Eigen, who left the World Bank in 1991 when his pleas for a stronger anti-corruption stance were ignored, said he believes that under Wolfensohn the bank has made fighting corruption a priority. "It's very hard to change a large organization like the World Bank, and they're still working through this," Eigen said. "They were pretty bad, and allowed [corruption] to become a major problem. There's been a total change in policy, but to change from policy to total implementation is a long way to go. While I'd be hard pressed to say they've licked it, they are an enthusiastic and effective partner." The U.S. General Accounting Office evaluated the bank's anti-corruption efforts and gave a mixed review in a June report. While it found that the bank had taken "important steps" toward reducing internal corruption, the agency also recommended further action, including a more extensive audit of whether the bank's loans are used for their intended purposes. The bank "has a long way to go," said William Easterly, an economics professor at New York University. "If the client is important enough geostrategically or one they want to cultivate in the long run, they will continue lending to them, despite long histories of corruption. They continue forcing loans down that pipe." Corruption can take many forms, but it is usually defined as the misuse of public office or money for private gain. In the 1980s and early 1990s, most academic literature on economic development argued that corruption could help "grease the wheels" of a fledgling economy. But after several studies showed that corruption impedes development, many foreign aid programs began advocating "zero tolerance" toward corruption. The World Bank responded to the shifting conventional wisdom. Soon after Wolfensohn railed against the "cancer of corruption" at the bank's 1996 annual meeting in Hong Kong, the bank formed an invest
Re: WB-corruption
The WB fights retail corruption, not wholesale corruption. -- Michael Perelman Economics Department California State University Chico, CA 95929 Tel. 530-898-5321 E-Mail [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Re: WB/IMF reconstructing capitalism yet again-!!??
>>> [EMAIL PROTECTED] 08/23/01 01:13PM >>> > > If , in fact, LTCM was not allowed to take the fall when its bet failed , then it did not take a risk initially. Risk means that a chance is taken of a negative outcome. If when the negative outcome arises, the "risktaker" is not required to suffer the negative outcome, then , in fact, there was no risk taken in the first place. == Unless you have a document or other smoking gun that has LTCM saying "well if we fuck up AG will save us" the above is meaningless. ( CB: No, that's to positivistic. We make inferences because we won't have direct , sensual experience of all of capitalist reality. We have to use circumstantial evidence. AG and the finance caps. have connections and discussions we will not know about. Well, at least I won't know about. Maybe you have connections. I don't know. Anyway, we don't operate on the smoking gun evidentiary standard on this. It's structural like with saving Chrysler. If you are big enough , you are too big to fail. This might even be a definition of a monopoly/oligopoly. ((( LTCM made no money, others poneyed up cash because they were thinking of systemic risk not LTCM's risk. Bankers panic precisely because they're not omniscient, so to say that hindsight is 20-20 and then impute omniscience because of that, is fallacious. CB: Nothing in what I said attributes omniscience to the financial oligarchs. It might be closer to ominipotence. They are certainly approaching omnipotence as a limit within the financial sphere. ( > There is nothing teleological about that, unless you mean that LTCM's winning was predetermined. Yes, LTCM's win was predetermined. The Fed just didn't tell anybody ahead of time. > Nor is there any element of "this occurred after that so it occurred because of that " That is just either you joking or a misuse of reference to that fallacy. I am not saying that the bailout occurred after the risk taking, and therefore the bailout occurred because of the risk taking. You must be joking. The bailout occurred so that LTCM's owners would remain rich. === The bailout occurred because the bankers thought there would be contagion in the market. We obviously have an underdetermination problem here. ( CB: That obviousness is similar to the insurance of bailout I was referring to earlier. You can't actually see it , smell it, touch it or hear it. But we know it is there through thought, you know, concepts. ((( The bailout occurred BECAUSE the richest people have enough power to guarantee they stay rich. The side effect is that LTCM's owners never took a risk in the first place, because they were insured against the risk by the U.S. central bank authority. The fact that the "insurance" was not announced until after the failure doesn't matter in evaluating whether the risk was real or illusory. == The Fed organized a meeting, nothing more. I fail to see a conspiracy to hide omniscience or exploit the moral hazard problem in the below. ( CB: It's not a conspiracy. It's a system. Business week is not a neutral , objective, ... you know, they aren't going to expose the secrets of the capitalist system