gmane.science.economics.progressive-economists

According to the World Bank, of the nearly 100 banking crises that have occurred internationally during the last 20 years, all were resolved by bailouts at taxpayer expense.[9]

c b — 2012-05-25T17:12:33

Taxpayers, depositors, and other creditors often have to shoulder at
least part of the burden of risky financial decisions made by lending
institutions.[5][6][7][8] According to the World Bank, of the nearly
100 banking crises that have occurred internationally during the last
20 years, all were resolved by bailouts at taxpayer expense.[9]


        http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Moral_hazard#History_of_the_term
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Thoughts for Memorial Day: Heroism vs. Moneymaking

michael perelman — 2012-05-25T16:28:44

We remember how the neoconservatives will solve warfare as a way to
out American softness and recover the noble heroism associated with
past military victories.  Here is a snippet from the post-Civil War
period, which adds an interesting twist: the editorial in question
makes a distinction between the ethic of warfare and the sordid
moneymaking at the time.  Today, the presumptive ethical basis of both
the military and the moneymaking crowd deserve our highest admiration,
even though the moneymakers are engaged in warfare against the same
people that the military is supposed to be protecting.


94-5: "The fervor with which Americans practiced the rituals of
Memorial Day began to fade in the late 1870s and early 1880s.
Graceful popular ceremonies," declared The New York Tribune in May
1878, no longer fit in a society characterized by "the pioneers of the
prairie and the speculators in railway stock." Bitterness had waned,
and as "individual sorrow for the fallen fades away," said the
Tribune, Decoration Day "gradually loses its best significance."  By
1880, the same paper editorialized on how Decoration Day had "become
coarser and more blurred" in its meaning, and how it had fallen into
the "slough of politics."  In the Gilded Age, the Tribune claimed that
the truly "loyal" would continue to honor the Civil War dead, but also
make every "effort to put out of sight the causes of the war, the hate
and bitterness which we thought immortal." At stake now was the next
generation and the social and moral order. Civil War memorialization
should not be used for political purposes among the children born
since the war, claimed the Tribune, but the sacrifice of soldiers
should very much be used as lessons in morality and patriotism. "The
days they [postwar children) have been born in are not heroic,"
declared the Tribune, "they are full of fraud, corruption, bargain,
and sale.  Men are not pushing to the battlefield to die for an idea;
they are pushing into place." As an antidote to America's "sordid
expertness in money-getting," the editors spoke for a large
cross-section of the culture that now looked to the Civil War dead, as
well as to living veterans, as the alternative to their unheroic age,
as sources of honest passion, higher morality, something "noble and
true ... kept for our children."

Re: Preannouncement of Paperback Edition of my Book

2012-05-25T04:07:39

Congratualtions to a great writer!

Brian

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From: michael perelman <michael.perelman3-Re5JQEeQqe8AvxtiuMwx3w< at >public.gmane.org>
To: Progressive Economics <pen-l-FPEHb7Xf0XWG9Rqvk1bdOTe48wsgrGvP< at >public.gmane.org>
Sent: Fri, May 25, 2012 12:01 am
Subject: [Pen-l] Preannouncement of Paperback Edition of my Book

After letting my book languish for almost five years Palgrave let The
onfiscation of American Prosperity, they are about to release a
aperback edition.  In addition, they are featuring me as author of
he month and reprinting my new introduction, which I explain why the
ook was constructed as a crime story.
My picture and the introduction are at the bottom.
http://view.mail.macmillan.com/?j=fe5816787c6d057f7316&m=feee1c737d6c02&ls=fdd015717762057b7511777465&l=fe5c1575746d01757512&s=fe3010727564037b731171&jb=ffcf14&ju=fe1f1773716d027b721777&r=0

- 
ichael Perelman
conomics Department
alifornia State University
hico, CA
5929
530 898 5321
ax 530 898 5901
ttp://michaelperelman.wordpress.com
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Preannouncement of Paperback Edition of my Book

michael perelman — 2012-05-25T04:01:30

After letting my book languish for almost five years Palgrave let The
Confiscation of American Prosperity, they are about to release a
paperback edition.  In addition, they are featuring me as author of
the month and reprinting my new introduction, which I explain why the
book was constructed as a crime story.

My picture and the introduction are at the bottom.

http://view.mail.macmillan.com/?j=fe5816787c6d057f7316&m=feee1c737d6c02&ls=fdd015717762057b7511777465&l=fe5c1575746d01757512&s=fe3010727564037b731171&jb=ffcf14&ju=fe1f1773716d027b721777&r=0

Giroux's Passionate Speech for Youth

2012-05-25T00:42:37

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WxJgr40bBHk_______________________________________________
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Blood money

Jim Devine — 2012-05-24T15:59:23

I don't understand the brouhaha about selling Reagan's blood. By the
free-market principles he professed, his blood should be fair game.
Everything should be for sale, even if it's sold to Transylvania.

Jim Devine
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Pink Floyd's Roget Watets hearts Occupy

raghu — 2012-05-24T15:05:36

Very cool.
http://hellaoccupyoakland.org/occupy-the-wall-how-pink-floyds-album-became-political-theater-in-2012/
------------------------------snip
“If at first you don’t succeed, call an airstrike.”

