Re: [PEN-L] Job listing

[Steve Cohn]

The listed position is at the assistant level and will probably turnout
that way- but  the hybrid position (economics-business) and the newness
of the Knox business minor (a couple of years) leave things fluid.  I
think the job might be an attractive one for someone in mid-career
interested in defining alternatives to standard business education (and
this could include "heterodox MBA's with decent backgrounds in
economics.)  As with most things,  the  terrain is contested. 
Steve

Gassler Robert wrote:

  Sounds great, but can you hire at the senior level?

  
  
Knox College is doing a tenure track search for a combined position in
economics and business.  The position is listed in JOE.  Knox has a
fairly unique business studies oriented minor that has a strong
"reflective" component.  Students are expected to think critically about
philosophical and social questions surrounding business as well as
master conventional business skills (like accounting).  The economics
department and business program is methodologically diverse.  Folks
interested in applying should submit their applications within 10 days.
It would be great to have some Pen-L oriented folks apply.  For further
info, contact Steve Cohn ([EMAIL PROTECTED] ).






  
  



  
  ---
[This E-mail scanned for viruses by Declude Virus]

  

[PEN-L] after Greenspan?

[Eubulides]

Financial World Focuses on Next Fed Chief

By MARTIN CRUTSINGER
The Associated Press
Sunday, November 28, 2004; 11:28 PM

WASHINGTON - While President Bush is busy putting together his Cabinet for
a second term, the financial world's attention is on a job vacancy 14
months away: Who will succeed Federal Reserve Chairman Alan Greenspan?

It might seem daunting to follow a legend like Greenspan, now in his 18th
year in the job. Yet there seem to be plenty of people who would like to
do it.

The list of candidates being talked about in Washington and on Wall Street
is half what it was before the Nov. 2 election, when prominent Democrats
such as former Treasury Secretary Robert Rubin were considered hot
prospects had Massachusetts Sen. John Kerry won the White House.

With Bush's re-election, the focus is on Republicans. Candidates include
Harvard economics professor Martin Feldstein, chairman of the Council of
Economic Advisers during the Reagan administration; Columbia University
professor Glenn Hubbard, who was Bush's first CEA chairman; Treasury
Undersecretary John Taylor; and Federal Reserve board member Ben Bernanke.

Handicappers generally put Feldstein, 65, at the top of the list, in part
because he is the best known. He has had a distinguished teaching career
at Harvard and served from 1982 to 1984 as chairman of the CEA, a post
that Greenspan used as a stepping stone to the Fed job.

Some believe Hubbard, at 46 the youngest on the list, might have an inside
track because of his strong support for Bush's tax cuts. Also, doubts
linger among some conservative GOP supply-siders about Feldstein, given
his reputation as a deficit hawk.

Taylor, 57, gained prominence as a monetary expert at Stanford University
before coming to Treasury. He developed the "Taylor rule," a formula
designed to aid the Fed in setting interest rates. He has had trouble
making an impact on administration economic policy in his current job.

Bernanke, 50, is viewed as the dark horse. Little known outside academic
circles before coming to the Fed board in August 2002, Bernanke has
impressed veteran Fed watchers who have started to read his speeches
carefully for insights into Fed thinking on a range of economic issues.

Many believe that Greenspan will play a large role in choosing his
successor.

"I think that Greenspan will have an unusually large influence on the
selection process given his close relationship with Vice President Cheney,
going all the way back to the Ford administration," said David Jones,
author of four books on the Greenspan Fed.

Greenspan was President Ford's CEA chairman and Dick Cheney was Ford's
White House chief of staff.

Many see Greenspan's hand in appointments Bush has made to the Fed board,
including Bernanke and Donald Kohn, a longtime Fed staff member on
monetary policy.

"Greenspan has done a great job and weathered a lot of storms during his
tenure at the Fed with only two recessions and both of them relatively
mild," said David Wyss, chief economist at Standard & Poor's.

Greenspan became Fed chairman on Aug. 11, 1987, when he was picked by
President Reagan to succeed Paul Volcker.

In June Greenspan started his fifth four-year term as chairman. He has let
it be known that he does not intend to serve past the end of his current
term and separate 14-year term on the Fed board, which ends Jan. 31, 2006.

Greenspan was by far the front runner in 1987 and was virtually the only
name being mentioned on Wall Street. That several names are circulating
this time does not prove anything because it still is early in the
process, analysts said.

"I am not at all surprised that we are still talking about four or five
possible replacements," said Lyle Gramley, a former Fed board member. "It
is a little early to have a single candidate, given all the other things
the president has to worry about right now."

Many analysts believe it could be this time next year before the White
House announces a nominee as Greenspan's successor. The Senate must
confirm the nomination.

Analysts tend to dismiss the idea that a successor might find succeeding
Greenspan a daunting task.

"People said how tough it was going to be for Greenspan to succeed
Volcker, but within a few months he had settled in and pretty soon he was
his own legend," said Ted Truman, a longtime director of international
affairs at the Fed who is now at the Institute for International
Economics.

Re: [PEN-L] Job listing

[Gassler Robert]

Sounds great, but can you hire at the senior level?

>Knox College is doing a tenure track search for a combined position in
>economics and business.  The position is listed in JOE.  Knox has a
>fairly unique business studies oriented minor that has a strong
>"reflective" component.  Students are expected to think critically about
>philosophical and social questions surrounding business as well as
>master conventional business skills (like accounting).  The economics
>department and business program is methodologically diverse.  Folks
>interested in applying should submit their applications within 10 days.
>It would be great to have some Pen-L oriented folks apply.  For further
>info, contact Steve Cohn ([EMAIL PROTECTED] ).
>
>
>
>
>>
>>
>
>

[PEN-L] Job listing

[Steve Cohn]

Knox College
is doing a tenure track search for a combined position in economics and
business.  The position is listed in JOE.  Knox has a fairly unique business studies oriented
minor that has a strong "reflective" component.  Students
are expected to think critically
about philosophical and social questions surrounding business as well
as master
conventional business skills (like accounting).
The economics department and business program is
methodologically
diverse.  Folks interested in applying
should submit their applications within 10 days.  It
would be great to have some Pen-L oriented
folks apply.  For further info, contact Steve
Cohn ([EMAIL PROTECTED]).




  
  

[PEN-L] Feds want to track university students

[Eubulides]

[somewhere/when in hyperspace, J. Edgar Hoover is drooling with envy]


http://www.nytimes.com/2004/11/29/education/29college.html
November 29, 2004
Federal Plan to Keep Data on Students Worries Some
By DIANA JEAN SCHEMO

WASHINGTON, Nov. 28 - A proposal by the federal government to create a
vast new database of enrollment records on all college and university
students is raising concerns that the move will erode the privacy rights
of students.

Until now, universities have provided individual student information to
the federal government only in connection with federally financed student
aid. Otherwise, colleges and universities submit information about overall
enrollment, graduation, prices and financial aid without identifying
particular students.

For the first time, however, colleges and universities would have to give
the government data on all students individually, whether or not they
received financial assistance, with their Social Security numbers.

The bid arises from efforts in Congress and elsewhere to extend the
growing emphasis on school accountability in elementary and high schools
to postsecondary education. Supporters say that government oversight of
individual student data will make it easier for taxpayers and policy
makers to judge the quality of colleges and universities through more
reliable statistics on graduation, transfers and retention.

The change would also allow federal officials to track individual students
as they journey through the higher education system. In recent years,
increasing numbers of students have been attending more than one
university, dropping out or taking longer than the traditional four years
to graduate. Current reporting practices cannot capture such trends; a
mobile student is recorded as a new student at each institution.

Under the proposal, the National Center for Education Statistics at the
Department of Education would receive, analyze and guard the data. In
making its case for the change, the center points to a history of working
with student information and says it has never been forced to share it
with law enforcement or other agencies. The proposal, first reported in
the current issue of The Chronicle of Higher Education, is supported by
the American Council on Education, the American Association of State
Colleges and Universities, and the State Higher Education Executive
Officers Association, but opposed by other education organizations, like
the National Association of Independent Colleges and Universities.

A department overview of the proposal insisted that data would not be
shared with other agencies and that outsiders could not gain access. By
law, the summary says in capitals, "Information about individuals may
NEVER leave N.C.E.S.," the National Center for Education Statistics.

But Jasmine L. Harris, legislative director at the United States Student
Association, an advocacy group for students, said that since the Sept. 11
attacks, the balance between privacy and the public interest had been
shifting. "We're in a different time now, a very different climate," Ms.
Harris said. "There's the huge possibility that the database could be
misused, and there are no protections for student privacy."

She pointed to the National Directory of New Hires, a register of people
who re-enter the workforce, which began as an effort to track job trends.
Since its creation, however, the database has also been used to track
parents who fail to pay child support or who owe the federal government
non-tax debt, she said. "The door is wide open," Ms. Harris said.