like Karl , or anything. Believe me. They got stuff going on behind closed doors. If you don't think so. Again, you got to be an anti-positivist. You can't only rely on what you can detect with your senses. You do rely on that , but then you have to make inferences concerning what you can't see. You know like Marx says, if empirical evidence and theoretical concepts were the same thing, there would be no need for science. BUSINESS WEEK ONLINE September 25, 1998 INSIDE THE LONG TERM CAPITAL MANAGEMENT BAILOUT By now, everyone knows that an historic meeting occurred on Sept. 23 at the New York Federal Reserve Bank to hammer out the bailout for Long Term Capital Management, a Greenwich (Conn.) hedge fund founded by former Salomon Inc. partner John Meriwether. The assembled 16 commercial and investment banks agreed to pony up $3.5 billion to keep LTCM in business. -clip- By Leah Nathans Spiro in New York Also: < http://www.house.gov/financialservices/101298le.htm > > This can be generalized. The bourgeoisie claim that they are rich because they take lots of risks. They mythologize that they seek risks. This is a big lie. They seek sure things and leave the risktaking to the suckers whom they fleece. They do everything they can to take all the risk out of their investments. P.T. Barnum was a bourgeois poet when he said "A sucker is born everyday." === Everybody tries to reduce risk, CB. ( CB: Did I say anybody doesn't try to reduce risk ? I'm just pointing out that the bourgeoisie are included in the category of "everybody". So, when they claim to be risk seekers, I know that's bs. ((( If it didn't exist [omniscience] nobody would be trying to pawn it off others. LTCM did not pa
Re: WB/IMF reconstructing capitalism yet again- !!??
- Original Message - From: "Charles Brown" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> > > CB: If ex post it didn't take the risk, then it didn't take the > risk. The ex ante risk was an illusion. > === > No. That's too teleological and smacks of post hoc ergo prompter hoc > > > > CB: The philosophical , Latininzed concepts you are using are not valid in analyzing this. Well we'll just have to disagree, then. > > If , in fact, LTCM was not allowed to take the fall when its bet failed , then it did not take a risk initially. Risk means that a chance is taken of a negative outcome. If when the negative outcome arises, the "risktaker" is not required to suffer the negative outcome, then , in fact, there was no risk taken in the first place. == Unless you have a document or other smoking gun that has LTCM saying "well if we fuck up AG will save us" the above is meaningless. LTCM made no money, others poneyed up cash because they were thinking of systemic risk not LTCM's risk. Bankers panic precisely because they're not omniscient, so to say that hindsight is 20-20 and then impute omniscience because of that, is fallacious. > There is nothing teleological about that, unless you mean that LTCM's winning was predetermined. Yes, LTCM's win was predetermined. The Fed just didn't tell anybody ahead of time. > Nor is there any element of "this occurred after that so it occurred because of that " That is just either you joking or a misuse of reference to that fallacy. I am not saying that the bailout occurred after the risk taking, and therefore the bailout occurred because of the risk taking. You must be joking. The bailout occurred so that LTCM's owners would remain rich. === The bailout occurred because the bankers thought there would be contagion in the market. We obviously have an underdetermination problem here. ((( The bailout occurred BECAUSE the richest people have enough power to guarantee they stay rich. The side effect is that LTCM's owners never took a risk in the first place, because they were insured against the risk by the U.S. central bank authority. The fact that the "insurance" was not announced until after the failure doesn't matter in evaluating whether the risk was real or illusory. == The Fed organized a meeting, nothing more. I fail to see a conspiracy to hide omniscience or exploit the moral hazard problem in the below. BUSINESS WEEK ONLINE September 25, 1998 INSIDE THE LONG TERM CAPITAL MANAGEMENT BAILOUT By now, everyone knows that an historic meeting occurred on Sept. 23 at the New York Federal Reserve Bank to hammer out the bailout for Long Term Capital Management, a Greenwich (Conn.) hedge fund founded by former Salomon Inc. partner John Meriwether. The assembled 16 commercial and investment banks agreed to pony up $3.5 billion to keep LTCM in business. But just now, details of the meeting are getting out. According to one participant, the meeting was held in a big, wood-paneled room with pictures of past Federal Reserve presidents on the wall. The guest list included Wall Street's most powerful leaders. In attendance: CS First Boston CEO Allen Wheat; CEO James Cayne, along with Warren Spector, from Bear Stearns; Morgan Stanley CEO Phillip Purcell; Lehman Brothers CEO Dick Fuld and Tom Russo, chief legal officer; Goldman Sachs CEO Jon Corzine and CFO John Thain. Travelers CEO, Sandy Weill was there in the morning, as well as the co-CEOs of its Salomon Smith Barney unit, Jamie Dimon and Deryck Maughan. President Herb Allison and CEO Dave Komansky from Merrill Lynch were there, too. Their