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Pastimes : Free Trade is Squeezing You - Final Draft -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: Thomas M. who wrote (30)	2/16/2002 6:16:50 AM
From: GUSTAVE JAEGER	Respond to of 33

Hail to the Brave New TransPacific Era.... The trans-Atlantic rift is getting serious David Ignatius International Herald Tribune Saturday, February 16, 2002 PARIS Maybe it's because this is an election year in many European countries and politicians here are more likely to make inflammatory remarks. Or maybe it's because America - at once victorious and vulnerable after its Afghan success - is talking belligerently as it gropes toward the next phase of its war against terrorism. But whatever the causes, the rift between the United States and its European "allies" is getting serious. You could hear the NATO alliance tearing at the seams on Tuesday as Germany's foreign minister, Joschka Fischer, denounced the Bush administration's anti-terrorism policy and warned that Europeans will refuse to be treated like "satellite" states. The jousting continued Thursday as Secretary of State Colin Powell was quoted in the Financial Times as saying that the French foreign minister, Hubert Vedrine, was "getting the vapors" when he criticized U.S. foreign policy as "simplistic." For President George W. Bush, it must be a relief to be heading across the Pacific this weekend, toward Asia and away from those pesky Europeans. At least Beijing supports his anti-terrorism policy. It is tempting to regard the recent Euro-American friction as simply a dispute over Bush's "axis-grinding" State of the Union speech. Or to believe that, in the memorable words of the prison warden in "Cool Hand Luke" to Paul Newman: "What we have here is a failure to communicate." But I fear it's something considerably worse. What is driving a wedge between the United States and Europe isn't simply a lack of dialogue but a growing divergence of interests and capabilities. If this imbalance is not addressed quickly, both sides will soon find themselves on very unstable ground. [...] iht.com

To: Thomas M. who wrote (30)	3/24/2004 6:04:05 AM
From: GUSTAVE JAEGER	Respond to of 33

Galbraith debunks the American economy as the plaything of Technocracy: The Economics of Innocent Fraud : Truth For Our Time by John Kenneth Galbraith (Author) Editorial Reviews Amazon.com John Kenneth Galbraith has been immersed in economics for most of his long and remarkable life. The purpose of this extended essay is to illuminate examples of "innocent fraud" or the gulf between perception and reality in the modern American economic system--a system he had a hand in creating during his tenure in FDR's administration. Though tackling serious subjects, the book sparkles with wit and sly understatement. "A marked enjoyment can be found in identifying self-serving belief and contrived nonsense," he writes, clearly enjoying himself. The dominant role of the corporation in modern society is one such form of innocent fraud, and he explains how managers hold the real power in our system, not consumers or shareholders as the image would suggest. Despite the "appearance of relevance for owners," capitalism has given way to corporate bureaucracy--"a bureaucracy in control of its task and its compensation. Rewards that verge on larceny." He also explains how the public realm is effectively controlled by the private sector. The arms industry is but one example of this: "While the Pentagon is still billed as being of the public sector, few doubt the influence of corporate power in its decisions." He also looks at the financial world which "sustains a large, active, well-rewarded community based on compelled but seemingly sophisticated ignorance," and in particular the Federal Reserve System, "our most prestigious form of fraud, our most elegant escape from reality." In essence, Galbraith says that the Fed, for all of its power and prestige, effectively does nothing. And he has little problem with this: "Let their ineffective role be accepted and forgiven." Both a guide to the present and an aid to shaping the future, this slim, satisfying book is a font of wisdom, conventional and otherwise, from a respected elder statesman in the twilight of his life. --Shawn Carkonen *Book Description* Kenneth Galbraith has been at the center of the American economy since before the Second World War. In his new book, he offers a distillation of these years in both the public and the private sectors, the academy and the government, and explains where we are and how we got there. Galbraith argues that inherent in our economic system is a continuing divergence between reality and "conventional wisdom," or as he puts it self-serving belief and contrived nonsense, or "fraud." He contends that we observe the current state of the nation in a cloud of myth, believing that stockholders and owners run our corporate world. In reality, it is the management of giant corporations that controls not only the private sector, but also the public sector, too, from politicians, to the Federal Reserve Bank, to the Pentagon. In a work filled with provocative ideas that come from his years as an astute observer, Galbraith looks at today's economy and America's military actions in Iraq and sees that the gap between myth and reality has never been wider. Fraud within the American Economy: The myth of stockholder ownership The myth of a market economy The myth of the Federal Reserve System The myth of two sectors; public and private The myth that war is justifiable amazon.com