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38866 Dollar Diplomacy -- rank: 1000

Enrique Diaz-Alvarez wrote: >This may be a stupid question, but why would making more stuff per hour >worked make the stuff you make more expensive (i.e., make your currency >go up) in markets for traded goods? Think of it this way: the progressive more productive country is able to buy progressively more of other countries' manufactures; the progressively less productive country, progressively less. The first corresponds to an appreciating currency, the second, a depreciating one. Doug

Document Size:	4885
Author:	Doug Henwood
Date:	Tue Jul 20 07:34:36 PDT 1999

38867 Dollar Diplomacy -- rank: 1000

Michael Pollak wrote: >What book does Shaikh develop this idea in? I don't know if he's published this material. I saw him give a talk based on the research at the New School a couple of years ago. He and his grad students had done the work on lots of countries/currencies, and he had lots of very impressive charts to prove his point, with the market exchange rates bouncing around the relative productivity line. Shaikh applies similar reasoning to his analysis of the stock market. In that case ...

Document Size:	6186
Author:	Doug Henwood
Date:	Tue Jul 20 06:05:17 PDT 1999

38868 The Irish Miracle -- rank: 1000

Seth Ackerman wrote: >Does someone want to comment on Martin Wolf's column in the Financial Times >today about Ireland? The column is accompanied by a chart of Irish per >capita GDP as a percentage of the UK's and of the OECD average. It's quite >remarkable: from about 56% to about 102% of the OECD average between 1970 >and 1997. Ireland is now substantially richer than the UK. > >To the unschooled (like me) the Irish "miracle" seems to contradict the >notion th ...

Document Size:	5299
Author:	Doug Henwood
Date:	Mon Jul 19 19:32:49 PDT 1999

38869 Dollar Diplomacy -- rank: 1000

Max Sawicky wrote: >Does "fundamentally the price" mean that the currency >price converges to the fundamental as some kind of >(shudder) . . . equilibrium? When has it ever looked like equilibrium? Market prices gyrate around the fundamental value, but never stay there for long. > And if not for currency, >why not for everything else? Is the short run on that >account a tertiary consideration? Does the disparity >between short- and long-run have no fundamental &g ...

Document Size:	5406
Author:	Doug Henwood
Date:	Mon Jul 19 16:23:47 PDT 1999

38870 Gallup: confidence ratings -- rank: 1000

[From this week's Gallup update. Unions rank below big business, but above Congress.] SOCIAL ISSUES & POLICY Military on Top, HMOs Last in Public Confidence Poll Religion and police also receive high ratings The Gallup Poll's annual rating of Americans' confidence in the country's major institutions shows that the public has more confidence in the military than in any other institution tested, followed by organized religion, and the police. At the other end of the spectrum, HMOs suffer from ...

Document Size:	5390
Author:	Doug Henwood
Date:	Mon Jul 19 15:43:41 PDT 1999

38871 Dollar Diplomacy -- rank: 1000

Max Sawicky wrote: >Why would this market be grounded in fundamentals, >especially something as relatively esoteric as >productivity differences, while others are prey >to animal spirits? Because a currency is fundamentally the price of a nation's goods on world markets, and relative prices are determined over the long term by relative productivity differences. The oscillations around the fundamental values are the play of animal spirits. Doug

Document Size:	4814
Author:	Doug Henwood
Date:	Mon Jul 19 14:06:50 PDT 1999

38872 ICFTU: US denies labor rights -- rank: 1000

Here's the summary; the full report is at <http://www.icftu.org/english/els/escl99wtousa.html>. I see Max's employer, the Economic Policy Institute, is criticizing China for not recognizing labor rights. Doug ---- EXECUTIVE SUMMARY The United States has ratified only one of the seven core labour standards. In many areas, particularly regarding freedom of association, further measures are needed in order to comply fully with the commitments the US accepted at Singapore in 1996 and Geneva in ...