former Merrill colleague, Edson Mitchell, representing Deutsche Bank, was on the phone. >From the other commercial banks, Dave Pflug attended from Chase and Tom Carlis from Barclays. Roberto Mendozo and CEO Sandy Warner were there from J.P. Morgan. All in all, about 50 people were in the room, according to participants. Leading the meeting: William McDonough, head of the New York Federal Reserve. Merrill's Allison also was a key leader in pushing the plan. And Goldman Sachs had been shepherding firms up to LTCM all weekend for due diligence. First, there was some discussion about the big exposures the various firms had because of LTCM's losses. "The conversation was very constructive, very policy-oriented. They talked about systemic risk issues," says one participant. The general feeling was that there was inherent value in LTCM's portfolio and that putting up money now would save the 16 firms large losses later. People committed money out of self-interest, not because the Fed was twisting their arm, says the participant. "In a sense, you are paying yourself," he says. "There was a sense of responsibility to the market." There was some resentment toward Meriwether, since as an experienced trader, he knew what he was getting into. Then the big moment of truth arrived. One by one, in alphabetical order, they went around the table and firms declared what amount of mon
Re: WB
> Date: Thu, 23 Aug 2001 15:34:57 +0300 > From: "Michael Keaney" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> > If Wolfensohn really is inflicting such "damage" on the World Bank, > should he not get some sort of PEN-L award in recognition? Nah. Since whatever excellent destruction of that institution's esprit de corps is accompanied by co-option of both Northern and some Southern NGOs and trade unions, and deepening the profoundly destructive relations the Bank enjoys with comprador finance ministers and other leaders in the South, the overall balance is net negative. Forgive me if you disagree, but I have to start marketing a book that will be out in a couple of weeks from Univ.ofCapeTown Press and Pluto Press: *Against Global Apartheid: South Africa meets the World Bank, IMF and International Finance,* which perhaps gives some fresh insights into Wolfy-as-huckster. Meantime, this verified-real memo is an organic expression of bad management. More, please! *** The following memo--in its entirety--was leaked to the public in early February. It comes from the WB's Middle East and North Africa staff. Feedback from MNA staff and managers The President has asked for staff views on the reasons for disconnect between external views on the Bank that he gets when he travels and the almost fatalistic malaise that prevails inside the Bank. This note reflects the consensus views that emerged from discussions among the managers and staff of the MNA region. We all share Mr. Wolfensohn's perception. All of us feel energized when we are in the field dealing with real problems for real clients in real time. But like him, virtually all of us are demoralized and frustrated when we return to HQ. There is a deep and growing cynicism and to some extent even a sense of resignation among staff. We are overburdened with growing, uncoordinated and un- or under-funded mandates that are given to us all the time. We are disheartened by the lack of any clear direction. And we are concerned that the management rhetoric of teamwork, culture, ethics, accountability are the mantra adopted by senior management but which we see practiced far too rarely. These are deep problems that require clear management and leadership to resolve. They do not need yet more studies and task forces. These are not issues of "culture" as seems to be suggested by some. It is a problem that can only be fixed with better management and leadership. The Bank has always had a larger degree of negativity and cynicism than what may be considered "normal" for a large organization. But we feel that the Bank has now reached a low point of staff morale not seen before. One can offer many reasons for this state of affairs. Our discussion highlighted five inter-related reasons: President's management and leadership style An overload of institutional mandates and a lack of clear direction Problems at senior management levels Inadequate resources for the work These issues are exacerbated by: The high degree of negativity among staff Of these five issues, we believe the first one is by far the most important and which the President must deal with personally. The President sets the tone and style through his personal conduct and we would not be optimistic about the other issues being dealt with without the President making a real effort to deal with this issue. But equally, Bank staff must make a greater effort to move beyond skepticism and looking at everything in a negative light. The specific points that emerged in the discussions under each of these issues are summarized below. President's management and leadership style The President has put forward many ideas, some with great zeal and vigor (CDF, global gateway, GDLN, inter-faith dialogue are some examples). These ideas, while perhaps individually worthwhile, have tended to diffuse the Bank's focus. Their importance in individual countries often unclear. The ideas have not been