– projected text from Roger Waters: The Wall at AT&T Park, 5/11/12

Roger Waters, the stadium-rock showman and concept-album auteur who
quit the band Pink Floyd nearly thirty years ago, has brought his
epic, expensive production of that band’s 1979 album, The Wall, back
for another round of performances. This time, however, the show has
taken on a decidedly more political bent.

For a generation of rock fans like myself, The Wall was a landmark
album whose importance could not be overstated. Throughout the ’80s,
while our hipper and less sheltered peers were digging into hip hop
and metal, we suburban white guys tended to obsess over the more
establishment-friendly arena rock of Pink Floyd and The Wall. We
watched the movie starring Bob Geldof, we pored over its lyrics for
symbolism and referentia, and our classic-rock radio stations made
“Another Brick in the Wall (Part Two)” a hit. Its refrain, “We don’t
need no education / We don’t need no thought control,” transformed
into a mantra. It was an oft-cited and oft-misunderstood scream of
anti-establishment fury and rebellion, played on the same
establishment radio stations that were pumping REO Speedwagon,
Foreigner and Bob Seger.

For young rock listeners looking for deeper meaning, the lure of The
Wall was strong. Themes recurred and morphed over the course of the
four album sides, as characters appeared and returned. Like Tommy,
Quadrophenia, The Rise and Fall of Ziggy Stardust and the Spiders From
Mars, and other Big Concept Albums that came from the UK, The Wall had
resonance and significance where other albums were just collections of
songs. The Summer of Love had Sgt. Pepper, while the summers of fear,
greed and disillusionment (aka the Reagan-Bush era) had The Wall.
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Nearly 1 in 3 homeowners with a mortgage in L.A. County owes more than the property is worth, new data show

c b — 2012-05-24T14:57:10

http://www.latimes.com/business/realestate/la-fi-negative-equity-20120524,0,985482.story
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Re: South Africa to label settlement goods

Patrick Bond — 2012-05-24T08:31:33

*'Closing the doors of learning' (to the Israeli state) opens the doors 
of freedom*

By Patrick Bond and Muhammed Desai

One of South Africa's largest tertiary institutions, the University of 
KwaZulu-Natal (UKZN) in Durban, is a site of multiple controversy but a 
near-disaster on Monday deserves more reflection because it points us in 
a positive direction: away from allying with the Israeli state and its 
apartheid policies during a time of heightened racism.A representative 
of Israel had been invited to speak but was then disinvited, after the 
university was called on by staff and students to respect the "academic 
boycott" of Israel.

 From South Africa, the African continent and everywhere else, it is a 
critical time to step up pressure against the rogue regime in Tel Aviv. 
Israel's hard-right leader, Benyamin Netanyahu, is in a dangerous career 
phase, preparing to bomb Iran; illegitimately holding thousands of 
Palestinian prisoners in worsening conditions; expanding settlements on 
Palestinian land in the West Bank; terrorizing Gaza; and tightening his 
militaristic hold over the region.

Netanyahu's approach to protecting his core constituency was unveiled at 
a recent cabinet meeting, in his paranoid description of African refugee 
immigration (mainly from Eritrea, Ethiopia and South Sudan) last week: 
"if we don't stop the problem (/sic/), 60,000 infiltrators (/sic/) are 
liable to become 600,000, and cause the negation of the State of Israel 
as a Jewish and democratic (/sic/) state."

Interior Minister Eli Yishai picked up the same theme: "They [African 
immigrants] should be put into holding cells or jails... and then given 
a grant and sent back." In spite of police data confirming that Israelis 
commit more than twice as many crimes per person as African immigrants, 
Yishai claimed, "most African infiltrators are involved in crime."

According to the Hotline for Migrant Workers, "In the last month, the 
number of hate crimes carried out by Israelis against Africans has risen 
tremendously. Multiple Molotov cocktails were thrown into houses of 
Africans in southern Tel Aviv on two separate occasions, a week apart."

Then on Wednesday night, the logic of Netanyahu/Yishai unfolded at 
street level when hundreds of their followers attacked Africans in what 
was widely described as a race riot, leaving many injured, with a dozen 
Israelis arrested for violence.

In this context, the Israeli embassy had suggested an input to a UKZN 
audience about Jerusalem's Wailing Wall. The Wall is the topic of 
current controversy since Gush Shalom, a Tel Aviv-based human rights 
group opposed to Israel's illegal occupation of Palestine, has just 
demanded that last Saturday's 'Jerusalem Day' in future be removed from 
Israel's calendar of holidays.

As a celebration of the 1967 War and Occupation of Palestine, it 
involves a provocative march to the Wall through East 
Jerusalem.Political scientist, Peter Beinart, author of /The Crisis of 
Zionism, /remarked last week, "I am disturbed that Yom Yerushalayim 
[Jerusalem Day] has become a nationalistic holiday, observed most 
publicly by the religious right. Too often, Yom Yerushalayim 
celebrations turn violent... most celebrations glorify the violent abuse 
of power by cruel extremists."

As Lia Tarachansky of the Real News Network reported from Jerusalem on 
the weekend, "The celebrators marched through Damascus Gate and the 
Muslim Quarter chanting 'Muhammed is Dead' and celebrating a 1994 
massacre of 29 Palestinians in Hebron. Across the road roughly 600 
Palestinians protested the celebration and the occupation of East 
Jerusalem. They were joined by Israeli peace activists."

