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12286 [lbo-talk] Robber Barons -- rank: 1000

On Aug 23, 2007, at 8:55 PM, Mike Beggs wrote: > Hey, that's a great book. I love the part where the rival rail > barons hire > private militias who battle over the tracks. Those were the days. Yeah, isn't that amazing? I loved it when Morgan's men threw Fisk & his men down the stairs. Now *those* were takeover battles. Doug

Document Size:	4782
Author:	Doug Henwood
Date:	Thu Aug 23 18:29:15 PDT 2007

12287 [lbo-talk] Barbara Ehrenreich Loses Her Mind -- rank: 1000

On Aug 23, 2007, at 6:27 PM, Carrol Cox wrote: > I've always had differences with Ehrenreich, but I never dreamed that > she could be this abysmally stupid. From the earliest days of > capitalism > all sorts of capitalist have gone bust, with no threat to the system. > Periodically, hundreds of capitalists go broke, with no threat to the > system. No kidding. It's salutary to be reading Josephson's Robber Barons right now. Practically the whole history of the U.S. economy in t ...

Document Size:	5433
Author:	Doug Henwood
Date:	Thu Aug 23 15:38:06 PDT 2007

12288 [lbo-talk] more on house prices -- rank: 1000

On Aug 23, 2007, at 3:20 PM, Jordan Hayes wrote: > We're all in a much better position than our parents > were to buy a home and to benefit from it. Depends on your generation. My father (age 91) bought a house in Bergen County, New Jersey, for $11,000 in 1951. It was appraised at $509,000 in 2006; it's probably now worth 7-10% less than that. Adjusting for inflation (with the CPI), the change from 1951-2006: my father's house +493% per capita GDP +218% Shiller's house price inde ...

Document Size:	5179
Author:	Doug Henwood
Date:	Thu Aug 23 12:58:16 PDT 2007

12289 [lbo-talk] Fwd: Step It Up 2: Who's a Leader? -- rank: 1000

From: "StepItUp.org" <organizers at stepitup2007.org> Date: August 23, 2007 1:07:33 PM EDT To: dhenwood at panix.com Subject: Step It Up 2: Who's a Leader? Reply-To: organizers at stepitup2007.org Dear Friends -- There are occasional moments in history when we desperately need leadership, and this is one of them. April 14th was a great success: we took part in more than 1400 actions around the country, and our message resounded in the halls of Congress. All you need to do is ...

Document Size:	7174
Author:	Doug Henwood
Date:	Thu Aug 23 10:10:44 PDT 2007

12290 [lbo-talk] Grace Paley, RIP -- rank: 1000

[lots of links at orig] <http://maudnewton.com/blog/?p=7928> R.I.P. Grace Paley An hour ago I would have said my week couldn t get any worse. I would have been sorely mistaken. Terrible news: The great Grace Paley, feminist, activist, and until today one of our best living short story writers, has died. She was 84. Leora Skolkin-Smith (whose fiction Paley created an imprint to publish) sent word in email. The last thing Grace was working on was my own novels, she says, and I am ded ...

Document Size:	7791
Author:	Doug Henwood
Date:	Thu Aug 23 10:02:40 PDT 2007

12291 [lbo-talk] more on house prices -- rank: 1000

On Aug 23, 2007, at 11:39 AM, Jordan Hayes wrote: > I expect this is a > game-changer, and once things die down and correct, we'll be left > with a > much more sophisticated home buyer. Ha. Are you saying that people learn lessons from bubbles? Why do we have one every 5 or 10 years - in something, it's rarely the same instrument, though the contour is the same - then? Doug

Document Size:	4915
Author:	Doug Henwood
Date:	Thu Aug 23 09:48:36 PDT 2007

12292 [lbo-talk] "Save subprime borrowers, not bloated bankers" by Dean Baker -- rank: 1000

On Aug 23, 2007, at 10:53 AM, Wojtek Sokolowski wrote: > I quite honestly believe that the popular resistance to this form > of housing > is psychological rather than systemic. Most people I spoke to on this > subject were not swayed by financial arguments, but instead they > said they > preferred the comfort of individual ownership, even if it was a more > expensive option. It is not a coincidence that coops are limited > mostly to > ethnic minorities (especially Je ...

Document Size:	5927
Author:	Doug Henwood
Date:	Thu Aug 23 09:45:17 PDT 2007

12293 [lbo-talk] credit crisis easing -- rank: 1000

[for now of course - but the Big One's arrival has at least been postponed] Wall St seen higher on Countrywide-led confidence Thu Aug 23, 2007 9:04AM EDT By Kristina Cooke NEW YORK, Aug 23 (Reuters) - U.S. stocks were heading for a higher open on Thursday on news that Bank of America (BAC.N: Quote, Profile, Research) was pumping $2 billion into troubled U.S. mortgage lender Countrywide (CFC.N: Quote, Profile, Research), which lifted investors' confidence. Bank of America's investment to hel ...