Document Size:	6505
Author:	Doug Henwood
Date:	Mon Jul 19 13:50:37 PDT 1999

38873 #90 -- rank: 1000

The post office has apparently un-lost its copies of LBO #90 and they're now well on their way. Apologies for the delay, but it's their goddamn fault. Doug

Document Size:	4428
Author:	Doug Henwood
Date:	Mon Jul 19 13:37:17 PDT 1999

38874 Rwanda/Bosnia article -- rank: 1000

Maureen Therese Anderson wrote: >Michael wrote: > > >> A propos, for a superb account of press coverage on Rwanda, see "The > >> Inscription of Difference: News Coverage of the Conflicts in Rwanda and > >> Bosnia," Political Geography 15(1):21-46, 1996, by Garth Myers, >et. al. (It > >> can be also read online at > >> http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/journal/09626298, just click on the > >> appropriate issue). > > ...

Document Size:	6501
Author:	Doug Henwood
Date:	Mon Jul 19 13:30:46 PDT 1999

38875 Dollar Diplomacy -- rank: 1000

Seth Ackerman wrote: > Doug, it sounds like you take a kind of Marxian line on exchange >rates -- that policy is mostly futile, that rates are determined by >fundamentals. I find Anwar Shaikh's analysis of long-term exchange rates pretty compelling: they're determined by relative productivity differences. That is, the decline of the dollar vs. the mark and yen into the early 1980s was driven by faster productivity growth in Japan and Germany than the U.S. Oscillations around that fundam ...

Document Size:	7665
Author:	Doug Henwood
Date:	Mon Jul 19 13:09:11 PDT 1999

38876 Chained dollars redux -- rank: 1000

Enrique Diaz-Alvarez wrote: >How do you get the whole, then? If investment category A increases by X, >category B by Y, how come total investment doesn't grow by X+Y? > >(Sorry if this is a stupid question) It's a bit complicated. See <http://www.bea.doc.gov/bea/an/0597od/maintext.htm> for the official line. > > Nominal spending on computer investment contributed just 2% of > > nominal GDP growth in 1998, though, and the broader category of info > > processing ...

Document Size:	5361
Author:	Doug Henwood
Date:	Mon Jul 19 12:31:06 PDT 1999

38877 Chained dollars redux -- rank: 1000

Enrique Diaz-Alvarez wrote: >going back to this chained-dollars adjustment to GDP. I got some >figures. I get this from another bear, Michael Burke. > >"Here is how it works: The US counts growth in "computing power" as >sales growth, not in dollar sales. I don't understand what this means. Conceptually, they're defining the real price of computers as computing power per dollar spent. That's massively difficult in practice, but there's nothing wrong with the concept ...

Document Size:	7389
Author:	Doug Henwood
Date:	Mon Jul 19 11:51:03 PDT 1999

38878 Pacifica: the FBI angle -- rank: 1000

[Forwarded by Tom Lehman] San Francisco Chronicle - July 19, 1999 KPFA WORKERS' FILES KEPT FROM THEM Hired guards alleged to have ties to FBI by Charles Burress, Chronicle Staff Writer The private security service now occupying padlocked KPFA radio has ties to the FBI and other law enforcement agencies and could be having a field day with confidential records kept by reporters at the frequently anti-establishment station, KPFA journalists charged yesterday. The complaint came after KPFA's govern ...

Document Size:	7540
Author:	Doug Henwood
Date:	Mon Jul 19 10:49:03 PDT 1999

38879 Dollar Diplomacy -- rank: 1000

Seth Ackerman wrote, ages ago: >I was hoping someone could elucidate an issue I've had a little trouble >understanding. In his new book, Peter Gowan argues that the U.S. has used >the international status of the dollar as an economic/diplomatic weapon, and >he occasionally mentions the demise of the Mitterand experiment as an >example: the U.S. kept the dollar high in order to sabotage French efforts >at reflation. > >But as far as I know, a country has only two ways to m ...

Document Size:	6605
Author:	Doug Henwood
Date:	Mon Jul 19 09:51:14 PDT 1999

38880 Captive Nations Week -- rank: 1000

[Old habits die hard...] THE WHITE HOUSE Office of the Press Secretary (Des Moines, Iowa) ________________________________________________________________________ For Immediate Release July 16, 1999 CAPTIVE NATIONS WEEK, 1999 - - - - - - - BY THE PRESIDENT OF THE UNITED STATES OF AMERICA A PROCLAMATION This month Americans mark 223 years of freedom from tyranny. We celebrate the vision of our founders who, in signing the Declaration of Independence, proclaim ...

Document Size:	8521
Author:	Doug Henwood
Date:	Mon Jul 19 09:22:50 PDT 1999