Pretoria-based Israeli official Yaa'kov Finkelstein had informed UKZN's 
Social Sciences Dean Nwabufo Okeke-Uzodike that he "would like to give a 
lecture to staff and students on the Western Wall in Jerusalem" two days 
after this incident, but with less than 24 hours to go, UKZN Deputy Vice 
Chancellor Joseph Ayee emailed staff: "I have re-considered the 
sensitivities that the visit of the Israeli Deputy Ambassador has 
generated. Given the negative publicity that the visit will give UKZN, I 
hereby cancel the visit and the lecture."

That the talk would "be held under a cloud with likely reputational 
damage for the institution is not in the interests of all of us," 
observed Ayee. This resulted from a flurry of letters by senior 
academics including Lubna Nadvi, Rozeena Maart and Jerry Coovadia, as 
well as a vibrant protest planned by hip-hop artist, Iain 'Ewok' 
Robinson, who generated similar opposition to Finkelstein's 
co-sponsorship of the Hilton Arts Festival near Durban last year.Said 
Robinson, "Hosting the ambassador under the auspices of creating some 
kind of neutral space for dialogue is another blatant legitimization of 
Israel's policies of oppression."

A time for dialogue with Israel's official representatives should wait 
until nonviolent public pressure against the regime mounts and the 
extreme power imbalance is lessened. As the Palestinian solidarity 
movement argues, this time will come -- just as three-decade long 
sanctions were lifted against South Africa when in the early 1990s there 
was irreversible progress towards one-person one-vote democracy 
(implemented in April 1994) -- only when Israel recognises the 
Palestinian people's inalienable right to self determination and:

 1. ends its occupation and colonization of all Arab lands and
    dismantling the Wall;
 2. guarantees the fundamental rights of the Arab-Palestinians citizens
    of Israel to full equity; and
 3. respects, protects and promotes the rights of Palestinian refugees
    to return to their homes and properties as stipulated in UN
    resolution 194.

Accepting these three conditions as comparable to the demand for 
democracy in South Africa, our local movement for Boycott, Divestment 
and Sanctions (BDS)against Israel got a boost in 2010 when South African 
Artists Against Apartheid 
<http://www.southafricanartistsagainstapartheid.com>formed with the 
announcement, "Collaborating with institutions linked to the stateof 
Israel cannot be regarded as a neutral act in the name of cultural 
exchange."

In this context, severe reputational damage for UKZN would have surely 
followed had the event gone ahead. Upon hearing of Finkelstein's talk, 
Ramallah-based BDS strategist Omar Barghouti exclaimed, "Why would they 
invite an Israeli diplomat to UKZN at a time when even the SA government 
is advising its own ministers not to visit Israel, unless for absolute 
necessity? This is what complicity looks like!"

Barghouti continued, "Imagine in the 1980s if a Cuban or Palestinian 
university had invited a South African official to give a lecture? 
Wouldn't the ANC and the great majority of South Africans have felt 
betrayed by their best friends in the world? Well, this is how 
Palestinians feel now if a South African institution is complicit with 
Israel."

Universities should be at the forefront of the BDS movement -- and 
thanks to the Palestinian Campaign for the Academic and Cultural Boycott 
of Israel <http://www.pacbi.org/>this has been the case since 2004 -- 
because by making Israeli officials unwelcome, these opportunities 
actually open wide the door for learning political ethics, as at UKZN. 
Three years the same controversy arose at Johannesburg's University of 
the Witwatersrand, whose officials mandated a leading lawyer, Advocate 
Geoff Budlender, to investigate. Budlender concluded in favour of the 
BDS activists, saying that Wits University "could legitimately decide to 
make its facilities available to outside organisations only for certain 
purposes, and not to make them available for other purposes... [if] a 
speaker or activity might be so offensive."

Likewise, the University of Johannesburg (UJ) was requested by over 450 
leading South African academics -- including nine vice-chancellors and 
deputy vice-chancellors -- to end its institutional relationship with 
Israel's Ben-Gurion University (BGU) last year. UJ did terminate the 
relationship <http://www.ujpetition.com>and, in effect, became the 
world's first university to impose an academic boycott on Israel.Then, 
according to Nina Butler of the Rhodes University Palestinian Solidarity 
Forum, writing for the /Mail&Guardian Thoughtleader /last week, another 
local university "was approached by BGU with a large amount of funding 
for water research, only to be told explicitly that their association 
and money was not desirable."

At BGU itself, this week also an important moment for the academic 
boycott when a conference on Monday promoting 'African Entrepreneurs' 
was the subject of criticism, given the university's ongoing 
collaboration with the Israeli military and the occupation of Palestine. 
Laudably, Zimbabwean historian Musiwaro Ndakaripa withdrew as a result 
of BDS commitments, but some Africans went ahead to violate the 
Palestinians' boycott call 
<http://africaafrica.org/sites/default/files/images/posterbgu_e.pdf>, 
including the Angolan ambassador.

But elsewhere on the Israel-boycott front, matters are slowly improving. 
Last week, Pretoria's Ambassador in Tel Aviv was summoned by Israel's 
Ministry of Foreign Affairs for a formal reprimand because the SA 
Department of Trade and Industry ruled against 'Made in Israel' label in 
the marketing of Ahava Cosmetics, Soda Stream and other products from 
the illegal West Bank settlements. This extends existing labeling 
requirements of the European Union and Britain in a way that will 
facilitate the boycott of Israeli Settlement products, so Israel's 
Foreign Ministry complained that it is "negatively tagging a state 
through a special marking, according to national-political criteria. 
Accordingly, this is a racist (/sic/) measure." In reply: was it racist 
to oppose SA apartheid by boycotting the state institutions and the 
companies which made it tick, thus hastening the end of official racism?

