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Miscellaneous Good News, May, 2003
[Commentary] ©2003 Phil Hyde, The Timesizing Wire, Box 622, Cambridge MA 02140 USA (617) 623-8080

5/31/2003   headlines from heaven - alias glimmers of random hope/intelligence -

  1. 5/31 S.&P. index is up for the sixth week in the last seven, Bloomberg via NYT, B4.
    [Enjoy it while it lasts. Downsizing into a technological world is still incessantly gnawing away national and global markets, when timesizing would strengthen them.]

  2. 5/31 Pay debated at British bank's meeting - Some shareholders say 'American style' executive pay has no place in Britain, by Heather Thompson, NYT, B3.
    An environmental group protested outside the HSBC shareholders' meeting in London yesterday; inside, shareholders criticized a pay package for the executive director of the U.S., operations. [photo caption]
    ...Speaking at the annual shareholders' meeting of...the London-based global bank where he is chairman, Sir John Bond defended the [20.3+36= $56.3 million] 'compensation' package [our quotes] offered to William Aldinger, who became executive director of the bank's American operations this year..\.. Sir John Bond's message to British investors [yester]day was unapologetic: Executives are paid more in America. Get used to it....
    [Time for an organized shareholder uprising to can them both.]
    Mr. Aldinger joined HSBC last November when the bank bought Household International, the consumer loan company based in Prospect Heights, Ill., for $14.2 billion....
    [That was their first money-wasting mistake. Sir John, like so many others, has more money than sense. There are plenty of people who could do a better job than All Dinger for less $$ or ££.]

5/30/2003   headlines from heaven - alias glimmers of random hope/intelligence - 5/29/2003   headlines from heaven - alias glimmers of random hope/intelligence - 5/28/2003   headlines from heaven - alias glimmers of random hope/intelligence -
  1. 2 UPsizings

  2. Ideologically broad coalition assails FCC media plan - A GOP majority would let an owner have 3 TV stations in the same market, by Stephen Labaton, NYT, C6.
    WASHINGTON...- A broad coalition of both conservative and liberal organizations expressed deep criticism [yester]day of a plan by the FCC to relax the rules that have restricted the nation's largest media conglomerates from growing bigger.
    [Oh yes, the Federal Communications Commission, defined by someone, possibily Tom Paxton, on Sat. night (5/31) on Garrison Keillor's Prairie Home Companion show on NPR as a deregulatory agency. No, stopping the "conglomerates from growing bigger" is trivial compared with the real reason; namely, to keep one or two people from completely controlling American news a la Pravda and Izvestia, a situation we're already dangerously close to, with "Clear Channel" owning 60% of America's radio stations. Funny the Times didn't mention that up front. Which of the 2 guys who own the media owns the Times? And it waits till the 6th paragraph to give us a list of the organizations? -]
    The groups criticizing the plan...include the Leadership Conference on Civil Rights, the National Rifle Assoc., the National Rifle Assoc., the National Organization for Women, the Writers Guild of America, the Parents Television Council, Consumers Union and the U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops. Representatives from the organizations said the number of diverse groups opposed to the commission's action illustrated the deep national discomfort with the FCC proposal....
    [Like the Bush administration cares.... But the Times also has an editorial -]
    Upholding family leave, editorial, NYT, A22.

  3. Canada introduces measure adjusting penalities for marijuana, by Clifford Krauss, NYT, A7.
    ...to decriminalize possession of small amounts [but to] set stricter penalties for trafficking....

  4. [and what's happenin' on the continent that still does a lot of things in the "old" "outdated" way, and has the shortest worktime in the world - even though they're still pretty clueless about setting it up on an automatic fluctuating-workweek basis? -]
    Euro climbs above [$1.1932] record it set shortly after its birth [$1.1884], AP via NYT, C9.

5/27/2003   headlines from heaven - alias glimmers of random hope/intelligence/insight -
  1. Investors angry at [exec] pay packages, pointer digest (to C4), NYT, C1.
    Shareholders in Britain are wielding new voting rights to register their objections to hefty executive pay packages....

