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39961 rumors -- rank: 1000

According to our old friend, anecdotal evidence.... A guy working at a Southern California firm that makes high-interest rate loans against forthcoming payroll checks says that an increasing number of his customers are "doctors, lawyers, and others making over $90,000 a year." Doug

Document Size:	4574
Author:	Doug Henwood
Date:	Wed Aug 4 11:56:39 PDT 1999

39962 Fwd: Abuses against Serbs and Roma in Kosovo -- rank: 1000

[From Human Rights Watch. The full report is at <http://www.hrw.org/reports/1999/kosov2/>. The report says this about the quasi-exculpatory appeal to a "revenge" motive: "The intent behind many of the killings and abductions that have occurred in the province since early June appears to be the expulsion of Kosovo's Serb and Roma population rather than a desire for revenge alone."] HARASSMENT AND VIOLENCE AGAINST SERBS AND ROMA IN KOSOVO (New York, August 3, 1999) - Huma ...

Document Size:	10112
Author:	Doug Henwood
Date:	Wed Aug 4 11:23:32 PDT 1999

39963 smart consumers -- rank: 1000

[Note the amusing hit against Baffler editor Tom Frank at the end of this piece. Elsewhere, Postrel has identified him as an enemy of the future. Wonder how the cult stud mafia will greet this?] Wall Street Journal - August 2, 1999 Manager's Journal The Pleasures of Persuasion By Virginia Postrel, editor of Reason magazine and author of "The Future and Its Enemies: The Growing Conflict over Creativity, Enterprise and Progress" (Free Press, 1998). Obituaries for advertising pioneer Davi ...

Document Size:	12671
Author:	Doug Henwood
Date:	Wed Aug 4 10:20:59 PDT 1999

39964 back to 1835! -- rank: 1000

Max B. Sawicky wrote: > >> >Wall Street loves underwriting, trading, and repackaging Treasury >paper. There was a little chat on CNBC earlier today about how the >government is issuing more bonds than needed in its quarterly >refunding in order to buy back old debt and provide new debt; traders >like newer debt trading closer to 100 (i.e., not far away from 100, >as market rates diverge from the coupon rates) with maturities close >to round numbers. > >> &g ...

Document Size:	5822
Author:	Doug Henwood
Date:	Wed Aug 4 10:04:56 PDT 1999

39965 back to 1835! -- rank: 1000

Max Sawicky wrote: >Nathan, Nathan, Nathan . . . >. . . >The 1993 Budget Act did increase social spending quite significantly in the >following years. It was the GOP takeover of Congress that nipped those >increases. > >> > >Federal outlays, not including defense and net interest >payments, as percent of GDP: > >1988: 12.57% (Reagan's last year in office) >1992: 14.39% (Bush's last year in office) >1993: 14.22% >1994: 14.31% >1999: 13.95 ...

Document Size:	6319
Author:	Doug Henwood
Date:	Wed Aug 4 09:57:59 PDT 1999

39966 back to 1835! -- rank: 1000

Tom Lehman wrote: >The devil in this whole deal is going to be in the details---the mechanics of >how it is going to done. > >http://biz.yahoo.com/rf/990804/sz.html > >Comparing 1835 to today would be a pretty tough nut to crack! Not too many >people really have a handle on the economic power struggles of the 1830's---I >sure as hell don't and I don't think in all honesty even the experts do. The >whole power struggle between Andrew Jackson and the Bank of the United ...

Document Size:	5867
Author:	Doug Henwood
Date:	Wed Aug 4 09:41:18 PDT 1999

39967 Direct Action -- rank: 1000

curtiss_leung at ibi.com wrote: > Doug writes to let us know: > > > For an image from Woodstock 99, linked to by today's Suck, see > > http://www.ohio.com/justgo/woodstock/photogallery/photos/theaftermath > > /0013.jpg>. > > ...and to think there are those who say today's youth lacks > initiative... As a counterbalance to the inspiring image of trashing an ATM (oh yeah, I know it was for all the wrong reasons, it wasn't an attack on the ...

