Timesizing®com - Homepage

---

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

11/29/2003   glimmers of hope -

• [and just as there are a few Israelis standing up against militaristic insanity, there are a few Americans also -]
  Reservist balks at redeployment, by Ben Dobbin, AP via Boston Globe, A20.
  ROCHESTER, NY - Captain Steve McAlpin, a longtime Army reservist, [says] serving the United States is what "I've been wanting to do for my entire life." [But] McAlpin...who was deployed in Afghanistan most of 2002 and returned home in January, learned this week he is facing insubordination charges that could abruptly end his 25-year military career.
  His breach of discipline: questioning the legality of a waiver his battalion was asked to sign that would put his unit back in a combat zone after just 11 months at home. Under federal law, he pointed out, troops are allowed a 12-month "stabilization period."...
  [But what does the Cheney-Bush regime care about federal law or the Constitution?]
  About a dozen other officers refused to sign the waiver of Title X rights, a provision of the US Code since 1953, as well as four enlisted soldiers called to redeploy, McAlpin said....
  [It's come to this. In the once-great "Land of the Free," people who stand up for their rights under law are now "heroes." The noose of the Bush regime tightens around the throat of the once-free American eagle.]

1. [1 UPsizing]
   Areva SA - Company to invest $3.5B in uranium enrichment plant [in southern France], WSJ, B4.
   [Unspecified new jobs.]

2. Presidential TV ads, letter to editor by Paul Marx of Towson MD, NYT, A30.
   ...Unfortunately, there will be many \slanders and attack ads in\ the 2004 campaign...by both sides. That's why money should not be contributed to political campaigns; most of it gets used to buy TV ads that distort, exaggerate, lie.
   [The way we'd phrase this is, let's get money completely out of the political process in our self-professed 'democracy' - if we don't, it's a plutocracy, not a democracy. Hard to imagine getting money OUT of politics? Paul Marx tells how -]
   
   • Television makes use of the airwaves, which belong to the public. Our representatives in DC must [design] a way for the public airwaves to be used by candidates in all elections without charge.
   • Time must be made available as part compensation for use of this public resource.
   • No ads should be allowed, only talk by candidates themselves.
   [The quality of our public servants would skyrocket. In 1996, Joe Kennedy spent $2,000,000; Phil Hyde spent $600. Phil got 1,000 more votes per dollar than Joe, but Joe had the $2m. And yet, if there's any family in Massachusetts that could set an example and get money completely out of their campaigns (and still win on their fame alone), it's the Kennedy's. Guess they're too insecure.]

• [1 UPsizing, with bonus kick at Bush]
  Choice of France for reactor draws anger, by Dale Fuchs, NYT, A18.
  ...France, Spain, Japan and Canada have proposed sites for the International Thermonuclear Experimental Reactor, which would produce the first sustained fusion reactions. The plant [will] generate thousands of jobs..\..
  The EU's decision to back a French site as the European candidate for a $5B nuclear fusion reactor has left Spanish opposition leaders fuming.   [Spanish?] Socialist Party leaders cast the decision [ie: the deciding EU vote?], which passed over a less costly Spanish proposal, as punishment for Prime Minister Jose Maria Amar's support of the American-led war in Iraq....
  [Oh yes, mini-Blair.]

1. [1 UPsizing]
   Net income rose 43% in period on growth in revenue, stores, WSJ, B6.
   Krispy Kreme Doughnuts Inc...continued to expand its operation in the third [fiscal] quarter [ending Nov.2], opening 27 factory stores in 10 new markets....
   [Unspecified new jobs. Compare 5/13/2003 #1.]

2. Online voting approved for Michigan Democrats, AP via NYT, A17.
   ...in [their] presidential caucus Saturday [11/22] from national Democrats.
   [Easie voting is Good. This is the "electronic" part of electronic referendums.]
   Opponents said online balloting was not secure and discriminated against poor and minority voters, who are less likely to own computers.
   [Security is at least as good as online creditcard purchases, and we're assuming that poor and minority voters can still vote offline.]
   The Michigan party wil alow those participating in the Feb. 7 caucus to have the option of voting over the Internet, by mail or in person.
   [So no problem. Is this the first?]
   Democrats in Arizona used the Internet in the presidential primary in 2000.
   [So how'd it turn out?]
   Voter turnout was more than double the previous record and about 40% of the 86,000 ballots were cast online....