accompanied by adequate resources for implementation. Yet, coming from the President, these are treated as "mandates." These have contributed to the Bank losing its focus. There is no honest debate on the merits or priorities. We do not think that the President receives honest feedback from his senior managers. He does not welcome criticism or tolerate dissent, be it from the Board, or the managers or the Staff Association. Managers at all levels live under fear. Many have learnt that it serves them to agree with him. He is thus isolated from reality. The atmosphere of fear that now pervades the Bank is based on numerous day-to-day experiences of staff and managers in their interaction with Mr. Wolfensohn. He is quick to rebuke and humiliate managers, often in open meetings. Such instances generally become known quick
Re: Re: WB
- Original Message - From: "Jim Devine" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> To: <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> Sent: Wednesday, August 22, 2001 12:07 PM Subject: [PEN-L:16187] Re: WB > At 11:02 AM 08/22/2001 -0700, you wrote: > >To his critics, Wolfensohn has promoted favorites, ignoring bank > >regulations on staff advancement and prompting talentedsenior staff to > >leave. They also say he has caved in to New Age economic fads and > >interest groups, sacrificing the bank's intellectual integrity. > > New Age? does that mean crystals and incense, Theosophy and watered-down > Buddhism? Or does it refer to the "new economy" fad? > > Jim Devine [EMAIL PROTECTED] & http://bellarmine.lmu.edu/~JDevine = Maybe somebody gave him some acid while he was looking at the bank's books Ian
Re: Re: WB/IMF reconstructing capitalism yet again- !!??
- Original Message - From: "Charles Brown" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> To: <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> Sent: Wednesday, August 22, 2001 12:11 PM Subject: [PEN-L:16184] Re: WB/IMF reconstructing capitalism yet again- !!?? > > > >>> [EMAIL PROTECTED] 08/22/01 02:12PM >>> > > > (( > > > > CB: Since it was bailed out when it lost its bet, LTCM was taking > zero risk. It was the opposite of a high risk taker , yet it is > "rewarded" the most of all because it claims to take risk. > > > > ((( > === > Ex ante it took the risk. Ex post, the risk was diffused. > > ( > > CB: If ex post it didn't take the risk, then it didn't take the risk. The ex ante risk was an illusion. === No. That's too teleological and smacks of post hoc ergo prompter hoc We have to struggle to see ex ante and ex post as an ongoing time asymmetric dynamical system. Risk is a dynamical process. You're trying to "freeze" the dynamics. It's akin to, but not identical with, John Wheeler's delayed choice experiments in quantum theory. That we have some but not total, leeway in configuring the accounts of the past is not the same as saying the future is already "out there" and thus risk is an "illusion." Imagine the debt is repudiated. How far back in time would the IMF need to go to rewrite/clear the books? I would venture to guess to the very beginning of it's existence. We're talking about the erasure of information from an ongoing computational process. The larger question is why the credit/debt binary even exists for us. Look at those passages where M. is saying we need to get beyond money itself in order to be fully human. "But the mere trading of risks, *taken as a given*, is only part of the story, and in many respects the less interesting part. The possibility of shifting risks, of insurance in the broadest sense, permits individuals to engage in risky activities which they would not other wise undertake. I may well hesitate to erect a building out of my own resources if I have to stand the risk of its burning down; but I would build if the building can be insured against fire. The shifting of risks through the stock market permits an adventurous industrialist to engage in productive activities, even though he is individually unable to bear the accompanying risks of failure. Of course under these circumstances, some projects will be undertaken which will turn out to be mistakes; that is what is meant by risk. But at any moment society is faced with a set of possible new projects which are on the average profitable, though one cannot know for sure which particular projects will succeed and which will fail. If risks cannot be shifted, then very possibly none of the projects will be undertaken; if they can be, then each individual investor, by diversification, can be fairly sure of a positive outcome, and society will be better off by the increased production." [Kenneth Arrow] Hence the 2nd rule when capital and credit markets "miscompute" time: Panic first--Robin Hahnel. Ian
Re: WB
At 11:02 AM 08/22/2001 -0700, you wrote: >To his critics, Wolfensohn has promoted favorites, ignoring bank >regulations on staff advancement and prompting talentedsenior staff to >leave. They also say he has caved in to New Age economic fads and >interest groups, sacrificing the bank's intellectual integrity. New Age? does that mean crystals and incense, Theosophy and watered-down Buddhism? Or does it refer to the "new economy" fad? Jim Devine [EMAIL PROTECTED] & http://bellarmine.lmu.edu/~JDevine
Re: WB/IMF reconstructing capitalism yet again- !!??
