Re: [PEN-L] Rational Expectations and the Housing Bubble
More than 70% of U.S. consumers believe a national housing bubble will burst and home prices will collapse within the next year, although 56% believe it's unlikely to happen in the area where they live, according a new survey. Morrissey, Janet. 2006. Consumers Expect Housing Bubble to Burst. Wall Street Journal (20 April): p. D 3 The idea that governemnt is in the business of fooling people happens often. but it fools them to the interests of the class it serves, and rational expectation represents the view of those who think that people are not fooled enough for the interets of more voracious section of the upper class. the only decent thing about it is that when peoples' expectations tally with what market equilibrium is, the consequences are completely ascoial and without any moral preconceptions or implications. Recall that market equilibrium is a 'positive' outcome in the pragamatic sense of the word, for the market could clear at a price and quantity level that could easily wipe out a whole population and that would still be pareto optimal, hence the absurdity of symbolic, asocial and ahistorical reasoning. -- Michael Perelman Economics Department California State University Chico, CA 95929 Tel. 530-898-5321 E-Mail michael at ecst.csuchico.edu michaelperelman.wordpress.com Be a better sports nut! Let your teams follow you with Yahoo Mobile. Try it now. http://mobile.yahoo.com/sports;_ylt=At9_qDKvtAbMuh1G1SQtBI7ntAcJ
[PEN-L] Water in Atlanta
(Just received from my old friend Richard Greener, a long-time resident of Atlanta) Atlanta's well known, libertarian, right-wing talk show host Neal Boortz has taken a position on the water problem (you remember, we are supposed to RUN OUT of water the first week in February?). Boortz says that if RUNNING OUT of water really means there is NONE left (not a tiny little bit, but ZERO) then any human beings left behind AFTER the water is gone will die and die rather quickly since people cannot last much longer than 2-3 days without ANY water. If thousands - perhaps, hundreds of thousands, and maybe MILLIONS - of Georgians will die, why hasn't our Governor, Sonny Pudue sent the remains of the Georgia National Guard and State Police units to man the Buford Dam with orders to shoot anyone trying to open the dam to send water to Alabama and Florida? If you hadn't heard: the Army Corps of Engineers sends 3 BILLION gallons daily from here to these neighboring states. The old men of the Corps (for reasons unexplained) wear combat uniforms everyday, but they have no weapons. The Georgia Guard and State cops have plenty of guns! Why hasn't the Gov. stopped the Corps? Interesting question - IF YOU BELIEVE WATER IS ACTUALLY RUNNING OUT. Boortz says since no effort is being made to save the water we still have, that MUST MEAN the threat of water running dry is a HOAX! Think about it. For those wondering what we are doing to plan for our own Escape from a DRY Atlanta, and for those who find it hard to understand why we have done no planning thus far. we do have a canary in the mine! The city of Athens, Georgia is scheduled to RUN OUT WATER before Christmas. Athens is about 65 miles east of Atlanta, a city of more than 100,000 population plus the home of the University of Georgia, a huge institution with some 30,000 plus students and all the expensive infrastructure that goes with a major university. These people - about 150,000 - will die of thirst more than a month before we in Atlanta run DRY. Need I say, there are a growing number of those who claim nobody will go thirsty and no one will run OUT OF WATER. We'll see. Merry Christmas!
Re: [PEN-L] rant, corrected.
raghu wrote: You are right that the Fed's concern with wage increases is probably separate from its effects on the CPI. I also agree with your comment that strictly speaking, a stock market bubble has no effect at all on the CPI. I'd say that's exactly what is wrong with the CPI. The CPI is supposed to be a measure of the the consumer's cost of living. It would thus be wrong to bring in asset-price inflation as part of the CPI (or the Personal Consumption spending deflator). The CPI was originally designed (by labor, not by government, BTW) as an effort to measure the cost of living. The idea was that we should know when wages aren't keeping up with the prices that workers have to pay. Workers typically can't afford to buy stocks and bonds, so their prices shouldn't be counted as part of the CPI. Those paper products are hardly necessary to human life. BTW, in the US, the CPI's full name is CPI-U. That's short for CPI for All Urban Consumers. There's also the CPI-W, which refers to the CPI for Urban Wage Earners and Clerical Workers. It's not the CPI for financial speculators. But I'm no defender of the CPI. A few years ago, I had an article in CHALLENGE magazine arguing that the cost of living (COL) should be adjusted for the costs imposed by non-market processes (e.g., pollution) and the benefits received from non-market goods (such as leisure time). Of course, it the government used that kind of measure, it would indicate that the cost of living inflation rate was pretty high -- or (inversely) that the real standard of living of US workers is even worse than people think. If the Fed decided to target the COL inflation rate, it would impose a recession much more readily. I think everyone from libertarians to Marxists can agree that price stability and a stable currency are good things. Therefore it is legitimate for the Fed to keep inflation under control. ... of course, there are _other_ ways to control inflation (e.g., incomes policies). But these days, we worship the Fed and give it power. Non-market anti-inflation efforts are _verboten_. The effect of the current monetary policy is to keep wage increases subdued while encouraging or at least being indifferent to asset price increases, whereas we would want the exact opposite: a Fed that increases interest rates if asset prices are inflating and stay indifferent to wage increases. I think that the avoidance of asset-price inflation would best be seen as a separate goal from that of avoiding CPI inflation. On top of that, imposing higher margin requirements and the like seems a better way to fight asset-price inflation than raising interest rates. Using standard open-market operations (or discount policy or reserve requirements) to fight asset-price inflation would punish the working class with higher unemployment when the financiers get into another one of their silly bubbles. Even better would be to take away the power that Wall Street has over our lives. -- Jim Devine / Segui il tuo corso, e lascia dir le genti. (Go your own way and let people talk.) -- Karl, paraphrasing Dante.