Luke Swarthout, higher education associate at the State PIRG for Higher
Education, said his civic group, which has always monitored consumer
issues and privacy rights, was of two minds about the plan. Improving the
available data was important for Congress, policymakers and the public,
who finance higher education through government loans and grants, Mr.
Swarthout said. "But any time you're compiling a list of millions and
millions of students, as they go through college, move and have Social
Security numbers, we get concerns from a privacy perspective."

For colleges to hand over information on individual students, Congress
would have to create an exemption to existing federal privacy laws, said
Sarah Flanagan, vice president for government relations at the National
Association of Independent Colleges and Universities.

"The concept that you enter a federal registry by the act of enrolling in
a college in this country is frightening to us," Ms. Flanagan said.

She said that officials from some states had already announced they would
like to match the data against prison records. In states where such data
is already collected from public universities, she added, there has been
pressure to check the school data on students against housing records,
driver's licenses and employment records.

[PEN-L] From Black Reconstruction to Operation Dixie

[Yoshie Furuhashi]

"From Black Reconstruction to Operation Dixie":

--
Yoshie
* Critical Montages: 
* Greens for Nader: 
* Bring Them Home Now! 
* OSU-GESO: 
* Calendars of Events in Columbus:
,
, & 
* Student International Forum: 
* Committee for Justice in Palestine: 
* Al-Awda-Ohio: 
* Solidarity: 

[PEN-L] decline of the dollar

[Michael Perelman]

I suspect that we all [Doug?] agree that the international financial system is
stressed by the massive US deficits.  The solution (?) a weaker dollar also 
presents
serious risks.

I don't know where the stresses will eventually show up -- probably in a 
country that
has so far eluded our attention in a way that nobody expects.

The question would be about the resilliance of the entire system -- at least 
that is
my impression.  I would be especially interested to hear from those of you 
outside of
the Anglo-Saxon world.
 --
Michael Perelman
Economics Department
California State University
Chico, CA 95929

Tel. 530-898-5321
E-Mail michael at ecst.csuchico.edu

[PEN-L] URPE at Brecht: Book Party: "Other People's Money" Wed. Dec. 1

[Ruth Indeck]

   BOOK PARTY AND DISCUSSION: 
 "Other People's Money: the Corporate Mugging of America"
  by Nomi Prins
  
  Refreshments will be served.
   
 presented by New York Union for Radical Political  Economics  and
the   Brecht   Forum

 Wednesday December 1, 7:30 pm
  
  at the Brecht Forum,  122 West 27th St., 10th
 floor(between 6th   and   7th)
  212-242-4201
   
  Sliding Scale: $6/$8/$10
  

 Other People’s Money: The Corporate Mugging of America (The New
 Press,  2004) is a devastating exposé into the much publicized corporate
 malfeasance  of recent years. Prins examines the first years of the Bush
administration  during which some of America’s most prominent corporate executives
cashed  out billions of dollars in stock options before driving their companies
to  ruin through fraud and bankruptcy. In their wake they left a tangle of
lost  jobs, depleted pensions, and shattered lives. With an insider’s eye,
Prins  uncovers the old-boy networks and hot-money flows between Wall Street,
Corporate  America, and Capitol Hill, and exposes the whitewash reforms brought
in to  control them.
 
 SPEAKERS:
 

   Nomi Prins has held posts as managing director at Goldman Sachs,
seniormanaging director at Bear Stearns, as well as senior positions at
Lehman   Brothers and the Chase Manhattan Bank. She has written for Newsday,
Fortune,   The Guardian, Left Business Observer, and La Vanguardia.
She is  a senior fellow with the public policy center Demos.
  

  
  ***
   
  The Union for Radical Political Economics is   an interdisciplinary
association   devoted to the study, development  and  application of radical
political  economic analysis to social problems. Opinions expressed in
 talks  by URPE speakers are those of the individual, not of URPE as an organization.
   
   TO CONTACT URPE:
   Website: http://www.urpe.org
   National Office: [EMAIL PROTECTED],
 413-577-0806
   Economy Connection (speakers/resources): http://www.urpe.org/ec-home.html;
   [EMAIL PROTECTED]
  Review of Radical Political Economics: http://urpe.org/rrpehome.html;
  [EMAIL PROTECTED]
   
   
 
 
  
 

Re: [PEN-L] Celso Furtado

[Anthony D'Costa]

In 1987 as a grad student researching the global steel industry, I had the
privilege of chatting and interviewing Celso Furtado for nearly 3 hours
when he was the Minister of Culture.  Aside from his deep knowledge
of Brazil he was a very humble man ready to help.  He has left a deep
intellctual imprint in my thinking even though I don't always recognize
it.  As is customary for the Min of Culture the official photographer took
three great b/w shots of us, two of which still survive!
Cheers, anthony
xxx
Anthony P. D'Costa, Professor
Comparative International Development
South Asian and International Studies Programs
University of WashingtonCampus Box 358436
1900 Commerce Street
Tacoma, WA 98402, USA
Phone: (253) 692-4462
Fax :  (253) 692-5718
xxx

Re: [PEN-L] Celso Furtado

[Paul]

I had the honor of being a student of Furtado's during his difficult time
in exile.  What the obituary did not (could not?) capture was his
extraordinary sense of integrity and decency.
At that time I recall many other Brazilians around him who made bold
commitments to how things would be different if they ever came to power
(and indeed one did become President of the country).  Furtado was always
more reserved (even shy) in his rhetoric and his proposals.  But for
Furtado, his measured vision of reforms represented a deep commitment to
actual human beings and to a Latin America that desperately need change --
not a tactical stance that could later be traded down.  Hence he remained
true to his vision...without being dogmatic.  An important lesson for us
today in assessing allies.  Another fallen one whom we must honour when
their time does come...
Paul
Louis P. posted:
Obituary  Celso Furtado
An economist who offered radical interventionist policies for Brazil
Sue Branford
Friday November 26, 2004
The Guardian
Celso Furtado, who has died aged 84 from a heart attack, was Brazil's most
renowned economist, internationally revered for his political
commitment.

Re: [PEN-L] "the Incredibles"

[Eubulides]

- Original Message -
From: "Devine, James" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>



I don't think that this movie is "immers[ed] in ... the philosophy of Ayn
Rand." Nor is it "fascist" as some leftist mag described it. It presents
the standard individual (family) vs. society theme (along with the good
guys vs. bad guy theme) that shows up in a lot of U.S. films, e.g.,
Westerns. And some of the rituals that schools have are pretty stupid: the
one that "celebrates mediocrity" is a graduation ceremony from 4th grade.
The bureaucrats -- including the one in the private insurance company --
are pretty bad, but one doesn't have to respond to that in an Ayn Randian
way. Socialists and anarchists also have problems with bureaucrats.

I think this film is basically funny, with some excellent animation.

JD


-

What is it with the predilection to overinterpret pop culture all the
time?

Re: [PEN-L] Decline of the dollar

[Devine, James]

buy what? 
 
Jim Devine [EMAIL PROTECTED] http://myweb.lmu.edu/jdevine 



From: PEN-L list on behalf of Doug Henwood
Sent: Sun 11/28/2004 3:31 PM
To: [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Subject: Re: [PEN-L] Decline of the dollar



Hmm with all this PEN-L gloom on the dollar, is it time to buy?

Doug

[PEN-L] "the Incredibles"

[Devine, James]

I don't think that this movie is "immers[ed] in ... the philosophy of Ayn 
Rand." Nor is it "fascist" as some leftist mag described it. It presents the 
standard individual (family) vs. society theme (along with the good guys vs. 
bad guy theme) that shows up in a lot of U.S. films, e.g., Westerns. And some 
of the rituals that schools have are pretty stupid: the one that "celebrates 
mediocrity" is a graduation ceremony from 4th grade. The bureaucrats -- 
including the one in the private insurance company -- are pretty bad, but one 
doesn't have to respond to that in an Ayn Randian way. Socialists and 
anarchists also have problems with bureaucrats. 

I think this film is basically funny, with some excellent animation. 

JD

November 5, 2004
MOVIE REVIEW | 'THE INCREDIBLES'
Being Super in Suburbia Is No Picnic
By A. O. SCOTT

"THEY keep finding new ways to celebrate mediocrity," grumbles Bob
Parr, once known as Mr. Incredible, the patriarch of a superhero
family languishing in middle-class suburban exile. He is referring to
a pointless ceremony at his son's school, but his complaint is much
more general, and it is one that animates "The Incredibles," giving
it an edge of intellectual indignation unusual in a family-friendly
cartoon blockbuster. Because it is so visually splendid and ethically
serious, the movie raises hopes it cannot quite satisfy. It comes
tantalizingly close to greatness, but seems content, in the end, to
fight mediocrity to a draw.

By "they" Bob means the various do-gooders, meddlers and bureaucrats
- schoolteachers, lawyers, politicians, insurance executives - who
have driven the world's once-admired superheroes underground, into
lives of bland split-level normalcy. "The Incredibles,"... is
not subtle in announcing its central theme. Some people have powers
that others do not, and to deny them the right to exercise those
powers, or the privileges that accompany them, is misguided, cruel
and socially destructive.