Likewise, Israel's Pretoria embassy spokesperson Hila Stern ratcheted up 
the rhetoric upon learning of UKZN's about-face, describing it as a 
"campaign of intellectual terror."

Quite right. When in 2010 US Vice President Joe Biden labeled WikiLeaks' 
Julian Assange a terrorist for revealing imperialism's horrid secrets, 
and when the US State Department kept Nelson Mandela on its books as a 
terrorist from the early 1960s right through 2008 (when Congress forced 
a change), there was much these two men could be proud of. The UKZN 
academic activists who raised the stakes by further educating South 
Africa about solidarity ethics will hopefully continue to 'terrorise' 
the Israeli apartheid regime, just as did BDS 'terrorise' those on the 
side of South African apartheid decades ago.

Bond directs the UKZN Centre for Civil Society 
<http://ccs.ukzn.ac.za/>and Desai coordinates BDS South Africa 
<http://www.bdssouthafrica.com>.


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Yousef Munayyer in NY Times: Not All Israeli Citizens AreEqual

Joseph Catron — 2012-05-24T00:56:46

"Tragically for Palestinians, Zionism requires the state to empower and
maintain a Jewish majority even at the expense of its non-Jewish citizens,
and the occupation of the West Bank is only one part of it. What exists
today between the Jordan River and the Mediterranean Sea is therefore
essentially one state, under Israeli control, where Palestinians have
varying degrees of limited rights: 1.5 million are second-class citizens,
and four million more are not citizens at all. If this is not apartheid,
then whatever it is, it’s certainly not democracy. "

http://nyti.ms/JWhp5P

Re: South Africa to label settlement goods

David Shemano — 2012-05-23T21:51:17

The article said the labeling requirement is based on the "fraud" that something produced in the West Bank is produced in Israel, not because the good was produced in an illegal settlement.  

David Shemano

-----Original Message-----
From: pen-l-bounces-FPEHb7Xf0XWG9Rqvk1bdOTe48wsgrGvP< at >public.gmane.org [mailto:pen-l-bounces-FPEHb7Xf0XWSGuFOoTDV7g< at >public.gmane.org.edu] On Behalf Of michael perelman
Sent: Wednesday, May 23, 2012 1:01 PM
To: Progressive Economics
Subject: Re: [Pen-l] South Africa to label settlement goods

David, you are a lawyer.  Obviously, you have a response to this, but the settlements are illegal according to international law.  The illegality of the occupation is somewhat less.

On Wed, May 23, 2012 at 9:44 AM, David Shemano <DShemano-VUuivrTqRrj4abn9venZsw< at >public.gmane.org> wrote:

--
Michael Perelman
Economics Department
California State University
Chico, CA
95929

530 898 5321
fax 530 898 5901
http://michaelperelman.wordpress.com
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Sensible and popular Keynesians - the sophistry of RaghuramRajan

robert mckee — 2012-05-23T20:40:42

http://thenextrecession.wordpress.com/2012/05/23/sensible-and-popular-keynesians-the-sophistry-of-raghuram-rajan/

Rajan seeks to suggest in discussing what needs to be done to get the 
world economy going, it is necessary to make a distinction between 
“sensible” and “popular” Keynesians.  According to Rajan, sensible Keynesians must instead advocate more 
austerity and cuts in government until the private sector recovers of 
its own accord.  That’s neither sensible nor Keynesian._______________________________________________
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Re: South Africa to label settlement goods

Jim Devine — 2012-05-23T20:10:44

And aren't all the illegal settlements Jewish?

James Devine
 On May 23, 2012 1:01 PM, "michael perelman" <michael.perelman3-Re5JQEeQqe8AvxtiuMwx3w< at >public.gmane.org>
wrote:

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Re: South Africa to label settlement goods

michael perelman — 2012-05-23T20:00:51

David, you are a lawyer.  Obviously, you have a response to this, but
the settlements are illegal according to international law.  The
illegality of the occupation is somewhat less.

On Wed, May 23, 2012 at 9:44 AM, David Shemano <DShemano-VUuivrTqRrj4abn9venZsw< at >public.gmane.org> wrote:

Re: Taking over Greece's fiscal policy

Sabri Oncu — 2012-05-23T19:56:22

Sure. Trichet was talking about invading Greece militarily. What else?

Best,
Sabri
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Re: South Africa to label settlement goods

David Shemano — 2012-05-23T16:44:59

Why is the boycott limited to Jewish settlements?  Why would it not apply to a non-Jewish owned  business in the West Bank that slapped a "Made in Israel" stamp on a product?

David Shemano

-----Original Message-----
From: pen-l-bounces-FPEHb7Xf0XWG9Rqvk1bdOTe48wsgrGvP< at >public.gmane.org [mailto:pen-l-bounces-FPEHb7Xf0XWG9Rqvk1bdOTe48wsgrGvP< at >public.gmane.org] On Behalf Of Robert Naiman
Sent: Tuesday, May 22, 2012 3:52 PM
To: Progressive Economics
Subject: [Pen-l] South Africa to label settlement goods

Other countries could do this (clears throat.)

