Subject: Social Security is Fine From: Terri To: All Date Posted: Fri, Apr 08, 2005 at 10:56:03 (EDT) Email Address: Not Provided Message: An endowment that is growing, as our endowment for Social Security is growing, as the economy is growing will readily enable us to pay full Social Security benefits. At least for 2 generations there is no Social Security, likely far longer if economic growth is historically reasonable.

Subject: Bond Income From: Terri To: All Date Posted: Fri, Apr 08, 2005 at 10:50:07 (EDT) Email Address: Not Provided Message: Of course, the bonds I may own today are a saving and investment for tomorrow. Why ever else would I own bonds? And, we ought to wish Congress would allow bond interest the same tax treament as stock dividends. We had best worry about the fact that this year our international income, our return on saving and investment internationally, will finally be less than what we owe in income abroad. Yes; bond holders save and we had best be saving more.

Subject: Hunger-Based Lines Lengthen From: Emma To: All Date Posted: Fri, Apr 08, 2005 at 10:17:06 (EDT) Email Address: Not Provided Message: http://www.nytimes.com/2005/04/08/opinion/08fri3.html Hunger-Based Lines Lengthen at the Faith-Based Soup Kitchens By FRANCIS X. CLINES The 1,130 soup kitchen guests, as they're respectfully called, began gathering outside the church doors an hour early, curling around the corner in a long line to await a free main meal - their safety-net highlight in another day of being down and out, part of the working poor, or surviving somewhere in between. The repast, at 2,500 calories a serving, steamed aromatically: chicken à la king, rice, buttered spinach, peaches. A staff member in the nave of the building, the Church of the Holy Apostles, cued dozens of volunteer helpers: 'Ladies and gentlemen, it's showtime. Thanks be to God.' And from Ninth Avenue in Manhattan, the diners flowed in. The sight of masses of Americans gratefully chowing down on free food is indeed a show, an amazingly discreet one that is classified not as outright hunger but as 'food insecurity' by government specialists who are busy measuring the growing lines at soup kitchens and food pantries across the nation. There were 25.5 million supplicants regularly lining up in 2002; they were joined by 1.1 million more the next year. And even more arrive as unemployment and other government programs run out. Much as the diners at Holy Apostles peered ahead to see what was being dished up at the steam tables, soup kitchen administrators across the country are currently eying governments' trilevel budget season and wincing at all the politicians' economizing vows. They know that 'budget tightening' eventually means longer lines outside their doors. 'It's a desperate thing,' said the Rev. Bill Greenlaw, director of the Holy Apostles charity, one of the largest among 1,298 kitchens and pantries regularly helping more than one million residents in New York City. 'Every level of government seems to have the same mantra, that these programs are vulnerable. 'We're bracing that all three levels of government are coming down at the same time.' Most immediately, food charities are pleading against further cuts in the federal emergency food and shelter program, which directly fights hunger. Last year, 48 soup kitchens closed in the city as supplies were exhausted, and hundreds of others reported to be making do by cutting back on daily portions. Beyond that, however, administrators know that the myriad of severe program cuts looming in Washington - for everything from low-income wage supplements to health care spending for poor people - can only lead to further cuts down the revenue food chain in statehouses and city halls and, finally, longer lines of people silently begging for food. The budget debate in the Republican-run Capitol presents a Hobson's choice between the House's five-year, $30 billion-plus in program cuts for the poor and the Senate's $2.8 billion in cuts - one-tenth the pain, but focused most heavily on nutrition programs. The compromise cuts are likely to lean toward the House, levying more than their fair budget share on the poor, even as President Bush and the G.O.P. leaders argue that still more upper-bracket tax cuts are somehow justifiable. So Father Greenlaw can only turn to pleading for even more charity from the city's better-off residents. According to a survey by the New York City Coalition Against Hunger, seven out of 10 of the city's pantries and kitchens are 'faith based,' using the terminology of the Bush administration. But their besieged directors overwhelmingly warn that government, not charities, must take the lead if poverty is to be properly confronted. 'We're faith-based by the old rules, not the new ones,' Father Greenlaw carefully noted. 'We'll be feeding more guests unless and until society decides we don't have to tolerate a huge underclass in our cities.' In the meantime, the pungent scene in the nave at Holy Apostles is unabashedly hunger-based. People are being fed, not proselytized, at dining tables where the pews used to be. A midday hubbub of satiation rises up, plain as the pipes of the church organ, as the line lengthens outside.

Subject: One Hundred Years of Uncertainty From: Emma To: All Date Posted: Fri, Apr 08, 2005 at 10:15:13 (EDT) Email Address: Not Provided Message: http://www.nytimes.com/2005/04/08/opinion/08greene.html?pagewanted=all&position= One Hundred Years of Uncertainty By BRIAN GREENE JUST about a hundred years ago, Albert Einstein began writing a paper that secured his place in the pantheon of humankind's greatest thinkers. With his discovery of special relativity, Einstein upended the familiar, thousands-year-old conception of space and time. To be sure, even a century later, not everyone has fully embraced Einstein's discovery. Nevertheless, say 'Einstein' and most everyone thinks 'relativity.' What is less widely appreciated, however, is that physicists call 1905 Einstein's 'miracle year' not because of the discovery of relativity alone, but because in that year Einstein achieved the unimaginable, writing four papers that each resulted in deep and formative changes to our understanding of the universe. One of these papers - not on relativity - garnered him the 1921 Nobel Prize in physics. It also began a transformation in physics that Einstein found so disquieting that he spent the last 30 years of his life in a determined effort to repudiate it. Two of the four 1905 papers were indeed on relativity. The first, completed in June, laid out the foundations of his new view of space and time, showing that distances and durations are not absolute, as everyone since Newton had thought, but instead are affected by one's motion. Clocks moving relative to one another tick off time at different rates; yardsticks moving relative to one another measure different lengths. You don't perceive this because the speeds of everyday life are too slow for the effects to be noticeable. If you could move near the speed of light, the effects would be obvious. The second relativity paper, completed in September, is a three-page addendum to the first, which derived his most famous result, E = mc2, an equation as short as it is powerful. It told the world that matter can be converted into energy - and a lot of it - since the speed of light squared (c2) is a huge number. We've witnessed this equation's consequences in the devastating might of nuclear weapons and the tantalizing promise of nuclear energy. The third paper, completed in May, conclusively established the existence of atoms - an idea discussed in various forms for millenniums - by showing that the numerous microscopic collisions they'd generate would account for the observed, though previously unexplained, jittery motion of impurities suspended in liquids. With these three papers, our view of space, time and matter was permanently changed. Yet, it is the remaining 1905 paper, written in March, whose legacy is arguably the most profound. In this work, Einstein went against the grain of conventional wisdom and argued that light, at its most elementary level, is not a wave, as everyone had thought, but actually a stream of tiny packets or bundles of energy that have since come to be known as photons. This might sound like a largely technical advance, updating one description of light to another. But through subsequent research that amplified and extended Einstein's argument (see Figures 1 through 3), scientists revealed a mathematically precise and thoroughly startling picture of reality called quantum mechanics. Before the discovery of quantum mechanics, the framework of physics was this: If you tell me how things are now, I can then use the laws of physics to calculate, and hence predict, how things will be later. You tell me the velocity of a baseball as it leaves Derek Jeter's bat, and I can use the laws of physics to calculate where it will land a handful of seconds later. You tell me the height of a building from which a flowerpot has fallen, and I can use the laws of physics to calculate the speed of impact when it hits the ground. You tell me the positions of the Earth and the Moon, and I can use the laws of physics to calculate the date of the first solar eclipse in the 25th century. What's important is that in these and all other examples, the accuracy of my predictions depends solely on the accuracy of the information you give me. Even laws that differ substantially in detail - from the classical laws of Newton to the relativistic laws of Einstein - fit squarely within this framework. Quantum mechanics does not merely challenge the previous laws of physics. Quantum mechanics challenges this centuries-old framework of physics itself. According to quantum mechanics, physics cannot make definite predictions. Instead, even if you give me the most precise description possible of how things are now, we learn from quantum mechanics that the most physics can do is predict the probability that things will turn out one way, or another, or another way still. The reason we have for so long been unaware that the universe evolves probabilistically is that for the relatively large, everyday objects we typically encounter - baseballs, flowerpots, the Moon - quantum mechanics shows that the probabilities become highly skewed, hugely favoring one outcome and effectively suppressing all others. A typical quantum calculation reveals that if you tell me the velocity of something as large as a baseball, there is more than a 99.99999999999999 (or so) percent likelihood that it will land at the location I can figure out using the laws of Newton or, for even better accuracy, the laws of Einstein. With such a skewed probability, the quantum reasoning goes, we have long overlooked the tiny chance that the baseball can (and, on extraordinarily rare occasions, will) land somewhere completely different. When it comes to small objects like molecules, atoms and subatomic particles, though, the quantum probabilities are typically not skewed. For the motion of an electron zipping around the nucleus of an atom, for example, a quantum calculation lays out odds that are all roughly comparable that the electron will be in a variety of different locations - a 13 percent chance, say, that the electron will be here, a 19 percent chance that it will be there, an 11 percent chance that it will be in a third place, and so on. Crucially, these predictions can be tested. Take an enormous sample of identically prepared atoms, measure the electron's position in each, and tally up the number of times you find the electron at one location or another. According to the pre-quantum framework, identical starting conditions should yield identical outcomes; we should find the electron to be at the same place in each measurement. But if quantum mechanics is right, in 13 percent of our measurements we should find the electron here, in 19 percent we should find it there, in 11 percent we should find it in that third place. And, to fantastic precision, we do. Faced with a mountain of supporting data, Einstein couldn't argue with the success of quantum mechanics. But to him, even though his own Nobel Prize-winning work was a catalyst for the quantum revolution, the theory was anathema. Commentators over the decades have focused on Einstein's refusal to accept the probabilistic framework of quantum mechanics, a position summarized in his frequent comment that 'God does not play dice with the universe.' Einstein, radical thinker that he was, still believed in the sanctity of a universe that evolved in a fully definite, fully predictable manner. If, as quantum mechanics asserted, the best you can ever do is predict probabilities, Einstein countered that he'd 'rather be a cobbler, or even an employee in a gaming house, than a physicist.' This emphasis, however, partly obscures a larger point. It wasn't the mere reliance on probabilistic predictions that so troubled Einstein. Unlike many of his colleagues, Einstein believed that a fundamental physical theory was much more than the sum total of its predictions - it was a mathematical reflection of an underlying reality. And the reality entailed by quantum mechanics was a reality Einstein couldn't accept. An example: Imagine you shoot an electron from here and a few seconds later it's detected by your equipment over there. What path did the electron follow during the passage from you to the detector? The answer according to quantum mechanics? There is no answer. The very idea that an electron, or a photon, or any other particle, travels along a single, definite trajectory from here to there is a quaint version of reality that quantum mechanics declares outmoded. Instead, the proponents of quantum theory claimed, reality consists of a haze of all possibilities - all trajectories - mutually commingling and simultaneously unfolding. And why don't we see this? According to the quantum doctrine, when we make a measurement or perform an observation, we force the myriad possibilities to ante up, snap out of the haze and settle on a single outcome. But between observations - when we are not looking - reality consists entirely of jostling possibilities. Quantum reality, in other words, remains ambiguous until measured. The reality of common perception is thus merely a definitive-looking veneer obscuring the internal workings of a highly uncertain cosmos. Which is where Einstein drew a line in the sand. A universe of this sort offended him; he could not accept, as he put it, that 'the Old One' would so profoundly incorporate a hidden element of happenstance in the nature of reality. Einstein quipped to his quantum colleagues, 'Do you really think the Moon is not there when you're not looking?' and set himself the Herculean task of reworking the laws of physics to resurrect conventional reality. Einstein waged a two-front assault on the problem. He sought an internal chink in the quantum framework that would establish it as a mere steppingstone on the path to a deeper and more complete description of the universe. At the same time, he sought a grander synthesis of nature's laws - what he called a 'unified theory' - that he believed would reveal the probabilities of quantum mechanics to be no more profound than the probabilities offered in weather forecasts, probabilities that simply reflect an incomplete knowledge of an underlying, definite reality. In 1935, through a disarmingly simple mathematical analysis, Einstein (with two colleagues) established a beachhead on the first front. He proved that quantum mechanics is either an incomplete theory or, if it is complete, the universe is - in Einstein's words - 'spooky.' Why 'spooky?' Because the theory would allow certain widely separated particles to correlate their behaviors perfectly (somewhat as if a pair of widely separated dice would always come up the same number when tossed at distant casinos). Since such 'spooky' behavior would border on nuttiness, Einstein thought he'd made clear that quantum theory couldn't yet be considered a complete description of reality. The nimble quantum proponents, however, would have nothing of it. They insisted that quantum theory made predictions - albeit statistical predictions - that were consistently born out by experiment. By the precepts of the scientific method, they argued, the theory was established. They maintained that searching beyond the theory's predictions for a glimpse of a reality behind the quantum equations betrayed a foolhardy intellectual greediness. Nevertheless, for the remaining decades of his life, Einstein could not give up the quest, exclaiming at one point, 'I have thought a hundred times more about quantum problems than I have about relativity.' He turned exclusively to his second line of attack and became absorbed with the prospect of finding the unified theory, a preoccupation that resulted in his losing touch with mainstream physics. By the 1940's, the once dapper young iconoclast had grown into a wizened old man of science who was widely viewed as a revolutionary thinker of a bygone era. By the early 1950's, Einstein realized he was losing the battle. But the memories of his earlier success with relativity - 'the years of anxious searching in the dark, with their intense longing, their alternations of confidence and exhaustion and the final emergence into the light' - urged him onward. Maybe the intense light of discovery that had so brilliantly illuminated his path as a young man would shine once again. While lying in a bed in Princeton Hospital in mid-April 1955, Einstein asked for the pad of paper on which he had been scribbling equations in the desperate hope that in his final hours the truth would come to him. It didn't. Was Einstein misguided? Must we accept that there is a fuzzy, probabilistic quantum arena lying just beneath the definitive experiences of everyday reality? As of today, we still don't have a final answer. Fifty years after Einstein's death, however, the scales have certainly tipped farther in this direction. Decades of painstaking experimentation have confirmed quantum theory's predictions beyond the slightest doubt. Moreover, in a shocking scientific twist, some of the more recent of these experiments have shown that Einstein's 'spooky' processes do in fact take place (particles many miles apart have been shown capable of correlating their behavior). It's a stunning finding, and one that reaffirms Einstein's uncanny ability to unearth features of nature so mind-boggling that even he couldn't accept what he'd found. Finally, there has been tremendous progress over the last 20 years toward a unified theory with the discovery and development of superstring theory. So far, though, superstring theory embraces quantum theory without change, and has thus not revealed the definitive reality Einstein so passionately sought. With the passage of time and quantum mechanics' unassailable successes, debate about the theory's meaning has quieted. The majority of physicists have simply stopped worrying about quantum mechanics' meaning, even as they employ its mathematics to make the most precise predictions in the history of science. Others prefer reformulations of quantum mechanics that claim to restore some features of conventional reality at the expense of additional - and, some have argued, more troubling - deviations (like the notion that there are parallel universes). Yet others investigate hypothesized modifications to the theory's equations that don't spoil its successful predictions but try to bring it closer to common experience. Over the 25 years since I first learned quantum mechanics, I've at various times subscribed to each of these perspectives. My shifting attitude, however, reflects that I'm still unsettled. Were Einstein to interrogate me today about quantum reality, I'd have to admit that deep inside I harbor many of the doubts that gnawed at him for decades. Can it really be that the solid world of experience and perception, in which a single, definite reality appears to unfold with dependable certainty, rests on the shifting sands of quantum probabilities? Well, yes. Probably. The evidence is compelling and tangible. Although we have yet to fully lay bare quantum mechanics' grand lesson for the underlying nature of the universe, I like to think even Einstein would be impressed that in the 50 years since his death our facility with quantum mechanics has matured from a mathematical understanding of the subatomic realm to precision control. Today's technological wizardry (computers, M.R.I.'s, smart bombs) exists only because research in applied quantum physics has resulted in techniques for manipulating the motion of electrons - probabilities and all - through mazes of ultramicroscopic circuitry. Advances hovering on the horizon, like nanoscience and quantum computers, offer the promise of even more spectacular transformations. So the next time you use your cellphone or laptop, pause for a moment. Recognize that even these commonplace devices rely on our greatest, yet most puzzling, scientific achievement and - as things now stand - tap into humankind's most supreme assault on the idea that reality is what we think it is. Brian Greene, a professor of physics and mathematics at Columbia, is the author of “The Elegant Universe,’’ and, most recently, “The Fabric of the Cosmos.”

Subject: Cheap rent on its way!! From: Pete Weis To: All Date Posted: Fri, Apr 08, 2005 at 10:14:57 (EDT) Email Address: Not Provided Message: Raymond James must be losing out on annuity commissions and stock investing clients as the herd heads for real estate. Get along little doggies!! From the Miami Herald: Posted on Thu, Apr. 07, 2005 The specter of a South Florida real estate bust This has the making of a ghost story. As night snuffed out the last remnants of twilight in Fort Lauderdale, I looked up at the tall new residential tower by the New River and shuddered. It was a 31-story tower of darkness. Lights shone from no more than a dozen of the 315 condos. The rest were a study in black windows and empty balconies. As if the condo dwellers were phantoms. But are they spectral beings? Or just speculators? Speculation madness has gripped the real estate market in South Florida, particularly the high-rise condos going up along the beaches and in the old coastal urban centers. Real estate analysts estimate that anywhere from 50 to 75 per cent of our new luxury condos are being scarfed up by high stakes real estate gamblers. Last month, Raymond James & Associates warned that ''anecdotal reports'' indicated speculators and investors accounted for 85 per cent of Miami high-rise condo sales. No one actually knows, said Michael Y. Cannon, managing director of Integra Building Resources' Florida operation. Cannon, who predicted condo bust of the early '80s, said this time around the data is either sparse or a few months old and not of much use in market careening ahead at such reckless speed. But Cannon knows that we're in the midst of a speculation epidemic. He calls it ''hyper flipperism,'' as buyers put up their 20 percent for condos under construction and try to flip the contracts, at a profit, before the buildings are completed. There are reports of condos changing ownership two or three times without an actual human being ever moving in. OMINOUS WARNINGS Robert Shiller, the Yale economist who warned that the late 1990s tech-fueled stock market was overheated, overpriced and in for a brutal fall, said Wednesday on National Public Radio that the U.S. housing market was now nurturing that same reckless abandon. He said the danger was particularly acute in what he called the glamor markets -- like South Florida. And Shiller warned that this bubble, too, may burst. Such talk casts a peculiar light over the raging debate about new residential construction in downtown Fort Lauderdale. The Broward County Commission reacted with something like outrage last month when the city commission requested approval for another 13,000 new housing units in the urban core. The county reduced the number to 3,000. There were sharp words about so much traffic on the highways, so many more children in the schools and other stresses on the infrastructure if the city got another 13,000 units. But phantoms don't drive cars. Ghosts don't pack classrooms. If those 13,000 new units were to be built, along with the 45,000 new luxury units coming on line in Dade County, the big problem might be avoiding speculators as they hurled themselves from the balconies of their overpriced high-rise condos. HOUSING SOLUTION? If nothing else, when the bubble bursts, South Florida will have a ready-made solution to its affordable housing problem. After the big bust in the 1980s, a regular Joe could land himself a luxury high-rise condo on Miami's Brickell Avenue for 60 grand. I wonder if we're supposed to feel any sorrier for flippers snared in this real estate Ponzi scheme than, say, chumps who gamble away their paychecks at the Hard Rock Casino. But Shiller warns in his book Irrational Exuberance, updated to include the current real estate madness, that when they start abandoning their 20 percent deposits en masse, it could mean trouble for all of us. ``The bad outcome could be that eventual declines would result in a substantial increase in the rate of personal bankruptcies, which could lead to a secondary string of bankruptcies of financial institutions as well. ``Another long-run consequence could be a decline in consumer and business confidence, and another, possibly worldwide, recession.'' Suddenly, our little ghost story turns very, very scary.

Subject: Indian Call Center Employees Hack US Bank Accounts From: johnny5 To: All Date Posted: Fri, Apr 08, 2005 at 07:39:08 (EDT) Email Address: johnny5@yahoo.com Message: http://slashdot.org/articles/05/04/08/061245.shtml?tid=98&tid=172 Posted by CowboyNeal on Friday April 08, @05:49AM from the easy-money dept. The Ascended One writes 'Call center employees working for an Indian software company, MSource, supposedly used confidential client information to transfer client funds to themselves. The alleged perpetrators used the personal information of four NY-based clients to transfer ~$350,000 (Rs. 1.5 crores) in their names, a large sum in Indian currency. They were caught after the victims alerted the bank officials in the US, who then traced the crime to the Indian city of Pune. While the name of the bank has not been revealed, the article indicates that the bank in question is Citibank.'

Subject: Barro and Social Security From: Yann To: All Date Posted: Fri, Apr 08, 2005 at 07:09:35 (EDT) Email Address: Not Provided Message: http://post.economics.harvard.edu/faculty/barro/bw/bw05_04_04.pdf

Subject: Social Security is Fine From: Jennifer To: Yann Date Posted: Fri, Apr 08, 2005 at 07:25:26 (EDT) Email Address: Not Provided Message: The end of Social Security would be a tragedy, but this is what is wished for with privatizing plans. Social Security is wonderful and fine.

Subject: Caution From: Terri To: All Date Posted: Fri, Apr 08, 2005 at 05:49:40 (EDT) Email Address: Not Provided Message: Among analysts I trust there is more expression of caution than I can recall, sadly more caution than in 2000 from what I can tell. Possibly the difference is energy pricing. Possibly it is general valuation. But, where were the bears in 2000? I can not tell.

Subject: Realism From: Terri To: Terri Date Posted: Fri, Apr 08, 2005 at 06:30:28 (EDT) Email Address: Not Provided Message: Well, this is a time for caution. That is what realism dictates, and has nothing to do with worry or hope, for we cvan always be hopeful.

Subject: Re: Realism From: johnny5 To: Terri Date Posted: Fri, Apr 08, 2005 at 07:35:12 (EDT) Email Address: johnny5@yahoo.com Message: Well spoken Terri, hope and optimism will always overcome the paralysis of worry.

Subject: Speculation From: Terri To: All Date Posted: Fri, Apr 08, 2005 at 05:31:53 (EDT) Email Address: Not Provided Message: What is interesting month after month is the evident lack of volatility in any and every sector of stock, bond, and currency markets. In the currency market, though there must be huge private positions against the dollar, the dollar moved gently when it was weakening and is moving gently in strengthening. Where then are the speculators so many economists including Paul Krugman properly worried about?

Subject: Market Patterns From: Terri To: Terri Date Posted: Fri, Apr 08, 2005 at 05:41:05 (EDT) Email Address: Not Provided Message: Why is there so little evident speculation in markets that bearish analysts are so worried about? The stock and bond markets are about even for the year, while the dollar gradually strengthens against the Euro and Yen. Energy and materials and utilities sectors are strong. Health care look to be modestly strengthening. All else are about even to mildly negative. I have not known such an extended mild market period. REITs are much complained about, but even REITs are only mildly weak.