Bob (voiced by Craig T. Nelson, best known for his title role on
television's "Coach"), who was once a superman in both the
Nietzschean and the DC Comics sense of the word, has been forced by a
litigation-driven, media-fueled anti-superhero backlash into the
flabby, dull life of a cubicle drone. He and his pal Lucius, a k a
Frozone (Samuel L. Jackson), do a little clandestine moonlighting,
with the help of a police scanner, but it hardly compensates for the
9-to-5 tedium of Bob's day job processing insurance claims.

His wife, Helen (Holly Hunter), a daring and feisty crime fighter
named Elastagirl in their former life, now stays home raising their
three children, two of whom have already manifested special abilities
they are not allowed to use. Bob and Helen's teenage daughter, Violet
(who speaks in the scratchy deadpan of the essayist and public radio
storyteller Sarah Vowell), can make herself invisible and generate
impermeable force fields, but these powers serve mainly as metaphors
for her shyness and disconnection. Dash (Spencer Fox), her younger
brother, uses his gift of superhuman speed for low-level mischief.
Like their parents, the children are forced to conform to a society
where "everyone is special, so no one is."

In the movie's view of things, this kind of misguided egalitarianism,
enforced in petty ways at school and work, is not just stultifying
but actively, murderously evil. The super-villain, a flame-haired
nerd named Syndrome (Jason Lee), is a would-be superhero tormented by
his own lack of special talents. From his high-tech island
laboratory, populated by faceless minions, a slinky second-in-command
(Elizabeth Peña) and giant killer robots, he plots a quasi-genocidal
campaign against the former costumed crime fighters, whom he lures
out of retirement by promising them the chance to practice their
profession once again.

Syndrome's ultimate goal is not so much to rule the world as to force
the rules that already govern it to their logical conclusion. His
diabolical utopia will be cleansed of heroes: once he is done, he
hisses, "everybody will be super, which means no one will be."

The intensity with which "The Incredibles" advances its central idea
- it suggests a thorough, feverish immersion in both the history of
American comic books and the philosophy of Ayn Rand - is startling. 

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

Re: [PEN-L] Decline of the dollar

[Eugene Coyle]

No.  Pen-L gloom has been right in the past.  Sometimes a little early
but PEN-L sure got the internet bust and subsequent recession right.
Gene Coyle
Doug Henwood wrote:
Hmm with all this PEN-L gloom on the dollar, is it time to buy?
Doug

[PEN-L] ForEx vs CB's

[Eubulides]

http://www.guardian.co.uk/usa/story/0,12271,1361805,00.html
Weak dollar leaves central banks in a bind

Charlotte Moore
Monday November 29, 2004
The Guardian

The story of the last week has been the fall and fall of the dollar with
the currency touching daily record lows against the euro.

Speculation has intensified about a possible intervention by the European
Central Bank, to stem the fall to protect the prospects of the eurozone.

Growth in the global economy is softening and dollar weakness means
companies in European countries, such as Germany and France, will find it
harder to compete with rivals from the US or countries whose countries are
pegged to the dollar -most notably China.

Eurozone exports are priced out of markets while cheaper imports flood the
domestic markets. The result is an even greater squeeze on economic
growth.

Usually central banks use interest rates to stimulate economic growth,
backed up by government controlled fiscal policy, such as tax cuts that
leave consumers with more money to spend.

But the ECB is in a bind because if it cuts rates to stimulate growth and
make the euro less attractive, it stokes up inflation.

It is unlikely to get help from the US with policymakers clearly
signalling in recent weeks that they are prepared to tolerate a weaker
dollar and will not intervene to support the greenback or raise interest
rates.

Since the Chinese have refused to change their policy on keeping their
currency pegged to the dollar, it has been the euro and the yen that have
taken the brunt of the turbulence in the foreign exchange markets.

With interest rates at zero, the Bank of Japan has no alternative to
protect its export-driven recovery than intervening in the currency
markets. The BoJ has spent billions trying to control the exchange rate
between the yen and the dollar and has been successful at drawing a line
in the sand without changing the market fundamentals.

Even if the ECB is prepared to match the BoJ's aggression, it will only be
able to influence the exchange rate in short bursts.

The only thing that really scares the forex market is when the world's big
central banks act in concert - and back up their spending with
macroeconomic policy.

[PEN-L] Swans 11/29/2004

[Louis Proyect]

http://www.swans.com/
November 29, 2004 -- In this issue:
Note from the Editor:  The US squeaked through the 2004 elections,
Ukraine tried and failed with some help from the NED, and next in
line is Iraq, gearing up to exercise the gift of the "greatest democracy
on earth." It will happen in January, even if we have to kill every last
freedom-loving Iraqi and level a few more cities to make it so. One of
these days, in some utopian and distant future, the entire world will
become a big, peaceful Democracy, with no one left alive but weeds
to go to the polls...
The hidden costs of war are revealed by Charles Marowitz in the
psychic legacy that leaves no visible scars and earns its victim no
purple heart, but burns its mark on society...and it's gonna have to get
worse before hordes of disillusioned rise up through the weeds to
break this orgiastic folly, says Manuel García. Jan Baughman appeals
to the pool of marketing talent out there -- can someone, anyone,
please enlist your ad agency to represent humanity? There must be
hope of ending this cycle of violence and oppression in our lifetimes...
Gerard Donnelly Smith envisions a speech by a truly compassionate
president declaring National Gay and Lesbian Independence Week!
Gerard's words should be compared to those of Lockheed Martin's
chief executive, Robert J. Stevens ("Lockheed and the Future of
Warfare," by Tim Weiner, The New York Times, November 28,
2004) -- "Today, Lockheed is building weapons so smart that they
can change the world by virtue of their precision. . . . . With
technology we've been able to make ourselves more secure and more
humane. . . . . I don't say this lightly, our industry has contributed 
to a change in humankind."

One giant step for Lockheed, the military-industrial complex and the
killing fields of our newly revised "Utopia;" one catapult backwards
for humankind... Read, in that context, Milo Clark's analysis of
Pentagon strategist Tom Barnett's new "us vs. them" paradigm, where
"globalization personalized is Wal*Mart and Wal*Mart is America."
(Remember, it used to be GM that personified America -- cf. "Engine
Charlie Wilson," in 1953.) Amusingly, Wal*Mart has broken with its
world-wide policy of banning unions -- in PR China, that is... GM,
Wal*Mart, Lockheed..."it's all the same fucking shit, man!" (Janis
Joplin)
In fact, let's just heed Phil Rockstroh's antidote -- turn on some jazz
and get drunk on Coltrane instead of militarism, mass media escapism,
and consumerism. Not only can the arts warm the heart and soothe
the soul; perhaps they can even bridge, in some small way, great
divides such as those between Israelis and Palestinians. Phil
Greenspan reports on a Palestinian art exhibit that created a furor in
Westchester County, New York, was allowed to go on thanks to the
efforts of many activists, and occasioned much-needed dialogue.
Fiction depicts conflict in chapter one of Joe Davison's yet
unpublished novel, Gerry's War, about a paramilitary prisoner
released under the terms of the 1998 Good Friday Agreement; and
poetry is represented in a Smith poem to the "disappeared" victims of
war, and a Scott Orlovsky prose on the history of the Christian far
right and its atrocities, from Constantine to George W. Bush.
The Martian blips examine our dead-checking, psycho-ethnocentric
soon-to-be-completely-illiterate culture that looks to the Virgin Mary
on a grilled cheese sandwich for inspiration...among other tidbits.
Finally, John Steppling reviews the previous edition and, as usual,
we've a few letters from friends and foes alike. Of course, you did
subscribe to Bruce Anderson's new Weekly, didn't you?
As always, please form your OWN opinion, and let your friends (and
foes) know about Swans.
*
Here are the links to all the pieces:
http://www.swans.com/library/art10/cmarow02.html
The Hidden Costs Of War
- by Charles Marowitz
http://www.swans.com/library/art10/mgarci26.html
Newtonian America
- by Manuel García, Jr.
http://www.swans.com/library/art10/jeb138.html
Marketing Humanity
- by Jan Baughman
http://www.swans.com/library/art10/gsmith34.html
Remarks Of The President Of The United States On Gay And
Lesbian Policy
- Adapted by Gerard Donnelly Smith
http://www.swans.com/library/art10/mgc143.html
Functioning Core And Non-integrating Gap
- by Milo Clark
http://www.swans.com/library/art10/procks39.html
Dying Empire Bebop: The Sedition Of Ecstatic Novelty
- by Phil Rockstroh
http://www.swans.com/library/art10/pgreen54.html
Blowback For The Bigots
- by Philip Greenspan
http://www.swans.com/library/art10/joedav03.html
Gerry's War
- Story by Joe Davison
http://www.swans.com/library/art10/gsmith33.html
Birds in the Bush
- Poem by Gerard Donnelly Smith
http://www.swans.com/library/art10/sorlov22.html
Liberal Evangelical
- Poem by Scott Orlovsky
http://www.swans.com/library/art10/desk007.html
Blips #7
- by Gilles d'Aymery
http://www.swans.com/library/art10/letter55.html
- Letters to the Edit

Re: [PEN-L] Decline of the dollar

[Doug Henwood]

Hmm with all this PEN-L gloom on the dollar, is it time to buy?
Doug

Re: [PEN-L] Oil: prices and investment

[michael perelman]

This story should make a nice reading for people teaching economics
classes in light of the claim that markets efficiently aggregate
information in order to create optimal outcomes.  This claim also
extends to resource depletion as well as investment in other uncertain
markets.
--
Michael Perelman
Economics Department
California State University
michael at ecst.csuchico.edu
Chico, CA 95929
530-898-5321
fax 530-898-5901

[PEN-L] Celso Furtado

[Louis Proyect]

Obituary
Celso Furtado
An economist who offered radical interventionist policies for Brazil
Sue Branford
Friday November 26, 2004
The Guardian
Celso Furtado, who has died aged 84 from a heart attack, was Brazil's 
most renowned economist, internationally revered for his political 
commitment. He maintained his lucidity to the end, signing a petition 
calling on the government to keep Carlos Lessa on as president of 
Brazil's state-owned development bank the BNDES.