1. Ignoring Democrats' golden touch, pointer digest (to C2), NYT, C1.
   Stocks consistently do better under Democratic presidents than under Republicans ones.... Why don't investors cash in on this trend?

2. Spending bill would restore tighter media ownership cap, WSJ, B2.

1. [1 UPsizing, sort of]
   Wal-Mart and workers, letter to editor by Communications VP Mona Williams of Wal-Mart Stores of Bentonville ARK, 11/19/2003 NYT, A28.
   Re "The Wal-Martization of America" (editorial, 11/15/2003 #1):
   Regarding Wal-Mart's effect on unionized California grocers, you say Wal-Mart is the reason our grocery competitors are lowering wages and benefits to their unionized employees. We strongly disagree.
   Wal-Mart plans to open 40 supercenters in California over the next four years,
   [Scary!]
   and each will employ approximately 450 people.
   [Oh tank you, missee, dat mean we have 40x450= 18,000 new WalJobs!]
   Less than 20% of these associates will work in grocery,
   [So 100-20= 80% of these associates, four times the number of grocery associates, are OVERHEAD? How does Wal-Mart survive!]
   which represents about 80-90 associates per store.
   [20% of 18000= 3,600. 40x90= 3,600 = still 20%.]
   In fact, Wal-Mart will employ fewer than 4,000 [ie: 3,600?] nonunion grocery workers to compete with the more than 200,000 existing United Food & Commercial Workers employees.
   [So Wal-Mart currently has only (4000-3200)/80= 10 supercenters in California?]
   In other words, it is likely that Wal-Mart will employ about 2% [4000/200000= 2%] of the total grocery workforce in California four years from now.
   [Yeah but Wal-Mart still has that army of nongrocery workers four times that number, 2%x4= 8% = 4000x4= 16,000, waiting in the wings, to do something, we know not what.]
   That said, is it really credible to blame Wal-Mart for whatever the unionized grocers are doing (or not doing) in California? We think not.
   [Yeah, but with 2+8= total 10% of the grocery workforce by the numbers (4000+16000= 20,000 grocery-competing and -not-competing staff), we think so, especially when we consider what those extra 16,000 grocery-untied legions may be doing (or not doing)!]

2. [Free trade dissolves further - 3 blows on one NY Times page and a 4th from the Journal -]
   Canada disputes U.S. drug claims, pointer digest (to C4), NYT, C1.
   [Canada just says, "We know what you really want is 'free trade'." Again -]
   United States officials, frustrated, pointer digest (to C2), NYT, C1.
   ...with the prospect of a weakened hemispheric ['free'] trade agreement, said they would focus on bilateral pacts to get past differences with Brazil.
   Administration to restrict imports of Chinese textiles, pointer digest (to A1), NYT, C1.
   The Bush administration...immediately found itself caught between battle cries from the industry for more protectionism and anxiety among global investors who fear it....
   
   • [Followup -]
     Textile towns appeal for help, but quotas may not suffice [to] rescue Carolina textiles, by Edmond Andrews, 11/20/2003 NYT, C1.
     ...When the Bush administration moved on Tuesday to impose import quotas on certain Chinese textiles and clothing, it was responding to a furious outcry from North Carolina businesses, workers and elected officials....
     
   [And then there's the Journal's entry -]
   E.U. officials dismissed, pointer summary (to A2), WSJ, front page.
   ...a potential U.S. compromise over steel tariffs, insisting they be removed.
   [Bonus nail in free trade's coffin -]
   Report finds few benefits for Mexico in NAFTA, NYT, A9.
   ...a study from the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace....

3. Marriage by gays gains big victory in Massachusetts - Legislature told to clear way - Court cites state constitution, NYT, front page.

