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8266 [lbo-talk] Subprime crisis - overaccumulation? -- rank: 1000

On Jan 15, 2008, at 4:06 PM, Patrick Bond wrote: > James Heartfield wrote: >> You can argue with the definitions >> of GDP all you like, > > I'm probably past three posts to day (no rollover from prior months > lurking Doug?), but anyhow. No official rollover, but you've earned some indulgence. Just say a Hail Mary and an Act of Contrition. > Yes that is a problem you can't shy away from. But just as important, > the 1994-2007 period makes no conceptual sense so sh ...

Document Size:	8667
Author:	Doug Henwood
Date:	Tue Jan 15 13:32:47 PST 2008

8267 [lbo-talk] Why am I so annoyed by James Kunstler's The Long Emergency? -- rank: 1000

On Jan 15, 2008, at 3:49 PM, Dwayne Monroe wrote: > Kunstler's premise is straightforward: we're running out of easily > extractable petrol and yet, simultaneously, demand is rising. When I said to him that the greater danger was that we burn the oil we have, not that we're running out of it, Kunstler agreed. Doug

Document Size:	5207
Author:	Doug Henwood
Date:	Tue Jan 15 13:06:35 PST 2008

8268 [lbo-talk] Subprime crisis - overaccumulation? -- rank: 1000

On Jan 15, 2008, at 4:37 AM, James Heartfield wrote: > a prolonged period of (modest) growth 1994-2007 That period - which contains one recession - wasn't all that bad. Global growth (per capita, constant US$) averaged 1.8%, significantly higher than the 1980s' 1.4%. In 14 of the 18 regional classifications the World Bank uses growth was higher in that period than the 1980s - including Africa and Latin America. Growth isn't really the problem; it's distribution and quality. Doug

Document Size:	5097
Author:	Doug Henwood
Date:	Tue Jan 15 12:42:40 PST 2008

8269 [lbo-talk] Subprime crisis - overaccumulation? -- rank: 1000

On Jan 15, 2008, at 10:03 AM, Patrick Bond wrote: > * the 1990s and first half of the 2000s saw progressively lower per > capita growth rates, so you can chop/change and find 1994-2007 as a > slightly higher period but it's a strange slice because you've got two > upstages and just one recession, so I've never heard of this kind of > dating aside from people who like to torture stats until they confess > and I'm *sure* that doesn't include you. This meaning of this passage is a ...

Document Size:	8608
Author:	Doug Henwood
Date:	Tue Jan 15 12:30:08 PST 2008

8270 [lbo-talk] Price and taste of wine -- rank: 1000

On Jan 15, 2008, at 12:16 PM, Wojtek Sokolowski wrote: > --- Doug Henwood <dhenwood at panix.com> wrote: > >> >> On Jan 15, 2008, at 10:54 AM, Wojtek Sokolowski >> wrote: >> >> Three separate posts that were responses to a post >> with a completely >> different subject heading. >> > > [WS:] ???? I thought I entered an appropriate heading > manually and they do show as different headings on my > machine. They do but I'm gues ...

Document Size:	6101
Author:	Doug Henwood
Date:	Tue Jan 15 10:32:51 PST 2008

8271 [lbo-talk] Subprime crisis - overaccumulation? -- rank: 1000

On Jan 15, 2008, at 11:29 AM, Marvin Gandall wrote: > The Luxemburg/Lenin generation and a succession of Marxist thinkers > through > to Harvey have had no alternative but to look to "displacement" of > the final > crisis as an explanation for its failure to materialize in the most > mature > capitalist economies. According to Russell Jacoby's piece on crisis in Marxism, Lenin held Luxemburg's theory in low regard. He was much more convinced of the capacity of ca ...

Document Size:	5309
Author:	Doug Henwood
Date:	Tue Jan 15 09:17:44 PST 2008

8272 [lbo-talk] Price and taste of wine -- rank: 1000

On Jan 15, 2008, at 10:54 AM, Wojtek Sokolowski wrote: Three separate posts that were responses to a post with a completely different subject heading. Please don't do this. It confuses mail programs that use threading, and confuses the archives as well. If you're starting a new thread or subject heading, send a fresh message. Doug

Document Size:	4834
Author:	Doug Henwood
Date:	Tue Jan 15 08:18:08 PST 2008

8273 [lbo-talk] [Marxism] Subprime crisis -- rank: 1000

On Jan 14, 2008, at 4:04 AM, Patrick Bond wrote: > Because the subprime mortgages, current account deficit, public debt, > relatively stagnant GDP etc etc are symptoms of a deeper problem. What, the crisis of capitalism? Trotsky's death agony? Financial panics and recessions/depressions have been regular features of capitalism since forever. Has the deeper problem always been there - for all 700 of O'Connor's years? >> How can this story not be told without noting international fi ...

