Wednesday, February 25, 2004

Now it is worse. Surprise?? Posted here Wednesday, February 25, 2004 at 3:21:09 PM     Isn't it obvious that a policy of bully confrontation is the worst?   Al Qaeda's changing threat to US Intelligence officials see cells acting on own - and targeting US. By Faye Bowers | Staff writer of The Christian Science Monitor WASHINGTON – Sure Al Qaeda has been weakened, but it has transformed itself into a collection of regional terror groups that operate more autonomously and may be even more dangerous. And although Saddam Hussein has been removed, Iraq is increasingly becoming a rallying point for terrorists. "As we continue the battle against Al Qaeda, we must overcome a movement - a global movement infected by Al Qaeda's radical agenda," said George Tenet, director of the CIA.   ********

Social security cuts.. Posted here Wednesday, February 25, 2004 at 12:44:54 PM     As predicted, using the deficit to blast away the Roosevelt rules. The words of Greenspan.. In order to deal with the daunting budget challenges posed by the coming retirement of the Baby Boom generation, Congress should consider trimming retirement benefits by pushing up the age at which beneficiaries could begin to receive Social Security and Medicare. ********

Illegal to edit papers from Iran, Cuba... Posted here Wednesday, February 25, 2004 at 11:20:22 AM     Editing of papers from certain countries illegal.. Tuesday, February 24th, 2004 Publishers Face Prison For Editing Articles from Iran, Iraq, Sudan, Libya or Cuba The U.S. Treasury Department's Office of Foreign Assets Control recently declared that American publishers cannot edit works authored in nations under trade embargoes which include Iran, Iraq, Sudan, Libya and Cuba. [includes transcript] Although publishing the articles is legal, editing is a "service" and the treasury department says it is illegal to perform services for embargoed nations. It can be punishable by fines of up to a half-million dollars or jail terms as long as 10 years. Robert Bovenschulte, president of the publications division of the American Chemical Society, which decided this week decided to challenge the government and risk criminal prosecution by editing articles submitted from the five embargoed nations. If Bush has over shot with his marriage ammendment, little bytes like this one keep creating a resistance to the administration. ********