1. China set to act on fuel economy - Auto standards would be tougher than in U.S., by Keith Bradsher, NYT, front page.
   [What about truck standards?!]
   ...The new standards are intended both
   • to save energy
   • and to force automakers to introduce the latest hybrid engines and other technology in China, in hopes of easing the nation's swiftly rising dependence on oil imports from volatile countries in the Middle East....

2. Press baron from Canada [Lord Black] will give up his post..\..- Received unauthorized payments...- A probable breakup for an empire [Hollinger International] begun with Quebec weeklies, NYT, C2, continued from front page.
   [So maybe Canada will lead the U.S. in media deconsolidation now too.]

1. 11/15   Germany begins nuclear phaseout - Shuts down first of 19 power plants, Boston Globe, A7 (//NYT, A5).

2. 11/17   Now drawing German crowds: Michael Moore, by Charles Goldsmith & Almut Schoenfeld, WSJ, B1.
   Striding onstage in Berlin last night, it didn't take long for U.S. polemicist Michael Moore to attack the U.S.-led war in Iraq. "There should be a rule," he quipped to rapturous laughter, "that you're not allowed to bomb another country unless you can find it on the map."...
   The Berlin shows marked Mr. Moore's first stop in a weeklong tour of Germany, where he has become a folk hero in a country not normally smitten with in-your-face Americans - particularly a sloppily dressed bearded [moustache-only in photo!] type wearing a baseball cap....
   Mr. Moore's popularity in Germany stems from criticizing his own country. Besides bashing the current U.S. administration [he also bashed the last one, but this one offers sooo much more of a target], Mr. Moore's books and movies have taken aim at U.S. business, culture and education. "Do you feel like you live in a nation of idiots?" the Michigan native asks his fellow Americans in his book "Stupid White Men" [which] is No.1 on Der Spiegel magazine's nonfiction bestseller list, where it has ruled for 39 of the past 41 weeks.
   Its success prompted the German publication of "Downsize" last year, six years after the US hardback, and it is now the No.4 bestseller.
   Mr. Moore's new "Dude, Where's My Country?" came out in German on Friday with a huge first-print run of 200,000, under the title "Full Cover Mr. Bush."
   Germany isn't the only foreign country to embrace Mr. Moore. Given his relentless attacks on pResident George W. Bush, Mr. Moore is popular across Europe in the wake of the anti-Americanism sparked by the unpopular war in Iraq. Yet in Germany, Mr. Moore has captured the Zeitgeist as nowhere else....

3. 11/17   Regulation begins at home - If the Bush administration won't enforce the law, the states will , by N.Y. Attorney General Eliot Spitzer, NYT, A23.
   With two decisions in the last two weeks, the Bush administration has sent its clearest message yet that it values corporate interests over the interests of average Americans.
   • In the SEC's settlement with Putnam Investments, the public comes away short-changed.
   • In the EPA's decision to forgo enforcement of the Clean Air Act, the public comes away completely empty-handed....

4. 11/17   What voters want: Two good choices, letter to editor... by Ken Fish of NYC, NYT, A22.
   William Safire claims that if Howard Dean gains the Democratic presidential nomination, it could lead to a landslide for pResident Bush in 2004 (Nov.12).
   Years ago, my grandfather taught me to play chess. Midgame he would offer me advice, only to take advantage of my moves after I followed his suggestions. The lesson I ultimately learned was never to take advice from your opponent.
   Dr. Dean's opponents (and their allies in the news media) are claiming he is too liberal to win, while others claim he is actually too conservative.
   The reality is that he is neither. Dr. Dean has offered a credible and issues-based platform, which voters should judge on its merits and not by the intentional misdirections of his opponents or Mr. Safire.

5. 11/15   4 Israeli ex-security chiefs denounce Sharon's hard line, NYT, A3.
   [and the Boston Globe version which we saw first -]
   Four add voices to criticism in Israel - Ex-security chiefs hit Sharon policies, by Molly Moore, Washington Post via BG, A6, flagged by colleague Kate (& her mom's Jewish...).
   JERUSALEM - Four former chiefs of Israel's powerful domestic security service warned in an interview published yesterday that the Israeli government's actions and policies during the three-year-old Palestinian uprising have gravely damaged the country and its people.
   The four, who headed the Shin Bet security agency from 1980 to 2000 under governments that spanned the political spectrum, said that Israel must end its occupation of the West Bank and Gaza Strip.... One of the four said Israel also must stop what he described as the immoral treatment of Palestinians....
   