Lessa was one of the few remaining voices, in an increasingly orthodox 
government with market-oriented economic policies, to defend the 
growth-orientated interventionist policies that Furtado had proposed for 
50 years. Lessa still lost his job, but President Lula felt obliged to 
phone Furtado to justify his decision.

Furtado was born into a well-to-do family in Pombal, a town in the 
drought-ridden north-east. One of his earliest memories was hiding with 
his father, the local magistrate, when cangaceiros (bandits) invaded the 
town. "I was shocked by their violence," he recalled. "I remember the 
corpses on the streets."

He also had vivid memories of the 1924 floods that inundated the town 
after a long drought. "I finished up with the idea that danger was on 
all sides, either from nature or from humans. Perhaps this explains why 
I am a very cautious man. Although at times I have defended what may 
seem radical action, this has always been after very carefully 
considering all points of view."

After studying in Rio de Janeiro, Furtado served with the Brazilian 
expeditionary force in Italy during the second world war, where he was 
hurt in an accident during the final offensive.

A voracious reader, Furtado made a point, when he was in Lisbon, of 
having his picture taken in front of the statue of one of his favourite 
novelists, Eça Queiroz. This photograph (in which he is revealed as a 
handsome young soldier) became one of his prized possessions.

Postwar, Furtado took an economics doctorate from the Sorbonne in Paris. 
In 1948, he married Lucia Tosi, an Argentinian, with whom he had two sons.

In 1950, he moved to Santiago, the Chilean capital, where he joined the 
new Economic Commission for Latin America (Ecla). Under the inspiration 
of John Maynard Keynes, the industrialised countries had just created 
the International Monetary Fund and the World Bank, institutions that 
were intended to herald an era of steady economic growth and prosperity.

Latin America, too, was infected by the climate of hope. Thinkers such 
as Raul Prebisch, Jorge Ahumada, Juan Loyola, and Anibal Pinto began to 
produce exciting ideas about overcoming the region's structural problems 
of underdevelopment. Furtado's most important contribution to this 
debate, written at King's College, Cambridge, in 1957-58, was The 
Economic Formation Of Brazil. Using a Keynesian approach, he combined 
profound knowledge of Brazilian history with an analysis of the 
structural constraints on the economy to formulate a project for 
national development.

One of his particularly far-sighted conclusions was that the 
transformations in capitalism, particularly the formation of huge 
transnational groups, presented serious risks to this nation-building 
project. He recommended that Brazil should becautious before integrating 
into the world economy.

Back in Brazil in 1958, Furtado joined President Juscelino Kubitschek's 
government, which was building the new inland capital of Brasilia and 
promoting industrialisation under the slogan "50 years in Five". He set 
up the Sudene development agency for his beloved north-east.

In President João Goulart's government in 1962, as the country's first 
ever planning minister, he drew up a three-year development plan. But in 
April 1964 Furtado was forced into exile by the military coup.

In 1965 he became the first foreigner to be appointed head of the 
economic development faculty at the University of Paris. After the 1979 
amnesty he began to pay frequent visits to Brazil, while retaining 
residence in Paris. Divorced from his first wife, he married a Brazilian 
journalist, Rosa Freire d'Aguiar.

With the 1985 return to civilian rule, he became Brazil's ambassador to 
the European Economic Community. In 1988, he was appointed culture 
minister in José Sarney's government.

When I met Furtado in Rio in 2001, he was already having to be helped in 
and out of his leather armchair, but his green eyes sparkled with 
delight when he spoke of Brazil's landless movement, the MST. "It is 
Brazil's most important social movement ever," he enthused. Despite the 
repeated setbacks, he never lost hope that eventually Brazil would find 
the path to development.

He is survived by his wife and by two sons from his first marriage.
--
Marxism list: www.marxmail.org

[PEN-L] Halliburton gets it every way it can

[Dan Scanlan]

Little Big Companies
A Mother Jones Special Report
How did corporations like Halliburton get millions in government 
contracts designated for small minority businesses?

Michael Scherer
November 18 , 2004
 In Wainwright, Alaska, a village of about 500 Inupiat Eskimo north of 
the Arctic Circle, most people live off the land, hunting whale and 
caribou when the weather allows, drilling holes in the ice for smelt in 
the spring. About half the residents seek out jobs in the mainstream 
economy, and among that group, one in five is out of work. One of the 
few employers in town is the Olgoonik Corporation, a company owned by 
the tribe, whose business until recently consisted mostly of running 
Wainwright’s hotel, general store, and gas station.

 But lately, Olgoonik has emerged as a rising giant in the world of 
federal contracting. Since 2002, the company has won more than $225 
million in contracts for construction work on U.S. military bases and 
embassies from Alaska to Kosovo. Because Olgoonik is tribally owned, it 
was able to get the contracts without any competition. But that doesn’t 
mean the people of Wainwright have been doing the actual construction; 
instead, much of the work is being performed by Halliburton, Olgoonik’s 
non-native partner in the contracts.

 Partnerships between multinational companies and tribal businesses, 
most of them Alaska native corporations, have skyrocketed in recent 
years—in large part because of a provision in federal law that exempts 
tribal companies from rules that apply to other minority-owned 
businesses. The system was established in the mid-1990s to help native 
communities, where unemployment rates often exceed 40 percent. But it 
has also become a way for large corporations with no Native American 
ownership to receive no-bid contracts, an avenue for federal officials 
to steer work to favored companies, and a device for speeding 
privatization. “It’s a loophole gone wild,” Charles Tiefer, an expert 
in federal contract law, recently told the trade journal Washington 
Technology. “I have seen little evidence that this produces jobs in 
Alaska as opposed to profits for those entrepreneurs skillful enough to 
exploit it.”

 A Mother Jones analysis of federal contracting records shows that 
no-bid, or “sole-source,” awards to native companies have risen 
dramatically since the late 1990s (see chart). Back in 1999, the 
largest tribal firms received just $195.5 million worth of no-bid work, 
or roughly 3 percent of the awards under the federal government’s 
program to assist small and minority-owned companies. By 2003, however, 
large tribal companies were getting $1.3 billion worth of contracts 
without any competition, accounting for nearly 15 percent of the 
minority program. Bruce Pozzi, a spokesman for Olgoonik, says the 
company decided to “jump on this bandwagon” after it realized how much 
money other native companies were making. Olgoonik has 175 employees, 
but only 7 of them are tribal members and thus shareholders of the 
corporation.

 Tribal companies enjoy several benefits that other minority firms 
don’t. They can be considered small businesses even after winning 
billions of dollars in contracts, and there is no limit to the size of 
the no-bid awards they can win (other minority companies can bypass 
competition only if the value of the contract is less than $3 million). 
“It’s going to be a huge problem,” says one veteran Pentagon official, 
noting that when the system was set up, officials assumed that it would 
be used for occasional small contracts, not as a way to bypass federal 
competitive-bidding rules for $100 million projects. “Nobody thought 
they would be doing everything under the sun.”

 Not true, says Michael Brown, a soft-spoken former Navy officer who is 
known as the “godfather” of tribal contracting: The recent explosion in 
federal work is exactly what he hoped for when he began working in 1982 
as the chief executive for a subsidiary of the Arctic Slope Regional 
Corporation, one of the Alaskan tribal companies established by 
Congress in 1971. Founded with nearly $1 billion in assets and 44 
million acres of land between them, these Alaska native corporations 
depended on fishing, logging, and mining, all industries in decline; so 
Brown began lobbying officials in Washington, D.C., for the contracting 
exemptions. He encouraged federal officials to visit villages that 
lacked not only jobs, but plumbing or sewer systems, arguing that the 
scale of poverty demanded significant federal help. “There are really 
two Alaskas,” he says. “There is Anchorage, and there are the 
villages.”

