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36931 the Largest Surplus in History -- rank: 1000

The White House Office of the Press Secratary ________________________________________________________________________ For Immediate Release September 27, 1999 |----------------------------------------------------------------------| | | | THE LARGEST SURPLUS IN HISTORY | | | | ...

Document Size:	11296
Author:	Doug Henwood
Date:	Mon Sep 27 09:16:44 PDT 1999

36932 Marx on free trade -- rank: 1000

Max Sawicky wrote: >Free trade in its neo-liberal, liberal, or "marxist" variants, >is mostly another name for an unfettered market, or really >unfettered ownership of capital, since the market-like nature >of the result will be highly problematic. If regulating >trade is bad, so too should regulating domestic markets. Not at all. What I'm objecting to is the almost single-minded focus on trade and "globalization." The UAW finds it a lot easier to talk about M ...

Document Size:	6096
Author:	Doug Henwood
Date:	Mon Sep 27 09:08:54 PDT 1999

36933 Marx on free trade -- rank: 1000

Michael Hoover wrote: >is this from speech to Democratic Assn. of Brussels (9 Jan. 1848) in >which Marx said: Yes, that very one. Doug

Document Size:	4496
Author:	Doug Henwood
Date:	Mon Sep 27 08:53:00 PDT 1999

36934 Marx on free trade -- rank: 1000

Edwin Dickens wrote: >I know this speech by Marx has come up here (or pen-l) before so I hate to >rehash it. But Marx's support for free trade is explicitly based on the >immiseration of the proletariat thesis--that the >concentration/centralization of capital will bring about social revolution >by throwing small capitalists into the proletariat, and the resulting >increased competition for jobs will drive down the wage. Actually that's not all that different from your typical ...

Document Size:	6659
Author:	Doug Henwood
Date:	Mon Sep 27 07:22:42 PDT 1999

36935 Marx on free trade -- rank: 1000

Oiboy27 at aol.com wrote: >mbs, I salute you. I am overjoyed to see that someone is addressing what I >perceive as nonmasturbatory leftism here. I think your observation is pointed >and accurate and as obvious as it may seem to people such as you and I, it >yet needs to be hammered home. The American left's current abandonment of the >workers (in this case, obviously, American workers) Ahem. I said that most leftish trade rhetoric seems to assume the average worker is a factory wo ...

Document Size:	5753
Author:	Doug Henwood
Date:	Mon Sep 27 05:57:58 PDT 1999

36936 U.S. foreign debt -- rank: 1000

Brad De Long wrote: >First, when the "cutoff" occurs the dollar falls by some large share >of its value as demand for dollar-denominated assets tanks, we get >to see exactly how good our central bank is at guiding expenditure >shifting, but when the dust clears we find that (a) foreign >portfolio investors in the U.S. have lost perhaps 1/3 of the real >value of investments, (b) U.S. consumption has shrunk some (but U.S. >savings has increased), (c) U.S. investment ...

Document Size:	6173
Author:	Doug Henwood
Date:	Mon Sep 27 07:07:12 PDT 1999

36937 Ecudaor & the rest -- rank: 1000

[Memories are short: South Korea and Mexico are the blue-chips of the "emerging" markets.] Financial Times - September 27 1999 A new split is emerging By Edward Luce Whether or not Ecuador defaults on its Brady bonds, the prospect has not led to a general sell-off in emerging market bonds. One reason for this lack of contagion is the absence of any official statement from the International Monetary Fund. There is little point in the markets panicking until they know whether the IMF int ...

Document Size:	8676
Author:	Doug Henwood
Date:	Mon Sep 27 06:56:18 PDT 1999

36938 WSJ on US debt -- rank: 1000

[When Wysocki says "What's missing here is an acknowledgment that the equities boom of the 1990s has made tens of millions of Americans wealthier" he seems to forget it's made the 5% of stockholders who own 95% of individually held stock wealthier.] Wall Street Journal - September 27, 1999 The Outlook NEW YORK - The U.S. and Japan have long been like an old married couple. The U.S. likes to spend. Japan likes to save. And for nearly 20 years, this strangely symbiotic relationship has e ...