  2. [reader discusses problems with fighting deflation by printing money -]
    Keep pumping 'till the rate runs dry, letter to editor by Thomas Nugent of Hilton Head Island SC, WSJ, A15.
    In response to Michael Cosgrove's May 21 editorial-page commentary "The Fed's complacency":
    Mr. Cosgrove suggests that "the best way to beat deflation is to aggressively increase liquidity by pumping up high-powered money."
    [which is already extremely pumped up, by the way, - so pumped up and concentrated that it is starving the markets away from its own investments, - ergo, deflation.]
    Unfortunately the Fed cannot "pump" in anything to influence the supply of money as long as the Fed is targeting the Fed funds rate. (In other words, you can't control the price and quantity of something simultaneously.)
    [Maybe this explains why attempts such as the FLSA's, to simultaneously set a maximum workweek (quantity of labor) and minimum wage (price of labor) has worked so poorly.]
    ...Any increase in excess reserves that would occur if the Fed 'pumps' would drive the Fed funds rate quickly to zero. Banks [would]n't earn any interest on [such] excess reserves so they will minimize their holdings of same. In an environment where the Fed is pushing all these excess reserves on banks, they certainly will avoid paying for them in the Fed funds market....

5/24-26/2003   headlines from heaven - alias glimmers of random hope/intelligence/insight -
  1. 5/24   About-face on the tobacco pact, editorial, NYT, A28.
    The Bush administration finally came to its senses this week and stopped trying to undermine a tobacco-control treaty that was approved by the World Health Assembly in Geneva on Wednesday. The decision ended a prolonged and ultimately futile battle to modify the treaty in ways that could have rendered it virtually useless....

  2. 5/25   Nickel and dimed - Living in the city is tough enough - Why must we deal with a whole new set of fees, by Ric Kahn, Boston Globe, City Wkly 1.
    [Twenty-five years ago, Phil was talking about a vast underlying trend away from taxes that pour into a general budget dba slush fund, and toward specific fees for service, to reverse the growth of government, the rise of dependency and the threat of over-population.]

  3. 5/25   Few heed Greenspan on 'hurdle' ahead, op ed by Thomas Oliphant, Boston Globe, D11.
    ...Through the first quarter of this year, the economy was expanding at an annual rate, after barely detectable inflation, of 1.6% - puny even by historical standards. As business conditions improve now that the fighting phase of the war in Iraq has ended, there is no reason [except the ongoing risks of terrorism and SARS?] that number shouldn't double [to 3.2%] soon, especially now that the spike in oil and gas prices has ended....
    Greenspan's caution was that this improvement may not be enough to produce improvement in business investment, employment, and income.... One major reason, he said, is that the improvement in productivity (the amount of output obtained per man-hour of work) has continued through the brief downturn in GDP that occurred at the end of 2001 and through the galling stagnation that has followed. That means that businesses are feeling no pressure to expand their workforce as general conditions improve because greater efficiencies can produce the higher output.
    [At last a beginning of an assault on the general obsession with productivity regardless of marketability, and on the facile lullaby that "technology creates more jobs than it destroys." But that lullaby is still very powerful -]
    How to predict a changing economy? letter to editor by Alexander Blanton of Manhattan, NYT, 3:8.
    ...When forecasting...it is virtually impossible to foresee the positive effects of yet-to-be-imagined new technology and other productivity enhancements that might be unleashed by tax changes than encourage business investment....
    [as if a shortage of funds for business investment is our problem, or as if it's only positive effects that remain to be foreseen when we can see the negative effects of our downsizing, not timesizing, response to new technology all around us. Clearly we need a paradigm shift, a 'spectral shift,' to reach people like Blanton. Back to Oliphant -]
    As Greenspan put it in his testimony, "The ability of business managers to reduce costs, especially labor costs through investment or restructuring [ie: downsizing] is, of course, one reason that labor markets ahve been so weak.
    [At last a dim recognition that maybe downsizing isn't functioning as the 'creative destruction' that Schumpeter and the other pollyannas had it cracked up to be.]
    ...He added, this phenomenon "raises the hurdle" the overall economy must clear for conditions vital to the real economy to improve.
    Greenspan had another nugget - ...that assessments of the economy need to be [complete, because] positive developments in almost all sectors are accompanied by troubling ones. [For example,] the reversal..\..in the spike in oil prices [was accompanied by] a sharp escalation in the price of natural gas....