Subject: History will not repeat will it?? From: johnny5 To: All Date Posted: Thurs, Apr 07, 2005 at 16:38:24 (EDT) Email Address: johnny5@yahoo.com Message: http://www.siliconinvestor.com/readmsgs.aspx?subjectid=54696&msgnum=27090&batchsize=10&batchtype=Next Daily Reckoning compares World War I to our modern day economic war with China This past weekend marked an important anniversary. On April 2nd, 1917, Thomas Woodrow Wilson stood before a joint session of Congress. 'We must put excited feeling away,' said the president, and then launched into one of the greatest mob-inciting harangues ever delivered. Wilson was urging Congress to declare war against Germany. The Huns, he said, were governed by a 'selfish and autocratic power.' What they had done to justify trying to kill them was a matter of great dispute. Robert 'Fighting Bob' La Follette, senator from Wisconsin, thought they hadn't done much of anything. They were accused of bayoneting babies and cutting off the arms of boys in Belgium. But when a group of American journalists went on a fact-finding mission to get to the truth of the matter, they could find no evidence of it. Clarence Darrow, the lawyer who made a monkey out of William Jennings Bryan in the Scopes Trial, said he would offer a $1,000 reward to anyone who came forward whose arm had been cut off by the Germans. A thousand dollars was a lot of money back then... for this was when the Fed had barely settled down to work... equal to about $20,000 today. Still, no one claimed the money. The Germans had also sunk a few ships. But there was a war going on in Europe and Germany had tried to impose a blockade of English ports with the only weapon it had, submarines. You took a risk trying to sail into England, especially if your ship was carrying ammunition, and everyone knew it. The English were blockading German ports too. The difference was that the English had a bigger navy and were better at it. Try to run their blockade and you were almost certain to die; so few ships dared. It was a long and complicated story. In retrospect, the United States was better off minding its own business. Robert La Follette knew it. He told anyone who would listen that the struggle in Europe was best understood as a political and commercial rivalry. The Germans were challenging the English everywhere. The German economy was growing faster. While Britain seemed to be peaking out, the Germans were building new factories and developing new markets. In Africa, German colonialists were menacing English territories; in Europe, German manufacturers were taking market share from their English competitors. On the high sees, the German navy was growing more competent. And so, the English and the Germans were having it out. Leave them to it, said 'Fighting Bob.' But Woodrow Wilson had his own ideas. 'Civilization itself' seemed in the balance, he told the politicians. 'We shall fight for the things we have always carried in our hearts - for democracy, for the right of those who submit to authority to have a voice in their own governments, for the rights and liberties of small nations, [he did not mention, Mexico, Puerto Rico, and Nicaragua - countries to which he had already sent troops to meddle in internal political issues], for a universal dominion of right by such a concert of free peoples as shall bring peace and safety to all nations and make the world itself at last free.' When he finished his speech, most of the yahoos rose to their feet and cheered. Tears streamed down many jowly faces. At last, the United States was going to war! Two million people had already died in the war. For what reason, no one quite knew. Wilson had to resort to bombast and balderdash to try to explain it. But now the happy moment had come. Now, Americans would get to die too. Hallelujah! No one recalled the weekend's anniversary in the papers. Too bad. It makes us think of America's situation today. Are we not in Britain's shoes? Are we not facing our own new rival - China? Market cycles... and historical cycles... are like women [and here, dear reader, you may want to write this down in order to quote us correctly]... they are all the same and yet completely different. When prices are high, we know they must get down - somehow, someway, some day. When a nation is riding high... it too must someday sit lower in the saddle. For all things age. All things change. All things go away, in the end. But how and when they get where they are going is as varied, charming and mysterious as every woman we have ever met. Just something to think about, dear reader... .

Subject: Re: History will not repeat will it?? From: Setanta To: johnny5 Date Posted: Fri, Apr 08, 2005 at 04:57:33 (EDT) Email Address: Not Provided Message: Intruiging. History has proved, however, that the US was right to enter the war against the Axis. Would the US have be safer with Japanese hedgemony in the Pacific and Nazi hedgemony in Europe? It has to be remembered that Germany was not too far behind the US in developing the atomic bomb and all the Red Army tanks and troops could not have stopped it then. If history draws parallels then the US should start teaching its troops Chinese. Personally, being from a neutral country, I believe in the idea of the UN (founded precisely so the Great Powers never again march on eachother). If Bush stopped humiliating it and holding it in contempt, and in essence saying 'its my way or the highway' I think the UN would be more relevant in the real world today. At the moment its an object of ridicule and has no more power than a big charitable foundation. It should be more, it should be THE forum for discussing global matters.

Subject: Hated Chinese Cotton From: johnny5 To: johnny5 Date Posted: Thurs, Apr 07, 2005 at 16:48:13 (EDT) Email Address: johnny5@yahoo.com Message: http://www.siliconinvestor.com/readmsgs.aspx?subjectid=54696&msgnum=27090&batchsize=10&batchtype=Next West blocks China's cotton route BEIJING - Challenges loom over Chinese apparel exports as the United States and the European Union seem to be initiating steps to restrict this trade as demands from domestic producers get shriller. While the US government took the first step on Tuesday toward restricting imports of low-priced pants, shirts and underwear from China in response to pressure from its textile industry, the EU's executive commission is scheduled to present on Wednesday a framework for holding back the flood of Chinese textile imports. US trade officials said they would 'self-initiate' investigations to see whether to curb the runaway imports that have begun to gravely hurt the domestic industry. In a written statement, Commerce Secretary Carlos Gutierrez said the move is the 'first step' toward determining whether the US market is indeed being disrupted, and whether the disruption can be attributed to Chinese imports. Gutierrez said the Bush administration 'is committed to enforcing trade agreements and to providing assistance to the domestic textile and apparent industry, consistent with our international rights and obligations'. European Commission spokeswoman Francoise Le Bail said EU trade commissioner Peter Mandelson would unveil 'the way the safeguard clause could be activated' under WTO rules to protect the European textile industry from Chinese imports, but insiders said import blockades wouldn't be put up right away. European textile association Euratex has been lobbying with Brussels to use the temporary safeguard measures allowed under WTO rules as Chinese imports have surged since the beginning of the year. The EU had earlier assured China's textile firms that it would not follow Turkey's lead by imposing quotas on Chinese imports. Mandelson's spokeswoman, Claude Veron-Reville, had said such safeguards would only be used as a last resort. China's textile industry grew increasingly concerned that the EU might take such measures in light of the call from Euratex for action against China. There were reports that at a recent closed-door meeting, EU trade officials and politicians discussed whether Turkey's action against China should lead the EU to do likewise. Turkey decided in December to impose quotas on 42 categories of Chinese textile imports, just ahead of the lifting of global quotas. The US Commerce Department's push to cap Chinese textile imports was met with a sharp rebuke from the Chinese side. 'The United States has overprotectionist, irrational and unreasonable arrangements,' said Qin Gang, a spokesman for the Chinese Foreign Ministry. 'This is unfair,' he said, and added that to simply blame exporting countries, especially China, for the problems of the American textile industry is unreasonable. American consumer groups are equally dismayed. They believe new quotas will lead to higher prices, imposing a hidden tax on consumers. Textile groups and their allies in US Congress have been pressuring the Bush administration to slap emergency curbs on China, which, they say, will overrun the US market following the end of the decades-old quota system on December 31, 2004. The Chinese government agreed when it joined the WTO in 2001 to let the US and other countries impose 'safeguard' restrictions on its clothing and textile exports when they surge to 'market-disrupting levels'. That provision, which expires at the end of 2008, allows countries to limit the growth in imports from China to just 7.5% above the previous year. Textile quotas had seriously limited the trade. China, always a big exporter of trousers, was severely handicapped by the quota system. The US set China a quota of 5.5 million square meters, compared to 7.82 million for Bangladesh and 10.18 million for Vietnam. When the quota system ended, it was predicted that China would be the principal beneficiary of freer trade. Textile imports from China were expected to surge following the expiration of quotas controlling worldwide trade in textile and apparel products. China itself had warned that a rise was inevitable and even imposed export tariffs in a bid to address international concerns. But the increase in export volumes in the first three months of the year has proved too sharp for the West to ignore. Compared with the first quarter of 2004, US data for January through March 2005 shows a 1,521% jump in Chinese cotton trouser imports and a 1,258% jump for knit shirts. Overall textile and apparel imports from China in the first three months of the year totaled 2.86 billion square meters, up 62.5% year-on-year. China exported nearly US$1 billion of jeans, sheets, fabric and other textile goods to the US in February alone, compared with $424 million a year ago, according to Columbia's Global Trade Information Services Inc. The 125% increase in February follows a jump of 75% in January. Predictably, this flood of Chinese cloth is reflected in the job-loss figures. Some 381,300 textile and apparel industry jobs are estimated to have been lost in the US since January 2001, according to the American Manufacturers Trade Action Council, as 17 textile mills closed down in the first quarter itself. Since 1990, more than 1 million US jobs have been lost in the textile and apparel industries, including about 700,000 apparel jobs. One beneficiary from the latest Western hurdles to Chinese apparel could be India. The US and the EU are India's biggest markets for textile exports, but Chinese competition has severely tied down Indian exports in most product categories ever since the global textile trade was opened up. Though many leading Western labels have been outsourcing from India after the lifting of the quotas, the Indian industry is still struggling to find a foothold in the international market amid the deluge of Chinese products. (Asia Pulse/XIC/PTI) http://www.atimes.com/atimes/China/GD07Ad09.html

Subject: Impossible trade wars From: johnny5 To: All Date Posted: Thurs, Apr 07, 2005 at 15:44:30 (EDT) Email Address: johnny5@yahoo.com Message: Some people like noam chomsky do not TRUST what we read or are told or led to believe, they critically think for themselves and invest accordingly - contrary to the herd. This is like Warren no? He missed the bubble profits of 2000 but missed the bust too. Other people read the NY TIMES or watch Bill O'reilly and follow what the current pundits say to form mass thought in society. Soros follows this HERD mentality and invests accordingly - how did he do with the boom and bust in 2000? From what I read he did better than warren, squeezing more money from Mr. Market with his timing strategis on mass mentality than warren. Now Terri just last month you are saying things like IMPOSSIBLE when relating to trade wars with china - but if mass psychology changes - I predict you will react - this makes you a reactionary investor riding the wave - more like Soros I think - not an individual critical thinker that has little trust like noam chomsky - while me and pete were saying very negative things you kept saying IMPOSSIBLE and I can only think you believed that because mass psychology thought it was IMPOSSIBLE - this can be profitable as is with Soros - but you must understand the nature of the beast - don't get caught trying to wake up from the lemmings when they are pushing you over the cliff my friend. Snow says China should allow market to value currency - Thursday, April 7, 2005 5:43:06 PM http://www.afxpress.com WASHINGTON (AFX) - China should allow the free market to set the value of its yuan currency, and end its peg to the dollar, Treasury Secretary John Snow said during a congressional hearing Thursday. 'I'd like to see them move to a market system,' Snow told senators during a Senate Banking Committee hearing on government-sponsored housing enterprises Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac. Snow was responding to criticism from Sen. Charles Schumer, R-N.Y., over the Bush administration's handling of economic relations with China. Schumer and Rep. Lindsey Graham, R-S.C., introduced an amendment Wednesday to a State Department funding bill that would slap a 27.5% tariff on Chinese imports if China doesn't revalue its currency within 180 days. Snow said the U.S. trade deficit with China is 'far larger than we'd like to see it,' but argued that financial diplomacy with Beijing, not measures like Schumer's and Graham's, will prove effective. 'We're all waiting, Mr. Secretary,' Schumer responded. Meanwhile, Reps. Duncan Hunter, R-Calif., and Tim Ryan, D-Ohio, were scheduled to introduce legislation Thursday that supporters said will use existing trade laws, compliant with World Trade Organization rules, to address China's currency peg. Critics have argued Schumer's proposal violates WTO rules.

Subject: Fed not BEHIND the curve? From: johnny5 To: johnny5 Date Posted: Thurs, Apr 07, 2005 at 15:49:53 (EDT) Email Address: johnny5@yahoo.com Message: More on proactive versus reactive! Fed´s Santomero says Fed not behind the curve Thursday, April 7, 2005 6:24:04 PM http://www.afxpress.com Fed's Santomero says Fed not behind the curve WASHINGTON (AFX) -- The gradual pace of Fed tightening has not left the Fed behind the curve on inflation, said Anthony Santomero, president of the Philadelphia Federal Reserve Bank. Speaking to reporters after a speech on Thursday, Santomero said the Fed has to be vigilant against inflation as the U.S. economy moves into the fourth year of its expansion, but it is too early to say that inflationary risks have clearly shifted to the upside. The U.S. labor market is improving at a moderate pace. The spike in oil prices has slowed consumer spending, but has not altered his view for robust economic growth in 2005.

Subject: Pizza Inflation! BUMBER dude! From: johnny5 To: johnny5 Date Posted: Thurs, Apr 07, 2005 at 16:10:08 (EDT) Email Address: johnny5@yahoo.com Message: Oh CRAP! This hurts me and all the college kids - we just got A LOT POORER - INFLATION indeed! 10% RISE http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A32846-2005Apr6.html At Your Door? A Dollar More By Caroline E. Mayer Washington Post Staff Writer Thursday, April 7, 2005; Page E01 Free pizza delivery may soon amount to pie in the sky. Next week, local Domino's Pizza stores will begin charging a $1 delivery fee for any order. There's no other way to slice the rising costs the chain has to pay for fuel, rent, insurance and food, especially cheese, the prices of which are 'at record highs,' said David Carraway, president of Team Washington Inc., which owns 59 Domino's stores in the Washington area. 'Everything is going up. It's not a decision we're happy with, but it's the reality of what we're dealing with,' Carraway said. He added that some rivals are already charging the fee. 'I wouldn't be surprised if our competitors are not all doing it shortly.' Pizza Hut spokeswoman Patty Sullivan said Washington area stores have been charging a delivery fee, averaging about 75 cents, for a few years. Local Papa John's stores are not. However, some of the franchises in other areas are imposing a $1 to $1.50 delivery fee. 'If high fuel prices continue, more markets, including Washington, might consider it,' said Papa John's spokesman Chris Sternberg. Nationwide, about 45 percent of all Domino's stores charge a delivery fee, according to company spokeswoman Holly Ryan. Carraway said the current competitive pizza market makes it impossible to cover costs by raising the price of the pizza. 'Everybody's got deals, everybody's trying to outdo each other,' and consumers follow the lowest prices, he said. One Domino's store in Silver Spring started charging the dollar delivery fee on Tuesday, ahead of schedule, Carraway said. Government employee William Eck first learned of the surcharge when he ordered his usual Tuesday special: two large cheese pizzas for the price of one. He said he was surprised and angry when he learned why his order would cost $12.50 instead of $11.50. 'Their promotion was always for free delivery. I guess it's not free anymore.' Carraway said it has been about 12 years since the chain promised free delivery, or a discount if the order wasn't delivered within 30 minutes. 'Some people still think we have that, but that's gone too,' he said. From now on, Eck said, when it comes to his regular pizza order, 'I will be picking it up.'

Subject: Imf says OIL shocked permanently! From: johnny5 To: johnny5 Date Posted: Thurs, Apr 07, 2005 at 17:05:06 (EDT) Email Address: johnny5@yahoo.com Message: My friends, where is the value? What will starving poor people value 10 years from now - or 20 years from now? What will rich fat people value 10 years from now or 20? http://news.ft.com/cms/s/a3b6a0c2-a792-11d9-9744-00000e2511c8.html IMF warns on risk of ‘permanent oil shock’ By Javier Blas in London Published: April 7 2005 20:02 | Last updated: April 7 2005 20:02 The world faces “a permanent oil shock” and will have to adjust to sustained high prices in the next two decades, the International Monetary Fund said on Thursday in the starkest official warning yet about the long-term outlook for energy supplies. Predicting surging demand from emerging countries and limited new supplies from outside the Organisation of the Petroleum Exporting Countries after 2010, Raghuram Rajan, IMF chief economist, said: “We should expect to live with high oil prices.” “Oil prices will continue to present a serious risk to the global economy,” he added. The IMF forecast in its World Economic Outlook that crude would cost $34 a barrel in 2010 in today's money and would rise to $39-$56 a barrel in 2030. The predicted prices are well above market and oil industry expectations. They are also much higher than the latest long-term forecast from the International Energy Agency, the oil watchdog, of real oil prices of $27 a barrel in 2010 and $34 a barrel in 2030. “The shock we see is a permanent shock that is going to continue... and countries need to adjust to that,” said David Robinson, deputy IMF chief economist. US warns of need for more Opec production Opec will need to increase production further to balance the oil market in the second half of the year, the US government said. The IMF called on emerging countries in Asia, which this year would account for 40 per cent of the increase in oil demand, to curb their fuel subsidies. Several countries in the region, including China, Indonesia and Malaysia, have recently increased petrol prices in an attempt to reduce consumption. The IMF based its forecast on a sharp rise in global oil demand, particularly from increased vehicle ownership in China, and non-Opec production reaching a plateau around 2010. It expects oil demand to grow at a yearly rate of 2.1m barrels a day above the 1.5m b/d the market considers sustainable to reach 138.5m b/d in 2030. Some analysts are sceptical about the IMF's demand and projections, pointing out that no other international energy body shares its view. But the IMF's report paints a gloomy picture for energy consumers: “With global dependence on oil production from Opec countries rising, much would depend on Opec supply response; most likely however, there would be growing upside risk to prices.” It estimates that the cartel, which controls 40 per cent of global oil production, would need to invest about $350bn to 2030 in new installations. The IMF warning came as the US Department of Energy on Thursday raised its oil price forecast in 2005 and 2006 to about $55 a barrel, up more than $6 from last month. US crude futures were flat in late afternoon trade on Thursday at $55 a barrel.

Subject: Soros-'belief alters facts' - dont cause worry! From: johnny5 To: All Date Posted: Thurs, Apr 07, 2005 at 15:10:19 (EDT) Email Address: johnny5@yahoo.com Message: http://www.siliconinvestor.com/readmsgs.aspx?subjectid=54696&msgnum=27039&batchsize=10&batchtype=Next Where Buffett seeks to buy $1 for 40 or 50 cents, Soros is happy to pay $1, or even more, for $1 when he can see a change coming that will drive that dollar up to $2 or $3. To Soros, our distorted perceptions are a factor in shaping events. As he puts it, 'what beliefs do is alter facts' in a process he calls reflexivity, which he outlined in his book The Alchemy of Finance. For some, like the trader Paul Tudor Jones, the book was 'revolutionary'; it clarified events 'that appeared so complex and so overwhelming,' as he wrote in the foreword. Through the book Soros also met Stanley Druckenmiller who sought him out after reading it, and eventually took over from Soros as manager of the Quantum Fund. To most others, however, the book was impenetrable, even unreadable, and few people grasped the idea of reflexivity Soros was attempting to convey. Indeed, as Soros wrote in the preface of the paperback edition, 'Judging by the public reaction...I have not been successful in demonstrating the significance of reflexivity. Only the first part of my argument - that the prevailing bias affects market prices - seems to have registered. The second part - that the prevailing bias can in certain circumstances also affect the so-called fundamentals and changes in market prices cause changes in market prices - seems to have gone unnoticed.' Changes in market prices cause changes in market prices? Sounds ridiculous. But it's not. To give just one example, as stock prices go up, investors feel wealthier and spend more money. Company sales and profits rise as a result. Wall Street analysts point to these 'improving fundamentals,' and urge investors to buy. That sends stocks up further, making investors even wealthier, so they spend even more. And so on it goes. This is what Soros calls a 'reflexive process' - a feedback loop: a change in stock prices has caused a change in company fundamentals which, in turn, justifies a further rise in stock prices. And so on. You have no doubt heard of this particular reflexive process. Academics have written about it; even the Federal Reserve has issued a paper on it. It's known as 'The Wealth Effect.' Reflexivity is a feedback loop: perceptions change facts; and facts change perceptions. As happened when the Thai baht collapsed in 1997. In July 1997 the Central Bank of Thailand let its currency float. The bank expected devaluation of around 20%; but by December the baht collapsed from 26 to the U.S. dollar to over 50, a fall of more than 50%. The bank had figured out that the baht was 'really worth' around 32 to the dollar. Which it may well have been according to theoretical models of currency valuation. What the bank failed to take into account was that floating the baht set in motion a self-reinforcing process of reflexivity that sent the currency into free-fall. Thailand was one of the 'Asian Tigers,' a country that was developing rapidly and was seen to be following in Japan's footsteps. Fixed by the government to the U.S. dollar, the Thai baht was considered a stable currency. So international bankers were happy to lend Thai companies billions of U.S. dollars. And the Thais were happy to borrow them because U.S. dollar interest rates were lower. When the currency collapsed, the value of the U.S. dollar debts companies had to repay suddenly exploded...when measured in baht. The fundamentals had changed. Seeing this, investors dumped their Thai stocks. As they exited, foreigners converted their baht into dollars and took them home. The baht crumbled some more. More and more Thai companies looked like they would never be able to repay their debts. Both Thais and foreigners kept selling. Thai companies cut back and sacked workers. Unemployment skyrocketed; workers had less to spend - and those who still had money to spend held onto it from fear of uncertainty. The Thai economy tanked...and the outlook for many large Thai companies, even those with no significant dollar debts, began to look more and more precarious. As the baht fell, the Thai economy imploded - and the baht fell some more. A change in market prices had caused a change in market prices. For Soros, reflexivity is the key to understanding the cycle of boom followed by bust. Indeed, he writes, 'A boom/bust process occurs only when market prices...influence the so-called fundamentals that are supposed to be reflected in market prices.' His method is to look for situations where 'Mr. Market's' perceptions diverge widely from the underlying reality. On those occasions when Soros can see a reflexive process taking hold of the market, he can be confident that the developing trend will continue for longer, and prices will move far higher (or lower) than most people using a standard analytical framework expect. Soros applies his philosophy to identify a market trend in its early stages and position himself before the crowd catches on. In 1969 a new financial vehicle, real estate investment trusts (REITs), attracted his attention. He wrote an analysis - widely circulated at the time - in which he predicted a 'Four Act' reflexive boom/bust process that would send these new securities sky-high - before they collapsed. Act I: As bank interest rates were high, REITs offered an attractive alternative to traditional sources of mortgage finance. As they caught on, Soros foresaw a rapid expansion of the number of REITs coming to market. Act II: Soros expected that the creation of new REITs, and expansion of existing ones would pour floods of new money into the mortgage market, causing a housing boom. That would, in turn, increase the profitability of REITs and send the price of their trust units skyrocketing. Act III: To quote from his report, 'The self-reinforcing process will continue until mortgage trusts have captured a significant part of the construction loan market.' As the housing boom slackened, real estate prices would fall, REITs would hold an increasing number of uncollectible mortgages - 'and the banks will panic and demand that their lines of credit be paid off.' Act IV: As REIT earnings fall, there would be a shakeout in the industry...a collapse. Since 'the shakeout is a long time away,' Soros advised there was plenty of time to profit from the boom part of the cycle. The only real danger he foresaw 'is that the self-reinforcing process [Act II] would not get under way at all.' The cycle unfolded just as Soros had expected, and he made handsome profits as the boom progressed. Having turned his attention to other things, over a year later after REITs had already begun to decline, he came across his original report and 'I decided to sell the group short more or less indiscriminately.' His fund took another million dollars in profits out of the market. Soros had applied reflexivity to make money on the way up and the way down. To some, Soros's method may appear similar to trend-following. But trend-followers (especially chartists) normally wait for a trend to be confirmed before investing. When the trend-followers pile in (as in 'Act II' of the REIT cycle) Soros is already there. Sometimes he would add to his positions as the trend-following behavior of the market increased the certainty of his convictions about the trend. But how do you know when the trend is coming to an end? The average trend-follower can never be sure. Some get nervous as their profits build, often bailing out on a bull market correction. Others wait until a change in trend is confirmed - which only happens when prices have passed their highs and the bear market is under way. But Soros's investment philosophy provides a framework for analyzing how events will unfold. So he can stay with the trend longer, and take far greater profits from it than most other investors. And, as in the REIT example, profit from both the boom and the bust. Soros's theory of reflexivity is his explanation for Mr. Market's manic-depressive mood swings. In Soros's hands it becomes a method for identifying when the mood of the market is about to change, for enabling him to 'read the mind of the market.' Regards, Mark Tier for The Daily Reckoning

Subject: Realism From: Terri To: johnny5 Date Posted: Fri, Apr 08, 2005 at 07:27:10 (EDT) Email Address: Not Provided Message: Again, fine considered realistic posts.