Alternative currency bibliography Posted here Wednesday, February 25, 2004 at 10:44:01 AM     Thinking about alternative currencies, the following biblio is helpful Hayek, F. A.  1976. Denationalisation of Money -- The Argument Refined: An Analysis of the Theory and Practice of Concurrent Currencies .  London: Institute of Economic Affairs. Friedrich A.Hayek: Denationalization of Money--The Argument Refined: An Analysis of the Theory and Practice of Concurrent Currencies, 2nd ed., Hobart Special Paper 70, London: Institute of Economic Affairs, 1978 Hayek, F. A.  1990. Denationalisation of Money -- The Argument Refined: An Analysis of the Theory and Practice of Concurrent Currencies.  Third Edition.  London: Institute of Economic Affairs. For the following compare: Latzer M, S.W.Schmitz(Eds. 2002): Carl Menger and the Evolution of Payment Systems: From Barter to electronic Money. Cheltenham, UK, Northampton, MA,USA: E.Elgar. esp. 159-170 Klein B., 1974: The Competitive Supply of Money, Journal of Money Credit and Banking, 6, pp 423-53 Vaubel R. 1984: The Governments Money Monopol: Externalities or Natural Monopoly?, Kyklos 37, pp.27-58 Vaubel, R. 1985: Competing Currencies: The Case for Free Entry, Zeitschrift für Wirtschafts- und sozialwissenschaften,5, pp 547-64 Vaubel R.Currency Competition: Free Entra versus Governmental Legal Monopoly. in K.Groeneveld, J.A.H.Maks and J.Muyksen (eds) (1990), Economic Policy and the Market Process: Austrian and Mainstream Economics, Amsterdam: North Holland Issing 2000: Hayek, Currency Competition and European Monetary Union - with commentaries by Lawrene H. White and Roland Vaubel, Inst. of Economic Affairs Vaubel R. 2000: Commentary (on Issing 2000): in O.Issing (1999), Hayek, Currency Competition and European Monetary Union - with commentaries by Lawrene H. White and Roland Vaubel, Inst. of Economic Affairs, Occasional Paper 111, London pp.49-53 Hellwig, M,1985: What do we know about Courrency Competition?, Zeitschrift für Wirtschaft und Sozialwissenschaften, 5, pp.565-88 Dowd, K.; D. Greenway 1993: 'Currency Competition, Newtwork Externalities and Switching Costs: towards an Alternative View of Optimal Currency Areas', The Economic Journnal 103, pp.1180-9 Taub B 1985: Private Fiat Money with Many Suppliers, J. of Monetary Economics,16, pp.195 Selgin 1997: Network Effects, Adaptive Learning, and the Transition to Fiat Money. Working Paper. Dep of Economics, Terry College of Business, Univ. of Georgia, Athens White L.H. 1999: The Theory of Monetary Institutions, Oxford: Blackwell Publishers White L.H. 2000: Commentrary (on Issing 2000) in O.Issing (1999), Hayek, Currency Competition and European Monetary Union - with commentaries by Lawrene H. White and Roland Vaubel, Inst. of Economic Affairs, Occasional Paper 111, London, pp.39-47   I would be glad to see the final report of the senior project (and may be - before that - the collected list of publications you get just now). I wrote once a little about the topic but did not know most of above references (other than Hayek) and elaborated soemwhat on alternate money at the time of hyperinflation in the 1920ies+ in Germany and Austrai. However, this is in German and highly inadequate. Peter Sint Some google results (+concurrent.currencies): http://www.eh.net/XIIICongress/cd/papers/15Kuroda83.pdf http://www.jorim.nl/ http://www.jorim.nl/economicscommunitycurrencies.pdf http://www.econlib.org/library/Essays/LtrLbrty/brnCCMR2.html much is partisan directed http://www.worldservice.org/issues/octnov95/banking.html http://www.libertarian.co.uk/lapubs/econn/econn073.pdf http://www.jubileeplus.org/opinion/shann_Liquidwb.htm http://www.cato.org/moneyconf/14mc-3.html http://www.econlib.org/library/Essays/LtrLbrty/brnCCMR2.html http://www.geog.le.ac.uk/ijccr/vol4-6/5no1.htm http://cog.kent.edu/archives/ownership/msg00641.html ********

Plato and poetry - a reversal..(more) Posted here Wednesday, February 25, 2004 at 10:33:10 AM     Always a basic argument to understand.. (From BMCR 2004.02.47) Ramona A. Naddaff, Exiling the Poets: The Production of Censorship in Plato's Republic. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2002. Pp. xv, 189. ISBN 0-226-56727-3. $27.50. Reviewed by Bruce Krajewski (bkrajews@georgiasouthern.edu) Word count: 1547 words ------------------------------- Naddaff sets out to offer an "original interpretation" of the ancient quarrel between poetry and philosophy. "The censorship of poetry, I argue, is a foil, a cover, to produce literature, to produce philosophy, and to produce a reciprocal need between the two" (xi). This surprising thesis converts censorship into something salubrious from Naddaff's perspective, at least for the goals of Platonic/Nietzschean philosophy -- more about that below. She asserts that Plato does not wish to do away with poetry but to learn from it, in the process strengthening philosophy. The talk about censorship in the Republic calls for rethinking, according to Naddaff, since dialectic, by its nature encourages openness. "This openness to all discourses, however, is unconditional; indeed it is the condition of the possibility of the dialectic itself when it examines a nature alien to its own" (133). At this point, Naddaff sounds downright Gadamerian in her allegiance to the openness of dialogue, and fully philosophical in describing poetic discourse as "alien." That allegiance to openness dissolves rapidly when a few sentences later Naddaff endorses the analytic view of philosophy as an endless agon, a view she inherits from Nietzsche (a strange but telling source of inspiration for Naddaff's book). Naddaff tells the reader that "philosophy risks losing its own individual identity and individuality when it engages with and incorporates the object of its discourse.... ********