>>> [EMAIL PROTECTED] 08/22/01 02:12PM >>> > (( > > CB: Since it was bailed out when it lost its bet, LTCM was taking zero risk. It was the opposite of a high risk taker , yet it is "rewarded" the most of all because it claims to take risk. > > ((( === Ex ante it took the risk. Ex post, the risk was diffused. ( CB: If ex post it didn't take the risk, then it didn't take the risk. The ex ante risk was an illusion. Socialism of risk is just an egalitarian diffusion of risk. The calculus of diffusion of risk is the politics of finance capital. It's the ex ante/ex post issue that's problematic if we accept that 'future' is as much an act of creation as discovery. Ian
Re: WB/IMF reconstructing capitalism yet again - !!??
> (( > > CB: Since it was bailed out when it lost its bet, LTCM was taking zero risk. It was the opposite of a high risk taker , yet it is "rewarded" the most of all because it claims to take risk. > > ((( === Ex ante it took the risk. Ex post, the risk was diffused. Socialism of risk is just an egalitarian diffusion of risk. The calculus of diffusion of risk is the politics of finance capital. It's the ex ante/ex post issue that's problematic if we accept that 'future' is as much an act of creation as discovery. Ian
Re: Re: WB/IMF reconstructing capitalism yet again - !!??
- Original Message - From: "Steve Diamond" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> To: <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> > Ian, > > Really, you can't back down now... you were the one who introduced the piece > by referring to "reconstruction", after all. = What? No playful provacativeness in the headers anymore? :-) Your beef is with him not me. Just because I post a piece doesn't mean I agree with it. Like when I post Alan Greenspan or something from the NYT. [EMAIL PROTECTED] Bill Maurer Position Associate Professor , Dept. of Anthropology Degrees Ph.D. Stanford University M.A. Stanford University Distinctions Distinguished Assistant Professor Award for Research, 1998; Teaching Assistant Development Award, 1999; Distinguished Assistant Professor Award for Teaching, 2000 Keywords anthropology of law; globalization; Caribbean; anthropology of money and finance; gender and kinship Research Summary My research concerns the power of law and legal institutions to shape cultural realities. My first project investigated how British Virgin Islanders craft notions of identity in terms of legal categories of belonging and citizenship, and use those notions of identity to imagine intractable differences between themselves and immigrants from other Caribbean places. The British Virgin Islands, like many other small states, is a tax haven, and as I became interested in the cultural ramifications of offshore finance, I developed a second research project. In this work, supported by a grant from the National Science Foundation (SBR-9818258), I bring anthropological analyses of cultural forms to bear on the world of finance -- an area often assumed to be bereft of cultural content. The project investigates alternatives to financial globalization that seek to rewrite the cultural scripts of finance from the ground up. These include alternative currency movements in the US, digital cash or e-cash efforts of banking and computer companies, and Islamic banking. I am interested in what happens when people seek to redefine (or undermine) some of the taken-for-granted cultural terms of finance -- terms like "money," "property," "capital," "interest" and so forth -- that are our "native" categories and that we rarely subject to cultural analysis.
Re: WB/IMF reconstructing capitalism yet again - !!??
Steve Diamond wrote: > > Re: > > Forget Locke? From Proprietor to Risk-Bearer in New Logics of Finance > > Bill Maurer.. > > [snip] Who is Bill Maurer? In what post from whom was he introduced? What is this post about? Carrol
Re: Re: Re: WB/IMF reconstructing capitalism yet again - !!??
