Search LBO-Talk Archives

36766 no bubble -- rank: 1000

JW Mason wrote: >What do you think? Is the current payout ratio unsustainable? Net stock >purchases do seem to have been dropping pretty rapidly over the last few >quarters. But if borrowing to fund share buybacks is unsustainable, why are >companies doing it? It's hard to blame Abby Joseph Cohen for this one. One of the main motivations seems to be to come up with the shares to feed options programs. We've got a weird agency problem going here - the shareholders like the high payout ...

Document Size:	5597
Author:	Doug Henwood
Date:	Wed Apr 12 11:06:50 PDT 2000

36767 Mowing Embassies (was sowing dragons) -- rank: 1000

JKSCHW at aol.com wrote: >I agree with Brad. Imperialism is at least as stupid as it is evil. I mean, >look, we sent a man with a cake shaped like a key to see if he could pry the >American hostages loose from Iran. Uh, guys, sure bureaucracies screw up, and the U.S. military is the biggest bureaucracy known to humanity, but the Observer/Politiken story is based on interviews with people who said the bombing was deliberate. Doug

Document Size:	5050
Author:	Doug Henwood
Date:	Wed Apr 12 10:59:21 PDT 2000

36768 Question about England -- rank: 1000

matt hogan wrote: > In a previous issue of LBO you mentioned that the E.C.'s economic >growth is only a little bit under the USA's since 1996, or >thereabouts. But is this due to Britain's reforms made during the >reign of Thatcher? No. Today's FT reports that growth in the Euro-zone (which excludes the UK, of course) is around 4%. Doug

Document Size:	4786
Author:	Doug Henwood
Date:	Wed Apr 12 10:55:30 PDT 2000

36769 A not Unminor problem for the Left -- rank: 1000

matt hogan wrote: > One major problem for those of us on the left side of the >political spectrum goes back to the paradox of efficient markets: no >one has come up with a better way to have financial markets that >are more-or-less efficient in the long term, than to provide for >short term trading that can sniff out and damp small inefficiencies. Why should we care about efficient financial markets? Doug

Document Size:	4955
Author:	Doug Henwood
Date:	Wed Apr 12 10:54:23 PDT 2000

36770 Any comments? -- rank: 1000

Brad De Long wrote: >It's not the stock that is the problem, it is the flow... The flow of c/a deficits leads to a stock of debt, the service of which adds to the negative flow, which... Doug

Document Size:	4483
Author:	Doug Henwood
Date:	Wed Apr 12 10:22:21 PDT 2000

36771 any comments? -- rank: 1000

Rakesh Bhandari wrote: > >Rakesh, you know I admire your brainpower & erudition, >Thank you. You're welcome. And I meant it. But what about the rest? Where do you get your information on the composition and intentions of the anti-WB/IMF/WTO movement? Doug

Document Size:	4572
Author:	Doug Henwood
Date:	Wed Apr 12 06:52:12 PDT 2000

36772 Fwd: Labor Reaches Out to Global Economy -- rank: 1000

[Rakesh, you endorse the Chamber of Commerce/NAM view?] Wall Street Journal - April 11, 2000 Organized Labor Reaches Out To Win Over Global Economy By GLENN BURKINS Staff Reporter of THE WALL STREET JOURNAL WASHINGTON -- Can organized labor embrace the global economy yet still oppose free trade? Increasingly, union leaders are looking for ways to do both. In recent months, the AFL-CIO has: taken up the world-wide fight against AIDS, joined the chorus of groups demanding debt relief for developin ...