  4. 5/26   Illegal immigrants, letter to editor by Linda Evans of Matthews NC, NYT, A18.
    Re "Death on the border" (editorial, May 18):
    The United States can fill its labor needs without inviting in people from other countries or looking the other way when undocumented workers come in.
    With millions of Americans currently poor and unemployed, it makes no sense to import more workers. But employers want cheap labor; that's why they clamor for illegal immigrants.
    [And strangely, many liberals side with them.]
    Amnesty is not the answer to the illegal immigrant problem; enforcement is. The invasion, currently about 80,000 illegal immigrants a month, would end tomorrow if these illegal immigrants could no longer come here and get jobs, free healthcare, education and other rights of American citizens.
    [If only jobs and free healthcare were "rights of American citizens," or at any rate, rights they could access! But Linda has a point - to stop illegal immigration, go after the employers, the 'sponsors.']

  5. [and here's another application of that principle -]
    5/24   To stop a spammer, go after the sponsor, letter to editor by Eric Weiss of Jersey City, NYT, A28.
    Re "E-mail's backdoor open to spammers" (front page, May 20):
    There is only one way to stop the spam. Since you cannot catch the spammers, you have to go after their sponsors.
    The people who foot the bill for spamming are businesses that want, eventually, to be contacted. Otherwise, there would be no profit in it. So ISPs should go after them. And so should we: Answer their ads with a big invoice for all that mail you've processed on their behalf, and take them to court if they don't pay. Make it very expensive for them to promote themselves over the Internet on such a vast scale.
    If spamming becomes economically unattractive to merchants, the market will dry up and spam will go away, finally.

  6. [finally, the theater (or at least this one theater critic) is getting into the act against Bush nutsiness -]
    5/24   Big trouble for the pResident's magician [our mixed casing], by Wilborn Hampton, NYT, A24.
    Although the world is spinning more out of control every day, the American theater has seemed reluctant to address some of the issues that are polarizing the country. Gil Kodman's "American Magic" tries but has little new to say.
    The story line concerns a magician who is entertaining an unnamed pResident on his birthday when he suddenly goes into a trance and warns the chief executive to "beware." An explosion ensues and the magician wakes up being interrogated in a clothing store window by two wisecracking agents from "the department,"
    [at least it's a public interrogation]
    while the offstage pResident addresses the nation from an "undisclosed but secure location."...

5/23/2003   headlines from heaven - alias glimmers of random hope/intelligence -
  1. [1 UPsizing]
    Williams-Sonoma Inc., Dow Jones via WSJ, B6.
    ...Revenue rose 12% to $536.8m, helped by the addition of 62 stores....
    [Unspecified new jobs.]

  2. [& 1 glimmer of intelligence -]
    Washington wire - "Wrong track", by Jackie Calmes, WSJ, A4.
    That's where [a] growing number of Americans see U.S.
    On a question that's a leading indicator of public attitudes, the portion saying U.S. is headed in the right direction slides to 49% in a new Wall Street Journal/NBC News poll from 62% a month ago; 38% say U.S. is on [the] wrong track, up from 22%. The shift is driven by women, those over 50 and independents.
    "The mood is less euphoric" than after Iraq's fall, says Journal/NBC pollster Peter Hart, "but a lot better than in January," when war loomed. Fewer than half of Americans give Bush good grades for handling the economy, in contrast to his high overall job approval.
    The May 17-19 poll of 1,000 adults has a margin of error of 3.2%.

5/22/2003   headlines from heaven - alias glimmers of random hope/intelligence - 5/21/2003   headlines from heaven - alias glimmers of random hope/intelligence - 3 UPsizings, totaling 1500 new jobs + unspecified in the WSJ &/or NYT -
  1. [UPsizing #1]
    Japan: Toyota to increase output, by Ken Belson, NYT, W1.
    The Toyota Motor Corp. [will] increase production capacity in France and Britain to expand its sales in Europe. ...The third-largest car maker in the world will add an extra shift at its factories in Burnaston, England, and Valenciennes, France, beginning in 2Q04. The move will create 1,500 new jobs and expand output by 26% at the two plants....
    [Added factoids from the Journal version -]
    Auto maker will raise output of popular brands in Europe, Dow Jones via WSJ, C10.
    ...defying the auto slump.... The expansion is the first time Toyota will run a three-shift system....
    [Frozen-workweek capitalism = trying to sell more and more robotically manufactured goods to fewer and fewer human consumers - unless they make more goods with more employees instead of fewer, there's no way there're going to be enough consumers to buy the stuff.]