> At 21/08/01 21:41 -0700, Ian wrote: > > >He does go into how one > >material medium's relation to time--paper--affected the bundling of > >asset streams and how computer programs for bundling, unbundling and > >rebundling in the quest for the dream of liquidity and market clearing > >is effecting a shift in the meaning of property rights that we've > >gotten from the legal realists through Berle and Means. > > > That was broadly how I read the article. More sophisticated electronic ways > of doing financial business highlight the fact that paper contracts are > symbols too. This leads to greater complexity about what can actually be > done in the transfer of assets, and what an asset, or a bit of property, is. > > I see this article as evidence of developing knowledge by the > intelligenstia who manage and administer finance capital, while the units > of finance capital become ever larger, and ultimately more abstract in > representing vast masses of dead labour. > > It is a symptom of how the capitalist system is teetering on the edge of > its breakdown when its servants no longer find it rational, and yet it is > dependent on them. == Well it seems to be a very real issue of how to manage the computational complexities enabled by mathematics, the fact that math can model and prescribe all kinds of economic time and whether they are a harbinger of an improvement in forcasting robust asset streams or are creating problems of information overload for the received view of property rights. The essay goes into a paper by law professor Charles Mooney published in the Cardozo Law Review in 1990 [I perused the Cardozo website and noticed a Steve Diamond had written a piece on Autopoiesis in America, that you Steve, 'fess up?] Paper created legal problems and efficiency problems in back in the late 60's and early '70's and the then head of the SEC came right out and said electronics was going to augur a big change in the meaning of property akin to what happened late in the 19th century under people like Justice Holmes and others.As Maurer states "the chains of fiduciary obligations have the potential to come undone and cause, what the literature terms 'systemic risk'; the possibility that the whole system, based on future obligations to settle trades promised during the course of the trading day, will collapse." Granted, this has always been a possibility under capitalism, but perhaps what we're seeing is the need to insure the potentially disastrous consequences of the computability of an enormous spectrum of risks and volatility in asset trading taking precedence over property rights. Mooney puts it thus: "Modern securities markets have moved so far beyond the movement of pieces of negotiable paper that the property law construct is inadequate and unworkable. Whatever rules might emerge, there is a need to push the legal regime 'beyond negotiability' and, perhaps, 'beyond property.' > Everyone in a market place bears risk, and any attempt to redefine the > right to make profits from others labour on the grounds that entrepreneurs > have a monopoly of risk, should be firmly resisted. Workers take > considerable risk, with much less certainty, in living in a certain > location and acquiring certain skills with the risk of prolonged > unemployment always over their heads. === Well risk is like the game of musical chairs rather than a casino; you want the other guy to have a monopoly on it. Capital mobility is the opposite of capital commitment. Finance capital has attention deficit disorder. It doesn't want to commit to anything but the next sure thing which, of course, there is none. So it bundles and rebundles asset/risk porfolios in some abstract space-time of algorithms, leveraging [credit inflation] as fast as their software allows them to. LTCM showed what happens at the limits of current computational competence. > > However I do sense that risk management is the Achilles heel of capitalism. > The more they try and manage risk (for example in the important and growing > area of health management) the more they have to explore socially stable > ways of organising the economic activity, including the risks, which can > now be very expensive. > Time to watch the health of insurance firms, reinsurance firms and securities regulators "With leveraging there will always exist a remote possibility of a chain reaction, a cascading sequence of defaults that will culminate in financial implosion if it proceeds unchecked. Only a modern central bank, with its unlimited power to create money, can with a high probability thwart such a process before it becomes destructive. Hence, central banks will of necessity be drawn into becoming lenders of last resort. But implicit in the existence of such a role is that there will be some allocation between the public and private sectors of the burden of risk of extreme outcomes." [Alan Greenspan] Spinoza and Marx
Re: WB/IMF reconstructing capitalism yet again - !!??
Ian, Really, you can't back down now... you were the one who introduced the piece by referring to "reconstruction", after all. In any case, let's look at what Maurer himself says: since he thinks finance "discourse" is not understandable on its own terms - "Securitization, thus, is not obvious or self-evident" - he is here to tell us what is really going on - and THAT is the fundamental conceit behind all of deconstructionism, postmodernism, etc. That somehow there really is something behind the wizard's curtain. Well, as someone who spent a little time actually working in and around securities, I can tell you that "securitization" IS obvious and self-evident to anyone who spends the time acquiring the skillset to understand it - just like any other field of knowledge. Nothing controversial in that, I should hope. The problem here is that Maurer clearly has not taken even the time that a non-securities professional needs to take to speak intelligently about the very real problems associated with fictitious capital. And that leads to his confusion of the term securitization with the completely different concept of a security interest. Of course, there is the possibility that he is purposely trying to make this all sound far more magical and unapproachable than it really isbut I really don't want to go down that road. Stephen F. Diamond School of Law Santa Clara University [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Re: Re: WB/IMF reconstructing capitalism yet again - !!??