Document Size:	11226
Author:	Doug Henwood
Date:	Wed Apr 12 06:40:34 PDT 2000

36773 A16 -- word on the street? -- rank: 1000

Chris Doss wrote: >big labor presence (I'd say about a fourth of those attending were >wearing labor jackets) Were they there on the urging of their unions, or on their own? Lots of rank & filers seem to be way ahead of the leadership on these issues. Doug

Document Size:	4655
Author:	Doug Henwood
Date:	Wed Apr 12 06:30:47 PDT 2000

36774 Any comments? -- rank: 1000

Brad De Long wrote: >But we do need a kinder, gentler, larger, more touchy-feely IMF... And I wish I were 30 years old again... Doug

Document Size:	4423
Author:	Doug Henwood
Date:	Tue Apr 11 21:22:37 PDT 2000

36775 Any comments? -- rank: 1000

Brad De Long wrote: >How, exactly? You become indentured to the IMF only if you hit the >wall. Keep yourself from hitting the wall and you have all the >freedom of engagement that you want... How do you keep yourself from hitting the wall if you're a commodity exporter facing declining terms of trade, or if your productivity growth lags the First World's, or if debt service and profit repatriations drain your surplus and put you in a chronic c/a deficit, or IMF-dictated austerity puts y ...

Document Size:	4846
Author:	Doug Henwood
Date:	Tue Apr 11 21:21:56 PDT 2000

36776 Speaking of no weak s... -- rank: 1000

Rakesh Bhandari wrote: >Pat doesn't want these countries trying to export their way >out of macreconomic imbalances Pat's a horror, so I'd like to leave him out of this - but do you really buy export orientation as a development strategy? I'd have thought an anti-imperialist would be rather down on export orientation. Doug

Document Size:	4839
Author:	Doug Henwood
Date:	Tue Apr 11 21:11:53 PDT 2000

36777 any comments? -- rank: 1000

Rakesh Bhandari wrote: >So I guess Perot got that wrong too--that giant sucking sound is really >emanating from the US which has also birthed the most hypocritical >movement against globalization, presently spearheaded by a motley >assortment of regionally subsidized capitalists, national security state >yahoos, reactionary trade unionists, and tough kids in black... Rakesh, you know I admire your brainpower & erudition, but what in god's name are you talking about? Is this s ...

Document Size:	5012
Author:	Doug Henwood
Date:	Tue Apr 11 21:08:59 PDT 2000

36778 MOre boring crap on money creation -- rank: 1000

Enrique Diaz-Alvarez wrote: >Michael, Doug, Kasriel sort of appears to concede Noland's point. About credit risk, yes. Not about their immunity to Fed tightening. In fact, the kinds of anomalous interest rate spreads Noland talks about - expanding risk premiums, for example, of the sort that did in LTCM - are more likely to occur when the Fed is in a hostile mode. When the Fed is easy, investors get mellow about risk; when it's tight, they get nervous. Doug

Document Size:	4958
Author:	Doug Henwood
Date:	Tue Apr 11 10:59:49 PDT 2000

36779 no bubble -- rank: 1000

JW Mason wrote: >Inspired by discussion on these lists and by a talk Dean Baker gave here >on the stock market the other day, I decided to take a look at total >payouts to shareholders, defined as dividends minus net new equity >issues. (The latter being negative in recent years.) The price-payout >ratio, then, is the market value of equity divided by the total payout. >This is for nonfinancial, nonfarm corporate businesses, from the Flow of >Funds. > >The results were ...

Document Size:	5660
Author:	Doug Henwood
Date:	Tue Apr 11 10:55:22 PDT 2000

36780 Fwd: Re: Economist job -- rank: 1000

X-From_: DLCallahan at aol.com Tue Apr 11 12:16:48 2000 From: DLCallahan at aol.com Date: Tue, 11 Apr 2000 12:15:57 EDT Subject: Re: Economist job Position Available Economist/Senior Fellow Demos: A Network for Ideas and Action, is a new public policy organization based in New York City and focused on two of the most urgent challenges facing the United States in the 21st century: Strengthening our democracy and creating more broadly shared economic prosperity. Economist/Senior Fellow Responsibi ...

Document Size:	6452
Author:	Doug Henwood
Date:	Tue Apr 11 10:05:26 PDT 2000