Subject: Re: Soros-'belief alters facts' From: Setanta To: johnny5 Date Posted: Fri, Apr 08, 2005 at 04:39:15 (EDT) Email Address: Not Provided Message: The great PK himself has a few choice words to say about Soro's idea of Reflexivity...however he does agree that Soros has some important points that should be listened to. Published a long time ago in the NYT. SORO'S PLEA SYNOPSIS: The strange case of George Soros, a speculator who hates speculation. Ponders his case for restriction, arguing that overall benefits are worth some inefficency. Recently I found myself in not one but two meetings that also included George Soros, and I was inspired to furious intellectual effort. You see, I'm convinced it's possible to construct a terrific palindrome centering on the famous investor's reversible last name. Unfortunately, the best I've come up with so far is an imaginary conversation wherein I ask the great man what to make of the gyrations of Japan's exchange rate, and he tells me it means we must introduce a unified global currency: 'Yen omen, O Soros?'; 'One money!' Of course, that's not what Soros is really saying. His actual message--expounded in a series of articles and speeches over the past two years, and soon to be restated in his forthcoming book, The Crisis of Global Capitalism--might be described as 'Stop me before I speculate again!' And considering the source--a man whose funds have attacked currencies around the world, from the British pound to the Hong Kong dollar--it's a message that needs to be taken seriously. I'm not necessarily suggesting you read Soros in the original. It's not that he writes like a businessman; it's that he writes like a Central European intellectual, which is far worse. Someone should tell him it doesn't help his case to dress up fairly simple ideas in pretentious philosophical language. In particular, many people have argued that financial markets tend toward boom-and-bust cycles, that investors tend to engage in herd behavior, and that financial systems are subject to self-justifying panics. But such observations are not enough for Soros: For him they must serve as illustrations of the general principle of 'reflexivity,' whichI take to mean that human perceptions both affect events and are themselves affected by them. Gosh, I never thought of that! But if reading Soros isn't exactly a pleasure, he is nonetheless saying something important--namely, that the rules of the game under which he and others like him have prospered are dangerous for society as a whole. This is not what you'd expect to hear from a speculator, or for that matter anyone in the financial world. The typical view from Wall Street or London's City is that left to its own devices, the global capital market will always reward economic virtue and punish only vice. As one Wall Street Journal op-ed writer enthused, 'Foreign-exchange markets are a continuing, minute-by-minute election in which everyone with wealth at stake, including residents of the country, gets to vote, an election in which the winners are those countries whose governments have the most pro-growth policies.' Accordingly, if these days national economies seem to be falling like dominoes, it must be their own fault--or that of the IMF, which many conservatives see as having a demonic ability to wreak economic havoc with very little actual money. (Has anyone noticed just how small a player the IMF really is? That $18 billion U.S. contribution to the IMF, which has finally been agreed upon after countless Administration appeals and conservative denunciations, is about the same size as the short position that Soros single-handedly took against the British pound in 1992--and little more than half the position Soros' Quantum Fund, Julian Robertson's Tiger Fund, and a few others took against Hong Kong last August.) Soros, however, believes that financial markets are 'inherently unstable,' that left unregulated they inevitably produce recurrent crises. And he should know. What would a defender of free capital markets say in response to Soros? True believers would doubtless be unshaken. Never mind who Soros is and what he's done, they would claim that people who worry about destabilizing speculation just don't understand how markets work. Others, however, would agree that financial markets are inherently unstable, but argue that this is a price worth paying, that the presumed huge returns from free markets outweigh the risks. And indeed that was the position I myself took a year and a half ago, when Soros and I staged a fundraising debate on global capitalism for the Council on Foreign Relations. (Yes, I was pro, he was anti.) But events since May 1997 have certainly reinforced his position, and led those of us who still believe in the extraordinary merits of free markets in goods, services, and long-term capital to search for ways to protect those merits from the destructive effects of destabilizing hot money flows. Rather oddly, I can't quite figure out what Soros himself thinks we should do. In general, for a businessman his approach seems peculiarly abstract and philosophical: He seems far more concerned with denouncing laissez-faire ideology than with proposing workable ways to regulate markets without strangling them. (Maybe we need a super-IMF, big enough to take on the Soroi of this world. Or maybe, horrors, we actually need to control capital movements.) But if Soros doesn't have the answer, at least he asks the right question. Next time somebody tells you that the global capital market is our friend, that only economies that deserve it get punished, tell him to tell it to George Soros.

Subject: Great and wonderful From: johnny5 To: Setanta Date Posted: Fri, Apr 08, 2005 at 07:38:36 (EDT) Email Address: johnny5@yahoo.com Message:

Subject: I Remember From: Terri To: Setanta Date Posted: Fri, Apr 08, 2005 at 05:15:36 (EDT) Email Address: Not Provided Message: Thank you, I had forgotten this.

Subject: Interesting Posts From: Emma To: johnny5 Date Posted: Thurs, Apr 07, 2005 at 20:45:05 (EDT) Email Address: Not Provided Message: Interesting posts. Thanks.

Subject: Re: Interesting Posts From: Terri To: Emma Date Posted: Thurs, Apr 07, 2005 at 21:40:15 (EDT) Email Address: Not Provided Message: Well done.

Subject: The pillar of our economy From: Pete Weis To: All Date Posted: Thurs, Apr 07, 2005 at 15:06:37 (EDT) Email Address: Not Provided Message: Real estate’s ‘dirty little secret’ ‘Appraisal inflation’ a worry for housing experts By Jane Wells Reporter CNBC Updated: 6:45 p.m. ET April 6, 2005 It is often referred to as “appraisal inflation” and it could be the dirty little secret of the housing industry. The practice — when real estate appraisers bend the numbers to satisfy clients and stay in business — is a growing problem, according to real estate experts. Appraisers say there is pressure on them to inflate home values, and there is concern that if people pay too much for their homes it could lead to more foreclosures if housing prices tumble. And banks could be left holding the bag. Data show the problem is widespread. A recent survey of 500 appraisers by the October Research Group, a provider of news and information to the real estate services industry, found that 55 percent of them personally feel pressured by sellers, agents, and even lenders to inflate home values by 10 percent. And one-third of the appraisers surveyed said they fear losing business if they don’t comply. Jonathan Miller, CEO of Miller Samuel, an appraisal company in Manhattan, said he thinks 75 percent of appraisals are inflated. And Miller thinks honest appraisers are leaving the business as a result. Congress recently introduced a bill to curb the appraiser issue. The Ney-Kanjorski bill would prohibit agents and other outsiders from pressuring appraisers through coercion, bribes or extortion. It would also force a physical inspection for higher-cost loans instead of just using computer appraisal software, which can be manipulated, and it would force a second appraisal of a property that has risen in value over the previous six months. However, Miller says the proposed bill does not address structural problems in the appraisal business, such as the fact that many lending institutions that hire appraisers profit from the outcome. The wall is eroding between the loan sales department and quality control, Miller contends, and no one is worried about potential defaults if the housing market takes a breather. So what if people start defaulting? “I don’t think there’s a general awareness or concern about that,” Miller said. “The sales function, the people who are paid on commission probably won’t be there when those problems come in the future.” The issue could evolve into the something similar to the savings-and-loan scandal of the late 1980s, Miller added, referring to the failed speculation and, in some cases, fraud that cost the U.S. taxpayer over $100 billion. In California, meanwhile, an investigation into title insurance — the protection you must buy to make sure there are no other claims to the property you plan to acquire — is underway. The state’s insurance commissioner is investigating alleged kickbacks by title insurance companies to realtors, lenders and builders.

Subject: Trust? They wouldn't lie would they? From: johnny5 To: Pete Weis Date Posted: Thurs, Apr 07, 2005 at 15:52:18 (EDT) Email Address: johnny5@yahoo.com Message: http://www.siliconinvestor.com/readmsg.aspx?msgid=21202124 'My mother-in-law is an Appraiser. About six months ago she was contacted by a 'trainee' who wanted her to sign off on his appraisals. She has a couple of these trainees underneath her, and she agreed. California law used to require that a person take a minimum number of appraisal classes before they could even be a trainee. However, they changed the rule a few months ago. That means that ANYONE can be an appraiser. They still have to get a fully liscensed appraiser to sign off on the appraisal, but the lax requirements are becoming scary. Now back to the story. She was contacted about one month ago by another fully liscensed appraiser. He told her that he had been hired to review one of her appraisals. (Common practice by banks when they are suspicious of the appraisal or just sometimes done randomly). She asked for the address so she could forward him the comps and other data she used to come to the appraisal. After looking through her appraisals, she told him he must be mistaken, she hadn't done an appraisal at that address. Long story short, the 'trainee' had cut and pasted her signature from another report into MULTIPLE appraisals. Most of these appraisals were ones that she told him NOT to take because there was no way to get value on them. Not to mention that he was doing commercial appraisals under her name and she's not even liscensed for them. What a mess. He has begged her not to file criminal charges, but the only way to clear her name is to at least file a police report and let them decide if they will bring charges. It's just so sad. She went to school and worked as a trainee for YEARS. Now some guy who just decided to be an appraiser a few months ago, with nothing to loose, has created a disaster for her. She has no idea how many he did under her name. Luckily, she was out of the country when some of them were done, so she should be able to prove that at least some of them are fraudulent. The worst part about it is the BROKER's KNOW. They have access to look up comps just like I do, and just like appraisers do. They are fully aware that 'certain appraisers' will give more value (And trust me they have ample work available to them). My mother-in-law has reported that the amounts people are expecting to get for their appraisal are getting MORE ridiculous and not less. She had a re-finance just the other day. The couple had bought a $250k house in the ghetto 3 months ago. They got some kind of a risky 6 month interest only loan and need to re-finance. They were expecting the house to appraise at $310k (More than 20% in 3 months?) The lender they are working with told my mother-in-law that the previous lender had 'assured' the clients it would be worth 25% more by the time they re-financed. This has become a joke.'

Subject: Of course it's hard to argue... From: Pete Weis To: johnny5 Date Posted: Thurs, Apr 07, 2005 at 22:21:34 (EDT) Email Address: Not Provided Message: that something isn't worth (at least at that moment) what someone is willing to pay for it. But it's the refinancing where there is no buyer that that's brings the most concern!

Subject: OT: The seven pillars of wisdom From: Pancho Villa To: Pete Weis Date Posted: Thurs, Apr 07, 2005 at 15:31:54 (EDT) Email Address: nma@hotmail.com Message: 'This is the exciting and highly literate story of the real Lawrence of Arabia, as written by Lawrence himself, who helped unify Arab factions against the occupying Turkish army, circa World War I. Lawrence has a novelist's eye for detail, a poet's command of the language, an adventurer's heart, a soldier's great story, and his memory and intellect are at least as good as all those. Lawrence describes the famous guerrilla raids, and train bombings you know from the movie, but also tells of the Arab people and politics with great penetration. Moreover, he is witty, always aware of the ethical tightrope that the English walked in the Middle East and always willing to include himself in his own withering insight.'

Subject: Re: OT: The seven pillars of wisdom From: Pete Weis To: Pancho Villa Date Posted: Thurs, Apr 07, 2005 at 22:26:59 (EDT) Email Address: Not Provided Message: If only we could go back to those simple train bombings.

Subject: Lawrence on Negative Thinking From: johnny5 To: Pancho Villa Date Posted: Thurs, Apr 07, 2005 at 20:11:57 (EDT) Email Address: johnny5@yahoo.com Message: Yes I have that on audiobook - what a great listen. http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0056172/quotes Prince Feisal: Young men make wars, and the virtues of war are the virtues of young men: courage, and hope for the future. Then old men make the peace, and the vices of peace are the vices of old men: mistrust and caution. Lawrence on the rise and fall of civilization: Prince Feisal: But you know, Lieutenant, in the Arab city of Cordoba were two miles of public lighting in the streets when London was a village? T.E. Lawrence: Yes, you were great. Prince Feisal: Nine centuries ago. T.E. Lawrence: Time to be great again, my lord. Lawrence on why Bush and Co can never bring peace to the desert: T.E. Lawrence: A thousand Arabs means a thousand knives, delivered anywhere day or night. It means a thousand camels. That means a thousand packs of high explosives and a thousand crack rifles. We can cross Arabia while jolly Turkey is still turning round, and smash his railways. And while he's mending them, I'll smash them somewhere else. In thirteen weeks, I can have Arabia in chaos.

Subject: Economics and Ecology in Africa From: Emma To: All Date Posted: Thurs, Apr 07, 2005 at 14:23:30 (EDT) Email Address: Not Provided Message: http://www.nytimes.com/2005/04/07/international/africa/07nairobi.html?8hpib Flower of Africa: A Curse That's Blowing in the Wind By MARC LACEY NAIROBI, Kenya - Surrounded by all the asphalt and car fumes of this overgrown African capital, hidden among the tin-roof shacks in the sprawling slums and the forested parklands, there are some rather beautiful blooms. In and around overpopulated Nairobi, one can spot the tiny purple and white flowers of the knotweed, or the bright yellow blooms of the blackjack weed or the elongated appendages of the devil's horsewhip. 'The beauty and almost infinite variety of our wildflowers is one of the greatest pleasures for the traveler in East Africa,' Teresa Sapieha wrote in her 1989 book 'Wayside Flowers of East Africa.' But this is a story of a different kind of flower, which also comes in many colors but lacks the beauty of the many varieties discovered in nature by Ms. Sapieha. All over Nairobi, and all over Africa, are ugly artificial blooms that mar the landscape and that environmentalists want plucked up and removed. These flowers are cheap, thin plastic bags that are tossed to the ground by consumers. This kind of litter has reached a critical mass in Kenya - clogging streams, choking animals and piling up into little mountains of disease. These bags are different from the ones that Westerners carry their groceries in from the neighborhood supermarket; the Kenyan bags are so thin they barely hold a few mangoes or a few pounds of corn meal without tearing. Their delicate nature makes reuse impossible and leads to their frequent introduction into nature, where experts say they tend to remain without breaking down for somewhere around 1,000 years. The bags are so pervasive in this part of the world that many have taken to calling them 'African flowers,' as if they were local varieties of roses or bougainvillea. 'You can't miss these bags,' said Clive Mutunga, an environmental economist in Kenya who is seeking to clean up the mess. 'It's gotten to the point where it's almost become our national flower.' Wangari Maathai, the assistant environmental minister in Kenya and 2004 Nobel Peace Prize winner, says the sacks provide a breeding place for malarial mosquitoes, helping spread one of the continent's major killers. 'I'm not saying don't use plastics at all,' Dr. Maathai said recently as she extolled the virtues of more homegrown bags, like those made of sisal or cotton, or the traditional baskets, which were what people used before plastic came along. A recent study by the National Environmental Management Authority and the Kenya Institute for Public Policy Research and Analysis estimated that more than 100 million light polythene bags, many of them thinner than 30 microns, are handed out each year in Kenyan supermarkets, which is more than 4,000 tons of the bags every month. The study recommended banning the thin bags, which are believed to make up most of the litter. Other bags, it said, should be taxed to provide a financial incentive for bag manufacturers to come up with more environmentally friendly alternatives. The tax could then go to support recycling efforts, which are not common in Africa, says the report, which was financed by the United Nations Environment Program. The report notes that there would be some job losses if Kenya outlawed the manufacture of plastic bags, which is a booming industry here that supplies all of East Africa. But it notes that other jobs would probably be created among cotton bag manufacturers. Nairobi's street children and others might also earn some income from picking up plastics if a recycling program was started. Kenya, which profits from the many tourists who come to witness its pristine landscape, is not the first African country to try to clean up its act. Rwanda recently banned plastic bags that are less than 100 microns thick and it took such a tough enforcement stand that the police would dump out the goods on the road if they found shoppers with them. 'The black plastic bag has disappeared from Kigali,' the United Nations Environment Program said, referring to the capital of Rwanda in a recent statement on the issue. South Africa has also imposed a ban on bags thinner than 30 microns, which are so flimsy that one's finger can easily pierce them. Other more durable bags are taxed by South Africa, which gives some of the revenue to a plastic bag recycling company. Somaliland, a breakaway state in northwestern Somalia, outlawed plastic bags as well, although passing the law has not appeared to put much of a dent in the problem there. In local parlance, the plastic bags there are called 'Hargeisa flowers' because they pop up everywhere in and around Hargeisa, the Somaliland capital. 'The bags have not only become an environmental problem, but also an eyesore,' Abdillahi Duale, Somaliland's information minister, recently told the United Nations News Service. Eliminating the bags is regarded primarily as a task that falls on shopkeepers. Nakumatt Holdings, one of Kenya's largest supermarkets, has said it backs the effort to clean up the country's landscape. But the problem lies as well with the consumers throwing them into the wind. Kenya is considering an antilittering campaign not unlike its other public service campaigns - encouraging people to use condoms, pay their taxes, drive safely and seek a woman's consent before sex. To reach the next generation of potential litterers, the United Nations Environmental Program has produced a children's book in which a little boy named Theo alerts all the grown-ups around his town to the menace of discarded plastic bags by collecting them and rolling them into a ball that soon grows bigger than he is.

Subject: A New Disposable Battery From: Emma To: All Date Posted: Thurs, Apr 07, 2005 at 14:20:41 (EDT) Email Address: Not Provided Message: http://www.nytimes.com/2005/04/07/technology/circuits/07pogue.html?8hpib=&pagewanted=all&position= Can a New Disposable Battery Change Your Life? Parts of It, Maybe By David Pogue THIS June, Panasonic will introduce Oxyride batteries: AA and AAA disposable batteries that the company calls 'the most significant developments in primary battery technology in 40 years.' According to Panasonic, these batteries last up to twice as long as premium alkaline batteries like Duracell Ultra ($5 for four), yet cost the same as regular alkalines ($4 for four). Astounded yet? Then get this: Oxyride batteries are also supposed to deliver more power. The result, the company says, is that battery-operated toothbrushes spin faster, flashlights shine brighter, camera flashes are quicker to recharge and music players produce richer sound. Play your cards right, in other words, and these batteries might just clean out your gutters, wash the car and do your taxes. Those are pretty fantastic claims, but Panasonic is certainly right about one thing: the time is right for some technical improvement in batteries. Technology has marched on in just about every other corner of modern life, but people still tiptoe nervously through birthday parties and weddings with their digital cameras, anxiously rationing shots so they'll have juice left for the big moment. No wonder, then, that in Japan, the Oxyride batteries have captured 10 percent of the battery market in the one year they've been available. In fact, Panasonic predicts that Oxyride will eventually wipe out alkalines just the way alkalines blew regular 'heavy-duty' batteries off the map. Skeptics, however, are surely entitled to scoff, especially at that part about brighter flashlights, faster fans and better-sounding music. Aren't these gizmos somehow voltage-controlled so that they shine, spin or play at a certain rate, regardless of the battery? Armed with a stopwatch, I spent several exceedingly boring days conducting battery-drain tests with identical pairs of flashlights, screwdrivers, cameras, hand-held fans and swimming bathtub fishies. (Note to the neighbors: You can call off the nice men in the white jackets. It was all in the name of science.) As it turns out, the power-boosting effect is no marketing concoction; it's real. In identical flashlights, Oxyrides produce an obviously wider, whiter circle of light than Duracell Ultras. You can immediately tell the difference in portable fans, too, because the Oxyride fan hums at a higher pitch, a musical step higher than the Duracell one. The Oxyrides even make power screwdrivers spin faster: 364 r.p.m., compared with 316 r.p.m. for the Duracell Ultras. Then there's that bit about Oxyrides making MP3 players and CD players produce richer, fuller sound. Panasonic cited a test in Japan in which 80 percent of the players in an orchestra said they preferred the sound from an Oxyride-powered music player. (Panasonic doesn't include sound-quality claims in its official marketing, but it does say it's investigating.) This one's a tougher call. In blind tests, most people couldn't tell any difference between a CD player with Oxyrides and one with regular alkalines. A few identified the Oxyrides as maybe being a bit richer-sounding, but said that the difference was awfully subtle. All participants confessed, though, that they were not members of a Japanese orchestra. Amazingly, then, Panasonic Oxyrides do deliver more power, for the same price as ordinary alkalines. To be precise, they deliver 1.7 volts, which is 13 percent more juice than the 1.5 volts of alkalines. (In both cases, the voltage diminishes as the batteries empty.) According to Panasonic, Oxyrides get their power not only from an improved chemical makeup, but also from a vacuum-assembly machine that packs more ingredients into the same space. But what about the primary claim, that Oxyrides last longer than alkalines? Here, the answer is more complicated. In rundown tests (put the batteries in, run nonstop till they're dead), Duracell Ultras, and even regular alkaline Duracells, actually beat the Oxyrides. In a krypton-bulb flashlight, the Oxyrides ran for two and a half hours; Duracell Ultras lasted 35 minutes longer. An Oxyride hand-held fan died after an hour; Duracell Ultras had another 25 minutes in them. And in a really cute swimming fish bathtub toy, the Oxyride fish gave up the ghost after 8.5 hours; a pair of ordinary alkalines kept finding Nemo for an amazing 25 hours, nearly three times as long. Now, battery companies generally hate it when well-meaning journalists conduct rundown tests, for a very good reason: nobody uses batteries that way. In the real world, people play, pause and put aside their electronics for days or weeks. Properly conducted battery tests, experts say, are repetitive, expensive and computer-controlled. A battery that's designed to last a long time under real-world conditions may not do well in rundown tests. ('We'd be delighted to help you design valid tests,' a battery company representative once told me. 'And we'll look forward to reading the results around Christmas.') And sure enough, when the flashlight test was repeated in a more realistic regimen - one hour on, followed by 30 minutes off for good behavior - the Oxyrides lasted 4 hours 14 minutes. The Duracells still won, but this time by only 10 minutes, and the light produced during the flashlight's final 20 minutes was so feeble it probably shouldn't count. (The Oxyrides tend to die more suddenly than alkalines.) Panasonic further protested that the Oxyrides were designed to shine in high-drain gadgets (cameras, L.E.D. flashlights, remote-control toys, portable televisions and photo flash units) and moderate-drain gizmos (Game Boys, CD and music players, electric razors), not in low-drain devices like flashlights, fans, radios, clocks, remote controls and bathtub fishies. (So out came the Game Boy and the L.E.D. flashlight, and in went the Oxyrides. Test results: pending. After three days, both of them are still running strong.) All of this brings us to the World Series of battery competitions: the digital camera test. These days, most digital cameras come with rectangular, proprietary rechargeable battery packs. But if your camera takes disposables, you're already aware of their pathetic battery-consumption record. The challenge: See how many shots a pair of AA's can take in a digital camera. The test: 50 consecutive shots, alternating flash and nonflash, followed by 10 minutes turned off so the batteries could rest. Then another 50 shots, and so on until 'Change the batteries' appears on the camera's screen. (I set the camera to capture low-resolution images, so they'd all fit without having to change or erase the memory card.) Because this isn't a constant-drain test, you'd expect the Oxyrides to win - and this time, they do. The final score: Regular alkalines, 354 shots; premium alkalines, 566; Panasonic Oxyrides, 844. That's not exactly twice the longevity of premium alkalines, as Panasonic promises (and as PC World magazine found in its own Oxyride battery tests). But it's 2.4 times the life of regular alkalines, for the same price. Now, even Panasonic admits that Oxyrides aren't the most economical, environmentally friendly, powerful batteries you can buy. That honor goes to rechargeable nickel-metal hydride (NiMH) batteries, which cost under $15 including charger. You can recharge NiMH batteries hundreds of times, and each charge lasts longer than Oxyride or any sort of alkaline. But NiMHs aren't widely available in stores, they lose their charge quickly on the shelf, and the recharging and swapping process requires planning and discipline. Alas, not everybody has the patience; the road to the abandoned-gadgets drawer is paved with good intentions. (Another Oxyride rival is AA disposable lithium batteries, offered by Energizer in a four-pack for about $23. Five times the power of standard alkalines, at six times the price. You do the math.) The bottom line: Oxyride batteries may not quite live up to Panasonic's enthusiastic claims in all kinds of gadgets in every situation. But penny for penny, they deliver more power and, in power-hungry gadgets like digital cameras, last a lot longer than alkalines. Don't look now, but the Energizer bunny may soon be squashed by the Panasonic elephant.