Document Size:	10347
Author:	Doug Henwood
Date:	Mon Sep 27 06:20:32 PDT 1999

36939 Marx on free trade -- rank: 1000

Carrol Cox wrote: >attacking the slogan "Buy America," which is an anti-working class >slogan in any case On that topic, check out Dana Frank's fine new book, Buy American: The Untold Story of Economic Nationalism (Beacon). Among other things, she shows how fraudulent and xenophobic such campaigns have long been, from William Randolph Hearst's through Roger Milliken's. Doug

Document Size:	4751
Author:	Doug Henwood
Date:	Mon Sep 27 06:23:48 PDT 1999

36940 Lafontaine speaks... -- rank: 1000

Johannes Schneider wrote: >For all the fans of Red Oskar: >from the BBC website: >http://news.bbc.co.uk/hi/english/world/europe/newsid_458000/458232.stm So what do you & other Germany-watchers make of this? Doug

Document Size:	4714
Author:	Doug Henwood
Date:	Mon Sep 27 05:42:22 PDT 1999

36941 death list -- rank: 1000

John K. Taber wrote: >Calvinism cuts both ways. > >Southern Protestants seem to take Calvin's predestination to mean >that they are assured of God's grace. They believe that as born >again Christians they are guaranteed salvation regardless of >what they do. > >Maybe that's bad theology, but I've had several dishonest >businessmen tell me that. Hmm, well it's a long way from Jonathan Edwards' "Sinners in the hands of an angry God" <http://douglass.speech.n ...

Document Size:	6199
Author:	Doug Henwood
Date:	Sun Sep 26 15:17:52 PDT 1999

36942 Marx on free trade -- rank: 1000

Maybe I'm just too seduced by the conclusion of Marx's 1848 speech on free trade <http://csf.colorado.edu/psn/marx/Archive/1848-FT>: "If the free-traders cannot understand how one nation can grow rich at the expense of another, we need not wonder, since these same gentlemen also refuse to understand how within one country one class can enrich itself at the expense of another. Do not imagine, gentlemen, that in criticizing freedom of trade we have the least intention of defending the s ...

Document Size:	6187
Author:	Doug Henwood
Date:	Sun Sep 26 14:01:18 PDT 1999

36943 nation-states and financial Kism -- rank: 1000

Edwin Dickens wrote: >Do your comments about "tariffs" also apply to "managed trade," the >struggle against NAFTA, etc.? I have mixed feelings about anti-free-trade struggles. I wanted to see NAFTA defeated just to stick it in the bourgeoisie's eye, but I was really bothered by lots of the rhetoric around NAFTA, which was deeply nationalist and often anti-Mexican. A lot of it seriously alienated Mexicans, with whom we should be allying with, not offending. In general, ...

Document Size:	6053
Author:	Doug Henwood
Date:	Sun Sep 26 13:56:25 PDT 1999

36944 nation-states and financial Kism -- rank: 1000

Adam Stevens wrote: >Would protective tariffs be an example? Tarrifs in the US were designed to >shield the new American industrial sector from foreign (eg British) >competition -- "fostering infant industries," in List's words. By the late >19th century, American industry was out producing the British in all the key >sectors (like steel) but the tariffs were maintained. Only now they were >maintained to "protect the wages of the American worker," -- or ...

Document Size:	5706
Author:	Doug Henwood
Date:	Sun Sep 26 12:36:29 PDT 1999

36945 Nader -- rank: 1000

In response to the Nader people saying I'm not a "progressive," whatever that is, I put up a 1996 LBO piece on Nader - a tortured, qualified endorsement - on the LBO website <http://www.panix.com/~dhenwood/Nader.html>. There's a long account from Tim Shorrock on what it was like to be fired and smeared by Ralph & Co. for trying to organize a union at Multinational Monitor. Doug

Document Size:	4708
Author:	Doug Henwood
Date:	Sun Sep 26 12:30:46 PDT 1999