 Brown found an ally in Alaska’s senior senator, Ted Stevens, the 
powerful Republican head of the Appropriations Committee. As the tribal 
loopholes began to grow, Stevens also formed personal ties to the 
native companies. His brother-in-law, William H. Bittner, is a 
prominent lobbyist for many of the largest tribal firms, and the 
senator

Re: [PEN-L] Decline of the dollar

[Devine, James]

the pressure is to revalue or to float upward. If China's trade surplus is 
mostly 
vis-à-vis the US, then the Yuan would float upward mostly relative to the USD 
-- or at least theory predicts it would. 
 
I finally figured out why they call it the "Renminbi": one Yuan can cause 
a contagion of  yuans.  
 
Jim Devine [EMAIL PROTECTED] http://myweb.lmu.edu/jdevine 



From: PEN-L list on behalf of Michael Perelman
Sent: Sun 11/28/2004 12:21 PM
To: [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Subject: Re: [PEN-L] Decline of the dollar



Right, but tremendous pressure may be put on China to devalue, even though its
balance with the rest of the world outside of the US is very small, isn't it?

I am going to the store to see if they have Ellen Frank's new book.

On Sun, Nov 28, 2004 at 12:15:51PM -0800, Devine, James wrote:
>
> but the Yuan is falling in step with the dollar at this point.
>
---
Michael Perelman
Economics Department
California State University
Chico, CA 95929

Tel. 530-898-5321
E-Mail michael at ecst.csuchico.edu

Re: [PEN-L] Decline of the dollar

[Michael Perelman]

Right, but tremendous pressure may be put on China to devalue, even though its
balance with the rest of the world outside of the US is very small, isn't it?

I am going to the store to see if they have Ellen Frank's new book.

On Sun, Nov 28, 2004 at 12:15:51PM -0800, Devine, James wrote:
>
> but the Yuan is falling in step with the dollar at this point.
>
---
Michael Perelman
Economics Department
California State University
Chico, CA 95929

Tel. 530-898-5321
E-Mail michael at ecst.csuchico.edu

Re: [PEN-L] Decline of the dollar

[Devine, James]

Michael P writes:  >I wonder how likely that a decline in the dollar, if it
continues to take place at the present rate, could destabilize the world 
economy,
perhaps unleashing a strong recession. <
 
the problem is that Japan & Europe are being pushed into recession by the rise 
of
their currencies.
 
> Could China withstand much of an increase its
currency -- especially with its high unemployment?<

but the Yuan is falling in step with the dollar at this point. 

JD

 


 

Re: [PEN-L] Decline of the dollar

[Waistline2]

In a message dated 11/28/2004 11:45:46 AM Central Standard Time, [EMAIL PROTECTED] writes:
>Are the contradictions really finally accelerating towards aqualitative change in the mode of world-wide capitalist organisation?Can this be happening? Now??And what are the future implications for class struggle?<
 
Comment
 
Frightening. 
 
It means admitting that a vision exists of a transition to the domination of a new mode of production on the basis of draconian measures and the preservation of a historic ruling class, rights and  privileges as a ruling class - that makes the economic leap to communism. 
 
Political forms of rule are subjected to the victor of the political contest and the only thing truly mobile and revolutionary as permanence, is the changes in the means of production that compels society to leap forward. 
 
Speculation and interest is nothing new in society. Profits detached and polarized against value production; that sits on the basis of fiat money or money detached from the value of a substance shaped by human beings, as a dominate form of wealth creation is a contradiction that cannot stand. Wealth has not been an abstraction of an abstraction or super symbolic for most of human history but a tangible relations and combination of man + land + machinery + energy + a tangible substance. 
 
I am extremely confused, which is why I read Pen-L for answers. 
 
Wealth based on a derivative that is derived from another set of derivatives - or financial rewards and obligations created to share risk (mathematical equations) , founded on money that has zero value (by virtue of its detachment from anything material - silver, gold, substance, physical assets as building, bureaucratic organization or infrastructure properties or fiat money) can only stand on the basis of an agreement between agents and people (ideology) backed up and maintained by military force. We are dealing with a super symbolic relations detached from the materiality of what the symbols are meant to be a short hand for or express.  The German intellectuals refer to this as the negative dialectic or what Marx referred to as the negation of the capitalist as capitalist within the bourgeois property relations or the political system that allows one to be treated as a capitalist after his material functions as a class has vanished. This is called the bourgeois property relations. Jail or armed force imposes upon us our current system of exchange and distribution and I have not always felt this way. 
 
I think this means: 
 

Wealth based on a derivative that is derived from another set of derivatives, founded on money that has zero value can only stand on the basis of an agreement between agents and people (ideology) backed up and maintained by military force because, this is a super symbolic relations detached from the materiality of what the symbols are meant to be a short hand for or express.  Jail or armed force imposes upon us our current system of exchange and distribution. 
 
In exchange, one countries relative decline in the value of its currency is often another's gain, depending on how physical substances are exchanged and accumulated.  Without a universal measure of worth - value, and its accumulation, how can one determine the relative worth of a symbol? 
 
A section of the feudal bureaucracy and ruling class passed over and became capitalist, based on wealth accumulation, while the industrial mode of production based on capitalist property gain universal dominance. 
 
If I know that, then the bourgeoisie mastered the process 200 years before I was born. 
 
Now, the American Union is really violent and revolutionary and might produce a few surprises, but our ruling class is more interested in staying ruling class - or a section of it, than capitalists. As capitalist they long ago understand their symbolic relations to wealth and as rulers they long ago understood their relationship as rulers. 
 
"What are the future implications for class struggle?"
 
Soviet history and industrial relations leaped forward under the banner of Stalin because his political forms of compliance matched the revolution in the mode of production and the historic demand to develop and evolve an industrial society. 
 
You . . . (not you comrade) think the bourgeoisie ain't studied history and learnt from it. 
 
Bush Jr. is extremely aware of this process and reactionary in their forms of political compliance and will continue to expand the role of government and reorganize society based on their vision as a sectarian grouping within capital and the historical process. 
 
Everyone hits the wall of value at the same time and experience it different, based on stion in life.  
 

"What are the future implications for class struggle?"
 
Throw away "left" and "right" ideological categories. 
 
This one is going to be real ugly and the left was always the left bench of the bourgeoisie. 
 
The tragedy is that a section of the bourgeoisie or rather those 

Re: [PEN-L] Decline of the dollar

[Michael Perelman]

Regarding Chris's question, I wonder how likely that a decline in the dollar, 
if it
continues to take place at the present rate, could destabilize the world 
economy,
perhaps unleashing a strong recession.  Could China withstand much of an 
increase its
currency -- especially with its high unemployment?
 --
Michael Perelman
Economics Department
California State University
Chico, CA 95929

Tel. 530-898-5321
E-Mail michael at ecst.csuchico.edu

[PEN-L] Thomas Frank book review

[Louis Proyect]

In today's NY Times, Thomas Frank reviews a number of books that attempt
to come to terms with the USA's recent political evolution, especially
around the question of "blue states" versus "red states."
http://www.nytimes.com/2004/11/28/books/review/28FRANKL.html
Frank has become a rather ubiquitous figure on the cable network news
shows, holding forth on these themes. With the stunning success of his
"What's the Matter With Kansas," he has become an expert on why people
vote against their own class interests, to put it in Marxist terms.
Although Frank was once far more explicitly Marxist in his language and
reasoning as editor and contributor to Baffler Magazine, he seems to
have evolved in a more mainstream direction. In his exchange with Bill
O'Reilly the other day, Frank referred to "we Democrats" or something
like that. I guess that will get you more invites to Fox TV or CNN than
referring to "we socialists."
Frank's review exhibits both his strengths and weaknesses. He is
particularly strong as he takes apart the idiotic "The Great Divide:
Retro vs. Metro America," by John Sperling, Suzanne Helburn, Samuel
George, John Morris and Carl Hunt. This book was promoted heavily in the
newspapers with rather eye-catching graphics showing, for example,
Michael Moore side-by-side with Mel Gibson. The former supposedly stood
for Metro America, while the latter stood for Retro America. Frank sums
up the book's main argument as follows:
"Here the goal is to blend together two of the worst big ideas of recent
years -- the new economy fantasy of the 1990's and the red/blue thesis
of the last few years -- into a universal narrative that can
simultaneously direct the electoral strategy of the Democratic Party and
inform future scholarship. The essential cleavage in American life, the
authors argue, is not between left and right or business class and
working class; instead, it is a regional matter, a cultural divide
between the states, polarized and unbridgeable. One America, to judge
from the book's illustrations, works with lovable robots and lives in
''vibrant'' cities with ballet troupes, super-creative Frank Gehry
buildings and quiet, tasteful religious ritual; the other relies on
contemptible extraction industries (oil, gas and coal) and inhabits a
world of white supremacy and monster truck shows and religious
ceremonies in which beefy men in cheap clothes scream incomprehensibly
at one another."
In other words, despite being written before the election, the book
reinforces the stereotypes about the typical Bush voter. Liberals
everywhere consoled themselves on November 3rd with the idea that the
country was simply too stupid to vote for the obviously superior
candidate. "The Great Divide" agrees with this self-flattering
appraisal, but conjoins it with the equally stupid idea that red state
voters are economically behind the curve as miners or farmers rather
than web designers or financial analysts.
This week's Village Voice has a cartoon that encapsulates this kind of
elitism. You can see it at: http://www.villagevoice.com/sutton/ under
the caption "Gap-Toothed, Missing Link Troglodytes Delighted by
Presidential Election Outcome." The cartoon depicts two obviously
working-class men standing on an unemployment line saying things like,
"Shee-yit, America shore is number one, ain't we."
Unfortunately, Frank seems to be operating under the mistaken impression
that "class conflict...defined the [Democratic] party in the old days."
This becomes more obvious in his look at Ohio Congressman "Sherrod
Brown's Myths Of Free Trade: Why American Trade Policy Has Failed." He
writes:
>>Someone who understands the implication of this is Representative
Sherrod Brown, a Democrat from the steel-producing 13th District of
Ohio, and a liberal of the old school. In ''Myths of Free Trade'' he
describes the role that the false religion of unregulated free trade has
had in reopening the class divide, and also what we might do about it.
For him the word ''elite'' refers not to someone who likes books, but to
the industry lobbyists whose planes clogged National Airport and whose
gifts inundated Capitol Hill during the debate over Nafta. Brown could
easily have taken the anti-intellectual route to populism since, as he
points out, virtually the entire pundit class, regardless of party,
routinely supports free-trade agreements (and just as routinely depicts
opponents as ''selling out the poor'' or Luddites). The real battle he
lays out is not between salt-of-the-earth folks and effete know-it-alls,
or between tolerant Metro and screeching Retro: it is between all of us
and the corporate power that today bombards labor and environment from
the ideological heights of free trade.<<
If the real battle is between "all of us" and "corporate power," then
the question of Brown's participation in the Democratic Party must be
addressed. Like Dennis Kucinich and many other well-meaning Democrats,
Brown serves merely as window-dressing. Their role in 