Subject: Re: A New Disposable Battery From: Pancho Villa To: Emma Date Posted: Fri, Apr 08, 2005 at 06:42:55 (EDT) Email Address: nma@hotmail.com Message: Hitachi, Toshiba Show Portable Fuel Cells Devices to power to PDAs, cell phones, and laptops could be available next year. Paul Kallender, IDG News Service Wednesday, October 06, 2004 CHIBA, JAPAN -- Hitachi and Toshiba this week unveiled new fuel cell prototypes for a range of applications that could be commercialized as early as next year. The prototypes on display at Ceatec Japan 2004 show that fuel cells could become a widely adopted supplementary power source to conventional lithium ion batteries, and could start replacing them in some applications after 2007, according to developers. As well as showing its prototype fuel cell for PDAs that it announced last December, Hitachi also unveiled a prototype laptop PC fuel cell and a fuel cell-based battery recharger for mobile phones, both of which will be available in 2006, according to the company. In addition, Hitachi will make a lithium ion battery replacement fuel cell that it will put on sale in 2007, Mitsugu Nakabaru, senior engineer of Hitachi's fuel cell promotion and development group, says. All of the prototypes use direct methanol fuel cell (DMFC) technology. The demonstration model PC fuel cell shown is designed to latch on the back of a laptop screen, and is about 10 inches wide, 8 inches long, and between .4 inches and .8 inches thick. This includes a cartridge containing methanol that is diluted to a 20 percent to 30 percent concentration to produce power in the fuel cell. Hitachi is not disclosing the exact specifications, but the demonstration model weighs less than 2.2 pounds, says Nakabaru. The prototype is designed to provide at least five hours of continuous operation for even the most power-hungry laptops while they are running multiple applications, Nakabaru says. 'Five hours, we think, is the minimum specification customers will accept, but we think it will provide five to seven hours at 10 watts for most laptops running the usual programs,' he says. The laptop version is nearly ready for commercialization, but Hitachi is working to improve specifications, including developing the fuel cell's capability to use higher concentrations of methanol up to 40 percent, Nakabaru says. The company declined to discuss potential prices. 'It's nearly ready,' he says. Hitachi's fuel cell for PDAs, which the company already announced, is on target for sale in the second half of 2005, Nakabaru said. That prototype fuel cell is a cartridge type around .4 inches in diameter and between 2.0 inches and 2.4 inches in length. Specifications for the commercial model 'are about the same,' he says. Going Mobile Both Hitachi and Toshiba are showing prototype fuel cell-based lithium-ion battery supplementary power sources for mobile phones designed for KDDI, Japan's number-two carrier. The number of major Japanese electronics companies that have announced fuel cell rechargers for this application currently stands at three. Last week, NTT DoCoMo and Fujitsu Laboratories said they developed a prototype DMFC technology recharger for commercialization in 2006. That version is a cradle-type design that uses a thumb-sized cartridge containing methanol at a concentration of 30 percent to provide an output of 5.4 volts at 700 milliamperes. The commercial version will be able to provide enough power to charge a lithium ion battery three times, to provide about 6-hours worth of continuous use, according to NTT DoCoMo. The Hitachi and Toshiba prototypes are stand-alone boxes with cords that plug into KDDI mobile phones. Both designs will be available before the end of March 2006, Youichi Iriuchijima, assistant manager of KDDI's IT development division, says. Hitachi's fuel cell recharger is smaller than Toshiba's, but Toshiba's design will provide power for longer, Iriuchijima says. The companies are not releasing details about size and weight, and the demonstration models were displayed under plastic. The Hitachi version uses 46 percent methanol concentration fuel to provide 700 milliwatts and 3.5 volts, that is capable of providing at least 5 hours of supplemental power when a lithium ion battery is exhausted, Iriuchijima says. The Toshiba prototype uses a 100 percent concentration methanol fuel that provides nearer 10 hours of power, he says. Power Hungry Devices Over the next few years, many of Japan's mobile phone makers will add power-hungry digital broadcast tuners to their mobile phone models. KDDI sees the fuel cell supplemental batteries as a useful way to reassure users that they will be able to watch TV on their mobile phones without worrying about the battery dying. 'When you are watching TV, and the battery is running out, you can plug these fuel cells in. That's what they are for,' Iriuchijima says. The fuel cells will be able to connect into all KDDI phone models, not just those made by Hitachi and Toshiba, he says. 'The Toshiba and Hitachi versions are for KDDI. Fujitsu's is for NTT DoCoMo. But we are encouraging other companies to join us,' Iriuchijima says. Like Fujitsu, Hitachi is working towards commercializing a fuel cell that will replace the lithium ion battery completely, and this will be commercially available in 2007, says Hitachi's Nakabaru. While Hitachi is not giving details about the battery version, the initial design will be between two and three times more bulky than conventional batteries, he says. 'It's going to take some time, and it's going to be a bit big,' he says. http://www.pcworld.com/news/article/0,aid,118080,00.asp

Subject: Rayovacs I-C3 technology From: johnny5 To: Emma Date Posted: Thurs, Apr 07, 2005 at 20:00:14 (EDT) Email Address: johnny5@yahoo.com Message: 'But NiMHs aren't widely available in stores, they lose their charge quickly on the shelf, and the recharging and swapping process requires planning and discipline. Alas, not everybody has the patience; the road to the abandoned-gadgets drawer is paved with good intentions. ' '(Another Oxyride rival is AA disposable lithium batteries, offered by Energizer in a four-pack for about $23. Five times the power of standard alkalines, at six times the price. You do the math.) ' Johnny5 has done the math, rayovacs new I-C3 batteries can stay fully charged while plugged into the charger - so no shelf life loss - they only take about 15 minutes to charge if fully drained unlike the older rechargeable batteries that took hours, and they power all of johnny's PDA's and MP3 players and Scanners and other such digital goodness and they are widely available in every k-mart, walmart, and radio shack that johnny5 has ever visited. http://www.rayovac.com/recharge/batteries.htm Rayovac's patent-pending I-C3 technology (In-Cell Charge Control) puts the control of the recharging into the battery, instead of the charger. This Nickel Metal Hydride (NiMH) technology offers fast, safe, reliable charging and provides you with power that lasts longer and is less expensive than constantly throwing away alkaline batteries.

Subject: Master of the Universe From: Emma To: All Date Posted: Thurs, Apr 07, 2005 at 10:51:24 (EDT) Email Address: Not Provided Message: http://www.nytimes.com/2005/04/07/opinion/07mcewan.html?pagewanted=all&position= Master of the Universe By IAN MCEWAN London WHEN a great writer dies - an unusual event, for this is a rare breed - we pay our respects by a visit to our bookshelves, library or bookshop; mourning and celebration merge honorably. It will be some time before we have the full measure of Saul Bellow's achievement, and there is no reason we should not start with a small thing, a phrase or sentence that has become part of our mental furniture, and a part of life's pleasures. After all, good readers, Nabokov advised his students, 'should notice and fondle details.' Bellow lovers often evoke a certain dog, barking forlornly in Bucharest during the long night of the Soviet domination of Romania. It is overheard by an American visitor, Dean Corde, the typically dreamy Bellovian hero of 'The Dean's December,' who imagines these sounds as a protest against the narrowness of canine understanding, and a plea: 'For God's sake, open the universe a little more!' We approve of that observation because we are, in a sense, that dog, and Saul Bellow, our master, heard us and obliged. In fact, the very freedom that Henry James claimed for the novelist in his essay 'The Art of Fiction' ('All life belongs to you') was generously embraced by Mr. Bellow; he set himself, and succeeding generations, free of the formal trappings of modernism, which by the mid-20th century had begun to seem a heavy constraint. He had no time for Virginia Woolf's assertion that in the modern novel character is dead. Mr. Bellow's world is as densely populated as Dickens's, but its citizens are neither caricatures nor grotesques. They sit in memory like people you could convince yourself you have met: the hopeless racketeer Lustgarten ('partly subtle, partly ill') in 'Mosby's Memoirs,' who brings financial ruin to his family by importing a Cadillac into postwar France; the excitable low-lifer, Cantabile, waving a gun in 'Humboldt's Gift' - in his agitation he suddenly needs to defecate, and forces his victim, Charlie Citrine ('a man of culture or intellectual attainments') into the stall with him. Citrine distracts himself with reflections on ape behavior while Cantabile 'crouched there with his hardened dagger brows.' And most vivid of all, for me at least, Moses Herzog, Mr. Bellow's most achieved dreamer, the least practical of men in an America of vigorous, material pursuits. In 'Herzog,' Mr. Bellow brought to perfection the art of fictional digression. When the hero goes to visit his lover, the lovely Ramona, he waits on the bed while she goes off to change into what Martin Amis would call her 'brothel wear.' In those moments Herzog reflects on the way the entire world presses in on him, and Mr. Bellow seems to set out a kind of manifesto, a ringing checklist of the challenges the novelist must confront, or the reality he must contain or describe. It also serves as a reader's guide to the raw material of Mr. Bellow's work. I came to know this passage by heart through re-reading, and borrowed it for the epigraph of a novel. It was a risk, because the pulse of this prose was likely to make my own sound puny. 'Well, for instance, what it means to be a man. In a city. In a century. In transition. In a mass. Transformed by science. Under organized power. Subject to tremendous controls. In a condition caused by mechanization. After the late failure of radical hopes. In a society that was no community and devalued the person. Owing to the multiplied power of numbers which made the self negligible. Which spent military billions against foreign enemies but would not pay for order at home. Which permitted savagery and barbarism in its own great cities. At the same time, the pressure of human millions who have discovered what concerted efforts and thoughts can do. As megatons of water shape organisms on the ocean floor. As tides polish stones. As winds hollow cliffs...' Mr. Bellow's city, of course, was Chicago, as vital to him, and as beautifully, teemingly evoked, as Joyce's Dublin; the novels are not simply set in the 20th century, they are about that century - its awesome transformations, its savagery, its new machines, the great battles of its thought systems, the resounding failure of totalitarian systems, the mixed blessings of the American way. These elements are not dealt with in abstract, but sifted through the vagaries of character, of an individual trying to figure where he stands in relation to the mass of which he is a part. And always, the past is pressing in, memories of childhood, the crowded streets and tenements, shared rooms, overbearing and eccentric relatives and neighbors - the immigrant poor, attending to the call to American identity. The American critic Lee Siegel wrote recently that every British writer with an intellectual or emotional connection to America wants to lay claim to Mr. Bellow, saying, 'He is their Plymouth Rock, or maybe their Rhodesia.' There is some truth to this. What is it we find in him that we cannot find here, amongst our own? I think what we admire is the generous inclusiveness of the work - not since the 19th century has a writer been able to render a whole society, without condescension, or self-conscious social anthropology. Seamlessly, Mr. Bellow can move between the poor and their mean streets, and the power elites of university and government, the privileged dreamer with the 'deep-sea thought.' His work is the embodiment of an American vision of plurality. In Britain we no longer seem able to write across the crass and subtle distortions of class - or rather, we can't do it gracefully, without seeming to strain or without caricature. Mr. Bellow appears larger, therefore, than any British writer can hope to be. Another reason: in a literary culture that has generally favored the whole scheme of a novel against the finely crafted sentence, we honor the musicality, the wit, the lovely beat of a good Bellovian line. An example, rightly favored by the critic James Wood, is the description of Behrens, the florist in the story 'Something to Remember Me By': 'Amid the flowers, he alone had no color - something like the price he paid for being human.' Another example, of special significance to me because I paid tribute to Bellow by making a variation on it: in 'Herzog,' we read of Gersbach with his wooden leg, 'bending and straightening gracefully like a gondolier.' It is not surprising then that some of the best celebrations of Mr. Bellow's writing have originated in Britain. Certain essays may already be on your shelves, and in this time of taking stock, it might be enlivening to reach for them. One of them is Martin Amis's magnificent advocacy of 'The Adventures of Augie March' as the definitive Great American Novel in the introduction to the Everyman edition; another is James Wood's introduction to Penguin's 'Collected Stories,' in which joy is a central element in his response to the work. Writers we admire and re-read are absorbed into the fine print of our consciousness, into the white noise of our thoughts, and in this sense, they can never die. Saul Bellow started publishing in the 1940's, and his work spreads across the century he helped to define. He also redefined the novel, broadened it, liberated it, made it warm with human sense and wit and grand purpose. Henry James once proposed an obvious but helpful truth: 'the deepest quality of a work of art will always be the quality of the mind of the producer.' We are saying farewell to a mind of unrivalled quality. He opened our universe a little more. We owe him everything.

Subject: Rocket Science? From: Pete Weis To: All Date Posted: Thurs, Apr 07, 2005 at 10:15:58 (EDT) Email Address: Not Provided Message: We have an economy which is foundationed on consumers to a higher degree than ever in history. We have consumers in greater debt than ever in history. We have a consumer primarily supported by a soaring housing market - not booming jobs numbers and rising wages relative to inflation. This is from Forbes: Fresh Pricks In Housing Bubble Dan Ackman, 03.02.05, 9:00 AM ET There is a sharp debate over whether there is a bubble in the U.S. housing market generally or in certain localities, or whether there is a bubble at all. But the past two days have brought fresh warnings that home prices are unsustainable. First, a new study by the National Association of Realtors shows that 23% of all homes purchased in 2004 were for investment, while another 13% were vacation homes. Traditionally, one of the bulwarks against a sharp decline in housing prices has been the fact (or belief) that most people live in their homes and would be unlikely to sell even if the market heads downward. But the same logic would not apply to investment homes or vacation homes. While there has long been anecdotal evidence that non-occupant buyers are fueling the rise in home prices, the NAR study claims to be the first to thoroughly analyze the phenomenon. The study, based on 2003 census data, says there are 43.8 million second homes in the U.S. While 6.6 million of these are vacation homes, far more, 37.2 million, are investment units. This compares with 72.1 million owner-occupied homes. About a quarter of last year's home sales were for investment homes, NAR says. Nearly 80% of investment buyers rent their homes. While an owner-occupant is unlikely to sell his or her home (except to buy a new one), for an investor, the decision to sell is much more purely economic: If rents can't sustain a mortgage, there is no point in owning an investment property, except for the hope that home prices will inevitably rise, as they have been. So far, there has been no problem. Since 2001, the median price of an investment home has risen 25.4%, from $118,000 to $146,900. (In most markets, the average price is much higher than the median.) But if prices start to fall or if mortgage rates start to rise, there could be a rush to sell and a crash. Otherwise, some investment buyers could find themselves unable to get renters at all, as rental vacancy rates are near historic highs. With many buyers putting down almost no cash, they could simply let their bank foreclose and walk away. Investment buyers could be made even more sensitive to interest rate increases than is normally the case. The reason is the increasing popularity of adjustable rate mortgages. According to the Mortgage Bankers Association, more than 32% of mortgages are now adjustable. The popularity of ARMs is on the rise even though the spread between the so-called teaser rate and the fixed rate on a standard 30-year mortgage has narrowed. An adjustable mortgage is most attractive to a borrower who figures he won't own the house for long. That could be a person who figures he will move to a different area or will soon be able to afford a better home. Or it may be a person who figures he'll unload the place to a greater fool. All these trends are playing out against a larger trend of double-digit price increases for the average new home nationally, and 20% or more price jumps in many markets, including some of the most populous markets in the Northeast, Southern California and Las Vegas. At the same time, the share prices of home builders like Toll Brothers (nyse: TOL - news - people ), Centex (nyse: CTX - news - people ), D.R. Horton (nyse: DHI - news - people ) and Pulte Homes (nyse: PHM - news - people ) are all up by 25% to 100% in the last six months. Top mortgage lenders Countrywide Financial (nyse: CFC - news - people ) and Bank of America (nyse: BAC - news - people ) have increased their lending by 40% and 31%, respectively, in a year. Most studies of housing markets are conducted by people with a vested interest in keeping spirits high. As a result, even those who issue warnings tend to mute their gloom. For instance, a study reported in yesterday's Los Angeles Times warns that Southern California home prices 'could be at or near a peak,' noting they are likely to level but are unlikely to fall by much. That study is by Christopher Cagan, an economist for First American, a title insurer. Cagan notes that since 1998, prices in Los Angeles-Long Beach, Orange County, Riverside-San Bernardino and San Diego have been climbing by about 20% to 40% above their long-term average annual growth rate of 3.2% to 6.2%. He notes that in the last downturn, from 1995 to 1997, prices dipped 10% to 25% below their 'historical averages.' Cagan is quoted as saying, 'We won't be seeing 20%, 25% or 30% appreciation rates anymore,' and he's allowing for a 5% decline. As with all bubbles, it's fun to ride up and scary to get off while the roller coaster is still climbing. But if prices have doubled in four years, unfueled by income gains of anything close to that level, what's to stop, say, a 30% or 50% drop?

Subject: Costs Lure Peop to India for Medical Car From: Emma To: All Date Posted: Thurs, Apr 07, 2005 at 09:55:40 (EDT) Email Address: Not Provided Message: http://www.nytimes.com/2005/04/07/business/worldbusiness/07health.html?pagewanted=all&position= Low Costs Lure Foreigners to India for Medical Care By SARITHA RAI BANGALORE, India - Until recently, Robert Beeney, a 64-year-old real estate consultant from San Francisco, lived in pain. But when he finally decided to do something about the discomfort, he spurned all the usual choices. His doctors advised that he get his hip joint replaced, which his insurer would pay for, but after doing some research on the Internet, he decided to get a different procedure - joint resurfacing - not covered by his insurance. And instead of going to a nearby hospital, he chose to go to India and paid $6,600, a fraction of the $25,000 he would have paid at home for the surgery. This winter, Mr. Beeney flew to Hyderabad, in southern India, and had the surgery at Apollo Hospital by a specialist trained in London, Dr. Vijay Bose. Two weeks later, Mr. Beeney said that he was walking around the Taj Mahal 'just like any other tourist.' Mr. Beeney's story is becoming increasingly common, as Europeans and Americans, looking for world-class treatments at prices a fourth or fifth of what they would be at home, are traveling to India. Modern hospitals, skilled doctors and advanced treatments are helping foreigners overcome some of their qualms about getting medical treatments in India. Even as politicians and workers' groups are opposing the corporate practice of outsourcing, Mr. Beeney and patients like him are literally outsourcing themselves - not only to India but also to Thailand, Singapore and other places - for all kinds of medical services from cosmetic to critical surgeries. About 150,000 foreigners visited India for medical treatments in the year ending in March 2004, the Confederation of Indian Industry, a leading industry group, said. That number was projected to rise by 15 percent each year for the next several years. The consulting firm McKinsey & Company, a management consultant based in New York, said foreign visitors would help Indian hospitals earn 100 billion rupees (about $2.3 billion) by 2012. 'Health is an emotional issue; it's not like buying a toy or a shirt made abroad,' said a health care analyst for McKinsey, Gautam Kumra, who is based in New Delhi. 'Nevertheless, you cannot deny the power of economics.' For some foreigners, like George Marshall, a 73-year-old violin restorer from Yorkshire, England, India's hospitals also offer speedier treatments. Last year, Mr. Marshall said that he started having trouble finishing a round of golf. An angiogram showed two blocked arteries in his heart. With the British National Health Service, Mr. Marshall would have had to wait three weeks to see a specialist, and six more months for coronary bypass surgery. 'At 73, I don't have the time to wait,' Mr. Marshall said. 'Six months could be the rest of my life.' Nor could he afford the £20,000 ($38,000) for surgery at a private hospital. After an Internet search and a chance meeting with a businessman who had gone to India for surgery, Mr. Marshall traveled to the Wockhardt Hospital in Bangalore in southern India last winter. His surgeon, Vivek Jawali, had trained at Great Ormond Street Hospital in London. The men chatted about British politics and Dr. Jawali gave Mr. Marshall his cellphone number and said that he was available 24 hours. A surprised Mr. Marshall said that in the British health system, 'you are just a number, but here you are a person.' Travel expenses included, the surgery cost him £4,500 ($8,400). While the number of patients from the West is still small in India, the trend is expected to grow as populations age and health costs balloon. In India, cardiac surgeries cost about one-fifth of what they would in the United States; orthopedic treatments cost about one-fourth as much and cataract surgeries are as low as one-tenth of their cost at American hospitals. Mr. Kumra, the McKinsey health consultant who also advises the auto industry, noted that a corporation like General Motors spends $5 billion on health care annually. 'When you buy a G.M. car, you are helping G.M. fund $2,000 or $3,000 towards health care costs of retired workers,' Mr. Kumra said. To curb spending, corporations are being forced to look at creative low-cost solutions. For instance, radiologists working for Wipro, a software and information technology company based in Bangalore, analyze X-rays and scans from United States hospitals for a fraction of the cost. A diagnostics firm, SRL Ranbaxy, based in New Delhi, tests blood serum and tissue samples from British hospitals. Health specialists say that sending patients to India for treatment is not as unthinkable as it was 20 years ago. 'India is well-positioned to expand into this area of outsourcing,' said John Lovelock, an analyst in Ontario on global industries for Gartner. 'India is equipped to provide long-term in-patient rehabilitation services, which are very labor intensive, require large facilities and are under serviced in North America,' he said. In the last four years, the Apollo Hospital chain, which has 18 hospitals throughout Asia, has treated 43,000 foreigners, mainly from nations in southern Asia and the Persian Gulf. Last year, 7 percent of its 5 billion rupees ($114.9 million) in revenue came from medical services provided to foreigners. Apollo's founder, Dr. Prathap C. Reddy, 73, a surgeon trained at Massachusetts General Hospital in Boston, said that health care in India had drastically changed from the time he returned to open his first hospital in 1983. 'Then, all rich Indians rushed overseas for medical help,' Dr. Reddy said. Now, he has 200 doctors on his staff who are qualified to work in the United States, and has many wealthy Indian expatriates as clients. Still, some hospitals in India are discovering that affordable costs and foreign-trained doctors may not be enough to make India a global health care destination. The country's dilapidated airports, garbage-strewn streets and overcrowded slums can put off even the hardiest foreigners. 'Some foreign patients arrived at the airport and took the next flight back,' said Dr. Reddy, who has been trying to persuade the local government in Chennai, formerly known as Madras, to clear a slum next to his hospital there. 'I can change the insides of my hospitals, but I cannot change the airports and roads,' Dr. Reddy said, The challenge, said Harpal Singh, chairman of Fortis Healthcare, a chain of hospitals based in New Delhi, is to get the world to understand that India is a complex country. Acknowledging that foreigners might feel more at home having surgery in sleek hospitals in Singapore or Thailand, which are competing to woo them, Mr. Singh said, 'We have to project that India is capable of delivering first-rate as well as shoddy work.' Fortis, part owned by the country's biggest drug firm, Ranbaxy Laboratories, has a chain of four hospitals in India and another six on the way. Indian hospitals are also working to ensure that they meet international standards. The Indian Healthcare Federation, a group of 50 hospitals led by Dr. Reddy, is developing accreditation standards for hospitals. One doctor in India held up as first rate is Dr. Naresh Trehan, a cardiac surgeon based in New Delhi and the executive director of Escorts Heart Institute and Research Center. Dr. Trehan, 58, who studied cardiac surgery at the New York University School of Medicine and worked there for a decade, returned to India in 1988 to open his own cardiac hospital in New Delhi. The hospital now conducts 4,000 heart surgeries a year with 0.8 percent mortality rates and 0.3 percent infection rates, on par with the best of the world's hospitals. Last October, Dr. Trehan performed surgery on Howard Staab, 53, an uninsured self-employed carpenter from Durham, N.C., to repair a leaking mitral heart valve. Mr. Staab paid $10,000 for his surgery, his round-trip fare to India and for a visit to the Taj Mahal. In the United States, his options included surgery costing $60,000 at Duke University Medical Center in Durham, N.C. To take advantage of patients like Mr. Staab, Indian hospitals are expanding. In the Gurgaon suburbs of New Delhi, Dr. Trehan is building a $250 million multispecialty hospital modeled after the Cleveland Clinic in Ohio. In the same neighborhood will be Fortis Healthcare's Medicity, a 43-acre hospital complex for foreign patients, which will have special immigration and travel counters and interpreters, with the idea of branding itself the Johns Hopkins Hospital of the East. 'We're gearing up, and the doors of Indian hospitals are wide open to the Western world,' Dr. Trehan said.

Subject: My relative on dialysis From: johnny5 To: Emma Date Posted: Thurs, Apr 07, 2005 at 19:40:02 (EDT) Email Address: johnny5@yahoo.com Message: Went to several doctors in florida for his kidneys - after determining he was too old to get on the kidney donor list here in America - he was told unofficially to go to india and he could buy some kidneys and the procedure for under 30K. But he couldn't get beyond all the moral issues of using young poor people for thier body parts for one, and for 2 the doctors telling him this never seemed to convince him that the procedure was a good invesment and would not fail - in the 3 dialysis clinics he has taken treatments in, everyone that has had the kidney replacement sugery had the kidneys fail within a year. He was shown literature to the contrary and that many peoples new kidneys did take, but he doesn't believe what he reads much - just what real people tell him about thier real life.

