Monday, December 08, 2003

Posted here Monday, December 08, 2003 at 3:51:08 PM     The naivety of economists. I found this scanning some old papers on the net, by sir Harrod Harrod introduced the concepts of warranted growth, natural growth, and actual growth. The warranted growth rate is the growth rate at which all saving is absorbed into investment. If, for example, people save 10 percent of their income, and the economy's ratio of capital to output is 4, the economy's warranted growth rate is 2.5 percent (10 divided by 4). This is the growth rate at which the ratio of capital to output would stay constant at 4. The natural growth rate is the rate required to maintain full employment. If the labor force grows at 2 percent per year, then to maintain full employment, the economy's annual growth rate must be 2 percent. with the best of intent, but the commitment to maintaining employment of course was given up when inconvenient, so that now we can have that the economy is doing well but the people are doing poorly. ********

Gore, Dean, China, Bush Posted here Monday, December 08, 2003 at 3:04:40 PM     Two very important Gore to Endorse Howard Dean for '04 Presidential Nomination By ADAM NAGOURNEY  5:42 PM ET Democrats said that Al Gore's endorsement, to be announced on Tuesday, would provide a huge boost to Howard Dean's candidacy. On Eve of Chinese Premier's Visit, White House Warns Taiwan By DAVID E. SANGER  4:37 PM ET The Bush administration today dropped a longstanding policy of deliberate ambiguity about how it would respond to moves by China or Taiwan to change the status quo. On Gore, would this make him a VP candidate? On China, as noted last week here, this is chess play, but Bush as a tic tac toe player may ruin the game. ********

Hersh in the New Yorker on Iraq secret plan and Israel Posted here Monday, December 08, 2003 at 1:56:55 PM     From Hersh in the New Yorker One step the Pentagon took was to seek active and secret help in the war against the Iraqi insurgency from Israel, America’s closest ally in the Middle East. According to American and Israeli military and intelligence officials, Israeli commandos and intelligence units have been working closely with their American counterparts at the Special Forces training base at Fort Bragg, North Carolina, and in Israel to help them prepare for operations in Iraq. Israeli commandos are expected to serve as ad-hoc advisers—again, in secret—when full-field operations begin. (Neither the Pentagon nor Israeli diplomats would comment. “No one wants to talk about this,” an Israeli official told me. “It’s incendiary. Both governments have decided at the highest level that it is in their interests to keep a low profile on U.S.-Israeli coöperation” on Iraq.) The critical issue, American and Israeli officials agree, is intelligence. There is much debate about whether targeting a large number of individuals is a practical—or politically effective—way to bring about stability in Iraq, especially given the frequent failure of American forces to obtain consistent and reliable information there. comment: as Bush gets in trouble, escalation, moral and military, is likely to happen. This one seems like a classic short term gain long term disaster kind of move. It requires that Israel in the long run remain a part of a successful market globalization ( a la Friedman) world scenario. If that fails, this alliance will reap revenge. So this is not part of a cut and run strategy, but a deep "win at all costs" strategy. Compares to the recent 'strategic hamlet" initiatives with barbed wire. The requirement that America’s Special Forces units operate in secrecy, a       former senior coalition adviser in Baghdad told me, has provided an additional incentive for increasing their presence in Iraq. The Special Forces in-country numbers are not generally included in troop totals. Bush and Rumsfeld have insisted that more American troops are not needed, but that position was challenged by many senior military officers in private conversations with me. “You need more people,” the former adviser, a retired admiral, said. “But you can’t add them, because Rummy’s taken a position. So you invent a force that won’t be counted.”       At present, there is no legislation that requires the President to notify Congress before authorizing an overseas Special Forces mission. The Special Forces have been expanded enormously in the Bush Administration. The 2004 Pentagon budget provides more than six and a half billion dollars for their activities—a thirty-four-per-cent increase over 2003. A recentcongressional study put the number of active and reserve Special Forces troops at forty-seven thousand, ********

Thoughts on early civilization and hunter gatherers. Posted here Monday, December 08, 2003 at 10:31:56 AM     Thought Hunter gather societies seem to have done two things. 1. killed off much of the animal that could have been domesticated 2. tore apart any signs of settlement life they came across. The result is that Australia never developed settled communities, and in the US only a few places were safe from HG incursions, such as the Pueblo people in North America. Thus civilizational developments were rare and required excellent agricultural opportunities, access to domesticatable animals and... the rest of the story is details, but in those e details feeling humans like ourselves lived, dreamt, godded their spaces, and came to terms with the pains of living. For details read A Brief History of the Human Race by Michale Cook ********