  2. [UPsizing #2]
    Apple to open 20 retail stores, Bloomberg via NYT, C3.
    Apple Computer will increase the number of its retail stores 35% over the next year by opening 19 more in the U.S. and one in Tokyo, its first overseas. Apple, which opened its first shop two years ago and now has 57 stores in the U.S., said last month it would have about 70 stores open by the end of 2003. Apple's CEO, Steve Jobs, has been looking for ways to increase revenue as demand for personal computers has been in a slump for more than two years....
    [Unspecified new jobs.]

  3. [UPsizing #3]
    Japan unit posts loss for year on weak sales, increased costs, WSJ, C16.
    The Japan unit of coffee chain Starbucks Corp. of the U.S. posted a loss for the fiscal year ended March 31, on a prolonged sales slump and expansion costs....
    [Expanding into a slump? Not too smart.]
    Starbucks Coffee Japan posted a parent-only net loss of 454m yen ($3.9m) for the year.... The unit had expected a loss of 500m yen [but] revenue climbed 15% to 54.6B yen, as Starbucks Japan had 454 outlets, 110 more than it had at the end of the previous fiscal year....
    [Unspecified new jobs.]

  4. Byrd unleashes oratorical fury - Senator wins young fans by goading colleagues to confront Bush, by David Rogers, WSJ, A4.
    Something big is happening with Sen. Robert Byrd that no one, including the West Virginia Democrat, has fully figured out. ...Mr. Byrd has thrown himself into a personal crusade [goa]ding fellow lawmakers to stand up against what he sees as an increasingly arrogant, wartime White House.... Mr. Byrd's Senate website recorded more than 3.7m hits in March alone. While the numbers have dropped off with the end of hostilities in Iraq, there continued to be almost 800,000 visitors in the first two weeks of May. His speeches travel in mass e-mails around the nation, and even the globe. *MoveOn.org, a liberal Internet-based group, reprinted one Byrd address in a full-page ad in the NY Times....
    [We caught something on 3/20/2003 #3. Not sure if that's it.]
    The steady drumbeat of his floor speeches betrays a deep frustration with pResident Bush, whom he once praised but now fearss is using America's wars overseas to gain power at home.... He says..."I have never in my political career been so concerned about my country as I have been for the last two years."
    [Man, there's millions of us who feel that way!]
    "We stand passively mute in the Senate today, paralyzed by our own uncertainty," he scolded colleagues in the weeks leading up to the Iraq war. "I can imagine hearing the walls of this chamber ring just before the war between the states...but today we hear nothing.... We are truly sleepwalking through history."
    [We have a lot of very small people in Congress today.]
    ..."This chamber is hauntingly silent.... The rafters should ring. The press galleries should be filled. Senators should be at their seats listening to questions being asked about this war."... "We flaunt our superpower status with arrogance. We treat U.N. Security Council members like ingrates who offend our princely dignity by lifting their heads from the carpet"..\..
    Angry phone calls - urged on by conservative radio - followed the senator's criticism of Mr. Bush's celebratory swoop onto the USS Abraham Lincoln, but Mr. Byrd was amused that thousands of CNN viewers backed his position 61%-39% in an unscientific "Question of the Day" poll....
    The Iraq war resolution, which Mr. Byrd fiercely resisted and which gave Mr. Bush unprecedented advance authority to strike Baghdad at will, was a "giveaway of power by people who should know better" and "a blotch" on the Senate...."

  5. FedEx to switch 30,000 trucks to hybrids - Long-term plan cuts emissions from fleet, by Jennifer Lee, NYT, C4.
    ...energy-saving, environmentally friendly hybrid-powered vehicles...powered by both fuel and electricity....
5/20/2003   headlines from heaven - alias glimmers of random hope/intelligence - 5/17/2003   headlines from heaven - alias glimmers of random hope/intelligence -
  1. [1 UPsizing - up to 1200 new jobs somewhere in U.S.]
    Boeing issues criteria for site of new assembly plant, AP via NYT, C4.
    The Boeing Co. plans to assemble its new 7E7 passenger jet in the U.S., but the plant site will depend on factors like taxes, construction costs and the support of local leaders.... Boeing, which has assembled nearly all of its passenger planes in the Seattle area, released its 7E7 site selection criteria after briefing Congressional, state government, labor and other leaders.
    [So the whole country is so desperate for jobs that this company can hold an auction to see who bids the highest offer of taxbreaks, subsidies and services? Pathetic.]
    The company, which is based in Chicago, is opening the competition to other states and communities that want the final-assemble work as well as the millions of dollars in construction work and the 800 to 1,200 jobs in aircraft production, engineering and support.
    [Any municipality or state that implements Timesizing can respond to this brazen RFB (request for bribes) the way it deserves - "Drop dead! We want businesses, not quasi-parasites on the public purse." But then for most cities and states, their fate as desperate job creators was sealed when FDR chose the makework and minimum wage option in 1933, instead of simply spreading and flexibly sharing the vanishing market-demanded human employment as automation and robotization decremented demand for manhours.]
    Boeing said it would select a site by the end of the year.