Israeli anger over S Africa bid to label West Bank settlement goods Vita Bekker, The National (UAE), May 21, 2012 http://www.thenational.ae/news/world/middle-east/israeli-anger-over-s-africa-bid-to-label-west-bank-settlement-goods

Tel Aviv - The Israeli government lambasted an unprecedented move by South Africa to label all products made in Jewish settlements in the occupied West Bank before selling them.

The South African decision, should it be implemented, would hand a considerable victory to a campaign by Palestinians and their supporters to boycott products made in Jewish settlements.

The South African move would be the first time that any country forces companies to inform consumers about which goods were produced in the settlements.

Denmark said on Saturday that it may take a similar step and analysts said other European Union countries may also follow suit, possibly hurting Israel's diplomatic ties with western allies and staining Israel's image among consumers in other countries.

Economic damage, according to analysts, is negligible since settlements' exports account for less than 2 per cent of Israel's total.

Experts say Israel is violating international law by not separately labelling products made within the country's internationally recognised borders and those produced in West Bank settlements.

"Israel's placing of a label 'made in Israel' on products made in the West Bank is fraud," said Neve Gordon, an Israeli political scientist and author of the book Israel's Occupation.

"The South African decision would force Israel to expose its lie."

Last week, the South African government published a statement by Trade Minister Rob Davies saying the state would require merchants "not to incorrectly label products that originate from the Occupied Palestinian Territory as products of Israel."

The statement, which did not detail what would be written on labels of settlement-made products, said the goods include some cosmetic brands, technology products and soft drinks.

The decision is subject to objections from the public until the end of June.

Palestinian officials welcomed South Africa's move. Ghassan Khatib, a spokesman for the Palestinian Authority, said: "This is based on a proper understanding of the illegality of settlements and their products. We hope that this will be followed by other countries."
[...]
On Saturday, the Danish foreign minister, Villy Sovndal, told the Danish Politiken newspaper that the country would stop labelling products from settlements as ones made in Israel.

He said: "This is a step that clearly shows consumers that the products are produced under conditions that not only the Danish government but also European governments do not approve of."

--
Robert Naiman
Policy Director
Just Foreign Policy
www.justforeignpolicy.org
naiman-GKljc6h9Mzb8dW4R1uvzK7FspR4gePGN< at >public.gmane.org
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Weisbrot/Guardian: New ILO Leadership Could Push For BetterEconomic Policies

Robert Naiman — 2012-05-23T16:31:50

http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/cifamerica/2012/may/22/new-role-ilo-world-economy

A new role for the ILO in the world economy
Poised to elect a new director general, the International Labor
Organization needs to challenge the pro-austerity consensus

Mark Weisbrot
guardian.co.uk, Tuesday 22 May 2012 16.58 EDT

The Troika – the European Central Bank (ECB), the European Commission,
and the IMF – is dragging Europe into its second recession in three
years. The ECB by itself has the ability to end this crisis, by
guaranteeing low interest rates on the sovereign bonds of countries
such as Spain and Italy. Member governments would then be able to
restore normal economic growth and employment.

But the ECB refuses to do this – partly because the Troika is using
the crisis as an opportunity to force changes, especially in the
weaker eurozone economies, changes that the people residing there
would never vote for. These reforms include shrinking government,
privatization, "labor flexibility", and reduced public pensions.

Since, however, Europe has by far the largest banking system in the
world, the eurozone crisis is also a significant drag on growth and
employment throughout most of the world. This could easily do more
damage if it is not resolved.

It is in this context that a struggle is taking place both within and
between governments and international institutions over the
economically and socially destructive policies in the eurozone. At the
latest G8 summit in Camp David on Saturday, there were noticeable
differences between Presidents Obama of the US and François Hollande
of France, on the one hand, and Chancellor Angela Merkel of Germany,
on the other, over the wisdom of continuing to push Europe deeper into
recession through fiscal tightening (as the Troika is currently
doing).

While there are signs that many IMF economists and even the leadership
of the IMF are not happy with the Troika's policies, the fund is not
going to break with the Europeans on its board of directors. But there
is one international institution that, because its governance
structure includes labor unions, is sometimes able to take a more
progressive stance on these vital issues.

That is the International Labor Organization (ILO), affiliated with
the United Nations. The ILO is thus differentiated from such
organizations as the IMF, the World Bank, or the OECD (Organization
for Economic Co-operation and Development) – all of which have an
enormous influence which tends to reinforce the status quo, or worse.

The ILO estimates that the world has lost 50m jobs since the world
economic crisis and Great Recession began – and the Troika is adding
to the toll. In 2009, the ILO proposed a "global jobs pact", which
picked up support from the UN and the G20, but with little result.
Last year, it proposed a "social protection floor", which also won
international support, but again, not much effect.

On 28 May, the ILO will choose a new director general. The frontrunner
is Guy Ryder, a former general secretary of the International Trade
Union Confederation (ITUC). Last November, he secured the support of
the workers' group, comprising a quarter of the ILO electoral college,
before his rivals were even known. There are also other candidates
with regional support, such as Colombian Vice-President Angelino
Garzón.

But there is one candidate who is most likely to try to harness the
ILO's potential to challenge the devastating economic policies that
have caused so much unnecessary unemployment and suffering in the past
four years. That is Jomo Kwame Sundaram of Malaysia, the only Asian
candidate.