Document Size:	5938
Author:	Doug Henwood
Date:	Thu Aug 23 06:09:13 PDT 2007

12294 [lbo-talk] reflections on the current crisis -- rank: 1000

On Aug 22, 2007, at 6:30 PM, Julio Huato wrote: > In today's FT, Martin Wolf has a column in which he exculpates the Fed > from the credit bubble -- at least partially. He lays some of the > blame on the "savings glut." Which is, of course, Bernanke's favorite explanation. It absolves the U.S. of any responsibility for consuming 70% of GDP, and attributes the U.S. c/a deficit mainly to forces outside the U.S. > The article is worth reading, because he > breaks down th ...

Document Size:	12672
Author:	Doug Henwood
Date:	Wed Aug 22 15:43:21 PDT 2007

12295 [lbo-talk] How the Brits lost Basra -- rank: 1000

On Aug 22, 2007, at 5:34 PM, Julio Huato wrote: > http://www.ft.com/cms/s/0/2591095c-4f34-11dc-b485-0000779fd2ac.html > ___________________________________ > http://mailman.lbo-talk.org/mailman/listinfo/lbo-talk Meanwhile, it seems like the pundit consensus is that The Surge is sorta working. Doug

Document Size:	5010
Author:	Doug Henwood
Date:	Wed Aug 22 14:41:48 PDT 2007

12296 [lbo-talk] wanna feel old? -- rank: 1000

On Aug 22, 2007, at 5:32 PM, joanna wrote: > Also, maybe kids have not been indoctrinated against communism, but > have > you talked to anyone in the last twenty years who won't tell you that > it's totalitarian and that anyway history proves it doesn't work? ...and how many problem even think there's a problem for which Communism is a solution? Doug

Document Size:	4844
Author:	Doug Henwood
Date:	Wed Aug 22 14:39:11 PDT 2007

12297 [lbo-talk] porn for peace -- rank: 1000

<http://www.ynetnews.com/articles/0,7340,L-3440271,00.html> Arabs surf Israeli porn sites Owners of Israeli sex sites report high percentage of entries from Jordan, Egypt and Saudi Arabia. The hit: Clips starring female soldiers and Mossad women Adar Shalev The Israeli-Palestinian conflict apparently does not disturb and even encourages Arab internet users from consuming kosher Hebrew porn. Operators of a number of porn sites report that between two and 10% of their users arrive from ...

Document Size:	7547
Author:	Doug Henwood
Date:	Wed Aug 22 14:15:37 PDT 2007

12298 [lbo-talk] more on how the WTO and the US aren't so friendly as they once were -- rank: 1000

On Aug 22, 2007, at 4:17 PM, Jeffrey Fisher wrote: > http://www.iht.com/articles/2007/08/22/business/gamble.php > > that's right: gambling. throw in antigua, and you've almost got a tv > miniseries. this one's been going on since 2003. Omigod, a threat to our sovereignty! Someone tell Ralph Nader!!

Document Size:	5378
Author:	Doug Henwood
Date:	Wed Aug 22 13:25:22 PDT 2007

12299 [lbo-talk] borrowing as a public service -- rank: 1000

On Aug 22, 2007, at 3:36 PM, Michael Pollak wrote: > I think the point is that they are supposed to borrow billions from > the > discount window and use it to buy asset-backed commercial paper. > They'll > pass all the risk onto the fed by using them as collateral, so it > will be > like printing money for them on the difference. Oh yeah, I get the rationale, but it's still very odd: there used to be a stigma to borrowing at the discount window, and now it's behavior for r ...

Document Size:	5235
Author:	Doug Henwood
Date:	Wed Aug 22 12:56:43 PDT 2007

12300 [lbo-talk] "Save subprime borrowers, not bloated bankers" by Dean Baker -- rank: 1000

On Aug 22, 2007, at 2:13 PM, Joseph Catron wrote: > Where did you get that number? Ah, the dangers of quoting on hearsay. - Doug New York Times - March 23, 2007 In Surge in Manhattan Toddlers, Rich White Families Lead Way By SAM ROBERTS Manhattan, which once epitomized the glamorous and largely childless locale for ''Sex and the City,'' has begun to look more like the set for a decidedly upscale and even more vanilla version of 1960s suburbia in ''The Wonder Years.'' Since 2000, according ...

Document Size:	6783
Author:	Doug Henwood
Date:	Wed Aug 22 11:39:23 PDT 2007