  2. 5/18   Reversing the loss of American jobs, letter to business editor by Dennis Wanless of Charlottesville VA, NYT, 3:9.
    [This chap's heart is in the right place but The Problem is not only, or even primarily, Perot's "giant sucking sound" of jobs swooshing out of the USA -]
    ...Re "A bet on textiles, despite the doomsayers" (May 11), which described the prospects of various American textile companies:
    The loss of American jobs to other countries has been a reality for at least two decades.... But job losses might be reduced and even reversed if our government offered a true economic policy, one that did not aim at job creation through debt-financed taxcuts but that set as its objective the restoration of jobs that have moved offshore.
    A package including tax and capital investment incentives, factory-site redevelopment initiatives and an advertising campaign spun around pride and domestic security concerns [and sheer survival!] could breathe life into this idea. Even if only modestly successful, such an effort would bring home many jobs in textiles, apparel, toys, housewares, tools, appliances and electronics....
    [Dennis's suggestion involves an awful lot of detailed government intervention - and associated bureaucracy. A much simpler way for government to do this would be to drop the simplistic and increasingly suicidal dogma of "free" trade and globalization and just apply tariffs to imports. This would encourage domestic production and jobs. But the primary problem is not loss of American jobs to overseas, which is still just on the scale of our import sector, admittedly swollen as gauged by the trade deficit. The primary problem is our kneejerk downsizing, not timesizing, response to technolgy, which is pervasive.]

  3. 5/19   Open to all - Biological databases are becoming freely available to all researchers, - That's great for researchers - and bad news for companies that hoped to sell that data, by David Hamilton, WSJ, R12.

  4. 5/19   Free to choose - Linux may be the biggest threat Microsoft faces, - Even Microsoft, at last, seems to recognize that, by Roger Guth, WSJ, R6.
    [Das ist sehr gut, oder in aelter deutsch, guth! And Milton & Rose Friedman would surely approve, cuz they wrote an excellent book in 1979 called "Free to Choose."]

  5. 5/19   Canada parts with U.S. on drugs - Policies lean toward treating, rather than punishing, users, by Clifford Krauss, NYT, A9.
    ...A cocaine user took advantage of sterile conditions at the Safer Injection Site in Vancouver, BC. Although it is technically illegal, the privately run center is being allowed by the police to operate. [photo caption]
    ...and is condoned by the new mayor, Larry Campbell...elected in Nov. by a landslide on a platform of more treatment for addicts...and regulated injection sites..\.. "Safer Injection Site", modeled after similar facilities in Australia, Germany, Switzerland, and the Netherlands, is the only one to operate openly in North America....
    Prime Minister Jean Chretien, in his waning months in office, has said he plans to introduce legislation to decriminalize the possessin of small amounts of marijuana.... The legislation was scheduled to be introduced in the House of Commons on Thursday, but officials announced that it still needed work and would be delayed for 2 weeks..\..
    The government is also planning a research project among small groups of heroin addicts in Toronto, Vancouver and Montreal to see whether crime and health problems can be reduced among hardcore addicts by giving them prescriptions to maintain their habit, as has been done in Switzerland....
    [It's so much easier to quit fighting what people want - on the assumption that no one has a right to go to hell in their own way, based on OUR definitions of "hell" - and just let them access it, whatever it is - as long as it doesn't hurt anyone else.]
    Drug use is also an increasing domestic problem, connected with growing homelessness in Canada's largest cities.
    [Canada has gone much further than the US in suicidal regressive taxes such as the astronomical nationwide sales tax known as the GST (goods & services tax) which hobbles business in general and the velocity of monetary circulation, instead of just going with graduated income taxes to centrifuge sluggish, concentrated spending power back into circulation. And despite better social services, like nationwide health insurance, the job market is just as weak or weaker than the U.S.'s, so there is plenty of homelessness -]
    The RCMP has estimated that there are up to 40,000 heroin users among Canada's 30m inhabitants. The [US?] State Dept., in a 2002 narcotics report, estimated annual street sales of drugs in Canada at $13B....
    [And gosh, we wouldn't want to collapse the astronomical profits in the drug trade by decriminalizing it, would we?! Where would the CIA etc. get their slush funds??]