Subject: Central Park: Imagine From: Emma To: All Date Posted: Thurs, Apr 07, 2005 at 06:09:07 (EDT) Email Address: Not Provided Message: http://store1.yimg.com/I/palemale-store_1840_13265100 Hello, I am a Central Park screech owl who has just fledged 3 baby screech owls [screechlets?]. Imagine :)

Subject: That's the spirit Emma - how cute! From: johnny5 To: Emma Date Posted: Thurs, Apr 07, 2005 at 06:26:44 (EDT) Email Address: johnny5@yahoo.com Message:

Subject: Re: Central Park or Central Perk? From: Pancho Villa To: johnny5 Date Posted: Thurs, Apr 07, 2005 at 15:24:19 (EDT) Email Address: nma@hotmail.com Message:

Subject: Bond Values From: Terri To: All Date Posted: Thurs, Apr 07, 2005 at 04:42:34 (EDT) Email Address: Not Provided Message: Bond holders, international and domestic, ought to worry. We experienced an extended loss of value in bonds from 1972 to 1982. I have wondered whether this loss slowed investment and productivity growth in America for far longer. Another such period ought to be unthinkable.

Subject: Realism From: Terri To: Terri Date Posted: Thurs, Apr 07, 2005 at 09:00:54 (EDT) Email Address: Not Provided Message: The point of investing is always realism. That is how to be successful. Know how to judge where value is.

Subject: tell people to worry, you sink your investments From: johnny5 To: Terri Date Posted: Thurs, Apr 07, 2005 at 09:31:20 (EDT) Email Address: johnny5@yahoo.com Message: http://www.corporatefinance.mckinsey.com/_downloads/knowledge/MOF/2005_no15/MoF15_behavior_finance.pdf Don't make people worry, PLEASE

Subject: Ulcers not valuable From: johnny5 To: Terri Date Posted: Thurs, Apr 07, 2005 at 09:23:08 (EDT) Email Address: johnny5@yahoo.com Message: I read everywhere that trade sanction with china are on the way but you say that is impossible so I don't sweat it anymore and so what if it comes, do you really buy that much stuff made in china Terri? You got me to stop worrying dear Terri (big hug) and my ulcers went away now you say to worry again? Huh? Where is Value for you? Making my ulcers come back? Medical costs are going up - I can't afford more ulcer medicine. Reality is that money comes and goes, and in every life there is some trouble, but if you worry you make it double, so don't worry, be happy.

Subject: Ulcers are Bacterial Infections From: Terri To: johnny5 Date Posted: Thurs, Apr 07, 2005 at 09:50:19 (EDT) Email Address: Not Provided Message: Ulcers are not caused by worry, they are bacterial infections and cured by antibiotics :) But, there is no need to worry just to be knowledgeable and realistic.

Subject: What is worrying gonna achieve? From: johnny5 To: Terri Date Posted: Thurs, Apr 07, 2005 at 06:25:09 (EDT) Email Address: johnny5@yahoo.com Message: You are in the GNMA vanguard bond fund right - why worry - how does that stop what is coming? People are gonna need your optimism to get them through what is coming Terri, or they might jump off buildings, sing some bobby mcferrin. Dear Terri your gift is the joy in face of other's pain - share it - don't share worry.

Subject: Our Treasury Debt From: Terri To: All Date Posted: Thurs, Apr 07, 2005 at 04:31:29 (EDT) Email Address: Not Provided Message: The repeated comment that the debt we have to Social Security is a mere fiction is worrisome, but the suggestions go father to belittle the notion that all our treasurt debt is of no particular account for we can inflate and devalue our way past the debt. The comments come from alarming sources beginning with the President. Possibly no one really takes the comments seriously, for interest rate stay low, but I increasingly worry we trap ourselves in the language we use.

Subject: Bellow on Love, Art and Identity From: Emma To: All Date Posted: Wed, Apr 06, 2005 at 19:36:36 (EDT) Email Address: Not Provided Message: http://www.nytimes.com/books/00/04/23/specials/bellow-onlove.html June 3, 1987 Bellow on Love, Art and Identity By MERVYN ROTHSTEIN In Saul Bellow's new novel, ''More Die of Heartbreak,'' a botanist is asked by a reporter about the problems of radiation levels, dioxin and harmful wastes. ''It's terribly serious, of course,'' the botanist says, ''but I think more people die of heartbreak than of radiation.'' ''I think that's true,'' Mr. Bellow said, sitting in the lobby of a quiet midtown hotel. Yet the botanist is ridiculed in the press for what he says, and in the novel Mr. Bellow presents the statement in a humorous way. ''Well, I learned from reading George Bernard Shaw years ago,'' he said, ''that you can get away with murder as long as you can make people laugh.'' ''One of the subjects of the book,'' he continued, ''is the difference between a fabricated person and a true person. All through the writing of this book I was reading a lot of Nietzsche, and he makes some curious statements. He says that in a free society people are more free to make themselves up. He says that in older, more stable societies people didn't mind being a part of the general plan of the society, that they were governed by some kind of architectural faith and that they took their proper places in life, sometimes as an inconspicuous part of the whole structure, but that in a modern society people are released from all such necessities, and he mentions America particularly. They make themselves up. They leave nature and go toward art, is the way Nietzsche puts it. Well, the art is often not very good. It starts out with the project of inventing yourself gloriously and it ends up with a kind of fizzing out of the whole impulse.'' 'Access to Your Own Soul' It all goes by a blueprint, Mr. Bellow said. ''For a while I was a devoted reader of Playboy. Not for sexual reasons - it didn't do much for me in that department - but you could see that Playboy existed in order to advise young people on the make how to dress, what sort of apartment to have, how to furnish, where to dine, how to make a salad dressing, how to get your hair cut, how to entertain, how to date. The magazine was a source of instruction to people who have come up very quickly and haven't had time to look into these matters, which they needed for a successful corporate career or just for getting by socially, or whatever. So they go by a lot of slogans, which have been inculcated into them, and what happens to the true person? Culture means having access to your own soul. That's a very old-fashioned notion, but I think a great many people understand it.'' The novel concerns the relationship between the botanist, Benn Crader, and his nephew, Kenneth, as well as their many problems with their wives, lovers and ex-lovers. It's clear in the book that Mr. Bellow feels that there are many difficulties in contemporary relations between men and women. ''At the beginning of modern times, women were promised love, as it were,'' he said. ''They were told, you're going to be free, you're going to be well, you're going to love and be loved, and this will help you to weather the difficulties of life. This is Rousseau's plan - these free societies based on enlightened principles were not going to work unless people were trained in love, educated for it. 'Wretchedness' ''And that was the whole subject of the novel for a couple of centuries, that people were in love, either faithful or unfaithful, and in the French novel I suppose adultery was the principal subject for a long time. And in America, as one should have expected, this was done on a big scale, through sentiment, romantic books, Tin Pan Alley, early movies and all the rest. Well, then there was a sort of feminine discovery that this was bunk, that you couldn't take it from your ma that if you're a good girl you're going to be lucky, Mr. Right will come along, you'll be happy, your husband will love you, you'll love him, you'll be a happy family. ''Suddenly this was snatched away, and it was replaced by the sexual revolution, which has a very different foundation - namely, that you were a creature, you were an animal, you had certain creaturely needs, sex was one of them, you have a right to gratify these for the sake of your health, your well-being, your complexion, your personality, or whatnot else. All right, so people gave this a fling. Well, no human being takes another human being all that seriously any more, and when you have that happening at the very core of a society, then you're looking at a lot of trouble, a great deal of wretchedness, because something in human nature demands a constancy of connection, emotional constancy. There's a secret voice in us which says, 'No, this is bad; this is wrong. I'm alone again, once more cast into outer darkness.' '' The Beleaguered Artist It is now a little more than 10 years since Mr. Bellow, who will be 72 years old next month, was awarded the Nobel Prize for Literature. How has it affected his career? ''First of all,'' he said, ''I didn't start out to be successful. I started out to write. I didn't start scribbling at the age of 16 to win a prize. I would have been satisfied with much less. I didn't invent America's celebrity machinery, either, and I stay away from it as much as I can. In between books I have nothing at all to do with it.'' Mr. Bellow said he writes ''because this is my path into life. I don't know what I am without it. It's inconceivable for me to picture myself without it. I don't have a full explanation for it, any more than birds do for bird song.'' The artist in our society, though, is beleaguered, he said. In the novel, Kenneth says that the humanities -poetry, philosophy, painting - are ''the nursery games of humankind, which had to be left behind when the age of science began. The humanities would be called upon to choose a wallpaper for the crypt, as the end drew near.'' The artist's role, Mr. Bellow said, is one of resistance to these denaturing forces. ''William Blake is a wonderful guide to this,'' he said. ''First of all, you only know the truth of a poet or an artist when your heart rises up and says, 'Yes, yes, that's it, that's true. What he says is true. I've known it all along, only now it's clear to me because he has said it.' And the imagination to Blake is a divine power, and man is divine himself, insofar as he participates, as he enjoys the use of this power. It brings about a strength of personal vision. Not everybody sees the same world. Some people, when they see the sun in the sky, see something resembling a gold coin. Others see a chorus of angels crying 'Holy, holy, holy.' And as you see, so you are. That is a grade of human character - it's connected to the quality of perception of the external world.'' ''When I wrote 'The Dean's December,' '' he said, ''I tried to say in that book that even the power to experience is taken from us by our lack of development in art, in culture, so that we don't know how to interpret experience. So if you ask people to explain why they are what they are, why they do what they do, they're on the moon when they try to explain it to you. I know that and you know that.'' But, Mr. Bellow said, there is still hope. ''Our humanity is in so many ways intact. It's absolutely impossible for it to be destroyed in just one phase of human development. How do we know that? Well, ordinary people can still see 'King Lear' and weep.''

Subject: Saul Bellow: On His Work and Himself From: Emma To: All Date Posted: Wed, Apr 06, 2005 at 19:32:43 (EDT) Email Address: Not Provided Message: http://www.nytimes.com/books/00/04/23/specials/bellow-talk81.html December 13, 1981 A Talk With Saul Bellow: On His Work and Himself By MICHIKO KAKUTANI I sometimes enjoy saying that anybody's life can be encompassed in about 10 wonderful jokes. One of my favorites is about an American singer who makes his debut at La Scala. He sings his first aria to great applause. And the crowd calls 'Ancora, vita, vita.' He sings it a second time, and again they call for an encore. Then a third time and a fourth ... Finally, panting and exhausted, he asks, 'How many times must I sing this aria?' Then someone tells him, 'Until you get it right.' That's how it is with me - I always feel I haven't gotten it quite right, and so I go on singing.'' Saul Bellow tells this story with great relish. Sitting down in a black leather easy chair, he gazes out through the window of his high-rise apartment to the dark waters of Lake Michigan beyond, and throws his head back and laughs. His conversation, like his books, is at once colloquial and lofty, intellectual and passionate, filled with jokes heard on the Chicago streets and the high seriousness of Academe. The author himself bears a certain resemblance to his own heroes: earnest, elegantly dressed and deeply thoughtful, he too is ''a hungry observer'' of everything around him. At 66, Mr. Bellow has written nine novels - the latest, ''The Dean's December,'' will be published in January by Harper and Row - and created in his work a distinctive fictional world. It is a world animated by an acutely moral imagination and populated by assorted cranks, con men and fast-talking salesmen of reality who goad and challenge Mr. Bellow's now familiar heroes. Whether it is poor, putupon Moses Herzog or Eugene Henderson, that absurd seeker of higher qualities, or wise old Artur Sammler or Albert Corde in ''The Dean's December,'' they are men caught in the middle of a spiritual crisis, overwhelmed by the sheer ''muchness'' of the world and frightened by the stubborn fact of death. Rejecting both easy optimism and easy despair, they tend, like Corde, to wonder if their own problems are simply their share of ''the bigscale insanities of the 20th century.'' Like these characters who are continually searching for a way to apprehend reality, Mr. Bellow tends to regard fiction as a kind of tool for investigating the society around him; he sees the novelist as ''an imaginative historian, who is able to get closer to contemporary facts than social scientists possibly can.'' But while the madness of the modern world, manifested in everything from sexual profligacy to random violence, has always reverberated in his characters' lives - a phenomenon that became more pronounced in ''Mr. Sammler's Planet'' -specific public issues have remained largely in the background. With ''The Dean's December,'' such matters as oppression in Eastern Europe, the plight of the American ''underclass,'' student militancy and the deterioration of life in American cities are more directly addressed. What brought about this heightened focus on political and social issues? For one thing, Mr. Bellow says he realized after writing ''To Jerusalem and Back,'' an account of his 1975 trip to Israel, that ''it was as easy to write about great public matters as about private ones - all it required was more confidence and daring.'' The winning of the Nobel Prize in 1976 no doubt provided some of that necessary confidence, and he made plans to write a nonfiction book about Chicago. After making hundreds of pages of notes, however, he decided to abandon that approach and write a novel. ''I found a more congenial way to do it, my own way, developed over many decades,'' he says. ''But I think I've begun to write differently - I had never really attempted anything of this sort before, though I've been all my life an amateur student of history and politics. It became clear to me that no imagination whatsoever had been applied to the problems of demoralized cities. All the approaches have been technical, financial and bureaucratic, and no one has been able to take into account the sense of these lives.'' ''I thought I had to cut loose with this book,'' he goes on. ''It seems many of my contemporaries don't take many personal risks - they shoot fish in a barrel. They write about wounded adolescents - there's no problem there. Sexual adventures -there's no problem there. Wounded ethnicity. They appear occasionally to be bold, to challenge the powers that be, but they're generally pretty safe. I think I'm speaking out quite frankly about the deterioration of life in American cities (in this book), and I wouldn't be surprised if I drew some flack. But if you've told yourself all your life that you're a friend of the truth, there comes a time when you must put up or shut up. They're not going to be able to shrug this one off, though there are some very powerful shruggers around.'' By now, Mr. Bellow points out, he is somewhat accustomed to drawing flack - at least from certain quarters of the literary establishment. For all the honors he has received - a Pulitzer and three National Book Awards as well as the Nobel -he sees himself as going against the mainstream of contemporary literature. He has long rejected the fashionable nihilism of what he calls the ''wastelanders,'' those who believe - as he once put it in a 1966 speech -that it is ''enlightened to expose, to disenchant, to hate and to experience disgust.'' He is equally skeptical of willful estheticism. As far as Mr. Bellow is concerned, those writers who substitute analysis for imagination have estranged literature from the common world and removed one of its original and most important purposes: the raising of moral questions. Contemporary writers, he adds, are also easily tempted by the sensational, for they are faced with ''the Ancient Mariner problem'' - like Coleridge's seaman, ''they need something to buttonhole the wedding guests with, as they go from wedding to wedding or orgy to orgy; they need something that has the power to penetrate distraction.'' Such views, coupled with his attitudes toward more general social matters - most notably his skepticism about the 60's counterculture - have been delineated by Mr. Bellow in both his essays and his novels, and they have occasionally made for controversy. Touring universities in the 60's, Mr. Bellow was occasionally denounced by students during his lectures, and the critic Richard Poirier contended, in an essay written for Partisan Review, that ''Herzog'' and ''Mr. Sammler's Planet'' were ''efforts to test out, to substantiate, to vitalize, and ultimately to propagate a kind of cultural conservatism.'' It is an observation Mr. Bellow rejects. ''People who stick labels on you are in the gumming business,'' he says by way of reply. ''What good are these categories? They mean very little, especially when the people who apply them haven't had a new thought since they were undergraduates and now preside over a literary establishment that lectures to dentists and accountants who want to be filled in on the thrills. I think these are the reptiles of the literary establishment who are grazing on the last Mesozoic grasses of Romanticism. Americans in this respect are quite old-fashioned: they're quite willing to embrace stale European ideas - they should be on 10th Avenue where the rest of the old importers used to be. ''They think they know what writers should be and what writers should write, but who are these representatives who practice what Poirier preaches? They're, for the most part, spiritless, etiolated, and the liveliest of them are third-rate vaudevillians. Is this literary life? I'd rather inspect gas mains in Chicago.'' With their old-fashioned characters, their passion for big ideas and problems of the spirit, Mr. Bellow's own books clearly belong to a different tradition. The Old Testament, Shakespeare and the great 19th-century Russian novels - these were the books Bellow read as a boy, and these were the books which, in large measure, gave him a sense of what great literature ought to do. Indeed, his choice of vocation, he says, was animated by the traditional challenge ''to account for the mysterious circumstance of being.'' ''I don't think I was a very sophisticated person,'' he says, recalling his youth in Chicago as the son of an onion importer who had immigrated from Russia. ''Chicago is not a city that produces sophisticated people, but it was in Chicago where this child of Jewish immigrants got the idee fixe of becoming an American author, and he had to find a way to prove he wasn't hallucinated, that he could write English sentences and that he could hold the attention of a reader or two. In those days, the WASP establishment wouldn't listen till you established your credentials - there are people even now who don't.'' To establish his credentials, Mr. Bellow wrote two books that filled what he calls ''formal requirements'': ''Dangling Man,'' the story of a young Chicagoan awaiting induction into the war, was his B.A.; ''The Victim,'' a portrait of a journalist and his importunate, anti-Semitic alter ego, his Ph.D. Both these somber books won modest critical acclaim, but their author, who was living in Paris on a Guggenheim at the time, says he was already sinking ''into a depression by trying to do the wrong things.'' In a kind of manic reaction, he began another book, a book that he would write ''in a purple fever'' over the next three years. The book, of course, was the exuberantly picaresque ''Augie March.'' ''Augie March'' marked Mr. Bellow's discovery of his own voice. It was a supple voice, infused with the rhythms and idioms of Yiddish, a voice that was capable of articulating a moral vision and lofty philosophical speculation in the most colloquial of terms. ''I loosened up,'' Mr. Bellow recalls, ''and found I could flail my arms and express my impulses. I was unruly at first and didn't have things under control, but it was at least a kind of spontaneous event. It was my liberation.'' ''Augie March,'' Mr. Bellow said at the time, came easily -all he had to do ''was to be there with buckets to catch it'' - and it won the National Book Award in 1953. But, in retrospect, the experience was somewhat disconcerting as well, for it revealed to Mr. Bellow certain prejudices within the literary community that would last for many years. ''I began to discover,'' he says, ''that while I thought I was simply laying an offering on the altar like a faithful petitioner, other people thought I was trying to take over the church. It came at a strange point when I think the WASP establishment was losing confidence in itself, and it felt it was being challenged by Jews, blacks and ethnics, and some people were saying there was a Jewish mafia, and other people, who should have had more sense, spoke of - well, they didn't use the word conspiracy, but they saw it as an unwelcome eruption. I began to talk of Malamud, Roth and me as Hart, Shaffner & Marx, and there was a pathetic absurdity under it all - all we wanted was to add ourselves to the thriving enterprise we loved; no one wanted to take over. That's a motive worthy of the Mafia, and I don't think Hart, Shaffner & Marx were Mafiosi.' ''I think of myself as an American of Jewish heritage,'' he goes on. ''When most people call someone a 'Jewish writer,' it's a way of setting you aside. They don't talk about the powers of the 'Jewish writers' who wrote the Old Testament; they say to write novels you need to know something about manners, which is something you have to be raised in the South to know. I felt many writers (during the 50's and early 60's) treated their Jewish colleagues with unpardonable shabbiness, and anti-Semitism after the Holocaust is absolutely unforgivable.'' With the breakthrough in style achieved in ''Augie March,'' there also came a shift in tone. Whereas the first two books shared a certain depressive quality - underlined by the fact that their heroes did little to resolve the condition of their alienation - ''Augie March'' was a wildly extroverted work, ending with its hero looking forward to his next adventure. Later books such as ''Henderson, the Rain King'' and ''Herzog'' would go somewhat further: each ended with its protagonist taking the first step toward an affirmation of his life, and these books would also play, with greater facility, between what Mr. Bellow refers to as ''the two sides of my psyche'' -the brooding side and the exuberant. ''For many years,'' he explains, ''Mozart was a kind of idol to me - this rapturous singing for me that's always on the edge of sadness and melancholy and disappointment and heartbreak, but always ready for an outburst of the most delicious music. I found Mozart temperamentally so congenial. I'm not claiming the same range of talent, but I often feel an affinity with him.'' Certainly many of Mr. Bellow's characters have shared temperamental affinities with their author - a fact that Mr. Bellow acknowledges by quoting Alberto Moravia, who once told him, ''Every novel is some kind of higher autobiography.'' In ''The Dean's December,'' for instance, Albert Corde takes a trip to Bucharest to help his wife attend her dying mother - as Mr. Bellow himself did several years ago - and Corde shares, more or less, his creator's age, occupation and place of residence. Like many of Mr. Bellow's heroes, Corde is also something of a lapsed intellectual, who takes pride and pleasure in exercising his mind, but also worries about the inadequacy of all his theories. As Mr. Sammler puts it, ''Intellectual man had become an explaining creature. Fathers to children, wives to husbands, lecturers to listeners, colleagues to colleagues, doctors to patients, man to his own soul explained. ... For the most part, in one ear and out the other. The soul wanted what it wanted.'' Of course, Mr. Bellow himself has curiously ambivalent attitudes towards academia. He believes, on one hand, that ''it's in the university and only in the university that Americans can have a higher life,'' and yet he also contends that professors ''are so eager to live the life of society like everybody else that they're not always intellectually or spiritually as rigorous as they should be.'' By institutionalizing the avant-garde magazines and giving writers the security of tenure, he argues, universities effectively destroyed the independent literary culture that once existed in this country. Still, Mr. Bellow finds that an academic community provides him with people ''to talk to about the things that concern me most,'' and he has served, since 1964, on the prestigious Committee on Social Thought at the University of Chicago. His decision to leave New York and return to Chicago in the early 60's, he says, was motivated, in part, by what he saw as the increased politicization of writers in New York. When he first arrived in New York during the 40's, a ''young hick'' bent on ''going to the big town and taking it,'' a sense of community existed among writers associated with the Partisan Review. Mr. Bellow became friends with such writers and critics as Meyer Schapiro, Dwight Macdonald, Delmore Schwartz and Clement Greenberg - ''they were not always friendly friends, but they were always stimulating friends'' -and he enjoyed the ''open spirit of easy fraternization'' that animated their discussions. Politics, generally in the form of Marxism, tended to be mostly theoretical. ''Then,'' Mr. Bellow recalls, ''a new generation turned up -a lot of people out of Columbia University, a lot of students of Lionel Trilling, who got into enterprises like Commentary -and suddenly the whole atmosphere in New York became far more political than it had been before. With the Vietnam War and other issues, people became organized in camps, and while I was opposed to the war, I just refused to line up with the new groups. I didn't like it, and it seemed to me a good time to leave New York, because I'd been drawn there in the first place by my literary interests, and there seemed to be no room for an independent writer in New York anymore. It became harder to find people to talk to, and it was harder to stay out of the draft - you were always being solicited for this cause or that, always being drafted for one thing or another. ''People have said in their memoirs that I was guarded, cautious, career-oriented, but I don't think that's so - after all, there was nothing easier in New York during those days than the life of the extremist, and that's continued to be so. I was not comfortable with the extremist life, and so I thought I might as well go back to the undiluted U.S.A., go back to Chicago. It's vulgar but it's vital and it's more American, more representative.'' Indeed, Mr. Bellow finds that in Chicago he is able to keep up with his old high school friends, as well as a cross-section of society including contractors, lawyers, doctors, physicists, historians, policemen and retired social workers - some of whom surface in his fiction. ''You meet people,'' he says, ''They reveal or conceal themselves, and you read them or try. They struggle with their souls or don't. They either generate interest or not. It forms a picture for you. The people who interest me the most do concern themselves with the formation of a soul. The others are what Hollywood used to call the cast of thousands.'' When he is working on a book, Mr. Bellow spends his mornings at an electric typewriter, set up by a window overlooking Lake Michigan. After nine novels, the craft has been mastered, but the magical aspect of the art remains. Mr. Bellow, in fact, has spoken in the past of ''a primitive prompter or commentator within, who from earliest years has been advising us, telling us what the real world is'' - a commentator not unlike Henderson's little voice that constantly cries, ''I want, I want'' - and he attributes his best writing to this unconscious source. ''I think a writer is on track when the door of his native and deeper intuitions is open,'' he says. ''You write a sentence that doesn't come from that source and you can't build around it - it makes the page seem somehow false. You have a gyroscope within that tells you whether what you're doing is right or wrong. I've always felt a writer is something of a medium, and when something is really working, he has a certain clairvoyant power; he has a sense of what's going on. Whenever I've published a book that's received wide attention, I've heard from thousands of people around the world who have been thinking the same thing - as though I'd anticipated things. I didn't mean to, but I've learned one does.'' Since he won the Nobel Prize for Literature in 1976, of course, those letters from readers have increased, as have the demands on Mr. Bellow's time. He is asked to deliver speeches (he recently gave the celebrated Tanner lectures at Oxford) serve on committees and sign all mannner of petitions. As far as he is concerned, these responsibilities act as distractions from his true vocation. ''I could spend the rest of my life now functioning on committees,'' he says, ''standing up for all the right things and denouncing all the bad ones. What good this does your art, I leave to the expert guessers to guess at. I have yet to feel I've intimidated Brezhnev by signing protests.'' ''The Nobel changes things in different ways,'' he continues. ''For one thing, you feel that you have more authority, and if the Academy was mistaken in giving you the prize, you try to make the best of it, and recover your balance and your normal poise and not feel oppressed by the weight of this honor. I don't intend to let this laurel wreath of heavy metal sink me. I'm treading water very successfully, thank you. I know people like John Steinbeck thought it was the kiss of death, but I've decided to choose my own death kiss. No one's going to lay it on me.''