He is the Harvard-trained chief economist at the United Nations, also
responsible for its technical cooperation programs. Reputedly behind
the 2009 Stiglitz Commission report (pdf) on the crisis, Jomo has
shown clear understanding not only of the causes of the current
economic crisis, but also of the failure of the relevant government
and international institutions to bring us out of it. He would also
expose the fallacies of the labor market liberalization policies
currently being touted as the solution. His track record indicates
that he would provide the necessary leadership at the ILO.

Although the ILO's efforts to establish international conventions to
promote a "rights-based" agenda for labor can be helpful, they are
ineffectual in the face of high unemployment. They are also far from
sufficient to advance the cause of the billions of workers who are
unemployed or facing increasing insecurity due to precarious
employment, stagnating wages, and declining benefits. The prospects
for increasing employment, and even wages, in the near future will
depend, in large part, on the macroeconomic policies pursued by
governments – especially those of the largest economies.

Until now, these have been going in the wrong direction – and the ILO
needs to confront these policy failures head-on.

--
Robert Naiman
Policy Director
Just Foreign Policy
www.justforeignpolicy.org
naiman-GKljc6h9Mzb8dW4R1uvzK7FspR4gePGN< at >public.gmane.org
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Re: South Africa to label settlement goods

Joseph Catron — 2012-05-23T01:01:02

Robert, whenever this topic arises, you always seem to respond to a lot of
things that nobody has said.

On Wed, May 23, 2012 at 3:03 AM, Robert Naiman <naiman-GKljc6h9Mzb8dW4R1uvzK65RK/E6TXo3< at >public.gmane.orgg

If one is serious about the "S" of BDS - sanctions, that is, penalties


Who advocated that?




Who said that?




And now the real silliness begins. When has Hamas ever adopted any such a
position?




Except that last one.



Even if opinion polls in the '67 territories were worth anything (and
they're crap), so what? Support for UN membership for one state does not
entail recognition of another. Such nuances may be lost on Western
commentators, but I assure you, people here are well aware of them.

Re: risk underwriting

John Vertegaal — 2012-05-23T00:39:50

Sorry for the late posting. I'm slow but not quite that slow. Have been 
out of touch since mid-weekend when my rural community hotspot went out 
of service. Only just got it back...

On 19/05/2012 1:39 PM, Shane Mage wrote:

 > On May 19, 2012, John Vertegaal wrote:
 >>
 >> Both you and I know that Conrad
 > The name is Conard, which has an..interesting...significance in
 > French
 >
Chuckled, after looking it up.

 >> is spouting unadulterated BS. We also both know that to logically
 >> make a point we have to reason from axiomatic principles...
 >
 > Wrong.
 >
You are right, inductive reasoning is valid too. But, to my 
understanding, it compromises attainable knowledge by making the field 
of investigation infinitely large. Since in terms of deductive axiomatic 
reasoning, everything within a particular field of investigation is 
deduced from its axioms, a boundary becomes drawn and those axioms 
themselves have to originate from exogeneity. When on the other hand one 
reasons from an explicit premise, a boundary around  the subject field 
is forsaken and our economic situation would be a natural all 
encompassing and inevitable endogeneity into which we are born; whose 
true nature is unknowable and beyond our control. These two existential 
precepts are mutually exclusive. Logic commands an either/or, 
proposition. You can take your pick but you cannot have it both ways. 
Hence a coincidental  Marxian view that the economy is a human-made 
system, implying a boundary, is out of the question. There is a lot more 
to all of this, but I got to break it off here for now.

 > To make a point logically (without the barbarism of splitting 
infinitives)
 >
Thanks for the correction.

 > we have to reason from explicit premises. Only in mathematics are 
those premises >axiomatic.
 >
Why "only"? I grant you of course that arithmetic and all higher forms 
of mathematics have to be axiomatically true before any matters measured 
mathematically can be deemed true. But I've never seen axioms defined 
this narrowly before. It seems to me to be a matter of semantics.

 > In regard to practical realities those premises (for Marxists and
 > other scientists as well as for the general run of humanity) are
 > always *a posteriori*, never *a priori*.
 >
Indeed, premises always are whether axiomatic or explicit; but that 
isn't the point when "all things are made of numbers". While 
Pythagoras's doctrine as regarding the provisions of Nature is 
debatable, no such ambiguity exists when the _human provided_ economy is 
the subject of inquiry; as everything within it is valued *a priori* in 
terms of a unit of account. When *ex posteriori* these values have 
broken down due to a crash, the material presence of everything within 
is yet identical to before that crash and still has exactly the same 
potential to produce use-values. This means that an economy isn't part 
of Nature and that it has premises specific to its own nature as a whole 
and bounded system. So, in order to reason out economic crashes as to 
why changes in _account numbers_  (exchange-values) suddenly occurred, 
its premises have to be axiomatic for the same reason that the premises 
of the accounting discipline are axiomatic.

 > They are generalizations from experience and are always subject to
 > verification/refutation *in practice*.
 >
As noted before, this isn't substantially different from my axioms, as 
these aren't a priori valid either and thus refutable too; the 
appearance of a single contradiction will do that. Verifiable however, 
only if an infinite period of time is explicitly acknowledged.

 > Marx said it all in the second Thesis on Feuerbach: "The question
 > whether objective truth can be attributed to human thinking is not a
 > question of theory but is a practical question."
 >
Don't quite know what to make of this and wonder what Feuerbach's 
rejoinder would have been. Not having been schooled in philosophy (nor 
in economics truth be known) it seems to me that Marx, with the hubris 
common to all materialists, dismisses infinite regress. To me the 
objectivity of human knowledge in the here and now about the world we 
are born into is a myth.