   • Avraham Shalom...headed the security service from 1980-86
   • Yaakov Perry, 1988-95
   • Carmi Gillon [or NYT: Gilon], 1995-96
   • Major Gen. Ami Ayalon, 1996-2000
   [Four more heroes with the chutzpa to stand out from the silent herd.]
   "Why is it that everyone - (Shin Bet) directors, chief of staff, former security personnel - after a long service in security organizations become the advocates of reconciliation with the Palestinians?" asked Yaakov Perry....
   The security chiefs denounced virtually every major military and political tactic of the Sharon administration, adding to the mounting dissent inside Israel against the prime minister's handling of a conflict that has claimed the lives of more than 2,500 Palestinians and nearly 900 Israelis and foreigners. In recent weeks,
   • the country's top general has criticized Sharon's clampdown on Palestinians in the West Bank,
   • Air Force pilots have publicly declared the military's use of missiles and bombs to kill militants in civilian neighborhoods to be "immoral,"
   • activists have initiated independent peace proposals,
   • and opinion polls indicate that faith in Sharon is plummeting.
     [At last, maybe ordinary Israelis are waking up. The first side to adopt Gandhi's proactive, imaginative, media-invoking, non-violent resistance will "win" in less than two years.]

• [1 horrible UPsizing]
  U.S. trade law gives Africa hope and hard jobs, by Marc Lacey, NYT, front page.
  BUGOLOBI, Uganda - Uganda is banking its future on 1,400 girls - young women, really - plucked from their villages around the country and plopped down in front of row upon row of sewing machines at a vast factory here outside the capital.... These are the AGOA [Growth & Opportunity Act] girls, as the Ugandans call them, named for the American trade legislation that lured their employer, Tri-Star Apparel, from Sri Lanka to Uganda.... AGOA, which reduced or eliminated tariffs and quotas on more than 1,800 items, has drawn similar factories across Africa as foreign investors, mostly from Asia, seize upon its incentives to give this underdeveloped continent a chance.
  [A chance for what?]
  For workers the job can be as grueling as a day in the fields, still Africa's most common way of making a living. The Tri-Star workers, all new to formal employment, say their shoulders ache and their feet swell by quitting time, which bosses sometimes [postpone] into the evening if a big deadline looms.
  But at least they have work....
  For the first time in some African countries, the largest employer is no longer the federal government but a private enterprise..\.. Job creation has been dramatic.... Kenya has projected 50,000 AGOA-related jobs. Lesotho estimates it has created 10,000 new jobs in the last year, most of them going to young women....
  [So far, 1400 new jobs, evidently worse than McJobs.]

• [1 UPsizing]
  India: GM opens a lab, by Saritha Rai, NYT, W1.
  General Motors said it had set up a $21m auto research laboratory in Bangalore, India's technology capital.... [It] employs 17 scientists and the number will increase to 100 soon....

1. 11/10   Democracy - Let's lead by example, letters to editor, NYT, A22.
   [Amen to that!]

