Tuesday, October 28, 2003

Breshinski hnt from Marshal Posted here Tuesday, October 28, 2003 at 10:08:03 PM     B has a theory about Eurasia. I'd love to know more of jat eh said. But what stood out to me over everything else was the speech in the early evening by Zbigniew Brzezinski. I don’t know whether a transcript of the speech will be available. I’m not even sure how much of it was precisely written out or just extemporaneous. But the basic sanity, wisdom and tough-mindedness of it was bracing. And for me it brought home the nature of our historical moment, and the critical turning point we’re at, more powerfully than any other public address I’ve heard. I don’t know if the transcript will be available or if there’ll be some sort of recorded live feed on the conference website. But if it is, watch it. Balanced, powerful, shrewd -- it was that good. ********

Interest rates and (un)employment Posted here Tuesday, October 28, 2003 at 9:37:41 PM     Overheard The Fed can cut interest rates all it wants, in other words. It can bring short-term rates down from a 45-year low to a 55-year low. It may bring about a boom in asset prices... and even a boom in consumer spending, but it cannot bring about a real boom in the economy. Because half of all the manufactured items the consumer buys are now made overseas... and it is overseas where the new factories are built. When the consumer spends, his money stimulates the economy. But not in America. It's the Chinese economy that feels the tickles. ********

The Conservation of Curiosity in economics Posted here Tuesday, October 28, 2003 at 8:46:09 PM     A good historical summary To have some idea of where we are going in this world, it is useful to have some sense of where we have been. It is one thing to assert that most prominent economists of the 20th century can be divided into three groups: the Generation of the Great Depression (and World War II); the Generation of the Cold War; and the Generation of Perestroika. That is certainly true, and probably useful, as far as it goes. But it doesn’t tell us much about economics It is quite another thing to identify the discipline’s galvanizing events from the perspective of those inside the field. Such a chronicle of internal developments is, after all, the way economists report their news to us. Until about 1960, the big news (it reached the public well after the fact) had to do with the appearance of various books: Keynes’ "The General Theory of Employment, Interest and Money" in 1936, Hicks’ "Value and Capital" in 1939, Von Neumann and Morgenstern’s "The Theory of Games and Economic Behavior" in 1944, Samuelson’s "Foundations of Economic Analysis" in 1948, Debreu’s "The Theory of Value" in 1959, Friedman and Schwartz’ "Monetary History of the United States 1867-1960" in 1963. After that (and in many cases before), the most significant contributions to economics are short, technical papers published in journals: Ronald Coase’s "The Problem of Social Cost" in 1960; George Akerlof’s "The Market for ‘Lemons’" in 1970, Robert Lucas’ "Expectations and the Neutrality of Money" in 1972, Fisher Black and Myron Scholes and Robert Merton’s papers on options pricing in 1973 and so on. An almost-serviceable definition of a good economist is someone who reads the journals instead of the newspapers. A proper history of 20th-century economics would interweave these narratives, internal and external, in order to produce a coherent account of how those three unmistakable generations came to coalesce, forming unities of experience and analysis both inside the discipline and in countless countries round the world. ********

An AP Investigation: 500,000 Criminal Deportees From America Wreak Havoc in Many Nations Posted here Tuesday, October 28, 2003 at 8:28:17 PM     The num ers are staggering.. An AP Investigation: 500,000 Criminal Deportees From America Wreak Havoc in Many Nations By Randall Richard The Associated Press The U.S. government calls them criminal aliens, but they are as American as drive-by shootings and crack cocaine. Many came to the United States as children, often in the arms of men and women fleeing poverty and war. They went to school here, but usually not for long. They came of age on city streets from Los Angeles to New York. Eventually they broke the law. In 1996, Congress banished them from America for life and directed immigration agents to hunt them down. The biggest dragnet in U.S. history is now well underway. Already, more than 500,000 have been rounded up and deported, according to government figures, and this year they are being banished at a rate of one every seven minutes to more than 160 countries around the world.   ********

The general atmosphere. Posted here Tuesday, October 28, 2003 at 8:05:35 PM     Not much posting. Today we had a wind storm power loss and generally the news from Iraq and the economy is just on the depressing track. Most to watch is Syria which could get out of control from te USpoint of view. We can expect the Bush admin to hold to the course in Iraqand take the blows. The long term polarization between slam and the West continues, but the long term prospect is that the "west"wins through, and the Bush leadership gets continually dispersed into multilateral arrangements. but it will take time and the general feeling of optimism is in short supply.   ********

Sony job cuts Posted here Tuesday, October 28, 2003 at 7:58:24 PM     The following indicates the intensity of job shifts.This is at the level where most corporations cannot be smart about who goes and who stays. In desperation the cut is even across the board and mostly non-strategic.Such actions are a result of deadening because mindless sacrificial responses to lack of cash flow. As companies and state agencies cut in this way, subtle concerns for fairness, environment, meaningfulness and long term hope are passed over in the quest of simple stopping the hemorage. Empathy and compassion are vastly reduced and the whole society goes into a basic survival state. Confirming a published report last week, Sony Corp. said it will eliminate 20,000 jobs - almost 13 percent of its workforce - over the next three years. One-third of the layoffs will come in Japan. They are part of a larger strategy aimed at turning around the company's fortunes. Other steps include a 30 percent cut in production, distribution, and service facilities; ending the manufacture of cathode ray tubes for television; integrating jobs that overlap; consolidating its marketing operations in the US on the West Coast; forming a holding company for its noncore banking and insurance units; and joining rival Samsung Electronics of South Korea in a $2 billion project to develop liquid crystal display panels. The electronics giant reported a 25 percent drop in profits in the third quarter and cut its profit forecast for the full fiscal year by 23 percent. ********