 >> From my own set of them, capital rolls out to be a debt; and
 >> capitalization a societal to be resolved debt, that no amount of
 >> financial shenanigans can turn into a depletable positive entity...
 >> ...As I understand it, Marxians, just like (ueber) capitalists,
 >> axiomatically hold capital to be a depletable positive entity.
 >
 > Marxians, on the basis of the empirical generalization known as
 > historical materialism, view all modes of production as means of
 > distributing the labor power of society according to the uses valued
 > by the society.
 >
Fair enough, apart from materialism as a way to reach absolute truth 
through science, I have no quarrel with this regarding an overall 
purpose from a meaningful subset of the human condition. But it says 
nothing about our current exchange-value economy being that subset and 
subject to crashes whereby it would become a null-set. Use-values aren't 
approachable arithmetically, with everything that this restriction 
implies; while every accounted-for mode of production within our subset 
economy is concerned with nothing but measurable exchange-values.

 > Capital is the specific expression (in the mode of production known
 > as capitalist) of a social relationship: domination by a ruling class
 > through the exploitation of labor to produce and accumulate
 > materialized surplus labor as surplus *value* (an empirical, not
 > axiomatic, category).
 >
Surplus value materialized in the form of what? Use-values? What is its 
worth (or value) to its owners all by itself, i.e. in the absence of a 
return? And since returns are measured arithmetically, how can those 
have a  relationship in terms of use-values to those owners? The 
explicit premise of a materialization into surplus value conflates the 
value of the thing with the thing itself. As I said some time ago, the 
map isn't the territory.  N. Weiner (in the quotation below) exhibits 
the same confusion.

 > As surplus value accumulated in material form (the only form in
 > which surplus labor can be accumulated)
 >
Is finance capital a material entity in your interpretation of Marx?

 > capitalized labor is continually being depleted (losing its
 > efficacity as means of exploitation of labor) both through material
 > wear and tear and through the formation by competitors of more
 > exploitatively effective capital objects. Every capitalist, private
 > or state, has continually to be concerned with such depletion at pain
 > of competitive ruin. This is a material fact and has nothing to do
 > with "axioms."
 >
Let's examine your depletion scenario, looking plausible enough for 
scores of economists to fall for it, from my perspective. First, for 
labor to be capitalized a system of accounts is a prerequisite and such 
a system requires a unit of account. Expenditures are then made by 
capitalists before expected returns can come in, and for those returns 
to indeed occur, expenditures by other capitalists will have to be made. 
So in terms of the system of accounts, it's not any particular capital 
that engenders its own returns but instead only the capital of others 
can, but not necessarily do indeed, make those returns come about. The 
system works in a round-about way and it doesn't function in a straight 
line where the concept of "capitalized labor" has the causal property as 
envisaged by Marx. This doesn't mean that worker-owned means of 
production isn't valid, far from it; but what the above does imply is 
that the Marxian reasoning for it isn't. Capitalization of anything 
requires a system of accounts. Did Marx ever make that point, and if so 
how did he explain it? Supplant capitalist with worker/owner, and the 
logic of this short narrative remains entirely the same.

At any level of development this system thus starts out with booked 
debits, negatives or to be resolved debts, that under equilibrium 
conditions will be nullified by incoming credits having a positive 
value. Total credits will potentially match total expended debits, but 
no surplus of the former over the latter is possible; unless more to be 
resolved debt is acquired financially, either for investment purposes 
into additional means of production making additional personal income 
available, or for direct spending in excess of current income. Under 
dynamic equilibrium conditions this additional acquisition of debt will 
need to be nullified; which can happen through economic growth 
(additional workforce), and by increased direct spending of financial 
income earners. If the latter doesn't (or cannot!) come about, the 
system disequilibrates permanently and a crash at some future point 
becomes inevitable.

At _any_ level of remuneration, the costs of production (accounted-for 
personal incomes) cancel out in the aggregate. This axiomatically 
derived fact all by itself belies just about the entire subject of 
economics, from far left to far right interpretations. So, for the 
system as a whole, what determines profits and accumulation potential? 
First profits... With prices set at cost-plus levels, any "rate" 
(remember that no capital engenders its own!) of profit is achievable if 
capitalists were to spend their profit income directly. But this would 
rule out capital accumulation. So what is the latter in this scheme and 
how does it come about? As we all know, there is a massive amount of 
production facility in existence within our economy. It's on the books 
as being owned by someone and those owners would like to see a return, 
so prices are set to accommodate them. Owning something systemically, 
implies that the system owes. Although over the life of the capital the 
two are mirror images of each other, just like debit and credit are;  at 
any point in time (in the words of economist Herman Daly following 
Frederick Soddy) capital "...is a hypothetical calculation of the 
present value of a permanent lien on the future real production of the 
economy"*.