2. 11/08   Bloom is on the economy...as the cycle appears to turn, NYT, front page & B2.
   [and again -]
   11/08   3 months of job growth best in 3 years - A modest gain, but it's seen as a good sign, NYT, front page.
   [by those who are nervous about how much more they're grabbing than they ever thought possible. Here's the Journal version, with an additional caveat snuk in -]
   11/10   U.S. employment increased, pointer blurb (to column 5), WSJ, front page.
   ...126,000 last month, boosted by pre-holiday retail hiring [oh-oh], in what could be a sign that a long stretch of rising joblessness has neared an end.
   [Dream on - here's their elaboration of the "oh-oh" -]
   11/10   Retailer's present for job market on mend [ha]: More holiday hiring, WSJ, front page (col. 5).
   [And from the Boston Globe, here's "The Rest of the Story" -]
   11/09   Boom and bust - The latest economic news is good - but not good enough, by Jeff Madrick, BG, D1, flagged by colleague Kate.
   ..The unexpected quarterly GDP figures released by the Commerce Dept. recently...showed an annual growth rate of 7.2%...and will probably have 6-12 months of ripple effects. At last the economy will start producing some new jobs...after the longest drought since the Great Depression, and maybe a few people will even get a raise. Friday's...employment report, which saw an increase of 126,000 jobs in October, was sub-par for this stage of a 'recovery' [our quotes - Madrick says later that we need a minimum of 166,666 new jobs a month just to replace the ones we're losing] but may be a harbinger of more jobs to come....
   [That's a big "may be."]
   The economic policies of the Bush administration [however] have been about as crude and destructive a cocktail of stimulants...as we have ever seen -
   • lavish ihncome and estate taxcuts for upper-income Americans,
   • elimination of taxes on dividends,
   • stepped-up military and homeland 'security' spending [our quotes]....
   The result is short-term 'growth' and long-term damage. Even if the "Bush boom" hailed by some pundits temporarily takes hold, the administration's policies will
   • weaken the economy over time,
   • fall particularly harshly on its working middle- and low-income citizens,
   • and fail to prepare the nation for a century of far more intense global competition.
   ...We've been here before. The 7.2%...is the fastest since the first quarter of 1984 under Ronald Reagan when [it] reached 9%. Reagan's enormous taxcut of 1981 was of about equal size compared to the economy and he aggressively pumped up military spending. We then embarked on a solid[??] recovery, with 7.3% growth reported for the entire year of 1984, tapering off to under 4% in succeeding years.
   [Calling a recovery 'solid' when it just 5 years later we were back in recession, ditto 10 years after that, is a loose use of the term - reflecting some awfully low expectations - similar to letting mutual funds "time" the markets over their entire history till this year and finding nothing whatsoever wrong with it.]
   The stock market set out on its long bull market as well [except for the devastating crashes of 1987 and 2001]....
   But
   • the federal budget deficit did not dissipate as promised with growth, capital investment did not rise as a proportion of GDP,
     [the upper brackets always assume these things will happen automatically and their grotesque excess gives them no special role or responsibility]
   • and wages stagnated for most and fell for many even as jobs were created.
     [It never ceases to amaze us how Madrick can keep making statements like this without asking a few more obvious questions and breaking through to an independent invention of worktime economics. For example,
     • Q: how can wages stagnated when jobs are being created? A: most of the new jobs are not urgently demanded and are low-wage.
     • Q: why are only less urgently demanded jobs being created? A: the waves of highly efficient, productive, worksaving technology have been responded to by downsizing the workforce and thereby weakening the consumer base, and the effects have been accumulating.
     • Q: how should the waves of technology been responded to? A: by adjusting the workweek to whatever level maintains static or falling unemployment.
     • Q: if the workweek comes down, how can low-wage people survive? A: in the immediate term, their incomes can be stabilized by government transitional wage cushions. In the mid-term, they can switch jobs to the millions of skill-upgrading, on-the-job training opportunities that have popped up all over the economy in the prior process of overtime-to-training&hiring conversion. In the longer term, low-wage-paying employers, disciplined by high turnover, will raise wages, as they did during the long workweek-halving process between 1840 and 1940.
     • Q: if we get fuller employment, how can we avoid runaway inflation without raising interest rates and fostering higher unemployment again? A: Reduce our national overdependence on inflationary incentive (monetary 'compensation').
   • Americans began borrowing at maddening, and mad, rates to support flattening incomes
     [temporary and unsustainable]
   • and the nation's savings rate just kept falling.
     [As it should during a crisis of underconsumption and overconcentration of income (ie: too much saving dba hoarding for lack of good investments. The crazy runup of P/E ratios in the stock market is a symptom of this generally unrecognized danger. The alarmism over falling savings rates is beside the point.]
   In the end, when you measure growth over a complete business cycle, both recession and expansion, the Reagan 'reforms' [our quotes] produced no increase in the rate of growth over the 1970s....
   [which was already down from the 1940s-60s.]
   Most important, wages and salaries as reported by the Bureau of Economic Analysis did not rise at all in the third quarter [this year]. As a result, consumers are...borrowing against their homes and racking up creditcard debt to compensate for a 'recovery' that is not tightening labor [supply] sufficiently to produce either...raises \or downstream consumer spending&demand and business expansion&new\ jobs....
   This economy will have no legs if 1.5m jobs are not created in the next 6-9 months,
   [that's a minimum of 166,666 jobs/month, not just October's 126,000]
   and preferably 2-3m
   [that's a minimum of 222,222 jobs/mon, so 200,000 is a good round-figure guesstimate for replacement level].
   ...It is not likely that growth will be adequate to do that.
   In addition, business attitudes seem to have changed.
   [as deepening labor surplus spoils employers more and more.]
   The first line of defense against a downturn in profits is now to cut jobs and squeeze more hours out of workers....
   [At last he mentions the critical erosive factor, but still without giving the complete picture. It's the kneejerk downsizing in response to new technology that starts this vicious spiral, and it's the substitution of a kneejerk timesizing response that can reverse it. Continuing to rely on war to reverse it - in the nuclear age - is just nuts. All of which leads us to -]
   11/09   For Democrats, the core issue should be economic anxiety - The Bush message will be: Trust me, by Charles Stein, Boston Globe, H1.
   [In short, once again "it's the economy, stupid!" Anyone who trusts Bush is terminally naive. Stein does mention technology (and bonus: retraining!) -]
   Almost exactly 10 years ago, Bill Bradley, then a Democratic senator from New Jersey...described an American economy in constant flux [ie: deterioration] as the result of foreign trade, new technology [not alone but with] corporate downsizing. The changes, he said, left millions of Americans "adrift on a gigantic river of economic transformation [ie: deterioration] that carries away everything."
   Bradley proposed throwing people a lifeline - government help with health insurance, pensions, and a mix of education and retraining. He called his plan "an economic security platform," but he could just as easily have called it "compassionate capitalism."
   [Contrast what Latin Americans are calling what we've got now: "capitalismo savaje" = "savage capitalism." We could also call what we have now "downsizing capitalism" or "constipated capitalism." But compassion shmonpassion, he could just as easily have called the good version "sustainable capitalism," or "long-term capitalism," or with a little more insight, " timesizing capitalism."