Subject: Taco Bell: A Side Order of Human Rights From: Emma To: All Date Posted: Wed, Apr 06, 2005 at 18:35:01 (EDT) Email Address: Not Provided Message: http://www.nytimes.com/2005/04/06/opinion/06schlosser.html?pagewanted=all&position= A Side Order of Human Rights By ERIC SCHLOSSER Monterey, Calif. — AND now a word of good news from the world of fast food. Last month, the Coalition of Immokalee Workers, a group that represents farm workers in southern Florida, announced that it was ending a four-year boycott of Taco Bell. The most remarkable thing about the announcement was the reason behind it: Taco Bell had acceded to all of the coalition's demands. At a time of declining union membership, failed organizing drives and public apathy about poverty, a group of immigrant tomato pickers had persuaded an enormous fast food company - Yum Brands, which in addition to Taco Bell owns KFC, Pizza Hut, A&W All American Food Restaurants and Long John Silver's - to increase the wages of migrant workers and impose a tough code of conduct on Florida tomato suppliers. 'Human rights are universal,' said Jonathan Blum, a senior vice president of Yum, adding that under Taco Bell's new labor rules 'indentured servitude by suppliers is strictly forbidden.' The need for a corporate edict against slavery in the United States reveals just how bad things have become for farm workers. But it also suggests that the fast food companies now sitting atop America's food system can prevent the sort of abuses that state and federal officials seem unwilling to address. Migrant farm workers have long been the nation's poorest group of workers. Although wages and working conditions greatly improved during the 1970's, thanks to the efforts of Cesar Chavez and the United Farm Workers, the rise of illegal immigration and anti-union sentiment later eroded those gains. In California, where more than half of America's fruits and vegetables are grown (and mainly picked by hand), the hourly wages of some farm workers adjusted for inflation have fallen by more than 50 percent since 1980. Today the majority of America's farm workers are illegal immigrants. They often live in run-down trailers, sheds, garages and motels, where a dozen or so may share a room. Their status as black market labor makes them fearful of being deported, wary of union organizers and vulnerable to exploitation. The typical migrant farm worker is a young Mexican male who earns less than $8,000 a year. The working conditions in the fields of Florida are especially bad. According to a recent study by the Urban Institute, perhaps 80 percent of the migrants in Florida are illegal immigrants. They are usually employed by labor contractors, who charge them for food, housing, transportation - and, on occasion, smuggling fees. These charges are often deducted from workers' paychecks, trapping migrants in debt. Since 1996, six cases of involuntary servitude have resulted in convictions in Florida; many others have probably gone undetected. In one of these cases, hundreds of farm workers were held captive by labor contractors based in La Belle and Immokalee, Fla., forced to work without pay and warned that their tongues would be cut off if they tried to escape. The Florida legislature has done little to help migrants. Agriculture is the state's second-largest industry, after tourism, and many legislators have close ties with leading growers. The Coalition of Immokalee Workers is one of the few organizations willing to fight for migrant workers in Florida. Founded in 1996 and based in the town of Immokalee, amid lush tomato fields and citrus groves, the group helped the United States Justice Department gain convictions in five of the six slavery cases. During the late 1990's members of the coalition learned that Taco Bell was a major purchaser of tomatoes grown in Immokalee, where the wages of migrants (adjusted for inflation) had fallen by as much as 60 percent during the previous two decades. The coalition asked the fast food chain to pressure its Florida suppliers, seeking a wage increase and guarantees that human rights would be respected. When Taco Bell failed to respond, the coalition started a nationwide boycott in April 2001, focusing its efforts at high schools and college campuses. 'Boot the Bell!' was the rallying cry, as students tried to close Taco Bells and block the opening of new ones. At first Taco Bell tried to ignore the protests and to deny responsibility for the behavior of its suppliers. 'We don't believe it's our place to get involved in another company's labor dispute,' Jonathan Blum, the Yum Brands executive, said in an interview with The New Yorker. Asked about the possible link between slavery in Florida and Taco Bell's food, Mr. Blum replied, 'It's heinous, but I don't think it has anything to do with us.' The company's attitude gradually changed as the boycott gained support not only from students, but also from the United Methodist Church, the Presbyterian Church (U.S.A.), the National Council of Churches, the Robert F. Kennedy Memorial Center for Human Rights and former President Jimmy Carter, among others. (Disclosure: I supported the boycott, too, and spoke out on behalf of the coalition.) With coalition members conducting hunger strikes and staging demonstrations in front of Taco Bell headquarters in Irvine, Calif., it seemed increasingly unwise for the nation's leading purveyor of Mexican food to be publicly linked with the exploitation of poor Mexicans. And the coalition's wage demand was by no means outrageous. It was asking for a pay raise of one penny for every pound of tomatoes picked - the first major wage increase in Immokalee since the late 1970's. As part of the agreement with the Coalition of Immokalee Workers last month, Taco Bell vowed to help 'improve working and pay conditions for farm workers in the Florida tomato fields.' It promised to give the penny per pound increase to its Florida suppliers, so that migrant wages could be raised by that amount. It invited the coalition to monitor the new labor policies. And it said it would reward those suppliers that treat farm workers well. The penny-per-pound supplement will nearly double the wages of migrants picking tomatoes for Taco Bell. And though there is some debate about the final cost to Yum Brands, the figure will most likely be a few hundred thousand dollars a year - not a huge sum for a fast food company with annual sales of about $9 billion worldwide. Over the past few years the fast food industry has introduced healthier foods in response to consumer demands. It has adopted tough animal welfare policies in the wake of criticism from animal rights activists. The Taco Bell agreement demonstrates, for the first time, an industry commitment to farm workers' rights in the United States. Only a small number of tomato pickers will enjoy a wage increase as a result of the Taco Bell deal, but it's a step on the right path. And what's the next step? Although farmers are often demonized in reports about migrant labor, it's important to point out that they are under tremendous pressure from the leading fast food chains to reduce costs. Food-service companies now purchase the majority of fresh produce in the United States - and farmers often believe that cutting wages is necessary to cut prices for their largest customers. Meaningful change, therefore, will have to come from the top. McDonald's seems an obvious target for the next boycott. It is one of the nation's leading purchasers of lettuce, tomatoes, apples and pickled cucumbers. It is far and away the industry giant. The failure of government to protect the weakest and most impoverished workers in the United States has left the job to corporations and consumers. Taco Bell deserves credit for acknowledging its responsibility on this issue. Now McDonald's, Burger King, Wendy's and Yum's other brands need to do the same.

Subject: My favorite fast food From: johnny5 To: Emma Date Posted: Wed, Apr 06, 2005 at 21:05:00 (EDT) Email Address: johnny5@yahoo.com Message: Great, now everyone go out and celebrate and reward thier good behavior and buy the johnny5 friday night special - 1 meximelt and 1 burrito supreme. Make sure you got a bottle of GASX handy too - hehe.

Subject: Japanese Real Estate Investment From: Emma To: All Date Posted: Wed, Apr 06, 2005 at 18:29:51 (EDT) Email Address: Not Provided Message: http://www.nytimes.com/2005/01/26/business/26prop.html?ei=5070&en=8a256311af61f658&ex=1113451200&pagewanted=all&position= Echoes of the 80's: Japanese Return to U.S. Market By TERRY PRISTIN Japanese investment in United States real estate soared in the 1980's, as companies and financial institutions poured nearly $300 billion into high-profile properties like Rockefeller Center in New York and the Pebble Beach Golf Club in California. But the value of many of these assets plunged by as much as 50 percent in the early 90's, and for more than a decade, the Japanese have been sellers rather than buyers. After a 15-year hiatus, however, Japanese capital is re-entering the United States market, but much more quietly and cautiously this time. 'They have begun to test the waters again,' said Bill Collins, who runs the capital markets group at Cassidy & Pinkard, a real estate services firm in Washington. For the first time in years, for example, Mitsui Fudosan, Japan's largest real estate company and the owner since 1986 of 1251 Avenue of the Americas, the former Exxon Building, is searching for other buildings to buy in the two most competitive markets in the United States, said Michael W. McMahon, a senior vice president. 'We're targeting Midtown Manhattan and Washington, D.C.,' he said. A survey released this month by the Association of Foreign Investors in Real Estate, a trade group, found that most of its members expect the Japanese to lag only Germans and Australians as the most active foreign buyers of United States property. 'We have seen more activity from Japan in the past six months than we have in the past six years,' said James A. Fetgatter, the trade group's chief executive. 'I have Nikkei Shimbun coming in to talk to me today,' he said, referring to the Japanese newspaper. 'I've never met anyone from Nikkei Shimbun before.' So far, much of this Japanese money has been used to buy shares in publicly traded companies, rather than individual buildings. In October 2003, it became legal in Japan to sell portfolios of shares in real estate investment trusts, allowing special funds to be marketed specifically to Japanese investors. Some of these funds buy shares only in REIT's based in the United States, which largely own property in this country, while other funds own a portfolio of REIT shares from various countries, including the United States. Since these funds were first sold, investment in them has steadily increased, reaching $4.6 billion last month. Although this sum is just a fraction of the total $300 billion invested in United States REIT's, real estate specialists say it is significant nonetheless. 'It's not a huge number, but it's an encouraging number,' said Michael R. Grupe, a senior vice president of the National Association of Real Estate Investment Trusts, a trade group. 'It's been a fairly even growth path.' Takayuki Kiura, the managing director of a new Tokyo office that Heitman, a Chicago-based company that manages capital on behalf of pension funds and other investors, opened just this month, estimates that two-thirds of the $4.6 billion is invested in United States REIT's, with the rest in REIT's in other countries. A treaty that went into effect on July 1 gives Japanese investors in United States REIT's the same tax status as American investors, enhancing the appeal of these funds, said Tony Edwards, the general counsel of the REIT trade group. Heitman is just one of several American companies that have teamed with Japanese financial institutions to create REIT funds that are marketed to investors in Japan. Heitman manages about $270 million worth of assets for three funds with Nomura Asset Management and a fourth with Sumitomo Trust Bank. AEW Capital Management, a Boston company whose clients are mainly institutions, has a similar relationship with Nissay. And LaSalle Investment Management, part of the real estate services company Jones Lang LaSalle, manages a global REIT fund for Nikko that is aimed at Japanese investors. The American companies say they are focusing on Japan because it has an aging population with a long tradition of accumulating savings and a need for current income that cannot be met by low-yielding government bonds. REIT's, which pool money from investors to buy property, are required to return 90 percent of their taxable income to their investors, which means that they usually offer higher yields than most other types of securities. The Japanese have their own real estate investment trusts, but the industry is still relatively new, with only about 15 so-called J-REIT's in existence. The average dividend is about 3.5 to 4 percent, compared with an average of 6 percent for American companies. 'Besides that,' Jeroen Beimer, an analyst for Global Property Research, a company in Amsterdam that provides data for financial institutions, wrote in an e-mail message, 'J-REIT's primarily invest in Tokyo offices and to a lesser extent retail, so the spread of the portfolio in sector and geographical terms is limited. Another reason is that the underlying Japanese real estate market has faced tough times in the past 10 years, with declining prices and rising vacancy rates. The confidence in the market is therefore not that high.' Mark A. Grinis, a partner in Ernst & Young's real estate practice who recently moved back to New York after spending seven years in Tokyo, said that given their experiences of the past decade, Japanese investors would logically find more transparent and liquid investments in real estate attractive. 'You have a menu of options today that you didn't have in the late 1980's,' he said. The new focus on Japan is part of a growing globalization of the REIT industry. Mr. Grupe of the REIT trade group said that publicly traded real estate companies can be found in about 20 countries. 'They come in all different forms,' he said. 'Many of these countries tend to use the moniker 'REIT' to refer to that particular sector, but not all.' This trend is providing investors with a way to further diversify their real estate portfolios, said Michael J. Acton, the director of research for AEW Capital Management. 'Every city has its own cycles,' he said. Although the downturn in the United States real estate cycle in the early 1990's caused painful losses for many Japanese investors and banks, the Japanese continue to have significant holdings in this country. Mitsubishi Estate, for example, lost control of Rockefeller Center itself, but the company, through its wholly owned Rockefeller Group, still owns 7.7 million square feet of space there, including the Time & Life Building at 1271 Avenue of the Americas. Early last year, the Association of Foreign Investors in Real Estate reported that Japan was the leading source of foreign investment in American real estate, with a 26 percent share, the latest figure available. But Mr. Fetgatter cautioned that 'any statistics about foreign investment are always sketchy' since the countries do their own reporting. Sumitomo Life Realty (N.Y.) Inc., a subsidiary of the large Japanese insurance company (and a separate company from Sumitomo Trust), has a relatively new business strategy for geographically diversifying its United States portfolio in the hope of lowering its risk, said Norio Morimoto, the company president. Sumitomo Life Realty formed a partnership with Hines, the Houston-based real estate company, to invest in prime office buildings. The Japanese company subsequently sold four buildings to the fund: 499 Park Avenue, 425 Lexington Avenue and 600 Lexington Avenue in Midtown Manhattan and 1200 19th Street in Washington. About one-quarter of the investors in the Hines-Sumisei U.S. Core Office Fund, which now owns four more buildings in Houston and San Francisco, are Japanese, said Charles N. Hazen, the president. But other Japanese real estate companies are once again seeking to compete for buildings directly. Mr. Collins said that starting about six months ago, a 'handful of seasoned real estate companies' began looking for buildings priced around $100 million. Woody Heller, who heads the capital transactions group at Studley, the brokerage firm, said: 'We haven't seen any high-profile purchase, but we're all beginning to have conversations with them. Whether they will be competitive is unclear in my mind.' Mr. McMahon, the Mitsui Fudosan America executive, said his company was not looking for trophy buildings but rather for those that have potential for improvement. He acknowledged that bidding for properties in Washington and Midtown Manhattan, is challenging. 'We don't know at this point whether we're going to be successful,' he said. In the last decade, Japanese investors have become more sophisticated about market cycles, Mr. Morimoto said. 'We learned a lot from the experience,' he said. 'The best strategy is to diversify the location and timing of the investment, and by doing that we could have diversified our risk.'

Subject: Thanks for the article Emma - mom has passed From: johnny5 To: Emma Date Posted: Thurs, Apr 07, 2005 at 19:51:10 (EDT) Email Address: johnny5@yahoo.com Message: Mom got this from her financial people today on the phoenix fund - so it looks like the japanese real estate plan is dead in the water for her: RE: 1031 exchange into japanese commercial Thanks for the interesting material. I am generally against investing in real estate unless you have some ability to manage it yourself or at a minimum 'keep an eye on it.' Back in the 80's brokerage firms were selling these limited partnerships all over the country. They had real pretty brochures and all, but most people had no idea where their money was invested. The Government of course changed the tax law and basicly destroyed the wealth that was being created in these programs. Many of them were created with tax benefits as a part of the success of the programs. The Government did their thing and hurt investors again just like they have done every time. So like I said in the first sentence of this email, you have to be able to control it, see it and be able to sell it if things don't work out as expected (dump it).

Subject: Local boys stiff west palm beachers From: johnny5 To: All Date Posted: Wed, Apr 06, 2005 at 18:29:24 (EDT) Email Address: johnny5@yahoo.com Message: These guys were local good ole boys, 9 years building thier business and clients, trusted by most rich miserly greedy west palm beachers - and lost it all shorting GOOG at 160 - but japanese real estate is a better bet isn't it? If you can ensure that if everything else goes south you still have your real estate holdings - that is worth something no? http://www.palmbeachpost.com/business/content/business/epaper/2005/04/02/a2f_klfinancial_0402.html KL investors' recovery prospects bleak By David Sedore Palm Beach Post Staff Writer Saturday, April 02, 2005 It's been more than a month since KL Financial closed its doors one step ahead of the law, but the outlook for the hedge funds' 250 investors hoping to recover their money hasn't changed. In a word, it's grim. Michael Tein, the attorney working with KL Financial's court-appointed receiver, Guy Lewis, told investors Friday that about $2.5 million has been recovered from various accounts. Considering that investors lost as much as $250 million, that number is 'extremely disappointing,' Tein said. 'Right now, we are not optimistic that number will change by any degree of magnitude,' Tein said. 'You're looking at pennies on the dollar that we have been able to locate.' Tein discussed the latest updates in the case with investors via conference call and promised to keep them informed as matters progress. KL Financial, which maintained offices in West Palm Beach, Irvine, Calif., and San Francisco, was a hedge fund that offered high-risk, high-reward investments to the well-to-do — including some of Palm Beach's wealthiest. The firm shut down in late February in the wake of a Securities and Exchange Commission probe. The SEC sued KL and its principals, including Won S. Lee of Riviera Beach and John Kim of Jupiter, alleging that the operation was a fraud. Lee is now in South Korea. A third principal, John Kim's brother Yung Kim, is also named in the suit and is believed to be in South Korea. A federal grand jury is now investigating KL Financial, and Tein said the receiver's office is cooperating with the probe and providing the FBI with KL documents. Also Friday, Tein told investors that the office is hoping accountants and lawyers who worked for KL will assist in locating assets. Tein said John Kim will be held to a promise to cooperate that he made in court. Kim is to meet with the receiver's staff later this month. One investor asked Tein if he had any feeling for how much investors eventually will be able to collect. 'I don't,' Tein said. 'It's simply too early to tell. The receiver is not overly optimistic that you're going to see any considerable part of your assets back.'

Subject: Illegals contribution to SS costing in other areas From: johnny5 To: All Date Posted: Wed, Apr 06, 2005 at 17:21:39 (EDT) Email Address: johnny5@yahoo.com Message: http://www.siliconinvestor.com/readmsg.aspx?msgid=21202153 http://www.cis.org/articles/2004/fiscalexec.html#Complex Social Security and Medicare. Although we find that the net effect of illegal households is negative at the federal level, the same is not true for Social Security and Medicare. We estimate that illegal households create a combined net benefit for these two programs in excess of $7 billion a year, accounting for about 4 percent of the total annual surplus in these two programs. However, they create a net deficit of $17.4 billion in the rest of the budget, for a total net loss of $10.4 billion. Nonetheless, their impact on Social Security and Medicare is unambiguously positive. Of course, if the Social Security totalization agreement with Mexico signed in June goes into effect, allowing illegals to collect Social Security, these calculations would change. http://www.cis.org/articles/2004/fiscalcoverage.html U.S. households headed by illegal aliens used $26.3 billion in government services during 2002 but paid only $16 billion in taxes, an annual cost to taxpayers of $10 billion, says a report issued yesterday by the Center for Immigration Studies (CIS). The report, based on U.S. Census Bureau data, also said if illegal aliens now in the country — estimated at between 8 million and 12 million — received amnesty, paid taxes and used services similar to households headed by legal immigrants, the estimated net deficit would increase from $10 billion to more than $29 billion. En español: http://www.siliconinvestor.com/readmsg.aspx?msgid=21202153 http://www.cis.org/articles/2004/fiscalexec.html#Complex Seguridad Social y Seguro de enfermedad. Aunque encontramos que el efecto neto de casas ilegales es negativo en el nivel federal, igual no es verdad para la Seguridad Social y Seguro de enfermedad. Estimamos que las casas ilegales crean una ventaja neta combinada para estos dos programas en el exceso de $7 mil millones al año, contabilidad para cerca de 4 por ciento del exceso anual total en estos dos programas. Sin embargo, crean un déficit neto de $17.4 mil millones en el resto del presupuesto, para una pérdida neta total de $10.4 mil millones. No obstante, su impacto en la Seguridad Social y Seguro de enfermedad es inequívoco positivo. Por supuesto, si el acuerdo del totalization de la Seguridad Social con México firmado en junio entra efecto, permitiendo que los illegals recojan la Seguridad Social, estos cálculos cambiarían. http://www.cis.org/articles/2004/fiscalcoverage.html Las casas de ESTADOS UNIDOS dirigieron por los extranjeros ilegales utilizaron $26.3 mil millones en servicios de gobierno durante 2002 pero pagaron solamente $16 mil millones en impuestos, un coste anual a los contribuyentes de $10 mil millones, dicen un informe publicado ayer por el centro para los estudios de la inmigración (CIS). El informe, basado en los datos de la oficina de censo de ESTADOS UNIDOS, también dichos si los extranjeros ilegales ahora en el país - estimado en entre 8 millón de y 12 millones - amnistía recibida, los impuestos pagados y los servicios usados similares a las casas dirigidas por los inmigrantes legales, el déficit neto estimado aumentarían a partir de $10 mil millones a más de $29 mil millones.

