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1276 FT seeks riots elsewhere -- rank: 1000

I do not intend to get the FT this morning but can anyone who has, check the latest editorial. According to tv newsclips it regrets discretely that middle class middle aged Japanese are culturally inhibited from going out on the streets, because if they did, this would accelerate the necessary process of economic change in Japan. While I have enjoyed the threads on this list about the nuances of physical and sexual bonding, spare a thought for the nuances of how capitalists communicate with each ...

Document Size:	6700
Author:	Chris Burford
Date:	Mon Aug 31 23:43:41 PDT 1998

1277 Hong Kong battles the tide -- rank: 1000

Hang Seng down 7% today. Not too bad considering expectations, and by comparison with what happened on Wall Street. No comment from commentators. So it was in line with what was expected and it could have been worse. Chris Burford

Document Size:	4653
Author:	Chris Burford
Date:	Mon Aug 31 15:58:09 PDT 1998

1278 U.S. Congress pressed to fund IMF amid market chaos -- rank: 1000

Highly undesirable that the IMF should be depended on the politics of any one state. Roll in global taxation! In 1972 there was no problem about the IMF printing special drawing rights to inflate the western economies at the time of the oil price rise. If as the FT editorial said at the weekend, there is a need for a source of expenditure, (a spender of last resort) why can the cash/credits not be made over to the IMF or World Bank? And if the strictures of neo-liberal virtue are to be relaxed e ...

Document Size:	5302
Author:	Chris Burford
Date:	Mon Aug 31 15:57:52 PDT 1998

1279 FT's magnanimous solution! -- rank: 1000

I was just checking the concerned and enlightened tones of the editorial in this weekend's Financial Times, when I was amazed to see hidden between the well-meaning words, their solution to global recession: massive subsidies to the USA and western Europe by the rest of the world! The argument goes like this (and worse still, is already being anticipated as witness the fall in the dollar against the DM on Friday) - With Japan in the economic doldrums, the world is relying on the US and Europe, w ...

Document Size:	6746
Author:	Chris Burford
Date:	Sun Aug 30 16:01:49 PDT 1998

1280 Hong Kong battles the tide -- rank: 1000

On Friday Hong Kong authorities spent 7bn US dollars in supporting the stock exchange while reporting that 2nd quarter GDP fell by 5% projecting a contraction of 4% for the full year. The Hang Seng has risen 18% in the last two weeks when all other markets have fallen. This is witness to the massive reserves this city has built up, but in the last fortnight they have spent 13% of them. The excuse for this departure from its "free" market philosphy is the technical nature of the attack ...

Document Size:	7183
Author:	Chris Burford
Date:	Sun Aug 30 15:40:00 PDT 1998

1281 Russian v. Chinese Way -- rank: 1000

This is a good time to compare the road in China and in Russia. The question to what? can be left partly open, whether you believe it is to capitalism, or to a more flexible market socialism that can be more competitive on a world scale. The Chinese adopted a policy 15 to 20 years ago of transferring purchasing power to the majority of the rural population and developing petty bourgeois peasant initiative to increase agricultural efficiency and develop local village industries. The purchasing po ...

Document Size:	7674
Author:	Chris Burford
Date:	Sat Aug 29 10:30:41 PDT 1998

1282 As the hart pants after fresh water ... -- rank: 1000

The function of money as the means of payment implies a contradiction without a terminus medius. In so far as the payments balance one another, money functions only ideally as money of account, as a measure of value. In so far as actual payments have to be made, money does not serve as a circulating medium, as a mere transient agent in the interchange of products, but as the individual incarnation of social labour, as the independent form of existence of exchange-value, as the universal commodit ...

Document Size:	6306
Author:	Chris Burford
Date:	Fri Aug 28 17:00:47 PDT 1998

1283 Camdessus bland on currency boards -- rank: 1000

Michel Camdessus, Managing Director of the IMF has just been interviewed live on his talks with Chernomyrdin. What is not surprising is that he contrasted a "populist scenario" with a path of virtue. In the populist scenario "the poorest would pay", (a strange attribute of populism, as if they didn't under the neo-liberal scenario!) with a return to the command economy, with less monetary discipline, printing (of money) - he could not articulate the loathsome phrase in full - ...

