Labor & Economy

"Then, one day, some focus group showed that people, particularly older people, react negatively to any connection between Social Security and the word private. For some reason, people like the sound of 'personal accounts' better than they do 'private accounts.' / So the Republicans, with their fabulous ability to march in lockstep, all about-faced and started referring to the privatization of Social Security as 'personal accounts.' This is the new political correctness." [more]

"The United States, having broken Iraq, is not in the process of fixing it. It is merely continuing to break the country and its people by other means, using not only F-16s and Bradleys, but now the less flashy weaponry of WTO and IMF conditions, followed by elections designed to transfer as little power to Iraqis as possible." [more]

Aljazeera reports that member states have decided to maintain the existing official output ceiling of 27 million barrels per day, although they are currently producing about 1.1 million barrels more than that figure. [more]

The meeting comes in the wake of downward pressure on oil prices which in ten days have lost 17 per cent of their value, the largest collapse in prices since the start of the Iraq war. US light crude eventually settled down $1.52 at $41.46 a barrel, the first time it has broken the $42 floor since late August. [more]

First, the US is, and will remain for some time to come, the world's only superpower. This status is usually accompanied by currency supremacy. [more]

An estimated US$30-50 billion in "hot money," or speculative short-term foreign investments, may have entered China this year. Much of that would have been prompted by speculation that the currency will be revaluated. [more]

Imagine you could write cheques that were accepted as payment but never cashed. That is what it amounts to. If you had been granted that ability, you might take care to hang on to it. America is taking no such care, and may come to regret it. [more]

Washington, in other words, is relying on a soft landing for the dollar. History shows, however, that there is a better than even chance of this process ending in a full-scale crisis, as it did in the mid 1980s, when the weakness of the dollar culminated in the stock market crash of 1987. [more]

"Many of the arguments wedding the war in Iraq with a strategy for neoliberal expansion are not readily convincing. They risk reading causality into tangential relationships. And, in their drive to connect, they overlook important disjunctures between the Bush administration’s foreign policy and the policy preferred by many business elites." [more]

"The most important tools being used by the Bush administration to maintain varying degrees of economic and political control in Iraq are the 100 Orders enacted by L. Paul Bremer, III, head of the now defunct Coalition Provisional Authority (CPA) before his departure. ... Bremer also ensured the implementation of the Orders by stacking every Ministry with U.S.-appointed authorities with five-year terms—well into the period of the new, elected government." [more]

"Clubs have started booking private parties for delegates anxious to ogle topless beauties after a day of watching fully clothed politicians boast about family values." [more]

"The Party of European Socialists (PES) said the new chief of the European Union executive should not automatically be drawn from the ranks of the centre-right, which returned this month as the biggest bloc in the EU assembly." [more]

"If Washington scrapped the subsidies, Brazil estimated, American cotton exports would fall 41 percent and production would drop 29 percent. That, in turn, would lead to a 12.6 percent increase in world cotton prices, helping struggling cotton farmers from Brazil to West Africa." [more]

"There's still a big North-South gap in quantity of trade. Consider that the total foreign sales of auto giant DaimlerChrysler last year were 40 percent bigger than exports from the entire continent of Africa, according to the UN. Foreign sales of Japan's Honda cars were worth more than all of India's exports." [more]

"'Why do you think the Erez industrial estate is still attractive for 200 factories that have stayed put despite all the terrorist attacks?' asked Gabi Bar. 'The most important motive is the low wages paid to the workers: around 1,500 shekels ($332) as against 4,500 shekels ($995), which is the minimum wage in Israel. What is more, the employers don’t have to abide by Israeli labour laws.'" [more]

"The jury in New York supported Swiss Re’s claim that it had signed up to a policy which clearly defined the destruction of the twin towers as one event, rather than two." [more]

"Decision-making in the two financial bodies is far removed from the principle of one country-one vote./ The 46 sub-Saharan African countries, for example, have only two executive directors representing them at the World Bank and IMF, while eight northern nations have a single executive director each." [more]

"Shares in all sectors drew selling amid mounting security fears fueled by the kidnapping of the Japanese nationals by a terrorist group in Iraq, brokers said." [more]

How income inequality in the United States is showing up in basic health statistics. [more]

"Just over a week into the protest, and strikers are already being threatened by the paramilitary Autodefensas Unidas de Colombia, which issued a statement to 'declare war on the individuals that we have already identified as the leaders of the organisation. They must leave . . . or they will become a military target and we will finish them off. Anti-subversive justice will carry out justice.'" [more]

"'Nobody is forced to work overtime,' she said. 'It's just that sometime the supervisors tell us to put in extra time in an impolite, menacing way.' Overtime pay was theoretically time-and-a-half, but in practice this had little effect on their overall take-home pay, she said." [more]

"So the future of US-India ties will depend largely on the election results. RSS-supported economists believe that the world has entered the era of economic warfare with the developed nations and that by kowtowing to the US, India is merely prolonging its status as a developing country. This is also the view of India's president, missile scientist Dr Abdul Kalam, whom the RSS sponsored for the post of the president, even though he is a Muslim. The ideas expressed in his books - about economic warfare - are very popular in the country." [more]

"The two leaders are currently in Brussels for European Union (EU) summit. / Turkey-EU relations and Cyprus issues were primarily discussed at the meeting." [more]

"The merchandise sold on www.georgewbushstore.com includes a $49.95 fleece pullover, embroidered with the Bush-Cheney '04 logo and bearing a label stating it was made in Burma, now Myanmar." [more]

"The United Nations Secretary-General, Koffi Annan, wrote in his Millennium Report: 'When robust and comprehensive economic sanctions are directed against authoritarian regimes, a different problem is encountered. Then it is usually the people who suffer, not the political elites whose behaviour triggered the sanctions in the first place.'" [more]

"Lloyd said affordable health insurance is vital to his members, given the physical nature of most of their jobs – whether it be mechanics breathing diesel fumes or drivers who put in 10-hour shifts behind the wheel." [more]

"When the strike began, some feared that a lack of busses would prompt more people to drive to work and cause highway traffic to soar. However, that did not appear to be happening Monday." [more]