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41221 Overtime (was Re: happy autoworkers) -- rank: 1000

Hasn't this discussion of overtime gotten a little ahead of the evidence? The BLS reports that workers in "motor vehicles and car bodies" worked an average of 44.6 hours a week in May 1998, and earned $982.54 in direct pay for it. That's actually down a couple of hours from 1994 (the industry has been hiring a bit over the last couple of year, reducing the need for OT), and a long way from 80 hours. I agree that American society is sick with overwork, but 45 hours is enough to make thi ...

Document Size:	5874
Author:	Doug Henwood
Date:	Sat Jul 11 08:29:38 PDT 1998

41222 happy autoworkers -- rank: 1000

Michael Eisenscher wrote: >(It would be instructive to examine what is happening in Puerto Rico this >week, looking at specific unions, many of which are affiliates of their U.S. >counterparts.) I interviewed Cesar Ayala - a sociologist who teaches Latin American studies at Lehman College who's in Puerto Rico for the year, and who's running the Puerto Rico Libre list - on my radio show last night. He said that the CWA has been supportive and that the Teamster local has been very militan ...

Document Size:	4902
Author:	Doug Henwood
Date:	Fri Jul 10 08:33:15 PDT 1998

41223 idiocy -- rank: 1000

Wow. The Harry Dexter White thread prompted this outburst from an LBO subscriber (who shall remain nameless): >Dear Mr. Henwood, > >Please cancel my subscription to Left Business Observer. After following >your lbo-talk thread long enough to get a clearer understanding of what >you consider to be political discourse I've found I've had enough. > >The red-baiting of Harry Dexter White was the last straw. This is someone who's received almost 50 issues of LBO in his subscripti ...

Document Size:	5756
Author:	Doug Henwood
Date:	Fri Jul 10 08:25:06 PDT 1998

41224 Camdessus says... -- rank: 1000

The July 6 issue of the IMF Survey, the Fund's biweekly PR sheet (available at <http://www.imf.org/external/pubs/ft/survey/pdf/070698.PDF>) has a speech by managing director Michel Camedessus to the Council of Europe, "Asian Crisis Intensifies Need for A New Global Architecture." (The IMF has been fond of architectural metaphors in recent months.) What are the features of this new architecture? According to Camdessus, they should be (all italicized in the original): * "make ...

Document Size:	5526
Author:	Doug Henwood
Date:	Thu Jul 9 11:28:06 PDT 1998

41225 The World Accroding to Robert Merton -- rank: 1000

Jordan Hayes wrote: >I believe Michael was implying that "derivatives are bad" which >I think isn't a correct characterization of the situation. Oh, I agree that it's wrong to demonize derivatives (aside from the general demonization of Kapital, but that's another story). Still, I don't think anyone's proved that derivatives are good either. They've proliferated like hell, but, aside from the folks who sell them, who's benefited? As the article on hedging in the New Palgrave Dict ...

Document Size:	5270
Author:	Doug Henwood
Date:	Thu Jul 9 11:00:29 PDT 1998

41226 The World Accroding to Robert Merton -- rank: 1000

Jordan Hayes wrote: >You seem to have conflated the two >in your choice of quotations from the article; modelling of >interest rate or currency risk for use _as a hedging tool_ *is* >much more accurate and successful today than methods used in >the past. So what? What has the payoff been, and to whom, for such progress? Doug

Document Size:	4904
Author:	Doug Henwood
Date:	Thu Jul 9 10:18:48 PDT 1998

41227 UAW convention -- rank: 1000

MScoleman at aol.com wrote: >Doug succinctly points out the fact that UAW national leadership is trailing >the country in supporting the strikes of their own union members. The sad >fact is, this is all too typical of numbers of unions. As a more general >question, how can this pattern be fixed? Generally, it is the most tame and >bureaucratic of union members who get sent to conventions, thereby insuring >the re-election of the bureaucracy (in general this is true -- certai ...