Document Size:	5267
Author:	Doug Henwood
Date:	Wed Aug 4 09:30:23 PDT 1999

39968 Wages and Panic Buttons -- rank: 1000

Ellen Frank wrote: >While inflation means higher nominal interest rates, >it generally means lower real (minus inflation) interest >rates, because (1) existing contracts can't be rewritten, >so lenders locked into 7% are stuck, whatever the inflation >rate; and (2) since inflation is associated with rapid growth >and high demand, competition between lenders keeps >nominal interest rates from rising too fast. Does it really? I thought there was a lot of recent research showin ...

Document Size:	5971
Author:	Doug Henwood
Date:	Wed Aug 4 09:09:41 PDT 1999

39969 Russia: a tour d'horizon -- rank: 1000

[from Johnson's Russia List] Moscow Times - July 31, 1999 FOLLOWING THE SAME OLD MAP By Garfield Reynolds and Matt Bivens Meet the new program -- same as the old program. Garfield Reynolds and Matt Bivens lay out the details of an economic strategy worked out between Russia and the IMF, and ask whether it will work. A year after the now-infamous July bailout package failed to bail Russia out, the Kremlin and the International Monetary Fund have kissed and made up. The IMF has swallowed hard over ...

Document Size:	24919
Author:	Doug Henwood
Date:	Wed Aug 4 08:23:36 PDT 1999

39970 debt relief underfunded -- rank: 1000

[from the World Bank's daily clipping service for the media] G7 DEBT REDUCTION PLAN FACES BIG FINANCING GAP. Rich industrial nations will still have to plug a large gap in the financing of their new plan to ease poor countries' debt even if the IMF sells a tenth of its gold reserves, Reuters reports international financial officials said yesterday. Speaking at a conference in London organized by the Commonwealth, they said the IMF, the World Bank, and other agencies faced serious difficulties fo ...

Document Size:	7816
Author:	Doug Henwood
Date:	Wed Aug 4 08:43:12 PDT 1999

39971 Faking what democracy? -- rank: 1000

Chris Burford wrote: >I am responding to the President's obvious caution about point scoring >after each and every massacre. I also believe, and believe others believe, >tobacco capital was behind his impeachment. Certainly the "Independent >Prosecutor" is not independent of connections with tobacco interests. Didn't work out too well for them, did it? The impeachment idiocy boosted Clinton's poll ratings, marginalized the right, and made Starr one of the most unpopular pub ...

Document Size:	6132
Author:	Doug Henwood
Date:	Wed Aug 4 08:30:18 PDT 1999

39972 "Americans unbalanced these days almost as a matter of policy" -- rank: 1000

Carl Remick quoted: >Who came up with >this idiotic notion that there is something wrong with economic >security? Friedrich Hayek, an Austrian. Not all by himself, of course, but he was no small part of it. Doug

Document Size:	4966
Author:	Doug Henwood
Date:	Wed Aug 4 07:18:04 PDT 1999

39973 direct action -- rank: 1000

For an image from Woodstock 99, linked to by today's Suck, see <http://www.ohio.com/justgo/woodstock/photogallery/photos/theaftermath /0013.jpg>. Doug

Document Size:	4547
Author:	Doug Henwood
Date:	Tue Aug 3 20:02:02 PDT 1999

39974 Wages and Panic Buttons (http://www.nytimes.com/yr/mo/day/oped/03tyso.html) (fwd) -- rank: 1000

Max Sawicky wrote: >The stock part is hinky; I'll leave that to Henwood. Higher interest rates are almost always bad for stocks, and lower rates almost always good (except in a deflationary depression). Doug

Document Size:	5173
Author:	Doug Henwood
Date:	Tue Aug 3 15:39:18 PDT 1999

39975 Wages and Panic Buttons (http://www.nytimes.com/yr/mo/day/oped/03tyso.html) (fwd) -- rank: 1000

Max Sawicky wrote: > > > > That's a little unfair. It's not so unusual for a Democrat hack >economist to gently urge caution on Greenspan in the NY Times, it there? > Seth > >> > >Tyson said all the right things. But this sort of >hand-wringing has been going on for the past 20 >years, at least, and indulged in by both Democrats >and Republicans. We should not be impressed by it >anymore. > >The fundamental problem is that the Fed is allowed & ...

Document Size:	5891
Author:	Doug Henwood
Date:	Tue Aug 3 15:24:43 PDT 1999