Re: [PEN-L] spam

[Michael Perelman]

Why do you think traditional ads would have a higher multiplier?  Also, with 
respect 
to Jim's comment, cost of the ads on tv or in the paper are passed on to 
purchasers, 
who become convinced that Tom W.'s hat has more utils.


On Sun, Nov 28, 2004 at 07:06:50AM -0800, Tom Walker wrote:
> What is the difference between spam and advertising?
> 
> advertising = A
> spam = S
> capital = C
> 
> A - S = C
> 
> In terms of direct contribution to the GDP, the difference is about $200
> billion a year. Plus, advertising would have a far heftier multiplier.
> 
> Thomas Carlyle had a delightful vignette in Past and Present about the
> hatter in the Strand of London who, "instead of making better felt-hats than
> another, mounts a huge lath-and-plaster hat, seven-feet high, upon wheels
> and sends a man to drive it through the streets hoping to be saved thereby."
> He concludes with the lament that, "with a certain very considerable finite
> quantity of unveracity and phantasm, social life is still possible; not with
> an infinite quantity! Exceed your certain quantity, the seven-feet Hat, and
> all things upwards to the very Champion cased in tin, begin to reel and
> flounder, – the Law of Gravitation not forgetting to act."
> 
> Michael Perelman wrote,
> >
> > I was just looking at an article on MaxSpeak by Tom Walker regarding spam.
> > It raises
> > the question for me.  Advertising is considered legitimate enterprise.
> Spam
> > is not.
> > Pop-up ads are considered legitimate.  Lots of advertising annoys me.
> What
> > is the
> > difference between spam and advertising?
> 
> THE CONTRIBUTION OF SPAM
> TO THE
> GROSS NATIONAL PRODUCT
> 
> by the Sandwichman
> 
> http://maxspeak.org/mt/archives/000955.html
> 
> Today I received a reminder of how much damage spam has done to the
> uplifting potential of the internet. Last night I found an excellent essay,
> "The Janus-Faced Nature of Working-Time Reduction", on the web, written by a
> graduate student at Cornell, Daniel Kinderman. Actually, Kinderman wrote the
> (prize winning) essay several years ago when he was at York University but I
> was able to track him down to his current location at Cornell. I sent him a
> note of appreciation and he replied this morning. We have a lot to discuss.
> 
> Making that contact reminded me that up until about a year ago I had my
> email address posted on the TimeWork Web, a site that I started in 1995. It
> was always a delight when someone with similar interests contacted me after
> finding the site. But eventually the spam to that email address became so
> heavy that I had to shut it down and in the process terminated the TimeWork
> Web too.
> 
> In recent weeks, I've received a steady drip, drip of comment spam to my
> posts at MaxSpeak and at my own blog, the Work Less Institute of Technology.
> So far the comment spam is an irritation rather than a threat but with that
> previous experience of vandalism, I worry.
> 
> A thought occured to me, though. It's all the rage these days for economists
> to pontificate about how Europeans have to work more if they're ever going
> to match the US in GDP growth. Also obsessing about how to maximize GDP
> growth were FEDeristas Edward Prescott and Julie Hotchkiss in papers Max
> sent me. So the thought I had was "I wonder how much spam contributes to the
> GDP?"
> 
> That's right, spam contributes to the GDP. People usually talk about spam in
> terms of its cost to business or productivity or the economy but one man's
> cost is another's revenue. The standard example of why the GDP is not a good
> measure of well-being was the wreck of the Exxon Valdez. But that happened
> 16 years ago and has probably lost its shock value. Spam would be a good
> updated example of why the GDP is not the true measure of well being.
> 
> Back in March of 2003, the Washington Post cited an estimate from a San
> Francisco consulting firm estimating that spam cost $10 billion a year. So
> let's call that a $10 billion contribution to the GDP. Now, I know all about
> Bastiat's "fallacy of the broken window" and concede that those $10 billion
> could otherwise have been spent on something more useful instead. But it's
> also possible that those "$10 billion" worth of time and resources could
> have been quietly enjoyed outside of market exchange in which case they
> wouldn't have counted. And for the Hotchkisses and the Prescotts, being
> counted in GDP is all that counts.
> 
> Think of it this way: if you go to that Monty Python cafe and order the club
> sandwich -- spam, turkey, bacon, spam, tomato, spam, lettuce and spam on
> toast -- the GDP increases. But if you raise a free-range turkey on your own
> plot of land, feeding it with home-grown grain and then you butcher it
> yourself and stuff it and cook it, you've contributed nothing to the GDP --
> unless, of course, you stuff it with spam.
> 
> Speaking of turkeys, according to a recent Guardian article, just 10% of
> French adults are obese, com

Re: [PEN-L] Solidarity Forever!

[Michael Hoover]

>>> [EMAIL PROTECTED] 11/25/04 2:10 AM >>>
Alas, the drivers lost in Ohio, too.
Sunbury, OH vote fails 9-3
Intimidation, ineligible voters may be among potential causes
November 23, 2004 - The vote to unionize a Sunbury, OH Pizza Hut
under the APDD banner failed this evening by a vote of nine to three.
This was despite the fact that only eight people at the store were
eligible to vote. . . .

Yoshie
<>

pen-lers should pass along website info...   michael


--
Please Note:
Due to Florida's very broad public records law, most written communications to 
or from College employees regarding College business are public records, 
available to the public and media upon request. Therefore, this e-mail 
communication may be subject to public disclosure.

Re: [PEN-L] Decline of the dollar

[Chris Burford]

Is this how the dollar slips from being "world money" - to be replaced
by a basket of currencies, equilibrated technically and with maximum
diplomacy by a
network of interconnecting computers?
Is this process really happening already, in front of our very eyes?
Perhaps it depends on whether the size of the global economy and the
knowledge system is able to manage the US economy as only one
component part of the world economy, and not, as it was seen as
recently as the Asian financial crisis of 1997, the only engine of
world growth?
Are the contradictions really finally accelerating towards a
qualitative change in the mode of world-wide capitalist organisation?
Can this be happening? Now??
And what are the future implications for class struggle?
Chris Burford
London
- Original Message -
From: "Louis Proyect" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
To: <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
Sent: Saturday, November 27, 2004 3:39 PM
Subject: [PEN-L] Decline of the dollar

