Monday, October 20, 2003

US gives authority to UN and World bank... Posted here Monday, October 20, 2003 at 11:39:05 AM     The balancing out is proceeding   US bows to donor pressure; new independent agency will allocate billions in funds.   ********

Hersh on whitehouse - intelligence conflicts. Posted here Monday, October 20, 2003 at 11:26:39 AM       Notes coming   http://www.newyorker.com/fact/content/?031027fa_fact ********

Women are a better fit to the economy - consequences? Posted here Monday, October 20, 2003 at 10:29:47 AM     The complexities..   Women have overtaken men at every level of education in developed countries around the world. And girls are now more confident of getting better-paid, professional jobs than their flagging male counterparts. International education figures, published by the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development, show a consistent picture, across cultures and continents, of women achieving better results than men. The OECD survey is a detailed comparison of education achievement and spending in 43 developed countries. The success of girls is a complete reversal of what would have been expected a generation ago, said Andreas Schleicher, head of analysis at the OECD's education directorate. And he says that the 1990s have seen a remarkable change in women's expectations and achievements. The survey found that in almost every developed country, 15-year-old girls are more confident than boys about getting high-income jobs. For example, in the United Kingdom, 63% of girls expect to have "white collar, high-skilled" jobs by the time they are 30, compared to only 51% of boys. Comment: one issue, the downgrading of non whitecollar jobs. that is, real production. Women, taken away from children, are good employee careerists. men, taken away from soil and tools, make good bureaucrats. And we see that on balance women are better group leaders and organizational players than men. Consequences? Is it good for women? good for men? Good for children? Good for future humanity? ********

Gilder's predictions; what about y2k? Posted here Monday, October 20, 2003 at 10:04:35 AM     Analysis, without reference to y2k, seems to me to miss the distorted invesment cycle of 98-99 and the necessary retrenchment in 2000, 2001, and the ensuing consequences. Without which the demand curves may have remained as predicted.. Then reality intervened. Demand for bandwidth, it turned out, was not what everyone had thought it would be. The networks weren't filling up with customers at anywhere near the rate that the new-economy faithful had expected. The market had a huge glut of capacity, and many of the fiber-optic networks were left sitting idle. Within a few months of the March 2000 plunge in the stock market, many of Mr. Gilder's prime picks nose-dived. "My whole optical paradigm crashed, and it crashed on my head," Mr. Gilder said. When things fell apart, newsletter subscribers were irate. "They were mad and hurt and aggrieved and pained and broke," Mr. Gilder said. "And, they had a real grievance. These people didn't lose 50 percent or 80 percent of their money. They lost 98 percent of their money." As fate would have it, says Mr. Gilder, 90 percent of subscribers had bought their stocks during the peak months of 1999 and 2000. Some of them blamed Mr. Gilder personally for their losses. One group of subscribers started a class-action lawsuit against him, but the suit never got off the ground. He was also sued by his chief financial officer for severance pay, and settled for $7,000. ********