So the economy's accumulated capital is inanimate, and, as we saw above, 
entirely impotent to by itself effect the returns that are attributed to 
it. Each unit becomes created on account of the rest of society sharing 
its final output with the creators of the new capital, in the hope that 
its output will be sought after and thus provide returns; whereby it 
would remain integrally connected to the economy's system of accounts, 
sharing its derivative and now extra final output with those who 
previously sacrificed final output. Furthermore in a vertically 
integrated economy, with costs and profits being passed on down and 
assumed by lower levels, those returns in the aggregate and under 
equilibrium conditions can only become materialized through the direct 
spending on final output. Materialization in this scheme means crossing 
the economy's boundary, losing all economic connotation in 
exchange-values and turn into a reality having a use-value only, without 
seeking a monetary return. Note, as I've mentioned a number of time in 
the past, that this in no way prevents these items from returning to the 
economy. If that happens they would de-materialize, either momentarily, 
or when a (bank) loan gets involved, for a (much) longer time. The 
proceeds to the former owner, economic income, now assuming the systemic 
debt resolving means that is inherent in the personal income of the 
buyer. Money too isn't an asset in and of itself. So "your" money is far 
better characterized as the _economy's_  money. This entire analysis has 
been reasoned out from system-exogenous axioms where exchange-values and 
use-values have become mutually exclusive designations and there is no 
such thing as a "material fact".

To summarize... When an economy reaches a level of sophistication where 
only double-entry accounting can keep track of all the goings on and 
designate value, materialized (physical) entities no longer fit the 
reality of being causal. We know that by bringing these means to the 
point of production, expenditures will have to be made; so all who are 
accounted for as its creators can be compensated, at which point the 
system is in debt to the extent of the made compensations. And when 
accounted for as owned and deserving a return which is embedded in the 
price of its output, the system is similarly in debt. In an 
exchange-value economy, capital equals debt, capital accumulation is 
accumulated (resolvable) debt, and fictitious capital is unresolvable 
debt. At no time is capital (nor for that matter, money) a depletable 
positive entity.

Sure, a communist pure use-value economy (or society) is beyond all 
that. But the golden-age post-war period has shown that the cost-plus 
price system of free enterprise can be pretty efficient. Although times 
have changed and we can no longer rely on just growth to pull us out of 
the doldrums, there is plenty left to copy from that period; after which 
it would become a weigh-off of the pros and cons of both systems. All 
this is far too involved to tackle right now. But I'll close with the 
remark that there is no reason at all to identify free enterprise not 
only with dog-eats-dog capitalism, but even with more or less 
compassionate capitalism. The power of capital is vacuous.
 >
 >
 > Shane Mage
 >
 > "When we read on a printed page the doctrine of Pythagoras that all
 > things are made of numbers, it seems mystical, mystifying, even
 > downright silly.
 >
 > When we read on a computer screen the doctrine of Pythagoras that
 > all things are made of numbers, it seems self-evidently true." (N.
 > Weiner)
 >
Thanks for helping me out with this. ;)

John V

*)http://steadystate.org/capital-debt-and-alchemy/?utm_source=feedburner&utm_medium=email&utm_campaign=Feed%3A+DalyNews+%28The+Daly+News%29

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Re: South Africa to label settlement goods

Robert Naiman — 2012-05-23T00:03:33

If one is serious about the "S" of BDS - sanctions, that is, penalties
enacted by governments - one has to recognize that there is no
prospect of any government in the world which has an economic
relationship with Israel being ready to enact a penalty on Israel
based on one-statism. South Africa and Europe recognize Israel - a
member of the United Nations - within its 1967 borders. So there is no
increased legitimacy for Israel based on such actions - South Africa
and Europe already recognize Israel as "legitimate" within its 1967
borders, and there is little prospect of changing that in the future
as far as anyone can see - even if we agreed that trying to change
that would be is a good idea if it were plausible (which, personally,
I am not at all convinced of.)

I don't agree at all with the claim that the settlement boycott is
meaningless, and as evidence for the contrary view I would advance the
fact that the Israeli government is quite hysterical about it, going
so far as to effectively ban Israelis from advocating for it. The main
campaign in the U.S. - the Ahava campaign - is a boycott of settlement
products. The Methodists recently defeated a divestment resolution -
that was focused on particular companies tied to the occupation, like
Caterpillar - by a vote of two-to-one. On the other hand, they
overwhelmingly endorsed boycotting settlement products. So, in terms
of what one should care about in the U.S., what the South African
government is proposing to do is something we can emulate. A boycott
of Israel per se is a demand that we can do absolutely zero about
politically in the U.S. It's pie in the sky. In Iran you could get a
hearing. But since Iran doesn't have any economic relationship with
Israel, it would be meaningless.

Further, it should be recognized that the two-state solution is not
just the position of Fatah, it's also the position of Hamas. Every
election that takes place in the occupied territories is dominated by
parties that support the two-state solution. 80% of Palestinians
living under occupation supported the push for recognition of a
Palestinian state at the UN.

On Tue, May 22, 2012 at 6:19 PM, Joseph Catron <jncatron-Re5JQEeQqe8AvxtiuMwx3w< at >public.gmane.org> wrote:

Re: South Africa to label settlement goods

Joseph Catron — 2012-05-22T23:19:17

We've been having quite a good debate about this, in part because our

That's right! You're at U. KwaZulu-Natal. A lot of us in Gaza are very
happy with the recent developments there. I can't wait to read your
insider's account.

My concern with settlement boycotts, of which I'm not a complete fan, is
that they can inadvertently legitimize the ol' colonial regime as a whole
(which is why we see liberal Zionists, from Gush Shalom to Peter Beinart,
supporting them).

Settlement goods are a bit of a red herring anyway. Most West Bank
settlements function mainly as bedroom communities for '48, rather than
industrial zones.