Document Size:	7718
Author:	Chris Burford
Date:	Fri Aug 28 16:27:12 PDT 1998

1284 Marx on economic liberalism -- rank: 1000

The mercantilists lay special stress on the qualitative aspect of the expression of value, and consequently on the equivalent form of commodities, which attains its full perfection in money. The modern hawkers of Free-trade, who must get rid of their article at any price, on the other hand, lay most stress on the quantitative aspect of the relative form of value. For them there consequently exists neither value, nor magnitude of value, anywhere except in its expression by means of the exchange r ...

Document Size:	5204
Author:	Chris Burford
Date:	Fri Aug 28 13:44:15 PDT 1998

1285 Islamic economics -- rank: 1000

At 03:56 PM 8/26/98 -0400, Barkley wrote: > Sorry. In the buyback arrangements in Islamic banks >the resale is for more, not less. The borrower must buy >back the assets for more than they were sold to the lender. >Surprise, surprise, the agreement generally involves the >difference between the two prices, the net which the >borrower must pay to the lender, to be paid out in fixed >amounts over a specified time period. Gosh, and what does >this resemble awfully clo ...

Document Size:	6237
Author:	Chris Burford
Date:	Wed Aug 26 23:11:35 PDT 1998

1286 Barter in Russia -- rank: 1000

There have been stories for a long period about the use of barter being widespread in Russia but I was surprised to hear that it was the main form of liquidity for the top companies. Yesterday on CNN an editor for the Wall Street Journal, possibly the Europe edition, Fred Kempe, was scathing about the "Potemkin Banks", the facade of a financial system that is collapsing at this moment. In what sounds like an epitaph on the US and IMF attempt to colonise the former Soviet Union, he sai ...

Document Size:	6136
Author:	Chris Burford
Date:	Wed Aug 26 22:55:37 PDT 1998

1287 Is Value transhistorical? -- rank: 1000

This thread has hung on for some time, and I think I have to concede Andrew's point. In Capital Vol 1 Marx goes to lengths to argue not just the existence of exchange value in association with commodities, but Value, of which exchange value is the form. In this he is arguing against S. Bailey and his followers. We could exchange many different quotations, which IMO illustrate intriguing nuances on this question, but which are difficult to pursue on a list of this nature. One passage at the end o ...

Document Size:	6939
Author:	Chris Burford
Date:	Wed Aug 26 22:37:33 PDT 1998

1288 Proportional Representation (Was Re: la revolution) -- rank: 1000

At 07:38 PM 8/24/98 -0700, Paul Rosenberg wrote: >But if we set aside empirical considerations for a moment and focus on >the bare-bones of theory--not theory as in conjecture, but theory as in >how it works--something astonishing comes into focus: ONLY proportional >representation allows for majority rule. I too am in favour of proportional representation in Britain and the US, as ways of weakening the bourgeois two party system. But we need to understand in some depth from a marxis ...

Document Size:	6128
Author:	Chris Burford
Date:	Tue Aug 25 15:57:48 PDT 1998

1289 Sudan: experts wanted -- rank: 1000

I understand that the Arab League at its meeting on Monday agreed economic assistance for Sudan's reconstruction from the raid. I do not know the small print, and there appears to be no English language version of an Arabic paper in London (logically enough!) but it is reasonable to suppose that money would also be forthcoming for an investigation of the incident. A Scottish MP has asked for experts to volunteer to fly to the Sudan, and Tom Carnaffin, the British engineer who was technical head ...

Document Size:	5219
Author:	Chris Burford
Date:	Tue Aug 25 13:53:52 PDT 1998

1290 Sudan's ten minutes at UN SC -- rank: 1000

At 09:09 PM 8/24/98 -0700, Brad de Long wrote: >>Meanwhile the caution of the Taliban government may be a good sign in more >>ways than one. It is reported to have gagged bin Laden, while still >>protecting him. This will increase pressure for the US to operate within >>some sort of emerging international rule of law. > >So the Taliban government is now no longer letting bin Laden use its >territories and its resources to plan and support exploding truck bombs &g ...

Document Size:	9996
Author:	Chris Burford
Date:	Mon Aug 24 23:59:18 PDT 1998