3. 11/08   Former Enron chairman [Ken Lay] gives up fight to retain documents, NYT, B2.
   [So if this croney of Bush & Cheney releases his death grip on incriminating documents, does this offer hope that Cheney & Bush will do the same - like in the 9/11 area, or in the energy taskforce affair? Or does it just mean that Lay has had a chance to launder the documents?]

1. Senators and Attorneys General [from the Northeast] seek investigation into E.P.A. rules change, by Oppel & Drew, NYT, A17.
   ...that lawyers at the Agency say will lead it to drop investigations of 50 powerplants for Clean Air Act violations.
   [The degradation of our environment and quality of life continue under this hopeless administration.]
   Atty. Gen. Eliot Spitzer of NY...demanded that the Agency turn over all of its files on the investigations so he and officials in other states can proceed with the cases....

2. [Could this be an indication that even Bush Sr. is fed up with Bush Jr's shenanigans? -]
   Bush honors Kennedy, by Jackie Calmes, WSJ, A4.
   The first Pres. Bush, that is, today gives the 41-year Senate Democrat, one of his son's harshest war critics [though rather late], this year's George Bush Award for Excellence in Public Service at Texas A&M University. Kennedy is the first American honored; past awardees were Germany's Kohl and Russia's Gorbachev.
   [So the message from Bush Sr. is, "Junior is embarrassing."]