Subject: Reality in the Creation of Fiction From: Emma To: All Date Posted: Wed, Apr 06, 2005 at 12:44:00 (EDT) Email Address: Not Provided Message: February 11, 1962 http://www.nytimes.com/books/97/05/25/reviews/bellow-reality.html February 11, 1962 A Novelist-Critic Discusses the Role of Reality in the Creation of Fiction By SAUL BELLOW I have read somewhere that in the early days of the movies a miner in Alaska rushed at the screen to batter down the villain with his shovel. Probably he was drunk, but his action was significant nevertheless. This man had considered it a practical thing to travel thousands of miles into a frozen wilderness to dig for buried treasure. Money, land, furs, jewels, champagne, cigars, silk hats he must have accepted as legitimate objects of the imagination. Yet there was no place in his mind for this new sort of transaction. It must have seemed to him that if the fellow had taken the trouble to tie the kicking heroine to the tracks, he must mean business. His imagination could only conceive of real objects. Thus, with the self-same shovel he dug for gold and swung at shadows. Few people make this error in so primitive a form, but almost no one is altogether free from it. We understand, of course, that art does not copy experience but merely borrows it for its own peculiar purposes. Americans however do not find it always simple to maintain the distinction. For us the wonder of life is bound up with the literal fact, and our greatest ingenuity is devoted to the real; and this gives reality itself magical and even sacred properties and makes American realism very different from the European sort. With us the interest of the reader and often of the writer, too, is always escaping toward the fact. The non-factual imagination also returns to the fact. Ask a woman to describe her son, and she is likely to tell you with pride that he is 6 feet 2 or 3 inches and weighs 220 pounds, that his shoes are size 14 and that he eats four eggs at breakfast and two pounds of steak at a sitting. Her love in short, frequently takes a statistical form. Years ago, in Chicago, I used to listen to a Negro virtuoso, Facts-and-Figures Taylor, who entertained shouting crowds in Washington Park by reciting the statistics he had memorized in the Public Library. “You want to know what the steel industry exported in nineteen and twenty-one? You listen to this now.” “You tell ‘em, Facts-and-Figures. Give ‘em hell!” People who are not particularly friendly to art may be reconciled to it by factual interests, by descriptions of the stretching or priming of the canvas, the method of applying the paints or the dollar value of the picture. One thinks more kindly of a painting valued at $10,000, the original factory colors dripped from a six-inch brush, than of one which has not applied to the prevailing form of the imagination for consideration. The theatregoer may be pleased to learn that behind the living room represented on the stage are fully furnished bathrooms or kitchens that will never be seen but are there to give a reassuring sense of completeness of closure. The imitation will be absolutely genuine. Because we have a strong taste for the solid background, for documentation, for accuracy, for likeness, we are often confused about the borders between art and life, between social history and fiction, between gossip and satire, between the journalist’s news and the artist’s discovery. The demands, editorial and public, for certified realities in fiction sometimes appear barbarous to the writer. Why this terrible insistence on factual accuracy? “Our readers will want to know,” an editor will sometimes say, “whether your information is correct.” The research department will then make inquiries. How many stories does the Ansonia Hotel really have; and can one see its television antennae from the corner of West End Avenue and Seventy-second Street? What do drugstores charge for Librium? What sort of mustard is used at Nedick’s? Is it squeezed from a plastic bottle or applied with a wooden spoon? These cranky questions will be asked by readers, compulsively. Publishers know they must expect their errors to be detected. They will hear not only from the lunatic fringe and from pedants but from specialists, from scholars, from people with experience “in the field,” from protective organizations and public relations agencies, from people who have taken upon themselves the protection of the purity of facts. Archaeologists and historians are consulted by movie producers in the making of Roman spectaculars. As long as the chariots are faithful copies, the fire real Greek fire, it seems to make little difference that the dialogue makes you clutch your head, that the religious theme is trumped up with holy music and cunning lights. It presently becomes clear that the protagonist is not Ben-Hur, not Spartacus, but Knowhow Art based on simple illusion is art in one of its cruder forms, and it is this that Hollywood with its technical skills has brought to perfection. The realistic method made it possible to write with seriousness and dignity about the ordinary, common situations of life. In Balzac and Flaubert and the great Russian masters the realistic externals were intended to lead inward. I suppose one might say that now the two elements, the inward and the external, have come apart. In what we call the novel of sensibility the intent of the writer is to pull us into an all- sufficient consciousness which he, the writer, governs absolutely. In the realistic novel today the writer is satisfied with an art of externals. Either he assumes that by describing a man’s shoes he has told us all that we need to know about his soul, or he is more interested in the shoes than in the soul. Literalists who write to the editor are rather odd and amusing people who do not need to be taken too seriously, but the attitude of the writer himself toward externals is a serious matter. The facts may excite a writer deeply, and in America we have a poetry of fact--the details of labor in Walt Whitman, the knowledge of navigation in Mark Twain, the descriptions of process in Hemingway’s fishing stories. But in every case it is the writer’s excitement that counts. Without this excitement the facts are no more interesting than they would be in a manual of river navigation or a Sears, Roebuck catalogue. What is happening now is that the intrinsic excitement of the facts themselves has become intense, and the literary imagination must rival the power of the real. With us this rarely happens. The American desire for the real has created a journalistic sort of novel which has a thing excitement, a glamour of process; it specializes in information. It resembles the naturalistic novel of Zola and the social novel of Dreiser, but is without the theoretical interests of the first and is unlike the second in that it has no concern with justice and no view of fate. It merely satisfies the readers’ demand for knowledge. From this standpoint it may sometimes be called an improving or moral sort of book. However, it seldom has much independent human content, and it is more akin to popularized science or history than to the fiction of Balzac or Chekhov. It is not actively challenged by the “novel of sensibility.” The living heirs of Henry James and Virginia Woolf do not do very well, and I’m afraid that they largely deserve their neglect. They have receded altogether too far from externals, from observation, in their desire for mental independence and free sensibility. They give us very little information; and after we have visited them in their tree houses once or twice they lose their charm. The novel in America has taken two forms, neither satisfactory. Those writers who wish to meet the demand for information have perhaps been successful as social historians, but they have neglected the higher forms of the imagination. The novel of sensibility has failed to represent society and has become totally uninteresting. It seems hard for the American people to believe that anything can be more exciting than the times themselves and our common life. These modern facts perhaps have thrust imagined forms into the shadow. We are staggeringly rich in facts, in things, and perhaps like the nouveau riche of other ages we want our wealth faithfully reproduced by the artist. By now it is misleading to speak of the facts as if they were soluble, washable, disposable, knowable. The facts themselves are not what they once were and perhaps present themselves to the imagination of the artist in some new way. A. J. Liebling, in an uncommonly good article on Stephen Crane (The New Yorker, Aug. 5, 1961), writes, “We have seen in our time that the best writers as they mature become journalists--Sartre, Camus, Mauriac, Hemingway.” Are we to suppose therefore that the artistic imagination at its highest development must be drawn back into the world and its realities? Is the challenge of journalism higher than that of art itself in our time? Some of our novelists can scarcely help being better fact-bringers than artists. They are turning ground that has never been turned before--the Army, the laboratory, the modern corporation, the anarchic sexual life of “free spirits”: such phenomena in the raw state are not quickly assimilated into art. Moreover, it’s hard for writers to get on with their work if they are convinced that they owe a concrete debt to experience and cannot allow themselves the privilege of ranging freely through social classes and professional specialties. A certain pride in their own experience, perhaps a sense of the property rights of others in their experience, holds them back. The novelist, convinced that the novel is the result of his passionate will to suppose that he can know everything about the life of another human being, finds that he must get through the obstacles of the literal to come at his subject. Thus, he is prevented from doing the essential thing. Hard knowledge is demanded of him; to acquire this hard knowledge, he must at least temporarily transform himself into some sort of specialist. How then is the novelist to write about such questions as power--power which he has never experienced? Evidently he is asked to be reliable about the lower ranges of fact and is not expected to concern himself with the upper. He may be realistic but not about the things that matter, the arrangements that shape our destiny. In this smaller way to stick to the facts limits him to minor schemes of social history, to satire, to muckraking and leveling, or to the penny psychology of private worlds. To this sort of “objectivity” writers give all they’ve got. Strong on experience, they are much, much less strong on the truth. The greatest of the realists always believed that they owed a very special debt to truth. “The hero of my tale, whom I love with all the strength of my soul, whom I have tried to set forth in all his beauty, and who has always been, is, and always will be the most beautiful, is--the truth.” So wrote Tolstoy at the conclusion of “Sevastopol in May.” And Dostoevsky commenting on “Anna Karenina” tells us that he found the book at times very monotonous and “confined to a certain caste only” and that as long as it was merely a description of life in society it made no great claim to any deeper interest. Later, he says, “in the very center of that insolent and petty life there appeared a great and eternal living truth, at once illuminating everything. These petty, insignificant and deceitful beings suddenly became genuine and truthful people worthy of being called men.” That is, after all, what the novelist wants, isn’t it?

Subject: Incompetencia o mentira From: Pancho Villa To: All Date Posted: Wed, Apr 06, 2005 at 11:39:18 (EDT) Email Address: nma@hotmail.com Message: Incompetencia o mentira ¿QuÉ ES peor, la incompetencia o la mentira? Cuando se trata de un Gobierno, como el de Bush, que planteó una guerra preventiva contra Irak por unas armas de destrucción masiva que no existían, lo primero resulta casi más preocupante. Es lo que ha apuntado la comisión relativamente independiente que ha estudiado estos fallos de los servicios de inteligencia con una conclusión meridiana: estaban 'completamente equivocados' en casi todos sus juicios sobre el arsenal químico, bacteriológico y nuclear de Sadam Husein. Un año de trabajo ha producido escasos resultados por parte de ese órgano presidido por un juez retirado y un ex senador, incluidas 74 recomendaciones para mejorar la eficacia de los servicios de información. La Comisión del 11 -S ya vio fallos similares e hizo una labor mucho más meritoria. A falta del veredicto de la Comisión de Inteligencia del Senado, este último intento no ha encontrado manipulación o presiones políticas para que los servicios de inteligencia produjeran informes en la dirección que quería la Administración para justificar la invasión de Irak. Sin embargo, sí apunta que los servicios 'vendían' la información que a su juicio iba a interesar 'a sus clientes, o al menos a su cliente principal' (el presidente Bush). Ante lo que es, como poco, uno de los mayores fiascos de estos servicios en su historia, nadie asume la responsabilidad. El entonces director de la CÍA, George Tenet, ya dimitió en su día y el presidente, otorgó la Medalla Presidencial de la Libertad. Todos parecen lavarse las manos.(I cannot seem to lose the stains when I wash my hands?) Cabe preguntarse si esta incompetencia se ha mantenido, ahora que desde Washington se señala con el dedo a Irán y a Corea del Norte por sus programas de armas nucleares. La inteligencia estadounidense tardará en recuperar la credibilidad perdida en su país y en el resto del mundo. Si es que no se demuestra un día, en unos nuevos papeles del Pentágono, que algunos responsables políticos hicieron algo más que dejarse engañar por los servicios. Pues nada excluye que a la incompetencia confesa se sumara la mentira interesada. EL Pais, martes 5 de abril 2005

Subject: Am I the only Pkarchiver that cant read spanish? From: johnny5 To: Pancho Villa Date Posted: Wed, Apr 06, 2005 at 17:13:45 (EDT) Email Address: johnny5@yahoo.com Message: Pancho perhaps I have not been here long enough but what is with this posting of spanish articles that I cannot read? My mexican grandfather is probably rolling in his grave, but translation takes time and there is so little it seems. If you are trying to make the spanish community feel welcome I applaud your efforts to bring a new ethic group to the wealth of our community - however the St Pete times already beat you to the punch - hehe: http://www.siliconinvestor.com/readmsg.aspx?msgid=21197311 South Florida went from English only to Spanish only in less than 15 years. What happened? http://www.siliconinvestor.com/readmsg.aspx?msgid=21197370 What happened? Here is a good long read from the St Pete times on the influx of illegals when we let culture come in too fast to be absorbed quickly. You can read it in english or espanol - hehe! http://www.stpetetimes.com/2004/webspecials04/francisco/ Editor’s note You are reading history. This is the first story also published in Spanish by the St. Petersburg Times. In this special report, we examine Clear-water’s immigrant Mexican community, how and why it grew to nearly 20,000 and what changes have occurred both here in Clearwater and in Hidalgo. As we prepared this story, we knew it would be important for the Spanish speaking community to have the opportunity to read it. So we are publishing this project in both English and in Spanish. Last year I went to mexico to get a feel for the invaders - I did not like my trip for the most part and did not get a sense of brotherly love from these people when in thier native land. http://world.altavista.com/tr In English: Incompetencia or lie What IS worse, the incompetencia or the lie? When one is a Government, like the one of Bush, that raised a preventive war against Iraq by arms of massive destruction which they did not exist, first it is almost more worrisome. It is what it has pointed the relatively independent commission that has studied these failures of the intelligence services with a dazzling conclusion: they were ' completely equivocados' in almost all its judgments on the chemical, bacteriological and nuclear arsenal of Sadam Husein. A year of work has produced little results on the part of that organ presided over by a distant judge and an ex- senator, including 74 recommendations to improve the effectiveness of the information services. The Commission of the 11 - S already saw similar failures and made a work much more commendable. To lack of the verdict of the Commission of Intelligence of the Senate, this last attempt has not found political manipulation or pressures so that the intelligence services produced information in the direction that loved the Administration to justify the invasion of Iraq. Nevertheless, yes it aims that the services ' vendían' the information that in his opinion was going to interest ' its clients, or at least at his client principal' (president Bush). Before which it is, like little, one of the greater fiascos of these services in its history, nobody assumes the responsibility. The then director of BACKS WATER it, George Tenet, already resigned in his day and the president, granted the Presidential Medal of the Freedom. All seem to wash manos.(I cannot seem to lose the stains when I wash my hands) It is possible to ask itself if this incompetencia has stayed, now that from Washington is indicated with the finger to Iran and Korea of the North by his programs of nuclear weapons. American intelligence will take in recovering the lost credibility in its country and the rest of the world. If it is that a day is not demonstrated, in new papers of the Pentagon, that some political people in charge did something more than to let itself deceive by the services. Then nothing excludes that to the confesa incompetencia the interested lie was added. The Pais, Tuesday 5 of April 2005

Subject: Re: S...! From: Pancho Villa To: johnny5 Date Posted: Wed, Apr 06, 2005 at 17:32:16 (EDT) Email Address: nma@hotmail.com Message: (Shit!Clever Johnny5 unveiled my plan)Hat off to you dear Johnny5 ;)hehe

Subject: The Cisco Kid From: johnny5 To: Pancho Villa Date Posted: Wed, Apr 06, 2005 at 17:59:54 (EDT) Email Address: johnny5@yahoo.com Message: and Zorro were always favorites of mine and I seem to eat at taco bell almost daily, my grandfathers genes expressing themselves? Hehe - I just wish the mexicans in walmart would not feel so intimidated to talk to me while we fight over the ramen noodles and picante sauce. I was surprised to find out catherine zeta jones was Welsh and not latin http://www.visitwales.com/ Notice they have no spanish translation of thier website even though thier native daughter is often represented as such in the popular movies.

Subject: Re: The Cisco Kid From: Setanta To: johnny5 Date Posted: Thurs, Apr 07, 2005 at 09:22:34 (EDT) Email Address: Not Provided Message: isn't she of a welsh father and argentinian mother (or maybe vice versa!) the welsh and the spanish have a lot in common. they are both dark and swarthy (a slight generalisation i must agree!) and both use the ll in their language i.e. llueve for rain in spanish, llacrwydd for slackness in welsh. i'll be in cardiff in the next few weeks to a) watch the British and Irish Lions play Argentina in rugby before the Lions tour to New Zealand b) play against the Cardiff and Bristol offices in rugby. c) have one or two alcoholic beverages in line with the Lambay Rules for Rugby Tours.

Subject: Greenspan: beware huge mortgage risk From: Pancho Villa To: All Date Posted: Wed, Apr 06, 2005 at 11:08:43 (EDT) Email Address: nma@hotmail.com Message: Greenspan: beware huge mortgage risk Fed chairman says oversight alone won't reduce financial risks of government-sponsored enterprises. April 6, 2005: 10:08 AM EDT WASHINGTON (Reuters) - Federal Reserve Chairman Alan Greenspan Wednesday urged Congress to curb the rapid growth of Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac, saying this was vital to cut the risks the mortgage finance giants pose to the nation's financial system. Fannie Mae and its sister government-sponsored housing enterprise, Freddie Mac, do not lend directly to home buyers. Instead, they buy mortgages from lenders and repackage them as securities for sale to investors. They also hold some mortgages in their own portfolios. The companies together account for nearly half of total residential mortgage debt outstanding, with portfolios of some $1.5 trillion. Greenspan previously has proposed those portfolios be cut to $200 billion for each company. Financial woes at the two companies -- whose enormously complex accounting has been under fire from regulators -- could put huge pressure on the mortgage market. Fannie and Freddie already face the possibility of tougher supervision. Congress is due to weigh legislation that could give their regulator more power over the companies, including authority to approve any new products or programs they want to launch. But in his testimony prepared for the Senate Banking Committee, Greenspan said that stiffer regulation alone was not enough to ease -- and could actually worsen -- the risks the two government-sponsored enterprises (GSEs) pose. 'World-class regulation, by itself, may not be sufficient and, indeed, might even worsen the potential for systemic risk if market participants inferred from such regulation that the government would be more likely to back GSE debt in the event of financial stress,' Greenspan said. 'This is the heart of a dilemma in designing regulation for GSEs.' But he proposed a solution. 'We at the Federal Reserve believe this dilemma would be resolved by placing limits on the GSEs' portfolios of assets, perhaps as a share of single-family home mortgages outstanding or some other variation of such a ratio,' the Fed chief said. Fannie Mae ousted its long-time CEO Franklin Raines last December after regulators found accounting problems at the giant mortgage company. Shares of Fannie Mae (up $1.03 to $53.31, Research) and Freddie Mac (up $0.73 to $62.49, Research) both rose in morning New York Stock trading. http://money.cnn.com/2005/04/06/news/economy/fed_gse.reut/index.htm

Subject: Birth, Death and That Stuff in Between From: Emma To: All Date Posted: Wed, Apr 06, 2005 at 10:52:57 (EDT) Email Address: Not Provided Message: http://www.nytimes.com/books/00/10/15/specials/bellow-connections.html May 13, 2000 Saul Bellow on Birth, Death and All That Stuff in Between By EDWARD ROTHSTEIN Sitting in the office that the art critic Harold Rosenberg once used (his poster of a beautiful Nautilus shell still hangs there), Saul Bellow is leaning back slightly, fingertips touching, pausing before beginning to speak. For a listener whose education was shaped in part by Augie March and Henderson and Mr. Sammler, Mr. Bellow's meditations can seem a creation of his characters' pungent imaginations. Now his surgically shaped phrases and dreamlike imagery make it sound as if he were reciting one of Herzog's letters to the famous dead. Tolstoy is the recipient of this one, or perhaps Mr. Bellow is addressing himself. In the office, whose fading light comes from the small Gothic leaded windows of the University of Chicago, Mr. Bellow asks what is to be made of Ivan Ilych's death. That was Tolstoy's project in his famous short story: to reveal how death, with all its ruthlessness, strips away the creaturely surface of life, as vain pleasures and social climbings give way to final things. But what, then, is a novelist to do? If material life is an illusion and a distraction, it is also where the writer dwells. The surface cannot be avoided; its sensuous transience is of the essence. The novelist honors it with meticulous description, straining to take note of the rush of human sensations. So doesn't the world-dwelling novelist resist the otherworldly insistence of the religious believer? Bellow's meditations returned to me while reading his new novel, ''Ravelstein,'' and not just because I was acquainted with the model for Ravelstein; he is, of course, the political philosopher Allan Bloom, who also taught seminars with Mr. Bellow in Chicago. Ivan Ilych is invoked in ''Ravelstein'' as well, for this too is a portrait of a man headed toward death. Ravelstein is a version of Ilych without the hypocrisy, possessing an almost rabid sensuality, a devotion to luxury, unsated erotic longings and nervously trembling fingers. Ravelstein relishes sensation and desire. ''A human soul devoid of longing,'' he suggests, ''was a soul deformed, deprived of its highest good, sick unto death.'' But what happens to these material tastes as death steals away his strength and mind? Ravelstein believes that ''nothing is more bourgeois than the fear of death'' and that nothing much exists after death. So the essence of things is to be found only in the material world, which, in Ravelstein's view, can lead to philosophic knowledge as well as to sensual pleasure. It is an answer that might have pleased Tolstoy the novelist but dismayed Tolstoy the Christian believer. Chick, the chronicler of Ravelstein's death, also relishes the texture of the material world, believing, in fact, that ''the heart of things is shown in the surface of those things.'' Chick is devoted to pictorial detail. Death, he says, is when the pictures come to an end, though he eventually wonders if there may be something to see after life's images fade. Such themes have often preoccupied Mr. Bellow, but Augie March, Henderson and Herzog test their desires against the wide world, wrestling against its bounds. Their ambition is American, their tragic sense, Jewish. Here possibilities have shrunk as the problems have grown: the world is the size of a man's soul. The desires are as great, but the natural limits greater. If death can strip away all surfaces and we are fated to live in death's shadow, then by what guidelines are we to live? How are we to shape our lives? ''The soul of another is a dark forest,'' says Ravelstein. There was a time when Mr. Bellow was called (along with Philip Roth and Bernard Malamud) an ''American Jewish novelist,'' a label he mocked as resembling a haberdashery, the writers as the Hart, Schaffner & Marx of literature. But the label also identified a temperament: the Jewish novelists of the 1950's and 60's were new inheritors of the American estate, intoxicated with its personalities and possibilities. Recently Mr. Roth was asked whether it was necessary for the main character of his 1997 novel ''American Pastoral,'' Swede Levov, to be Jewish. ''It was for me,'' he responded. It is through knowledge of the particular that the universal is perceived. But now, in this Bellow novel, and in Mr. Roth's new novel, ''The Human Stain,'' the particular is itself unreliable. Mr. Bellow wonders about the stability of the material world. Mr. Roth wonders about the stability of character and identity. Mr. Roth's alter mind, Nathan Zuckerman, like Mr. Bellow's Chick, is ailing and aging, trying to comprehend the life of a friend, Coleman Silk, after being shaken by his death.'' Mr. Roth's political canvas is large -- racial identity, the Vietnam War, political correctness -- but the focus is concentrated. How can a soul's dark forests be illuminated? Mr. Roth never forgets our animal being, the sensual habits and desires that are cloaked by our public selves. Still, what do we know of another or of ourselves? There is, of course, the public persona we put forward. (''Everyone Knows'' is the title of the first chapter.) But as Zuckerman learned in ''American Pastoral,'' interpreting appearances is an impossible task. He will always get it wrong, always misinterpret. However much he may be devoted to understanding the human, reality is always ready to ''slip a punch,'' showing that what was taken for surety is little more than illusion. ''The entanglement with life'' is never untangled. Silk presented himself as Jewish; but he was actually black. ''I don't know what to think about anything,'' Nathan concludes. Nothing is known because nothing can be. It is only in death, when all appearances are stripped away, that something is disclosed. It is after Levov's death that Nathan begins to learn the truth; it is after Silk's death that Nathan learns his secrets. Otherwise, appearances and identities are all we have. Mr. Bellow sees them as a code to be read; Mr. Roth sees them as a code to be misread. And both writers, in these late American Jewish novels, treat their fragile existence with melancholic tenderness.

Subject: Saul Bellow, Poet of Urban America's Men From: Emma To: All Date Posted: Wed, Apr 06, 2005 at 10:29:59 (EDT) Email Address: Not Provided Message: http://www.nytimes.com/2005/04/07/books/05appr.html Saul Bellow, Poet of Urban America's Dangling Men By MICHIKO KAKUTANI His voice was instantly recognizable and inimitably his own: at once highbrow and streetwise, lofty and intimate - a voice equally at home ruminating on the great social and political ideas of the day, and chronicling the 'daily monkeyshines' of 'the cheapies, the stingies, the hypochondriacs, the family bores, humanoids' and bar-stool comedians who populate his cacophonous world. Indeed, Saul Bellow managed brilliantly, in the words of Philip Roth, 'to close the gap between Thomas Mann and Damon Runyon.' In doing so, he captured a huge slice of American life: the human comedy as played out - often in that raucous, quintessentially American city of Chicago - in the backrooms, bedrooms, boardrooms and barrooms of the second half of the 20th century. Mr. Bellow once told a reporter that 'for many years, Mozart was a kind of idol to me - this rapturous singing for me that's always on the edge of sadness and melancholy and disappointment and heartbreak, but always ready for an outburst of the most delicious music.' And his own writing embraced the exuberant and the depressive, the rapturous and the dispiriting. There were extroverted, ebullient performances like 'The Adventures of Augie March' (1953) and 'Henderson the Rain King' (1959), which end with their heroes taking giant steps toward an affirmation of their lives, and crotchety, more claustrophobic volumes like 'Seize the Day' (1956) and 'Mr. Sammler's Planet' (1970), infused with gripes and diatribes and desperate pleas for help. The novels, however, rarely stayed put on one side of the fence or the other: a dark preoccupation with mortality threaded its way through the comedy of 'Humboldt's Gift' (1975), and the best-selling 'Herzog' (1964) managed to be tragic and comic, cerebral and earthy, meditative and manic all at the same time. These novels were less plot-driven works than portraits of men trying to figure out their place in the world, what it means, as Mr. Bellow wrote in 'Herzog': 'to be a man. In a city. In a century. In transition. In a mass. Transformed by science. Under organized power. Subject to tremendous controls. In a condition caused by mechanization. After the late failure of radical hopes.' Cutting back and forth in time, while draping every manner of philosophical digression upon the armature of his characters' lives, Mr. Bellow conjured both the busy mental life of his heroes - men who live, quite willfully, in their heads - and their daily, creaturely existence, their hectic encounters with tempestuous women, fast-talking pitchmen, professional jokesters, bumblers, bureaucrats and poseurs. In many of the novels, his heroes are besieged by an importunate alter ego, someone eager to goad them out of their spiritual ruts, push them out into the rough-and-tumble world. Intellectuals, men deep in 'the profundity game,' find themselves facing off against street-smart thugs and business smoothies; Europeans Jews, burdened with a tragic sense of history, meet their American brethren, who have ardently embraced their country's ethos of instant gratification. These Bellovian men, like their creator, tend to be first-class 'noticers' - hungry observers of the world around them. And they tend to be overwhelmed by the sheer muchness of that world, with its dizzying material and sexual temptations; its calamities and con games; its capacity to continually shock, astonish and confound. Their struggle, chronicled in novel after novel, is to balance the equation between immersion in that 'moronic inferno' and retreat into the pristine realm of the self: the first proffering the dangers of shallowness and distraction; the second, the perils of solipsism and isolation. Like Charlie Citrine in 'Humboldt's Gift,' Mr. Bellow's dangling men suspect that 'all this human nonsense' in the real world 'keeps us from the large truth.' But many, like Harry Trellman in 'The Actual,' also realize that their judgmental intellects can cut them off from love and from humanity. For all the awards Mr. Bellow received in the course of his career, he saw himself as going against the mainstream of contemporary literature, skeptical of the willful aestheticism and postmodern pyrotechnics that had become increasingly fashionable, and equally dismissive of the trendy nihilism evinced by writers he called 'the wastelanders,' those who believe, in his words, that it is 'enlightened to expose, to disenchant, to hate and to experience disgust.' He believed that literature should hew to one of its original purposes - the raising of moral questions - and his own writing remained firmly indebted to the works he had studied as a boy: the Old Testament, Shakespeare's plays and the great 19th-century Russian novels. In his most powerful work, Mr. Bellow was able to draw from many literary traditions - the European existentialists, the Russian moralists and brawny, red-blooded Americans like Melville and Dreiser - to create his own utterly distinctive fictional world. Many of his earlier fictions feature older characters, looking back on the receding vistas of their lives, and this tendency became even more pronounced later on: reminiscence becomes a modus operandi for his people, a means of self-inventory and sometimes a mea culpa. In recent books like 'Ravelstein' (2000) and 'The Actual' (1997), an awareness of mortality, that perennial preoccupation of the Bellovian hero, also moved to the forefront, an awareness, as the years scroll by, that one is entering the final stretch, 'a period of 'mature' acceptance, reconciliation, openhandedness, general amnesty.'