[PEN-L] Indian Govt to expand coverage of pension for poor
Reuters India Govt to expand coverage of pension for poor http://in.reuters.com/article/businessNews/idINIndia-30579920071119 Mon Nov 19, 2007 NEW DELHI (Reuters) - The government will spend almost 38 billiob rupees on an expanded pension scheme for elderly poor in the fiscal year ending March 2009, the finance minister said on Monday adding it would not pressure the budget. The plan to increase coverage of the pension scheme to 16 million people above 65 years from 8.7 million now is part of the series of welfare measures planned by the coalition government as it gears up for the elections scheduled in 2009. http://in.reuters.com/article/businessNews/idINIndia-30579920071119
[PEN-L] “Yiddish Theater: A Love Story”
Playing at the Pioneer Theater in New York until the 28th, “Yiddish Theater: A Love Story” documents the efforts of Zypora Spaisman to keep Yiddish theater alive. As impresario and performer, the 85 year old holocaust survivor was determined to inspire a new generation to appreciate what was once a vibrant part of New York’s cultural landscape. Directed by Israeli Dan Katzir, the film is much more of a tribute to her dedication and perseverance than a study of a genre. That being said, there is enough historical context to at least help us understand why Spaisman’s struggle was an uphill one. Put succinctly, Yiddish theater died because Yiddish died. In addition to Spaisman, there are interviews with David Romeo, the general manager of the Yiddish Folksbiene Theater. Throughout the film, we see him knocking on doors of wealthy Jews trying to get donations to keep the theater going–mostly unsuccessfully. It becomes clear midway through the film that no matter how rich a cultural legacy Yiddish theater is, contemporary Jews have become so assimilated that they see no value in keeping it alive. Jewish identity for them mostly means the Hebrew language and the modern state of Israel. Yiddish symbolizes weakness, victimhood and the ghetto while Hebrew represents virility, success and power. Zionism was so anxious to destroy the cultural legacy of Yiddish that an organized campaign to stamp out the language was mounted not long after the state of Israel was created. In so doing, the Zionists demonstrated a kinship with Joseph Stalin who also tried to suppress the Yiddish language as well as the Russian-Yiddish theater. full: http://louisproyect.wordpress.com/2007/11/23/yiddish-theater-a-love-story/
[PEN-L] Barking Up The Bush Family Tree
In another thread on Nov 23, 2007 1:19 AM, soula avramidis [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: (describing the investor psychology of the U.S. housing market) ...completely ascoial and without any moral preconceptions or implications. HAH! The market you've described is also George W. Bush's state of mind... and the underlying psychology of average middle class American as well, of whom he is the perfect socio-psychological representation when things go their way... Otherwise, the options are scapegoat, blame, and blow people up. A G.W. Bush State Of Mind - Is this just bravado, or is this man clinically insane? Adbusters, Matt Taibbi President Bush recently told Australian Deputy Prime Minister Mark Vaile that the United States is kicking ass in Iraq. This was after a month, August, which saw the second-highest level of civilian deaths of the year, and in a year in which the number of US soldiers killed is on pace to be the highest since the war began. If that's kicking ass, one has to wonder what getting our asses kicked would really look like. It also raises a deeper question about Bush's mind state: is this just bravado, or is this man clinically insane? Most of the attempts to psychoanalyze Bush from afar – Dr. Justin Frank's 2004 book, Bush on the Couch, being the most noteworthy – have come away deeply troubled by this president's ever-repeating pattern of refusing responsibility and projecting blame onto others. But to understand Bush's psychological characteristics, it's important to go barking up his family tree. In Full: http://leighm.net/wp/2007/11/22/bushmind_adbust_75/
[PEN-L] American Economic Accomplishments... Surge!
