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38611 Unemployment 4.2% -- rank: 1000

Charles Brown wrote: >Charles: When you say "no idea" , not even more or less than a million ? >2 million ? Wouldn't a million raise the unemployment rate by about 1% ? >Doesn't seem logical to then just count it as zero homeless. What is the >range of among those who do estimate it ? > >I'll see if I can find out what some advocates for the homeless think. The unemployment rate isn't really intended as a measure of human deprivation; it's intended as a measure of la ...

Document Size:	5466
Author:	Doug Henwood
Date:	Fri Jun 18 07:02:24 PDT 1999

38612 patron saint of the Internet -- rank: 1000

Adam Stevens wrote: >I don't doubt at all that debt is used to subordinate poor counties, but if >debt forgiveness would be financially inconsequential to the creditor >nations, why is it always a "crisis" with "systemic implications" when some >Third World nation looks like it might default on its debt? Depends on the Third World nation. If Brazil or Mexico were to flip their creditors the bird, that wouldn't be a small matter. The 41 HIPCs all together owe about ...

Document Size:	5866
Author:	Doug Henwood
Date:	Fri Jun 18 06:49:07 PDT 1999

38613 education spending -- rank: 1000

Brad De Long said the other day: >a serious (OK, semi-serious) push to increase educational >attainment As far as the U.S. government contribution, it's largely rhetorical. Here's federal spending on the budget category called "Education, training, employment, and social services" as a percent of GDP: 1962 0.219% 1970 0.856% 1980 1.171% 1990 0.682% 1993 0.772% 1998 0.653% 2004 (proj) 0.647% So, spending rose a bit dur ...

Document Size:	5233
Author:	Doug Henwood
Date:	Fri Jun 18 05:56:25 PDT 1999

38614 postwar loans -- rank: 1000

[from the World Bank's daily development press briefing] WITH KOSOVO WAR OVER, PEACE IS NEW TASK Rebuilding Kosovo and the Balkans will top the agenda of the G8 heads of state when they meet in Cologne on Friday, reports the Wall Street Journal Europe (p.14). With their endorsement last week of a "Stability Pact for Southeastern Europe", leaders put their imprimatur on a sweeping regional plan aimed at shepherding Balkan countries into the West and erasing the sources of future confli ...

Document Size:	5866
Author:	Doug Henwood
Date:	Fri Jun 18 05:34:40 PDT 1999

38615 Unflation -- rank: 1000

Max B. Sawicky wrote, responding to Paula: >>> >Ah-ha. I thought that inflation news was a fake-out. Today when I heard a >bit of Greenspanese on NPR, the words just keep echoing: Yea. And Labor's >gettin' uppity. >>> > >Greenspan is the one who's uppity. Even after the latest >report of no inflation he is still signalling a rate increase. He may have something else on his mind. Here's what he said in a speech in Chicago on May 6: "A more distant conc ...

Document Size:	5691
Author:	Doug Henwood
Date:	Fri Jun 18 05:06:03 PDT 1999

38616 Unemployment 4.2% -- rank: 1000

Charles Brown wrote: >Charles: So no homeless are part of the sample ? And none who have given >up the search counted as unemployed if in the sample ? > >Is there any estimate of how much these would increase the unemployment >counts ? No one has any idea how many homeless people there are in the U.S. I wouldn't trust any estimate that tried to estimate the figure based on available info. Here's the latest array of unemployment estimates for May. Doug ---- Range of alternative mea ...

Document Size:	5950
Author:	Doug Henwood
Date:	Thu Jun 17 13:15:37 PDT 1999

38617 patron saint of the Internet -- rank: 1000

Adam Stevens wrote: >It would seem to me that no new wealth can actually be "created" by the >speculative exchange of paper, as opposed to the production of real physical >wealth created by human labor, i.e. the production of capital goods. >However, the debt extracted from regions like Sub Saharan Africa has real >physical consequences in that capital is allocated for debt service which >could have been used to create real wealth or improvements in the standard >o ...

Document Size:	5553
Author:	Doug Henwood
Date:	Thu Jun 17 13:10:23 PDT 1999

38618 Unemployment 4.2% -- rank: 1000

Adam Stevens wrote: >Didn't the Reagan Administration do something like that here, too? They briefly tried to include the armed forces in the count, which lowered the U rate by a tenth of a point or so, but no one bought it and the BLS went back the old civilian rate. >If I >understand correctly, the US unemployment rate is simply the number of >people who actually seeking/receiving unemployment benefits or assistance. The full skinny is at <http://www.bls.gov/cps_htgm.htm >. I ...