3. Working out - The last big hurdle to a sustainable recovery is showing signs of collapsing, by Jesse Eisinger, WSJ, C1.
   The government reports October employment statistics today and they are likely to be good....
   [That's lovely, but one month's uptick in employment is hardly the "last big hurdle to a sustainable recovery." The real hurdle is still untouched, as our first Headline from Hell today testifies ("With U.S. tax checks spent, retailers report slower gains" - see 11/07/2003 #1) - and also a story right across the double-page on the back of the previous section -]
   Motorola CEO to receive generous [$29m] exit package, WSJ, B8.
   ...Chairman and CEO Christopher Galvin...recently agreed to resign....
   [CEOs are still downsizing their own markets via their employees and granting themselves wealth beyond the dreams of Midas. The real hurdle to a sustainable recovery is CEOs' own turning of technology from blessing to curse by downsizing instead of timesizing - and scooping up all the money they can, far beyond their ability to spend and support their own companies' - and investments' - markets. If FDR had gone with timesizing in the form of the admittedly primitive 30-hour workweek bill, he wouldn't have needed the whole costly New Deal, which wasn't effective anyway until he implemented a weaker 44-42-40 hour version in 1938-39-40 (which, though weaker, still cut unemployment 2% for every hour it cut the workweek.]

4. Unemployment falls, Reuters via NYT, W1.
   Australian unemployment fell to 5.6% in October, its lowest in nearly 14 years. ...The prime minister, John Howard...said the government had a budget surplus, its debt was low and inflation was under control....
   [What a difference from here (USA).]

5. States in India take new steps to limit births, by Amy Waldman, NYT, front page.
   ...India['s] population...is set to surpass China's as the world's biggest by midcentury. Indian women currently bear an average of just under three children - a steep drop from the six of 50 years ago, but still above the 2.1 that would stabilize a population that already exceeds a billion people.
   [2001: China 1285.0m, India 1025.1m, USA 285.9m, Indonesia 214.8m, Brazil 172.6m, Pakistan 145.0m, Russia 144.7m, Bangladesh 140.4m, Japan 127.3m, Nigeria 116.9m, Mexico 100.4.... Source: The Economist Pocket World in Figures 2004. If all the former parts of India were re-united, it would beat China with 1025.1+145.0+140.4= 1310.5m.]
   ...The growing competition for resources like water and land are prompting a reassessment.... India...recoiled against coercive policies - like China's - after the ruthless sterilization campaign under Indira Gandhi in the late 1970s. But today, the national mood increasingly favors a tougher approach, and [Indian] states, free to adopt their own policies, are experimenting.
   • At least six [states] have laws mandating a two-child norm for members of village councils, and some are extending it to civil servants as well...on the notion that they should provide models of restraint..\..
   • States are also increasingly turning to incentives - pay raises, or access to land or housing - for government servants who choose sterilization after one or two children.
   • ...A move is gaining steam to revive a national bill limiting members of Parliament and state legislatures to two children....
     [Just like Lincoln Electric's principle - "all sacrifice together, starting at the top."]

6. Basque Parliament to debate independence plan, NYT, A10.
   ["Let my people go."]

7. Brazil eases its dependence on I.M.F. [and background puppeteer, USA], NYT, W1.
   [Compare Honduras, and Latin America in general (see "Where teachers rule - Honduras and the IMF," 10/25/2003 The Economist, p.35, which states, "In Latin American countries, visiting economists from the IMF are accustomed to being greeted about as warmly as paedophiles."). Compare Thailand, 10/24/2003 #2, below. Many countries are finally waking up to the way the I.M.F. really "AIDS" you - sort of like a Typhoid Mary.]

• Rises in services and factory orders, Bloomberg via NYT, C6.
  ...The Institute for Supply Mgmt said its index of service industries climbed to 64.7 [in Oct.], the second-highest level on record, from 63.3 in Sept.
  [That's great. Lots more work for the ATMs and other serve-yourself's, computers and robots to do - but they're not consumers.]
  Readings higher than 50 indicate [GDP (productivity)] growth.
  [But what good's growth without markets? Oops, here are some markets -]
  Orders at factories rose 0.5% in Sept, the Commerce Dept. reported....
  [Of course, more and more of those factory orders are orders for more computers and robots - and they're not consumers. As Reuther retorted when Ford taunted, "Let's see you unionize these robots!" - "Let's see you sell them cars."]

• Hybrids are the stars at Tokyo's auto show - Driving 600 miles on a single tank of gasoline, NYT, W1 & W7.
  [If we re-elect Bush and his oil consortium, hydrid vehicles will disappear in America and UK. Japan, Germany and France (and very quietly, Canada) will have to carry the ball.]