5/16/2003   headlines from heaven - alias glimmers of random hope/intelligence -
  1. [speaking of heaven -]
    Portable church is the latest from England, photo caption (photo: Agence France-Presse), NYT, A3.
    Visitors tested the pews of an inflatable church yesterday, in Sandown Park Exhibition Center, 20 miles west of London. It is 47 feet high, and includes a blow-up organ, altar, pulpit, pews, candles and "stained glass" windows. The church can hold about 60 worshippers, and its creator, Michael Gill of Innovations UK, said he recognized its potential for weddings, christenings and the like. He now has plans for a mosque and a synagogue.
    [The symbolism here is overwhelming. We particularly like the "blow-up organ." Ma ybe this invention will encourage people to take their religion with them into their everyday lives instead of leaving it behind on a pedestal after the weekly service.]

  2. Broadened definition of liability could curb use of some securities, by Cassell Bryan-Low, WSJ, C9.
    ...mandatorily redeemable shares..\..that resemble debt for tax purposes but appear more like equity for shareholders and rating agencies....
    [Finally, the triumph of voodoo management ifnot voodoo economics - a concoction that looks like assets to investors but debt to the IRS! "Broadened liability" is the goodnews here, and aligns with the great gradual groundswell that Phil "Boy Prophet" Hyde identified back in the '70s when beholding the outward creep of litigation targets (as in "follow the deep pocket!"), a trend that careened from the sublime to the ridiculous in the last 30 years and has reached its nadir in the the zillion-dollar award for the old lady who spilt her hot McDonalds/DunkinDonuts coffee on herself when she got into her car & started driving, not to mention the ruination of the American medical system by uncapped malpractice awards.]

  3. [and a glimmer of intelligence and creativity in these dark days for America -]
    A Declaration for the Future of America - A Challenge for George W. Bush, half-page ad by Lawrence Lader, NYT, A18.
    When in the course of a national crisis it becomes necessary for people to confront a long train of abuses and usurpations by a president, defeated by popular vote in the 2000 election, now decimating American progress, his damage to liberties and rights must be announced. The principles that should direct America's future in order to advance the safety and happiness of our citizens must be defined for the electorate in 2004.
    George W. Bush has widened the gap in income and savings between the rich and the poor, rewarded his financial supporters with government contracts, barely combatted the decline in U.S. jobs, and consistently favored the rich in tax policies.
    He embarked on destroying civil liberties guaranteed under the First Amendment, among them the right of privacy and the Roe v. Wade decision on which the privacy of women depends.
    He has repeatedly nominated ultra-conservative federal judges.
    He has launched a pre-emptive war against Iraq; damaged the United Nations in the progress; made enemies of France, Germany and other former allies, particularly Arab nations. He has brought about the deaths of more than a hundred U.S. troops and uncounted Iraqi civilians for the ostensible reason of finding instruments of mass destruction, still unproved. In reality, he aims to control Iraq's oil and to stamp U.S. hegemony everywhere, concentrating now on Syria and Iran.
    He has saddled the U.S. with the huge cost of policing Iraq at the same time as he whittles away at such basic domestic needs as Social Security and Medicare.
    Holding these truths to be self-evident, that all men and women are created equal and endowed with the inalienable rights of life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness, we therefore declare these principles to be the basis of America's future: We therefore, committed to the principle that governments derive their just powers from the consent of the governed, pledge to make this Declaration for the Future of America a reality.
    Sponsored by ABM, New York. To contribute to placing this ad nationwide, contact Lawrence Lader, president. 212-255-0682, fax 212-620-6166.