At 21/08/01 21:41 -0700, Ian wrote: >He does go into how one >material medium's relation to time--paper--affected the bundling of >asset streams and how computer programs for bundling, unbundling and >rebundling in the quest for the dream of liquidity and market clearing >is effecting a shift in the meaning of property rights that we've >gotten from the legal realists through Berle and Means. That was broadly how I read the article. More sophisticated electronic ways of doing financial business highlight the fact that paper contracts are symbols too. This leads to greater complexity about what can actually be done in the transfer of assets, and what an asset, or a bit of property, is. I see this article as evidence of developing knowledge by the intelligenstia who manage and administer finance capital, while the units of finance capital become ever larger, and ultimately more abstract in representing vast masses of dead labour. It is a symptom of how the capitalist system is teetering on the edge of its breakdown when its servants no longer find it rational, and yet it is dependent on them. But the title of the article: >Forget Locke? From Proprietor to Risk-Bearer in New Logics of Finance is problematic. Everyone in a market place bears risk, and any attempt to redefine the right to make profits from others labour on the grounds that entrepreneurs have a monopoly of risk, should be firmly resisted. Workers take considerable risk, with much less certainty, in living in a certain location and acquiring certain skills with the risk of prolonged unemployment always over their heads. However I do sense that risk management is the Achilles heel of capitalism. The more they try and manage risk (for example in the important and growing area of health management) the more they have to explore socially stable ways of organising the economic activity, including the risks, which can now be very expensive. After all capitalism started with little communistic cooperatives of merchants and miners. The story can come round full circle but in the form of a spiral, at a higher level of development of the means of production. The managerial intelligentsia, including those working in finance, may have crucial contributions to make in the social management of production and risk. Chris Burford
Re: WB/IMF reconstructing capitalism yet again - !!??
- Original Message - From: "Steve Diamond" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> To: <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> Sent: Tuesday, August 21, 2001 9:28 PM Subject: [PEN-L:16149] WB/IMF reconstructing capitalism yet again - !!?? > Re: > > Forget Locke? From Proprietor to Risk-Bearer in New Logics of Finance > > Bill Maurer.. > > God forbid that postmodernism should try to take on global finance. I don't > know who this guy is, but he doesn't know a lot about the global capital > markets. For example, "securitization" and "secured interests" are NOT the > same thing.What the World Bank in emerging market countries is trying to > do is what every modern capitalist economy has done for decades or more - > allow creditors a claim on the assets underlying a financial instrument. > Securitization on the other hand is the creation of a new financial > instrument based on the bundling together of underlying income streams from > another set of assets - if you want to understand, for example, the collapse > of Superior Bank in Chicago, the Pritzker subprime lender, you need to > understand its ability to bundle together mortgages and sell them into the > capital markets - that is securitization. It is a fascinating high wire act > underway in modern capitalism. > > But I don't think "deconstruction" will tell us very much about it. = The article does nothing on deconstruction. He does go into how one material medium's relation to time--paper--affected the bundling of asset streams and how computer programs for bundling, unbundling and rebundling in the quest for the dream of liquidity and market clearing is effecting a shift in the meaning of property rights that we've gotten from the legal realists through Berle and Means. No Derrida, no Foucault, no Lyotard, no jargon either. Ian
Fwd: Fw: URGENT ACTION ALERT - RE. WB/IMF PROTESTS
All, Express your opposition to the authorities' attempt to weaken the anti-IMF/WB protests in DC. Seth Sandronksy > URGENT ACTION ALERT > > Washington DC Mayor Anthony Williams >email: [EMAIL PROTECTED] >tel: +1.202.727.1620 >fax: +1.202.727.0505 > >Washington, DC Police Chief Ramsey >tel: +1.202.727.4218 >fax: +1.202.727.9524 > >Deputy Police Chief Gainer >tel: +1.202.727.4363 >fax: +1.202.727.9729 > >Tell these officials: > >* The April 15th raid on the Mobilization for Global Jusitice >was unjustified and an outrage. > >* Make immediate arrangements to allow these people to >retrieve ALL of their private property, (props, equipment, personal >belongings, etc...). > >* People have the right to gather and prepare for >assemblies and protests. > >THANK YOU!! __ Get Your Private, Free Email at http://www.hotmail.com