[November 23 2007] Travus T. Hipp Morning News Commentary: American Economic Accomplishments, Surging The American Economy (Or Why Is It That The Great Turkey Of Thanksgiving Came To Roost On November 22 and Not The 29th?) News of note: Crucifixes sold by christian gift shops around the United States are made in Chinese sweatshops from toxic materials. Listen Here: http://leighm.net/wp/2007/11/23/tth_071123/ Or: http://www.archive.org/details/tth_071123
Re: [PEN-L] Richard Seymour on the crisis in RESPECT
Finally, after about a month of chewing on my tongue on this one, I find my lungs may burst if I don't give vent to a massive great big scream of I TOLD YOU SO!!. Everyone else who has got involved with George Galloway has ended up regretting it and now so have the SWP. Quel blinking surprise. I am no more likely to get into the ins and outs of who did what to who when than I am to willingly spend an evening asking a recent divorcee to explain to me whose fault it was, but AFAICT from the British blogs (many of whom are quite unpleasant people with an obvious axe to grind, but not all of them, and by reading with a critical eye, I think you can pick up the facts), the general morphology of the SWP having been somewhat screwed by a pretty blatant power grab on the part of an alliance between Tower Hamlets elders[1] and George Galloway's personality cult, is more or less what happened. Lou is completely right about democratic centralism in his main point in the linked post, though. Len (Richard Seymour, who knew) seems like a nice enough chap, but surely he's got to realise that his credibility has been really badly damaged by the fact that not twelve months ago, he was the doughty defender of George Galloway, even when GG was on a reality TV show dressing up as a bloody cat! Nw we find out what we suspected all along - that the SWP contingent within RESPECT were as aghast about this as the rest of us, and were in fact lying when they claimed that it was a masterstroke aimed at engaging with British youth. In my book, if you tell fibs then you tend to get a reputation as a fibber, and Lou is dead on that this not-quite-straight behaviour is a big part of why lots of people don't like democratic centralist parties. I only hope that this monumental bad bet isn't going to end up fatally weakening the anti-war movement here. dd [1] Although I for one am not going to unequivocally condemn communalist politics. If you're part of a ghettoized community, then recognising the fact and organising around it seems to me a more sensible strategy than trying to pretend you're part of the global working class and postponing your new fridge until after the revolution. The Irish at the turn of the century were rather keen on communalist politics and they seem to have done rather better out of it than other ethnic groups who allowed themselves to be talked out of it. In as much as the community leaders in question are fundamentalists, homophobes, burka-fanatics etc, then obviously fuck 'em, but in actual fact and AFAICTWMNBVF, they're for the most part normal Bengali gadgies, several of whom drink alcohol and smoke, and the kids who were on the news in 2005 working for RESPECT in Bethnal Green certainly weren't communalists in the religious sense; they were pissed off about the Iraq War but that is hardly an uncommon point of view.
Re: [PEN-L] rant, corrected.
On Nov 21, 2007 2:29 PM, Jim Devine [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: strictly speaking, a stock market bubble has no effect at all on the CPI or the PCE and thus has no effect at all on the inflation rate or the core inflation rate. Stock prices are not directly connected with the prices of consumer goods, which is what are measured by the CPI and PCE. strictly speaking, a wage increase does not show up in the CPI or the PCE unless employers pass the increased wage on to consumers by raising prices. If the latter is true, workers should care, since it indicates a big element of futility in the wage struggle -- and the need to get beyond a mere struggle for higher wages (Gompers' more). Isn't there a problem with setting monetary policy on this basis? I think the Fed cares about wage inflation independently of the CPI or PCE. If workers stick their heads up, the Fed will stomp on them (all else constant). Jim, You are right that the Fed's concern with wage increases is probably separate from its effects on the CPI. I also agree with your comment that strictly speaking, a stock market bubble has no effect at all on the CPI. I'd say that's exactly what is wrong with the CPI. I think everyone from libertarians to Marxists can agree that price stability and a stable currency are good things. Therefore it is legitimate for the Fed to keep inflation under control. The important thing is what measure of inflation should be used, and what is the effect of monetary policy based on each inflation measure e.g. the CPI. The effect of the current monetary policy is to keep wage increases subdued while encouraging or at least being indifferent to asset price increases, whereas we would want the exact opposite: a Fed that increases interest rates if asset prices are inflating and stay indifferent to wage increases. I blame this at least partly on the flawed index being used i.e. the CPI and to that extent I think Farrell has a point. -raghu.