5/14/2003   headlines from heaven - alias glimmers of random intelligence/hope -
  1. Split of research from banking means still-lower analyst pay, by Cheryl Munk, Dow Jones via WSJ, C5.
    [That's good news. How ironic though, that while we've just unseparated banking, brokerage and insurance after learning the hard way in the 1920s that mixed together, they fostered costly conflicts of interest, we're now unseparating banking and research. Boy, are we stupid or what. Compare our long centuries of learning the hard way that we need to separate church and state, religion and politics, and now we're in the process of undoing that too. More human suffering, much much more are we giving ourselves.]

  2. FCC plan draws fire - Senators introduce bill to keep current media-ownership limits - 'There has been galloping concentration in virtually every area of the media industry,' said Sen. Byron Dorgan (D, ND) - 'It's hard to argue we need more', by Wigfield & Wilke, WSJ, B4.
    ...The Senate bill, co-sponsored by Ernest Hollings (D, SC) and Ted Stevens (R, Alaska), is identical to a measure introduced in the House on Friday. "Unless we reverse course, radical rule changes in the existing national and local ownership limits could seriously, and perhaps irreparably, alter the fabric of American culture and civic discourse," Sen. Hollings said....
    [Glad there's still some senators with a grain of common sense out in North Dakota and up in Alaska.]

  3. [a glimmer of intelligence -]
    How to lift the curse of Iraqi oil, op ed by Holman Jenkins Jr., WSJ, A15.
    The United States has bought itself a world of aggravation in trying to turn Iraq into something that will pass for a representative government. The U.S. has bought itself another headache in trying to figure out how oil, the curse of nations, can be turned into a source of peace and prosperity for the Iraqi people....
    [As if that was ever the goal of the Cheney-Rummy war. Aaanyway, as colleague Kate points out, except for Norway, oil really has been a 'curse of nations' - all nations with oil are either poor or unstable or both. Witness Chechnya, Venezuela, Mexico, Saudi Arabia,.... Here's hoping casinos don't turn into that kind of curse for American Indian tribes.]

5/13/2003   headlines from heaven - alias glimmers of random intelligence/hope -
  1. [1 UPsizing]
    Krispy Kreme Doughnuts to open 20 stores in Mexico in joint venture, Bloomberg via NYTY, C4.
    ...with the closely held Grupo Axo of Mexico City..\..in the next 6 years....
    [Unspecified new jobs.]
    Krispy Kreme will have a 30% interest in the partnership.... The foreign ventures were its 4th, after agreements to move into Canada, Australia and New Zealand, and Britain. Krispy Kreme, based in Winston-Salem, NC, has more than 280 stores in the U.S. and Canada.

  2. Europe won't be fooled again - Don't expect old friends to bail out the U.S. in Iraq, op ed by Olivier Roy, NYT, A31.
    PARIS - After months of cold war with the U.N., the U.S. put forth a draft resolution last week to give the international body oversight of efforts to rebuild Iraq. Although this might help the UN gain back some credibility, Washington's effort was clearly intended as a peace offering to its former "Old Europe" allies.
    While the offer is certainly genuine [if anything is genuine from this administration!], it is unlikely to thaw relations with Russia, France, Germany and Turkey. The problem is that the Bush administration, while ostensibly trying to get its traditional friends on board, continues to dissemble about where the train is headed....
    [And what about the UK? What about the naivete of Tony Blair and his foreign secy, the aptly named Jack Straw?]
    British cabinet minister quits, accusing Blair of betrayal - The Iraq war prompts a bitter attack on the prime minister, by Warren Hoge, NYT, A12.
    LONDON...- Clare Short, Britain's secretary for international development, [yester]day became the second person to resign from the cabinet over Iraq, ending her 6 years in government with a surprisingly personal attack on PM Tony Blair in an angry speech to the House of Commons. The immediate reason for her resignation, she said, was Mr. Blair's "betrayal" of his promise to work for UN involvement in postwar Iraq and his cooperation in an American campaign to "bully" the UN.
    [And she, as secy for international development, should know.]
    But she went beyond those disputes to accuse him of abandoning Labor Party values and the policies of his administration in order to further his own obsessive ambition. ...She said, "...Paradoxically, he is in danger of destroying his legacy as he becomes increasingly obsessed by his place in history."
    Mr. Blair was not in the House to hear her speech, but Foreign Secy Jack Straw sat in the front row with a grim expression.... By contrast, the resignation speech in March of Robin Cook, the leader of the Commons and a former foreign secy, drew a standing ovation from the legislators. At Ms. Short's conclusion, there were only murmurs, and they seemed to be as much of astonishment as of approval....
    Ms. Short...in March...first pledged to resign if Britain joined in the US-led war without UN approval and then stayed on in her post when that occurred....
    [So she was partly the more energetic in her denunciation because it took her this long to act on her pledge.]