Document Size:	8639
Author:	Doug Henwood
Date:	Mon Jan 14 18:36:20 PST 2008

8274 [lbo-talk] Citi to cut dividend, etc. -- rank: 1000

Hmm, I believe Jordan said this wasn't going to happen... > NEWS ALERT > from The Wall Street Journal > > Jan. 14, 2008 > > Citigroup is expected to announce a sizable dividend cut, cash > infusion of at least $10 billion and write-down of as much as $20 > billion in mortgage-related investments as part of its fourth- > quarter earnings report, people familiar with the plans said. > > For more information: > http://online.wsj.com/article/SB120035073183189649.h ...

Document Size:	5274
Author:	Doug Henwood
Date:	Mon Jan 14 15:06:06 PST 2008

8275 [lbo-talk] 31 state AFL-CIOs endorse single-payer -- rank: 1000

[from Sam Smith's Progressive Review] 31 STATE AFL-CIOs ENDORSE SINGLE PAYER Delegates to the Twenty-Sixth Biennial Convention of the Alabama AFL- CIO endorsed HR 676, single payer healthcare legislation introduced by Congressman John Conyers (D-MI). The Alabama state AFL-CIO is the 31st state federation to endorse the Conyers legislation. HR 676 would institute a single payer health care system by expanding a greatly improved Medicare system to every resident. HR 676 would cover every perso ...

Document Size:	5677
Author:	Doug Henwood
Date:	Mon Jan 14 14:11:17 PST 2008

8276 [lbo-talk] [Marxism] Subprime crisis -- rank: 1000

On Jan 14, 2008, at 11:19 AM, Julio Huato wrote: > It seems to me that spreads are all over the place. And, as we know, > they are pretty whimsical. Here's a couple of charts with a few > yields: > > http://www.economagic.com/mgif/M710125021802481007077239583134.gif > http://www.economagic.com/mgif/M710125021802481008494439290165.gif Not Found The requested URL /mgif/M710125021802481008494439290165.gif was not found on this server.

Document Size:	5215
Author:	Doug Henwood
Date:	Mon Jan 14 14:09:39 PST 2008

8277 [lbo-talk] [Marxism] Subprime crisis -- rank: 1000

On Jan 13, 2008, at 6:00 PM, Julio Huato wrote: > Maybe it's my eyesight, but Michael's interpretation of R&R's paper is > not clear to me. I don't see much of the connection between R&R's > claims and Doug's views. Not sure what you're characterizing as "my views," but not only have I been moaning about the housing bubble for years, I've long said the current account deficit is unsustainable, and the big political economy question of our time is how the U.S. goes ...

Document Size:	6264
Author:	Doug Henwood
Date:	Mon Jan 14 12:22:15 PST 2008

8278 [lbo-talk] Krugman: Obama to the right of rivals on domestic policy -- rank: 1000

New York Times - January 14, 2008 <http://www.nytimes.com/2008/01/14/opinion/14krugman.html> Responding to Recession By Paul Krugman Suddenly, the economic consensus seems to be that the implosion of the housing market will indeed push the U.S. economy into a recession, and that it s quite possible that we re already in one. As a result, over the next few weeks we ll be hearing a lot about plans for economic stimulus. Since this is an election year, the debate over how to stimulate the ...

Document Size:	10179
Author:	Doug Henwood
Date:	Mon Jan 14 07:30:34 PST 2008

8279 [lbo-talk] [Marxism] Subprime crisis -- rank: 1000

On Jan 14, 2008, at 4:21 AM, James Heartfield wrote: > Compelling to me, anyway, is how *little* this current credit > crunch looks > like a typical Marxist over-accumulation crisis. Marx's > precondition was a > rising organic composition of capital (roughly, capital intensive > growth) > but in Europe, and I believe in the US for around ten to fifteen > years, most > growth has been 'job-rich' growth, predicated on low wages, while > investment > in new technol ...

Document Size:	5625
Author:	Doug Henwood
Date:	Mon Jan 14 06:58:19 PST 2008

8280 [lbo-talk] [Marxism] Subprime crisis -- rank: 1000

On Jan 14, 2008, at 12:13 AM, Julio Huato wrote: > Although I hadn't read this, again, I thought I had noticed that Doug > was shifting his expectations. Perhaps I wasn't clear enough, but > that's what I tried to tell Patrick in my posting -- that Doug appears > to be more bearish now than he was a few months ago. I'd been pretty bearish on the U.S. housing market since I wrote this piece in the summer of 2005. I am now dislocating my arm patting myself on the back for prescience ...

Document Size:	8961
Author:	Doug Henwood
Date:	Mon Jan 14 06:56:01 PST 2008