Document Size:	22620
Author:	Doug Henwood
Date:	Thu Jun 17 12:58:35 PDT 1999

38619 Unemployment 4.2% -- rank: 1000

Charles Brown wrote: >Don't U.S. unemployment stats fail to take account of people who have >exhausted unemployment benefits ? No. U.S. unemployment stats are based on a survey of some 60,000 households. They don't include people who've given up the job search as hopeless or people who are in jail. The weekly unemployment claims figures, released every Thursday, report an "insured unemployment" figure. But that's something completely different. Doug

Document Size:	4813
Author:	Doug Henwood
Date:	Thu Jun 17 12:52:54 PDT 1999

38620 Unemployment 4.2% -- rank: 1000

Chris Burford wrote: >Today the UK government announces the lowest unemployment figures since >1980. Should we be pleased? Or worried? The UK employment figures are a joke, no? Didn't Thatcher change the definition something like 30 times to make them look lower? They're based on benefit registrations and not a household survey, right? Doug

Document Size:	4691
Author:	Doug Henwood
Date:	Thu Jun 17 12:20:33 PDT 1999

38621 patron saint of the Internet -- rank: 1000

Rakesh Bhandari wrote: >What was the exact figure Jeffrey Sachs cited in a recent NYT editorial? >That the stock market wealth created in the last 5 years in the rich >countries is 60x the debt owed by all Sub Saharan Africa? I don't have world market cap figures, but for the U.S., it's 31 times. Growth in stock market value of U.S. corporations, period ending 1999Q1: 1-year $1,494 billion 2-year 5,496 5-year 9,033 Debts of "developing" countries, 1999: all $1 ...

Document Size:	5046
Author:	Doug Henwood
Date:	Thu Jun 17 12:06:52 PDT 1999

38622 4.2% Unemployment -- rank: 1000

Rakesh Bhandari wrote: >While the lower unemployment rate and the greater proportion of the working >age population employed in the US than in Europe is well recognized, Martin >Wolf noted in yesterday's Financial Times that total factor productivity in >the 1990s has also risen faster in the US at 1.1% year, than in the Euro >zone, at .7% per cent. There's a lot of mysticism involved in computing TFP, including the highly mystical concept of capital productivity, which depends in ...

Document Size:	5628
Author:	Doug Henwood
Date:	Thu Jun 17 10:51:27 PDT 1999

38623 June 18 -- rank: 1000

Angela forwarded this to the list, but at 42k it was too long and and bounced to me. Here are the first few screens with links. Doug ---- From: "rc-am" <rcollins at netlink.com.au> To: "lbo" <lbo-talk at lists.panix.com> Subject: Re: June 18 day of action against global capitalism Date: Fri, 18 Jun 1999 02:51:21 +1000 MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset="iso-8859-1" Content-Transfer-Encoding: 8bit X-Priority: 3 X-MSMail-Priority: Normal X ...

Document Size:	9907
Author:	Doug Henwood
Date:	Thu Jun 17 10:22:39 PDT 1999

38624 patron saint of the Internet -- rank: 1000

Juliana Shearer wrote: >Has anybody seen this? >http://www.ireland.com/scripts/technology/showall.cfm?id=424 > >Representative quote: "Spokesman for the Catholic Media Office Tom >Hallwood said: "There are patron saints of many things, so why not let >the Internet have one?" > >Doesn't the Catholic Church have anything more useful to do besides make >records of the Pope singing off-key and ensuring an internet presence? Well the U.S. Catholic Church has ...

Document Size:	5250
Author:	Doug Henwood
Date:	Thu Jun 17 09:48:13 PDT 1999

38625 RTS in NYC -- rank: 1000

Folks in New York, the Reclaim the Streets anti-G7 demo is scheduled for Friday, June 18, 3 PM, at Liberty Street & Broadway. This is part of a worldwide action against the executive committee of the world bourgeoisie; for other actions, see <http://www.gn.apc.org/rts/>. Doug

Document Size:	4703
Author:	Doug Henwood
Date:	Thu Jun 17 09:20:00 PDT 1999