NY Times, November 27, 2004
Foreign Interest Appears to Flag as Dollar Falls
By EDMUND L. ANDREWS
WASHINGTON, Nov. 26 - Investors and market analysts are increasingly
worried that the last big source of support for the American
dollar -
heavy buying by foreign central banks - is fading.
The anxiety was on full display Friday, when the dollar abruptly
slid to
a record low against the euro after a report suggesting that the
Chinese
central bank might start to reduce its holdings in the American
currency.
Though Chinese officials later denied the report, and the dollar
recovered, analysts say the broader trend is that foreign
governments
are becoming less willing to finance the growing debt of the United
States government.
On Tuesday, a top official with the Russian central bank said his
government had become worried about the sinking value of the dollar
and
might switch some foreign reserves to euros.
A day later, India's central bank hinted that it was worried about
the
same issue and might shift some reserves into other currencies.
Japan and China, which together have amassed nearly $900 billion in
United States Treasury securities, have both slowed their buying
sharply
from the frenetic pace in February and March.
full: http://www.nytimes.com/2004/11/27/business/27dollar.html
===
In yesterday's NY Times, Morgan Bank economist tried to put a
positive
spin on this:
NY Times, November 26, 2004
OP-ED CONTRIBUTOR
When Weakness Is a Strength
By STEPHEN S. ROACH
Suddenly all eyes are on a weakening dollar. In recent days, the
American currency has fallen against the euro, the yen and most
other
currencies around the world. The renminbi is a notable exception;
China
has kept its currency firmly pegged to the dollar for a decade.
The fall of the dollar is not a surprise. It is the logical
outgrowth of
an unbalanced world economy, and America's gaping current account
deficit - the difference between foreign trade and investment in the
United States and American trade and investment abroad - is just the
most visible manifestation of these imbalances. The deficit ran at a
record annual rate of $665 billion, or 5.7 percent of gross domestic
product, in the second quarter of 2004.
While a decline in the dollar is not a cure-all for what ails the
world,
it should go a long way toward bringing about a sorely needed
rebalancing. With a weaker dollar, economic and even political
tensions
among nations would be relieved, helping to promote more sustainable
growth in the global economy.
full: http://www.nytimes.com/2004/11/26/opinion/26roach.html
===
However, the 11/23 Boston Herald reported Roach as predicting
"Armageddon". Could he be hedging his bets?
Economic `Armageddon' predicted
By Brett Arends/ On State Street
Tuesday, November 23, 2004
Stephen Roach, the chief economist at investment banking giant
Morgan
Stanley, has a public reputation for being bearish.
 But you should hear what he's saying in private.
 Roach met select groups of fund managers downtown last week,
including a group at Fidelity.
 His prediction: America has no better than a 10 percent chance
of
avoiding economic ``armageddon.''
 Press were not allowed into the meetings. But the Herald has
obtained a copy of Roach's presentation. A stunned source who was at
one
meeting said, ``it struck me how extreme he was - much more, it
seemed
to me, than in public.''
 Roach sees a 30 percent chance of a slump soon and a 60 percent
chance that ``we'll muddle through for a while and delay the
eventual
armageddon.''
 The chance we'll get through OK: one in 10. Maybe.
 In a nutshell, Roach's argument is that America's record trade
deficit means the dollar will keep falling. To keep foreigners
buying
T-bills and prevent a resulting rise in inflation, Federal Reserve
Chairman Alan Greenspan will be forced to raise interest rates
further
and faster than he wants.
 The result: U.S. consumers, who are in debt up to their
eyeballs,
will get pounded.
 Less a case of ``Armageddon,'' maybe, than of a ``Pe

Re: [PEN-L] spam

[Devine, James]

Michael Perelman writes: > Advertising is considered legitimate enterprise.  
Spam is not.
Pop-up ads are considered legitimate.  Lots of advertising annoys me.  What is 
the
difference between spam and advertising?<

one thing is that ads on TV are often seen as the "price" of broadcast TV, 
which we receive at no monetary price. Even ads on cable are like a price, 
since HBO and the like don't have ads (except for themselves) have a higher
explicit cost. Newspapers would cost the reader more money if it weren't
for the printed ads. Municipalities would charge higher taxes from residents 
if not for the revenues earned from allowing billboards. Etc.
 
On the other hand, there was a period when there was no spam in e-mail, so
that we saw that the service had a very low price (the ISP fee, the price of
the PC, etc.) and it didn't need ads to subsidize it. Some ISPs offered free
or cheap e-mail by incorporating ads in them, but that's not considered to
be spam. Spam is seen as an unnecessary annoyance, like all those virus-
laden e-mails we receive.
 
Part of the negative image of spam is based on the fact that it's relatively 
new. 
Once we get used to it -- and our spam filters get better -- it won't be that 
much
of an irritant.
 
Another is that it's so cheap to produce: a spammer can impose costs on
millions of people for just a few dollars. Other advertising is pretty expensive
to produce. I guess you can see spamming as a little like free-riding. The free
rider gets "something for (almost) nothing" by taking advantage of a public 
good (e-mail) and thus undermines the production of that public good. I've heard
that some churches have stopped using e-mail for their bulletins and the like 
because (1) there's so much spam people stop reading their e-mail and (2) 
spam filters sometimes send the bulletins to the trash bin automatically.
 
Finally, the spammers are a new, upstart, type of small business with little in
the way of power, prestige, or public image. They haven't used lobbyists to 
make themselves legitimate yet. This is partly a result of the small amount of
money they earn, compared to the big advertising agencies.
 
JD

[PEN-L] Oil: prices and investment

[Eubulides]

http://www.latimes.com/business/la-fi-drill28nov28,0,4759950.story?coll=la-home-business
Oil Spending Drips Even as Profits Gush
Fear of a sudden, steep price drop has companies wary of committing cash
to exploration that could take several years to start paying off. Some of
the funds are going to investors.
By James F. Peltz
Times Staff Writer

November 28, 2004

The key numbers for Big Oil these days aren't $45 or $55. They're 1986 and
1998.

Although producers are reaping massive revenues because of soaring
prices - crude eclipsed $55 a barrel last month and gasoline is well above
$2 a gallon in California - the industry remains wary of spending on
exploration and production.

The worry is that oil prices will drop sharply and perhaps even collapse
as they did in 1986 and again in 1998. And no producer wants to be stuck
with a string of expensive new drilling sites that can't turn a profit.

"Companies are cautious," said Charles Williamson, chairman of El
Segundo-based Unocal Corp. "We're not investing based on $45 oil, because
our projects are in three-, five-, 10-year cycles - and we don't know what
the oil prices will be then."

Instead of betting all of their extra cash on drilling, oil companies are
using much of it to reward investors and bolster their balance sheets.
They are hiking dividends, buying back shares, paying down debt and
beefing up pension plans.

ChevronTexaco Corp., for example, raised its quarterly dividend 10% in the
third quarter and bought back $750 million of its stock. Those moves came
as profit that quarter jumped 62% from a year earlier at the San Ramon,
Calif.-based company. Irving, Texas-based Exxon Mobil Corp. raised its
quarterly share repurchase program to $2.5 billion from $1.5 billion.

Stephen Chazen, chief financial officer of Occidental Petroleum Corp.,
recently told analysts that the Los Angeles-based company hoped "over the
next year to find high-quality projects with good returns." But if it
doesn't, he said, "we will return the money to shareholders."

Investors are happy, but the industry's moves aren't making a big dent in
one of the key problems behind lofty oil prices: tight supplies. The
world's limited supply of oil is struggling to keep pace with rising
demand in the United States, Asia and other regions. And with spare
capacity so slim, fears of production snags because of terrorism,
political upheaval and bad weather have repeatedly pushed prices up. So
has heavy speculation by traders.

Yet even if companies immediately started spending more heavily on finding
and producing oil, it probably wouldn't have an effect in the short term.
That's because major new oil projects - many of them in difficult
terrain - don't produce their first barrel of oil for years, sometimes
even decades.

"If we're developing a deep-water project, say, off the coast of West
Africa, it may have another four or five years before it's producing oil,"
said David Pursell, a principal at Pickering Energy Partners, an
investment bank in Houston.

The world's six largest oil companies this year are expected to reach a
record cash flow of $151 billion, a 40% jump from last year, according to
John S. Herold Inc., an industry consulting firm in Norwalk, Conn. But
their capital spending will rise only 19.6% to $75.4 billion, Herold
estimates. And much of that gain won't involve new exploration and
production; it will reflect higher operating costs for existing projects
and the companies' investments in foreign oil alliances.

ConocoPhillips of Houston, for instance, recently announced an investment
in Russian oil giant Lukoil valued at more than $2 billion. At Unocal, its
2005 capital budget "will look roughly like it does this year," about $2
billion, Williamson said. "Obviously, we've got to drill more wells; you
can't just stay still," he said. "But this industry is acutely aware of
having financial discipline."

It's an awareness born of disaster. As prices soared in the 1970s, oil
companies went on a spending binge. Exploration projects boomed, and the
companies diversified into such far-flung areas as retailing and beef
processing.

Then came the price collapse of the mid-1980s, with oil plunging as low as
$10 a barrel. Profits evaporated, exploration spending dried up, energy
stock prices tumbled, and several of the big oil companies merged to
survive.

The scenario repeated itself in the late 1990s, when oil climbed back
above $30 a barrel and then two years later plummeted to $10 a barrel.
Ever since, "capital discipline" has been the watchword for oil
executives.

"They have memories of being chastised by investors for destroying value,"
said Herold Chairman Arthur Smith.

Oil executives remain in a tough spot today even though oil prices have
climbed 52% this year. Crude for January delivery closed Wednesday at
$49.44 a barrel on the New York Mercantile Exchange; commodities markets
were closed Friday for the Thanksgiving weekend.

