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To: Ahda who wrote (74659)	8/8/2001 12:48:50 AM
From: Rarebird	Read Replies (4) \| Respond to of 116825

Investors who have been waiting patiently for concrete proof that business is improving half-heartedly got an encouraging report that American workers' productivity rebounded in the second quarter, their best showing in a year. Gains in productivity are the key to rising standards of living, because they allow wages to increase without triggering inflation, which would eat up those wage gains. If productivity falters, however, pressures for higher wages could forces companies to raise prices, thus worsening inflation. The rise in productivity helped to moderate labor costs. Unit labor costs, a measure of inflation pressures, rose at a 2.1% rate in the second quarter, down from a 5.0% rate in the first quarter. The annual revisions, meanwhile, showed that from 1996 through 2000, productivity growth averaged 2.5%, compared with the 2.8% average originally reported. Otherwise, recent economic data has been mixed, and that is evident in the movement of the markets. Thousands of layoffs in July could have contributed greatly to the rise in productivity. As long as the economic outlook is murky, the stock market will continue to narrowly fluctuate IMO.

To: Ahda who wrote (74659)	8/9/2001 3:02:52 PM
From: long-gone	Respond to of 116825

Here's another cost many would rather not acknowledge from the strong dollar / build & grow nothing here policy. How long before Dengue fever makes it way from Mexcio into every city of the US? The Global Disease Crisis: Why Americans Should Care Source: Foreign Policy Association Author: Noel Lateef, President of the Foreign Policy Association fpa.org Americans should care about world disease for the obvious humanitarian reason, but there are also pragmatic justifications for American concern about this important issue. In a world where economies are increasingly interdependent, ill health in any population affects all peoples. A reported one million people travel between the developing and industrialize worlds each week. Since 1990, the number of refugees and persons displaced within their own countries by war, environmental crisis or economic collapse has increased by over 60%, from approximately 30 million to 48 million. Poverty has been shown to be of overwhelming importance as both a direct and an indirect cause of poor health and, in turn, ill health makes people poor. More than one fifth of the worlds population lives in extreme poverty. Almost a third of all children are undernourished, and up to 2.5 billion people lack regular access to essential medications. Gro Harlem Bruntland, Secretary-General of the World Health Organization, points out that 30 million children still don't have access to basic vaccinations. "For only $17 per child, we can provide lifetime protection against the six historical scourges-polio, diphtheria, tuberculosis, pertussis, measles and tetanus," she said. World Bank President James D. Wolfensohn observed that health is a central issue in the fight against poverty. He noted "If Globalization is going to work, it must work for the world's children." In a globalized world, the risks of the spread of contagion are not to be minimized. The U.S. population is vulnerable to a wide array of infectious diseases. They include common infections that once existed in America, such as malaria, to rare and deadly diseases such as Ebola and Lassa fevers. For those who doubt the magnitude of the potential threat, it is well to recall that 1919 was marked by the influenza pandemic, which killed 20 million people worldwide (including 500,000 Americans), a greater death toll than all of World War I. In addition to human traffic, the trade in goods and services across U.S. borders also poses risks. In 1985, for example, Aedes albopictur mosquitoes-which carry a vector of diseases such as dengue fever, viral encephalitis, and yellow fever-were introduced to the U.S. through tires imported from Asia. Scientists at the Center for Disease Control and Prevention believe that since early last summer West Nile encephalitis was introduced into the U.S. through infected mosquitoes, which caused the recent outbreak in the New York metropolitan area. The economic costs of infectious diseases to the U.S. are extraordinarily high. Total U.S. expenditures exceed $120 billion annually. Drug-resistant infections greatly amplify these costs: for example, treatment for conventional tuberculosis in the U.S. costs $25,000, compared with $250,000 for multidrug-resistent tuberculosis. All nations face converging health problems of growing complexity. The outbreaks of Ebola in what is now Congo, hemorrhagic Dengue fever in southern Mexico, plague in India, E. coli 0157 in Japan and Scotland, and drug resistant tuberculosis in New York City emphasize the importance of global surveillance systems that can alert the international community to outbreaks of infectious diseases. No such system exists on a formal basis, and this fact is cause for alarm for America and the world. A grass roots approach to the global disease issue could reap important dividends, not the least of which would be a reprioritizing of health issues in the formulation of U.S. foreign policy. The internationalists at the FPA are doing their part to implement citizen efforts to act responsibly and effectively on the world scene. The State University of New York, and the Times Union wish to join this effort. Doing so involves generating student interest in careers devoted to public health, and the recruitment of all Americans to become involved in the solution to the global disease crisis.