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40516 $60 trillion in derivatives? -- rank: 1000

Greg Nowell wrote: >How do we get $60 trillion in derivatives in a world >economy with total GNP of $22 trillion? Let's not get >overblown, here. According to the May 1998 ish of the BIS's International Banking & Financial Market Developments, there were $19.2 trillion in interest rate swaps outstanding worldwide, and $1.6 trillion in currency swaps, both as of December 1996. As of December 1997, there were also $7.8 trillion in exchange-traded futures and $4.4 trillion in exchange ...

Document Size:	5337
Author:	Doug Henwood
Date:	Tue Sep 1 14:34:46 PDT 1998

40517 Burn, Wall Street, Burn! -- rank: 1000

Patrick Bond wrote: >Doug, a couple of weeks ago I asked on this list (I think) what folk >thought would happen to the gold price in the context of intense >financial volatility. No takers. If the volatility has a deflationary bias, gold should continue to sink, no? And bonds rise? >So if gold is so low, and if in the 1930s South Africa grew by its >fastest rate ever thanks to gold -- earning itself the moniker >"prosperous undertaker during the plague" -- and if, in ...

Document Size:	5376
Author:	Doug Henwood
Date:	Tue Sep 1 14:24:15 PDT 1998

40518 LatAm debt -- rank: 1000

[from TheStreet.com] "It's going to be a very tough task for Latin America to meet its external obligations." -- Warburg Dillon Reed's Walter Molano LATIN LOOT: BACK TO 1982? LATIN AMERICA'S DEBT MOUNTAIN IS DAUNTING By Peter Eavis Senior Writer 9/1/98 11:07 AM ET Latin America could soon find itself in the midst of its second full-blown debt crisis in two decades, which would deal another hard blow to already ravaged U.S. markets. Brazil, Mexico and Argentina face estimated external d ...

Document Size:	12347
Author:	Doug Henwood
Date:	Tue Sep 1 11:04:25 PDT 1998

40519 Cramer bearish -- rank: 1000

[Cramer is a former raging bull. TheStreet.com was started by Cramer, a professional speculator, would-be journalist, and frequent TV talking head, and New Republic horror Martin Peretz. They've since brought in outside investors. Note that the name of his colum is "Wrong!" Note too that he has positions in stocks he's writing about.] Many people have to sell. No one has to buy. Wrong! Dispatches from the Front: Deconstructing the Bull Case By James J. Cramer 9/1/98 8:47 AM ET The Bull ...

Document Size:	7287
Author:	Doug Henwood
Date:	Tue Sep 1 10:33:12 PDT 1998

40520 Burn, Wall Street, Burn! -- rank: 1000

Mark Jones wrote: >Guinness followed by coffee? Hmmm. The proper procedure is a pint of >Guinness followed by a large Lagavulin. Smoke a cigar, preferably Cuban, >while watching bankers throw themselves off ledges, recall Voltaire's >words ('If you see a banker jump from a window, be sure to do the >same'), smile and order the same again and this time drink the whisky as >a chaser, ie not serially. Walking down Wall Street at 5 PM yesterday towards the WBAI studio, I was struck ...

Document Size:	5687
Author:	Doug Henwood
Date:	Tue Sep 1 10:07:06 PDT 1998

40521 The Doctrine of Inevitability -- rank: 1000

Rakesh Bhandari wrote: >Oh, on the question at hand, does deflation only benefit bond holders? >Can't it aid the centralization process as well--driving weaker capitals >to the wall, allowing better positioned ones to pick them up for a song? Yes. It benefits anyone with a solid horde of money. Yale built its residential colleges in the 1930s very cheaply because it had lots of money (courtesy of the Harkness criminal enterprise, I mean family), and was able to hire contractors for the ...

Document Size:	5140
Author:	Doug Henwood
Date:	Tue Sep 1 09:44:46 PDT 1998

40522 The Doctrine of Inevitability -- rank: 1000

Max Sawicky wrote: >Coordination is clearly a problem for a global reflation. >But if Capital is sufficiently powerful, purposeful, >and supra-national, it ought to be able to override >mere national interests for the sake of its own >survival. One of the interesting aspects of this economic crisis is the political crisis that is accompanying it. The Japanese ruling class is dithering, disorganized, confused; Russia, well, one doesn't need to say anything about Russia; the EU is i ...