Document Size:	5701
Author:	Doug Henwood
Date:	Thu Jul 9 08:24:28 PDT 1998

41228 happy autoworkers -- rank: 1000

I had a long chat with a guy who does union education, mainly for auto and steel, last night. He painted a picture of a very happy workforce, with 25-year-olds pulling down $75k and senior skilled crafts guys (they are almost all guys, aren't they?) making over $100k. This would make the Flint strikers look pretty anomalous. But he argued that GM's failure to downsize aggressively in the early 1980s was a missed opportunity - had they done something like Ford, which cut its workforce nearly in h ...

Document Size:	4980
Author:	Doug Henwood
Date:	Thu Jul 9 08:11:13 PDT 1998

41229 The World Accroding to Robert Merton -- rank: 1000

JayHecht at aol.com wrote: >How is this going to work? Is it like this chat group, or a little more "real >time?" It's a mailing list, like any mailing list. You subscribe, read, type, delete, chortle, weep, reach for the air sickness bag.... Merton says: >"Further improved technology, together with growing breadth and experience in >the application of derivatives, should continue to reduce transaction costs as >both users and producers of derivatives move along th ...

Document Size:	5993
Author:	Doug Henwood
Date:	Thu Jul 9 07:58:40 PDT 1998

41230 finance question -- rank: 1000

Doug Henwood wrote: >When you consume more than your income, your debt rises; when you >consume less, your savings rise. I should have said consume and/or invest. Doug

Document Size:	4521
Author:	Doug Henwood
Date:	Wed Jul 8 20:31:50 PDT 1998

41231 finance question -- rank: 1000

christian a. gregory wrote: >question: how might i explain the difference between "capital account" and >"current account" balances? They're mirror images. A surplus (or deficit) on the current account has to be invested (or financed). So, a country like the U.S. that runs a very large current account deficit, has to borrow that amount abroad; the outflow on the current account is offset by the inflow on the capital account. When you consume more than your income, your ...

Document Size:	5088
Author:	Doug Henwood
Date:	Wed Jul 8 19:11:12 PDT 1998

41232 Tina out! -- rank: 1000

Aaron wrote: > Doug forgot that not everybody who reads English is acculturated to >a U.S. sense of humor. Doug was clearly being sarcastic about the >importance of the trivial item he was reporting. He probably felt a bit >embarrassed about sending it to the list at all, and thus made a joke >of it. That way, he gets to have his cake and eat it too, as we say. You're right. It doesn't really matter what the liberal bourgeoisie is told to think. Doug

Document Size:	4779
Author:	Doug Henwood
Date:	Wed Jul 8 17:58:42 PDT 1998

41233 ontology of class and race? (was Alabama and Tibet (?)) -- rank: 1000

Rakesh Bhandari wrote: >He seems to forget that due to the limits of the New Deal I just got a review copy of Suzanne Mettler's Dividing Citizens: Gender and Federalism in New Deal Public Policy, from Cornell University Press. In the preface, she argues that "Men, particularly white men, were endowed with national citizienship, incorporated into policies to be administered in a centralized, unitary manner through standardized, routinized procedures. Women and minority men were more likel ...

Document Size:	5410
Author:	Doug Henwood
Date:	Wed Jul 8 14:19:29 PDT 1998

41234 Wall Street cyberseminar -- rank: 1000

[apologies if this looks too self-promotional; modesty forced me to excise the blurbs] SEMINAR ANNOUNCEMENT: WALL STREET with Doug Henwood The seminar consists of the web site http://csf.colorado.edu/sustainable-economics/wall_street plus a moderated listserv or forum in which the public is invited to participate in conversation with the author (instructions below). The seminar with Doug Henwood is for one week: July 29-Aug 5,1998. With the impressive growth in the value of stocks on Wall St ...

Document Size:	6777
Author:	Doug Henwood
Date:	Wed Jul 8 13:02:42 PDT 1998

41235 Tina out! -- rank: 1000

Forget the UAW, the Asian crisis, the race-class melodrama - the big news is, Tina Brown has quit as editor of The New Yorker!!!! Doug

Document Size:	4381
Author:	Doug Henwood
Date:	Wed Jul 8 10:02:55 PDT 1998