They have to find more oil because their e

Re: [PEN-L] spam

[Ann_Li]

Tom,

Would spam, considering the recent US court convictions of spammers, be
considered prosecuting a cyberspace form of "social banditry"? Or would some
blogging also fall into that category? What would prevent bloggers from
using pop-ups in order to leverage their messages?

Ann
- Original Message - 
From: "Tom Walker" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
To: <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
Sent: Sunday, November 28, 2004 10:06 AM
Subject: Re: [PEN-L] spam


> What is the difference between spam and advertising?
>
> advertising = A
> spam = S
> capital = C
>
> A - S = C
>
> In terms of direct contribution to the GDP, the difference is about $200
> billion a year. Plus, advertising would have a far heftier multiplier.
>
> Thomas Carlyle had a delightful vignette in Past and Present about the
> hatter in the Strand of London who, "instead of making better felt-hats
than
> another, mounts a huge lath-and-plaster hat, seven-feet high, upon wheels
> and sends a man to drive it through the streets hoping to be saved
thereby."
> He concludes with the lament that, "with a certain very considerable
finite
> quantity of unveracity and phantasm, social life is still possible; not
with
> an infinite quantity! Exceed your certain quantity, the seven-feet Hat,
and
> all things upwards to the very Champion cased in tin, begin to reel and
> flounder, – the Law of Gravitation not forgetting to act."
>
> Michael Perelman wrote,
> >
> > I was just looking at an article on MaxSpeak by Tom Walker regarding
spam.
> > It raises
> > the question for me.  Advertising is considered legitimate enterprise.
> Spam
> > is not.
> > Pop-up ads are considered legitimate.  Lots of advertising annoys me.
> What
> > is the
> > difference between spam and advertising?
>
> THE CONTRIBUTION OF SPAM
> TO THE
> GROSS NATIONAL PRODUCT
>
> by the Sandwichman
>
> http://maxspeak.org/mt/archives/000955.html
>
> Today I received a reminder of how much damage spam has done to the
> uplifting potential of the internet. Last night I found an excellent
essay,
> "The Janus-Faced Nature of Working-Time Reduction", on the web, written by
a
> graduate student at Cornell, Daniel Kinderman. Actually, Kinderman wrote
the
> (prize winning) essay several years ago when he was at York University but
I
> was able to track him down to his current location at Cornell. I sent him
a
> note of appreciation and he replied this morning. We have a lot to
discuss.
>
> Making that contact reminded me that up until about a year ago I had my
> email address posted on the TimeWork Web, a site that I started in 1995.
It
> was always a delight when someone with similar interests contacted me
after
> finding the site. But eventually the spam to that email address became so
> heavy that I had to shut it down and in the process terminated the
TimeWork
> Web too.
>
> In recent weeks, I've received a steady drip, drip of comment spam to my
> posts at MaxSpeak and at my own blog, the Work Less Institute of
Technology.
> So far the comment spam is an irritation rather than a threat but with
that
> previous experience of vandalism, I worry.
>
> A thought occured to me, though. It's all the rage these days for
economists
> to pontificate about how Europeans have to work more if they're ever going
> to match the US in GDP growth. Also obsessing about how to maximize GDP
> growth were FEDeristas Edward Prescott and Julie Hotchkiss in papers Max
> sent me. So the thought I had was "I wonder how much spam contributes to
the
> GDP?"
>
> That's right, spam contributes to the GDP. People usually talk about spam
in
> terms of its cost to business or productivity or the economy but one man's
> cost is another's revenue. The standard example of why the GDP is not a
good
> measure of well-being was the wreck of the Exxon Valdez. But that happened
> 16 years ago and has probably lost its shock value. Spam would be a good
> updated example of why the GDP is not the true measure of well being.
>
> Back in March of 2003, the Washington Post cited an estimate from a San
> Francisco consulting firm estimating that spam cost $10 billion a year. So
> let's call that a $10 billion contribution to the GDP. Now, I know all
about
> Bastiat's "fallacy of the broken window" and concede that those $10
billion
> could otherwise have been spent on something more useful instead. But it's
> also possible that those "$10 billion" worth of time and resources could
> have been quietly enjoyed outside of market exchange in which case they
> wouldn't have counted. And for the Hotchkisses and the Prescotts, being
> counted in GDP is all that counts.
>
> Think of it this way: if you go to that Monty Python cafe and order the
club
> sandwich -- spam, turkey, bacon, spam, tomato, spam, lettuce and spam on
> toast -- the GDP increases. But if you raise a free-range turkey on your
own
> plot of land, feeding it with home-grown grain and then you butcher it
> yourself and stuff it and cook it, you've contributed nothing to the
GDP --
> unless, of c

Re: [PEN-L] spam

[Tom Walker]

What is the difference between spam and advertising?

advertising = A
spam = S
capital = C

A - S = C

In terms of direct contribution to the GDP, the difference is about $200
billion a year. Plus, advertising would have a far heftier multiplier.

Thomas Carlyle had a delightful vignette in Past and Present about the
hatter in the Strand of London who, "instead of making better felt-hats than
another, mounts a huge lath-and-plaster hat, seven-feet high, upon wheels
and sends a man to drive it through the streets hoping to be saved thereby."
He concludes with the lament that, "with a certain very considerable finite
quantity of unveracity and phantasm, social life is still possible; not with
an infinite quantity! Exceed your certain quantity, the seven-feet Hat, and
all things upwards to the very Champion cased in tin, begin to reel and
flounder, – the Law of Gravitation not forgetting to act."

Michael Perelman wrote,
>
> I was just looking at an article on MaxSpeak by Tom Walker regarding spam.
> It raises
> the question for me.  Advertising is considered legitimate enterprise.
Spam
> is not.
> Pop-up ads are considered legitimate.  Lots of advertising annoys me.
What
> is the
> difference between spam and advertising?

THE CONTRIBUTION OF SPAM
TO THE
GROSS NATIONAL PRODUCT

by the Sandwichman

http://maxspeak.org/mt/archives/000955.html

Today I received a reminder of how much damage spam has done to the
uplifting potential of the internet. Last night I found an excellent essay,
"The Janus-Faced Nature of Working-Time Reduction", on the web, written by a
graduate student at Cornell, Daniel Kinderman. Actually, Kinderman wrote the
(prize winning) essay several years ago when he was at York University but I
was able to track him down to his current location at Cornell. I sent him a
note of appreciation and he replied this morning. We have a lot to discuss.

Making that contact reminded me that up until about a year ago I had my
email address posted on the TimeWork Web, a site that I started in 1995. It
was always a delight when someone with similar interests contacted me after
finding the site. But eventually the spam to that email address became so
heavy that I had to shut it down and in the process terminated the TimeWork
Web too.

In recent weeks, I've received a steady drip, drip of comment spam to my
posts at MaxSpeak and at my own blog, the Work Less Institute of Technology.
So far the comment spam is an irritation rather than a threat but with that
previous experience of vandalism, I worry.

A thought occured to me, though. It's all the rage these days for economists
to pontificate about how Europeans have to work more if they're ever going
to match the US in GDP growth. Also obsessing about how to maximize GDP
growth were FEDeristas Edward Prescott and Julie Hotchkiss in papers Max
sent me. So the thought I had was "I wonder how much spam contributes to the
GDP?"

That's right, spam contributes to the GDP. People usually talk about spam in
terms of its cost to business or productivity or the economy but one man's
cost is another's revenue. The standard example of why the GDP is not a good
measure of well-being was the wreck of the Exxon Valdez. But that happened
16 years ago and has probably lost its shock value. Spam would be a good
updated example of why the GDP is not the true measure of well being.

Back in March of 2003, the Washington Post cited an estimate from a San
Francisco consulting firm estimating that spam cost $10 billion a year. So
let's call that a $10 billion contribution to the GDP. Now, I know all about
Bastiat's "fallacy of the broken window" and concede that those $10 billion
could otherwise have been spent on something more useful instead. But it's
also possible that those "$10 billion" worth of time and resources could
have been quietly enjoyed outside of market exchange in which case they
wouldn't have counted. And for the Hotchkisses and the Prescotts, being
counted in GDP is all that counts.

Think of it this way: if you go to that Monty Python cafe and order the club
sandwich -- spam, turkey, bacon, spam, tomato, spam, lettuce and spam on
toast -- the GDP increases. But if you raise a free-range turkey on your own
plot of land, feeding it with home-grown grain and then you butcher it
yourself and stuff it and cook it, you've contributed nothing to the GDP --
unless, of course, you stuff it with spam.

Speaking of turkeys, according to a recent Guardian article, just 10% of
French adults are obese, compared to 22% of Brits and 33% of Americans. For
those who like to contemplate comparative statistics, another study found
12% obesity in France, 20% in Great Britain and... drumroll... the envelope,
please ... 37% in the USA. A study from 1988 found only 7% obesity in
France, 9% in the UK and 15% in the USA. Not only are Americans fatter,
they're getting fatter faster. Lionel Tiger referred to this epidemic as the
"Gross National Grossness." So here's a word of advice to the