  3. Readers complain of problems caused by overpaid CEOs, by Carol Hymowitz, WSJ, B1.
    [At least, people are beginning to speak up.]
    Too many chief executives still don't understand how they undermine investor trust and employee morale when they negotiate steep compensation deals for themselves, regardless of performance....

  4. Exile on G Street: Bush's economists play peripheral role, by Alan Murray, WSJ, A4.
    ...Power in the executive branch diminishes geometrically as you move away from the Oval Office. That is why...staffers would rather have a cupboard in the West Wing than a coffered-ceilinged suite in the Eisenhower Executive Office Building. And...why they would rather slit their wrists than leave the Eisenhower building for 1800 G Street, which is what the Council of Economic Advisors has been asked to do.
    ...Bush prefers to get his advice on the economy from people who've been successful in the business world...even people who have been unsuccessful in the business world. The [economists], for the most part, never [had to meet] a payroll.
    But relying of capitalists to keep a capitalist system humming is a mistake. Businessmen, by and large, don't like free and open markets.
    [especially when the regulation is in their favor.]
    From John D. Rockefeller on, they have found markets to be messy, chaotic and insufficiently profitable.... In a new book, "Saving Capitalism from the Capitalists," two [economists] from the University of Chicago - Raghuram Rajan and Luigi Zingales - puncture the notion that free markets operate best when government is absent. Touring developing nations around the globe, they argue persuasively that free markets "cannot flourish without the very visible hand of government." The real challenge is to ensure that the government acts to protect the marketplace, rather than protecting those who wish to dominate the marketplace (the greater risk in Republican administrations) or those who lost out in the marketplace (the greater risk in Democratic administrations).
    That's where the Council of Economic Advisers comes in - or should come in....

5/10-12/2003   headlines from heaven - alias glimmers of random intelligence/hope -
  1. [here's a glimmer of intelligence -]
    5/12   The Bush agenda, letter to editor by Ellen Shire of NYC, NYT, A26.
    Richard Smith (op ed, May 7) proclaims that George Bush "may be on the verge of joining a small group of presidents, all now thought of as great, who pitted their top aides against each other, fashioning an agenda from above the fray."
    It is, however, the agenda, not the means, that makes a leader great. pResident Bush's agenda so far? What part of any of that makes Mr. Bush a "great" president?

  2. [but here's possibly a glimmer of hope -]
    5/12   More chief executives shown the door, study says, pointer digest (to C2), NYT, C1.
    Around the world, CEOs were forced to leave their jobs in record numbers in 2002, a study of CEO turnover by the consulting firm Booz Allen Hamilton shows. Nearly 100 of the CEOs of the world's 2,500 largest companies were replaced last year for performance reasons, almost four times the number forced to leave in 1995, the study found. The trend has spread quickly from the U.S. to Europe and Japan....
    [If we can get rid of a bunch of these 'rob & run' CEOs, maybe there's a chance we can get rid of Bush. The global labor surplus has been the leading factor in the deterioration of management skills for over a generation now. You don't need great interpersonal skills when the power gradient is steeply in your favor.]

  3. [and another -]
    5/12   U.S. toughens immigration stance, by Eduardo Porter, WSJ, A15.
    [It would be sufficient if the US merely enforced its immigration law for a change, and stopped sporadically setting it aside.]
    ...A series of tough actions by government agencies against illegal immigrants has thrown into disarray a long-standing series of agreement[s] among employers, unions and government agencies that have for years effectively allowed illegal immigrants to work in the U.S....
    [At last the double-dealing hypocrisy is admitted. Let's sh*t or get off the pot on immigration. Either repeal the laws or enforce them and quit pitting both sides against the middle. And let's develop national public referendums on the topic to really see what Americans feel about this over-sentamentalized subject.]

5/08/2003   headlines from heaven - alias glimmers of random intelligence/hope - 5/03/2003   headlines from heaven - alias glimmers of random intelligence/hope - 5/02/2003   headlines from heaven - alias glimmers of random intelligence/hope -
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