Document Size:	5559
Author:	Doug Henwood
Date:	Tue Sep 1 09:39:42 PDT 1998

40523 Marcuse and the CIA -- rank: 1000

I'm a bit behind, but what about the U.S. governmnt subsidy for the restarting of the Frankfurt Institute after the war? Joel Kovel reports this as fact - is it controversial. At least HM didn't move right like the gloomsters who returned to the old country. Doug

Document Size:	4582
Author:	Doug Henwood
Date:	Sat Oct 31 17:32:50 PST 1998

40524 Are you uninsured or underinsured? -- rank: 1000

[Anyone want to help out Democrat apologist Michael Moore? - Doug] Date: Fri, 30 Oct 1998 10:07:56 -0800 (PST) X-Sender: sameboat at pop.igc.org Mime-Version: 1.0 To: jmates at fcny.org, socolar1 at ix.netcom.com, grcclarry at pipeline.com, lcagan at people-link.com, mxt$leap at qc1.qc.edu, difaziow at stjohns.edu, thecastle at msn.com, mklackey at concentric.net From: Same Boat Coalition <sameboat at igc.apc.org> Subject: Are you uninsured or underinsured? >From our friends at the Heal ...

Document Size:	6118
Author:	Doug Henwood
Date:	Fri Oct 30 10:40:13 PST 1998

40525 Lean, Mean Rocket Man -- rank: 1000

K wrote: >Didn't y'all just love all that talk of the new, lean, mean, >efficient NASA? And all that hype which is clearly intended to >set us up for more spending on space programs. I wanna know how >much NASA spends on PR hype. But it was beautiful wasn't it? >And Paula, that rocket blasting off into the deep space hole of >vast blueness into blackness. It was a huge massive ejaculation. Yes, but isn't floating in space, once you're there, kind of amniotic? Doug

Document Size:	4905
Author:	Doug Henwood
Date:	Fri Oct 30 10:15:58 PST 1998

40526 MAI update -- rank: 1000

I have a longish (22k) memo on the state of the MAI negotiations, written by a Friends of the Earth staffer. Anyone interested, I'll send a copy. Doug

Document Size:	4414
Author:	Doug Henwood
Date:	Fri Oct 30 08:57:53 PST 1998

40527 SovArch 2 -- rank: 1000

Document IV: Ciphered telegram from Tunkin to Soviet Foreign Ministry (in reply to telegram of September 11), 14 September 1949 [He reports that he had meetings with Kim Il Sung and Pak Hon-yong on September 12 and 13 about the questions raised in the telegram of September 11 and gives their response--K.W.] 1. [Information about South Korean army, providing many figures--K.W.] 2. [Information about partisan units in South Korea, numbering 1,500-2,000 men--K.W.] Kim thinks they should not count o ...

Document Size:	23186
Author:	Doug Henwood
Date:	Thu Oct 29 17:37:30 PST 1998

40528 SovArch I -- rank: 1000

[this bounced for excessive length - it's Brad DeLong, speaking from the Soviet archives - can we trust these things? - Doug] http://cwihp.si.edu/ http://cwihp.si.edu/cwihplib.nsf/e7b8938c6eedaba4852564a7007a887a/577262b2024c7b d9852564bb006a024a?OpenDocument Ah, here they are. Stalin seems to have kept Kim Il Sung on a very, very short leash until January 1950. Only on January 30 does Stalin say that he is "ready to help," and only after that does the flow of arms and advisors to Kim ...

Document Size:	27576
Author:	Doug Henwood
Date:	Thu Oct 29 17:36:33 PST 1998

40529 Barlett and Steele... -- rank: 1000

Brad De Long wrote: >Page 21: "[The Federal Government] talks of retraining the newly unemployed >to fill high-tech jobs that don't exist." > > --Stagnant real wages are--according to Janet Yellen--the result >not of > the fact that new jobs are by and large bad, low-wage, low-skill >jobs, but > the result of declining real wages at old, already-existing jobs. Yellen's point doesn't answer B&S's claim, which in this case is true, since growth in "hi ...

Document Size:	5205
Author:	Doug Henwood
Date:	Thu Oct 29 15:59:43 PST 1998

40530 Summers famous memo -- rank: 1000

[There was some talk of this famous Larry Summers memo, now said to have been written for Summers by Lant Pritchett, here recently. I scanned the juicy bit for a Russian economist who wants to use it in a column, so I thought I'd share the fruits of the effort with the list. It's from a memo commenting on a draft of the World Bank's annual Global Economic Prospects for the Developing Countries, and was dated December 12, 1991. Summers was chief economist of the World Bank when Pritchett wrote th ...

Document Size:	7132
Author:	Doug Henwood
Date:	Thu Oct 29 09:48:46 PST 1998