Subject: Saul Bellow, Poet of Urban America's Men From: Emma To: All Date Posted: Wed, Apr 06, 2005 at 10:29:35 (EDT) Email Address: Not Provided Message: http://www.nytimes.com/2005/04/07/books/05appr.html Saul Bellow, Poet of Urban America's Dangling Men By MICHIKO KAKUTANI His voice was instantly recognizable and inimitably his own: at once highbrow and streetwise, lofty and intimate - a voice equally at home ruminating on the great social and political ideas of the day, and chronicling the 'daily monkeyshines' of 'the cheapies, the stingies, the hypochondriacs, the family bores, humanoids' and bar-stool comedians who populate his cacophonous world. Indeed, Saul Bellow managed brilliantly, in the words of Philip Roth, 'to close the gap between Thomas Mann and Damon Runyon.' In doing so, he captured a huge slice of American life: the human comedy as played out - often in that raucous, quintessentially American city of Chicago - in the backrooms, bedrooms, boardrooms and barrooms of the second half of the 20th century. Mr. Bellow once told a reporter that 'for many years, Mozart was a kind of idol to me - this rapturous singing for me that's always on the edge of sadness and melancholy and disappointment and heartbreak, but always ready for an outburst of the most delicious music.' And his own writing embraced the exuberant and the depressive, the rapturous and the dispiriting. There were extroverted, ebullient performances like 'The Adventures of Augie March' (1953) and 'Henderson the Rain King' (1959), which end with their heroes taking giant steps toward an affirmation of their lives, and crotchety, more claustrophobic volumes like 'Seize the Day' (1956) and 'Mr. Sammler's Planet' (1970), infused with gripes and diatribes and desperate pleas for help. The novels, however, rarely stayed put on one side of the fence or the other: a dark preoccupation with mortality threaded its way through the comedy of 'Humboldt's Gift' (1975), and the best-selling 'Herzog' (1964) managed to be tragic and comic, cerebral and earthy, meditative and manic all at the same time. These novels were less plot-driven works than portraits of men trying to figure out their place in the world, what it means, as Mr. Bellow wrote in 'Herzog': 'to be a man. In a city. In a century. In transition. In a mass. Transformed by science. Under organized power. Subject to tremendous controls. In a condition caused by mechanization. After the late failure of radical hopes.' Cutting back and forth in time, while draping every manner of philosophical digression upon the armature of his characters' lives, Mr. Bellow conjured both the busy mental life of his heroes - men who live, quite willfully, in their heads - and their daily, creaturely existence, their hectic encounters with tempestuous women, fast-talking pitchmen, professional jokesters, bumblers, bureaucrats and poseurs. In many of the novels, his heroes are besieged by an importunate alter ego, someone eager to goad them out of their spiritual ruts, push them out into the rough-and-tumble world. Intellectuals, men deep in 'the profundity game,' find themselves facing off against street-smart thugs and business smoothies; Europeans Jews, burdened with a tragic sense of history, meet their American brethren, who have ardently embraced their country's ethos of instant gratification. These Bellovian men, like their creator, tend to be first-class 'noticers' - hungry observers of the world around them. And they tend to be overwhelmed by the sheer muchness of that world, with its dizzying material and sexual temptations; its calamities and con games; its capacity to continually shock, astonish and confound. Their struggle, chronicled in novel after novel, is to balance the equation between immersion in that 'moronic inferno' and retreat into the pristine realm of the self: the first proffering the dangers of shallowness and distraction; the second, the perils of solipsism and isolation. Like Charlie Citrine in 'Humboldt's Gift,' Mr. Bellow's dangling men suspect that 'all this human nonsense' in the real world 'keeps us from the large truth.' But many, like Harry Trellman in 'The Actual,' also realize that their judgmental intellects can cut them off from love and from humanity. For all the awards Mr. Bellow received in the course of his career, he saw himself as going against the mainstream of contemporary literature, skeptical of the willful aestheticism and postmodern pyrotechnics that had become increasingly fashionable, and equally dismissive of the trendy nihilism evinced by writers he called 'the wastelanders,' those who believe, in his words, that it is 'enlightened to expose, to disenchant, to hate and to experience disgust.' He believed that literature should hew to one of its original purposes - the raising of moral questions - and his own writing remained firmly indebted to the works he had studied as a boy: the Old Testament, Shakespeare's plays and the great 19th-century Russian novels. In his most powerful work, Mr. Bellow was able to draw from many literary traditions - the European existentialists, the Russian moralists and brawny, red-blooded Americans like Melville and Dreiser - to create his own utterly distinctive fictional world. Many of his earlier fictions feature older characters, looking back on the receding vistas of their lives, and this tendency became even more pronounced later on: reminiscence becomes a modus operandi for his people, a means of self-inventory and sometimes a mea culpa. In recent books like 'Ravelstein' (2000) and 'The Actual' (1997), an awareness of mortality, that perennial preoccupation of the Bellovian hero, also moved to the forefront, an awareness, as the years scroll by, that one is entering the final stretch, 'a period of 'mature' acceptance, reconciliation, openhandedness, general amnesty.'

Subject: Sorry From: Emma To: Emma Date Posted: Wed, Apr 06, 2005 at 10:30:49 (EDT) Email Address: Not Provided Message: Sorry for the double post.

Subject: Vangaurd didn't make the the top 10 - 10 yr list From: johnny5 To: All Date Posted: Wed, Apr 06, 2005 at 09:02:58 (EDT) Email Address: johnny5@yahoo.com Message: Who are these bridgeway and blackrock companies I have never heard of? http://www.usatoday.com/money/perfi/funds/2005-04-06-10yr-cht.htm 10 years' best, worst performers Winners Fund (type, see glossary) Total return1 10 yrs. 1st qtr. Bridgeway Ultra-Sm Co (SG) 829% -5.5% Calamos Growth A (XG) 653% -5.8% Bridgeway Aggr Inv 1 (XG) 650% 0.6% Alpine Eq US RE Y (RE) 582% 3.2% Bruce Fund (FX) 574% -4.2% BlackRock Aurora Inst (SC) 570% -3.3% Meridian Value Fund (MC) 550% -1.8% BlackRock Aurora IA (SC) 549% -3.3% BlackRock Gl Res IA (NR) 544% 14.3% CGM Tr Realty Fund (RE) 539% 0.6% Alpine Eq US RE B (RE) 520% 2.9% Vanguard Hlth Care Inv (H) 468% -0.1% Legg Mason Value Tr Inst (LC) 438% -5.7% Fidelity Sel Brokerage (FS) 423% -5.7% Managers I Fr Micro-Cp (SG) 413% -10.4% Wasatch Core Growth (SC) 406% -4.1% Baron Growth (SG) 401% 1.4% Keeley Small Cap Value (SC) 396% 0.2% Muhlenkamp Fund (XV) 395% -2.6% Fidelity Lw-Prcd Stk (MV) 394% -1.0% Fidelity New Millennium (XG) 394% -4.9% AIM Energy Inv (NR) 390% 17.8% DFA US Small Value II (SV) 387% -2.8% Neuberger Genesis Inv (SG) 383% 2.8% Salomon Bros Capital O (XV) 383% -0.6% DFA US Small Cap Value (SV) 382% -2.9% Fidelity Sel Enrgy Ser (NR) 381% 15.1% FPA Capital (MV) 381% 3.3% Vanguard Energy Inv (NR) 376% 14.5% Fidelity Sel Insurance (FS) 375% -3.1% Nich-App Inst I GO I 372% 3.6% Alger Inst MidCap Gr I (MG) 371% -2.6% Evergreen Special Vl A (SV) 371% 0.4% Eaton Vance Ww H{lcub}S{rcub}A (H) 369% -10.0% Weitz Value (XC) 369% -4.1% Morg Stan Inst US RE A (RE) 368% -5.6% H&W Small Cap Value I (SV) 366% -0.0% Janus Sm Cap Val Inst (SC) 366% -0.2% Weitz Partners Value (XC) 364% -3.9% Fidelity Exprt Mltnatl (XC) 363% -1.5% Mairs & Power Growth (XC) 362% -2.4% Fidelity Sel Defense (S) 361% 5.0% Legg Mason Spec Inv Inst (XC) 361% -5.2% Eaton Vance Grtr Ch C (CH) 6% 0.4% Centurion Mkt Neutrl C (FX) 5% 6.5% Putnam OTC Emerg Gro A (MG) 3% -2.9% Van Eck Intl Gold A (AU) 2% -4.6% Gabelli Mthrs Fund AAA (SE) 1% 0.2% J Hancock Intl A 1% -0.4% Seligman Gl Intl Gr A 1% -7.7% Losers Frontier Equity Fund (SC) -96% -11.1% American Heritage Fund (SE) -87% -16.7% Ameritor Investment (MC) -83% -27.3% Apex Mid Cap Gro (SG) -73% -27.9% US Glbl Gold Shares (AU) -62% -4.5% Comstock Cap Val A (SE) -60% -1.1% American Heritage Growth (XC) -51% -14.3% Rydex Ursa Fund Inv (SE) -50% 2.8% Commonwealth Japan (JA) -47% -1.9% American Growth D (LC) -41% -6.8% Midas Fund (AU) -39% -5.6% Ameritor Security Tr 1 (SC) -36% -11.4% Rydex Juno Fund Inv (FX) -35% -1.3% AllianBer All-Asia A (PC) -27% -2.3% DFA Japan Small Company (JA) -22% 7.6% Rydex Precious Metls Inv (AU) -18% -6.6% Morg Stan Pac Gro B (PC) -16% -0.9% Julius Baer Global Eq A -14% -1.3% Goldman Asia Gr A (XJ) -9% 1.4% Scudder Pac Optys S (XJ) -8% 0.6% Vanguard Pac Stk Inv (PC) -7% -1.8% PBHG Emerging Gro PBHG (SG) -6% -6.1% Midas Spec Equities (XC) -5% -5.4% T Rowe Price Int Japan (JA) -1% -0.2% J Hancock LgCp Gro A (LG) 0% -4.1% Avg. stock fund 165% -2.5% 1 — dividends, gains reinvested through March 31

Subject: Top selling funds of 2000 deep in red From: johnny5 To: johnny5 Date Posted: Wed, Apr 06, 2005 at 09:04:11 (EDT) Email Address: johnny5@yahoo.com Message: http://www.usatoday.com/money/perfi/funds/2005-04-05-bear-usat_x.htm Top-selling funds of 2000 deep in red By John Waggoner, USA TODAY Never have so few lost so much for so many. The average stock fund has eked out a 1% gain the past five years. But investors who poured money into the 50 hottest-selling funds five years ago are down an average 42% since March 2000, according to Lipper, the mutual fund trackers. Q1 MUTUAL FUND RESULTS How fund categories fared. The 75 largest funds. First quarter's best, worst performers. 12 months' best, worst. 5 years' best, worst. 10 years' best, worst. These aren't just a bunch of tiny Internet funds. Consider Fidelity Aggressive Growth, which had $23 billion in assets in March 2000. Investors poured $15.1 billion into the fund the 12 months before the S&P 500 peaked that month. A $10,000 investment then would be worth $2,697 now — a 73% loss. Other big top-sellers that have fared badly: Janus Worldwide, then a $13 billion fund, has fallen 45% the past five years; Nasdaq 100 Trust, then a $10 billion fund, has fallen 67%; Janus Global Technology, a $10 billion fund in March 2000, has plunged 73%. All told, investors put $228 billion into the 50 best-selling stock funds in the 12 months before the market peaked. Only two of them have shown a gain the past five years: American Funds New Perspectives, up 2.3%, and Vanguard Capital Opportunity, up 1.5%. Technology stocks were the main culprit. Consider: Investors poured $2 billion into PBHG Technology & Communications the 12 months before the bear market began. Its largest holding on March 31, 2000, was InfoSpace, which sold at a split-adjusted price of $727 a share. The Internet search company now sells for $41.03. The fund has fallen 86%. Although most funds encourage investors to hang in for the long term, long-suffering investors in some funds will have a long time to wait. An investor who bought Fidelity Aggressive Growth in March 2000, for example, will have to gain 271% just to break even. The 50 largest funds five years ago also have suffered above-average losses since 2000: They're down an average 15%. Fidelity Magellan, then the largest fund, has fallen 23%. Janus, then fourth-largest, is down 45%. Investors who fled laggard funds have reason to kick themselves, too. The 50 funds that saw the most money flee in the 12 months ending March 2000 have gained an average 21.4%. Looking at what people bought before the bear market gives you some idea of the suffering that investors have endured the past five years — especially those who came late to the bull market of the 1990s. Should you ignore the average performance figures for stock funds? No. But you should take them with a grain of salt, says Don Cassidy, research analyst for Lipper. 'A straight average can be misleading,' he says. For example, in figuring the average performance of all funds, the same weight is given to the record of the Vanguard 500 Index fund, the nation's largest stock fund, and the Ameritor fund, one of the smallest — and worst — funds.

Subject: Social Security From: Poyetas To: All Date Posted: Wed, Apr 06, 2005 at 08:54:40 (EDT) Email Address: Not Provided Message: The cost of reforming Social Security By Jonathan Berk Published: April 4 2005 20:16 | Last updated: April 4 2005 20:16 At the foundation of modern finance lies the Modigliani-Miller Theorem. Named after the two economists - Franco Modigliani and Merton Miller - who developed it in the late 1950s (and subsequently won the Nobel Prize for their contribution), the theorem states that the return of any investment cannot depend on how the investment is financed. Economists do not debate the validity of this theorem any more than physicists debate the validity of the second law of thermodynamics. You cannot magically increase the return of an investment by choosing a different way to finance it any more than you can build yourself a perpetual motion machine. To argue otherwise requires finding a way to make something out of nothing. The implication of the Modigliani-Miller theorem for US Social Security reform is that the total amount of future wealth available to fund retirement does not depend on how George W. Bush, the president, chooses to finance future retirement. That is, whether the government invests on future retirees' behalf (the current system) or people invest for themselves in personal security accounts (the proposed system) cannot affect the overall return on investment in the economy. - Financial Times

Subject: Re: Social Security Part II From: Pancho Villa To: Poyetas Date Posted: Wed, Apr 06, 2005 at 10:45:01 (EDT) Email Address: nma@hotmail.com Message: '...Of course, people might make different financing choices under a PSA system than the government makes for them in the Social Security System. But these choices do not affect the total amount of resources available to fund retirees. That depends on economic growth in the interim which, according to Messrs Modigliani (grazie per la tua risposta, RIP) and Miller, does not depend on how that growth is financed. So at the point of retirement the total amount of wealth available to fund that retirement is the same under either system. The difference is how this wealth is divided. And therein lies the rub. If people are allowed to make their own investment choices under a PSA system, some investors will invest responsibly and some will not. The net result is that some investors will have more money to retire on than others. In principle there is nothing wrong with this outcome - people make their own investment decisions so they should have to live with the consequences of those decisions. The problem arises only when we accept that the people will not be willing to live with the consequences of their investment choices. From both a moral and a political standpoint it is clear that society would never allow old people to starve. By 'starve' I do not mean just going without food. In the US the poverty level is well above subsistence. Even the poorest people still have a place to live, most receive some medical care, watch television, use transport and so on. That is, they live at about the level of a currently retired person who has no source of income other than Social Security. So under the proposed new system investors whose personal investments go so badly that their PSAs would only support them at a level below current Social Security supports would appeal for relief. And they would get it, not only for moral reasons but also because they are likely to be a sizeable voting minority. In effect, the PSA system allows individuals to keep their gains if their investments do well, but if their investments perform badly the government is on the hook to make up for the losses. In financial terms, under the PSA system the government would be giving away a valuable financial option for free. One would have thought legislators would be wary of giving away free options. The last time they did such a thing, it precipitated the savings and loan crisis; in a similar vein to investors in a PSA system, savings and loans institutions knew that if they made risky investments and the investments did well, they could keep the rewards, but if the investments did badly government insurance would repay their depositors. Apparently Mr Bush's father, who was president during the S&L crisis, did not pass on this lesson to his son. This administration appears to be on the verge of making the same mistake, except on a much larger scale. It is not hard to predict the effect of putting a PSA system in place. Because current levels of Social Security payments are effectively at the minimum level society is likely to tolerate, a PSA system would increase society's commitment to retired people. The extent of this increased commitment depends on how much risk people take on in their PSAs. The more risk they take the more valuable the guarantee (or equally, the more likely that the government has to step in) and thus the greater the wealth transfer to retirees. If the S&L experience is any guide, the size of the new commitment would be large - and, as in the lead-up to the S&L crisis, investors would react to these incentives by substantially increasing their risk exposure in order to take full advantage of the free option. There are many more retirees than there were savings and loans, so ultimately the cost of privatising Social Security is likely dwarf the cost of insuring savings and loans....' The writer is an associate professor of finance at the Haas School of Business, University of California, Berkeley, where he holds the chair in management philosophy and values

Subject: Tank tread From: johnny5 To: Pancho Villa Date Posted: Wed, Apr 06, 2005 at 16:18:57 (EDT) Email Address: johnny5@yahoo.com Message: 'From both a moral and a political standpoint it is clear that society would never allow old people to starve. By 'starve' I do not mean just going without food. ' I wonder what the war veterans a couple generations back thought of that as macarthur ran the tanks over them in washington DC? One of them being criticized by Patton - had saved his life in the battelfield years earlier. Pancho why are people so needy to believe things can never get ugly or horrible out in this rosy colored world? I met a hobo woman in texas who was starving because the churches and soup kitchens in arizona would not feed her anymore and she had to leave.

Subject: Who We May Be From: Emma To: All Date Posted: Wed, Apr 06, 2005 at 06:26:13 (EDT) Email Address: Not Provided Message: http://www.nytimes.com/2005/04/05/books/0406wire-bellow.html?hp=&pagewanted=all&position= [Saul] Bellow grew up reading the Old Testament, Shakespeare and the great 19th century Russian novelists, and always looked with respect to the masters, even as he tried to recast himself in the American idiom. A scholar as well as teacher, he read deeply and quoted widely, often referring to Henry James, Marcel Proust and Gustave Flaubert. While others were ready to proclaim the death of the novel, he continued to think of it as a vital form. 'I never tire of reading the master novelists,' he said. 'Can anything as vivid as the characters in their books be dead?' Once, with reference to Flaubert, he wrote, 'I think novelists who take the bitterest view of our modern condition make the most of the art of the novel,' and added, 'The writer's art appears to seek a compensation for the hopelessness or meanness of existence.'

Subject: Saul Bellow From: Emma To: All Date Posted: Wed, Apr 06, 2005 at 05:59:14 (EDT) Email Address: Not Provided Message: http://www.nytimes.com/2005/04/05/books/0406wire-bellow.html?hp=&pagewanted=all&position= Author Saul Bellow Dies at 89 By MEL GUSSOW and CHARLES McGRATH Saul Bellow, the Nobel laureate and self-proclaimed historian of society whose fictional heroes - and whose scathing, unrelenting and darkly comic examination of their struggle for meaning - gave new immediacy to the American novel in the second half of the 20th century, died today at his home in Brookline, Mass. He was 89. His death was announced by Walter Pozen, Mr. Bellow's lawyer and a longtime friend. 'I cannot exceed what I see,' Mr. Bellow once said. 'I am bound, in other words, as the historian is bound by the period he writes about, by the situation I live in.' But his was a history of a particular and idiosyncratic sort. The center of his fictional universe was Chicago, where he grew up and spent most of his life, and which he made into the first city of American letters. Many of his works are set there, and almost all of them have a Midwestern earthiness and brashness. Like their creator, Mr. Bellow's heroes were all head and all body both. They tended to be dreamers, questers or bookish intellectuals, but they lived in a lovingly depicted world of cranks, con men, fast-talking salesmen and wheeler-dealers. In works like 'The Adventures of Augie March,' his breakthrough novel in 1953, 'Henderson the Rain King' and 'Herzog,' Mr. Bellow laid a path for old-fashioned, supersized characters and equally big themes and ideas. As the English novelist Malcolm Bradbury said, 'His fame, literary, intellectual, moral, lay with his big books,' which were 'filled with their big, clever, flowing prose, and their big, more-than-life-size heroes - Augie Marches, Hendersons, Herzogs, Humboldts - who fought the battle for courage, intelligence, selfhood and a sense of human.' Mr. Bellow said that of all his characters, Eugene Henderson of 'Henderson the Rain King,' the quixotic violinist and pig farmer who vainly sought a higher truth and a moral purpose in life, was the one most like himself. But there were also elements of the author in the put-upon, twice-divorced but ever-hopeful Moses Herzog and in wise but embattled older figures like Artur Sammler of 'Mr. Sammler's Planet' and Albert Corde, the dean in 'The Dean's December.' They were all men trying to come to grips with what Corde called 'the big-scale insanities of the 20th century.' At the same time, some of his novellas and stories were regarded as more finely wrought. V.S. Pritchett said, 'I enjoy Saul Bellow in his spreading carnivals and wonder at his energy, but I still think he is finer in his shorter works.' Pritchett considered Mr. Bellow's 1947 book 'The Victim' 'the best novel to come out of America - or England - for a decade' and thought that 'Seize the Day,' another shorter book, was 'a small gray masterpiece.' All his work, long and short, was written in a distinctive, immediately recognizable style that blended high and low, colloquial and mandarin, wisecrack and aphorism, as in the introduction of the poet Humboldt at the beginning of 'Humboldt's Gift': 'He was a wonderful talker, a hectic nonstop monologist and improvisator, a champion detractor. To be loused up by Humboldt was really a kind of privilege. It was like being the subject of a two-nosed portrait by Picasso, or an eviscerated chicken by Soutine.' Mr. Bellow stuck to an individualistic path, and steered clear of cliques, fads and schools of writing. He was frequently lumped together with Philip Roth and Bernard Malamud as a Jewish-American writer, but he rejected the label, saying he had no wish to be part of the 'Hart, Schaffner & Marx' of American letters. In his younger days, he was loosely allied with the liberal and arty Partisan Review crowd, led by Philip Rahv and William Phillips, but he eventually broke with them saying, 'They want to cook their meals over Pater's hard gemlike flame and light their cigarettes at it.' He spoke his own mind, without regard for political correctness or fashion, and was often involved, at least at a literary distance, in fierce debates with feminists, black writers and postmodernists. Speaking about multiculturalism, he was once quoted as asking, 'Who is the Tolstoy of the Zulus? The Proust of the Papuans?' The remark caused a furor and was taken as proof, he said, ''that I was at best insensitive and at worst an elitist, a chauvinist, a reactionary and a racist - in a word, a monster.' He later said the controversy had been 'the result of misunderstanding that occurred (they always do occur) during an interview.' In his life as in his work, he was unpredictable. He was the most urban of writers and yet he spent much of his time at a farm in Vermont. He admired and befriended the Chicago machers - the deal-makers and real-estate men - and he dressed like one of them, in bespoke suits, Turnbull & Asser shirts and a Borsalino hat. He was a devoted, self-taught cook, as well as a gardener, a violinist and a sports fan. He was a great admirer of, among others, John Cheever, William Faulkner, Ralph Ellison (a close friend), Cormac McCarthy, Denis Johnson, Joyce Carol Oates and James Dickey. Mr. Bellow grew up reading the Old Testament, Shakespeare and the great 19th century Russian novelists, and always looked with respect to the masters, even as he tried to recast himself in the American idiom. A scholar as well as teacher, he read deeply and quoted widely, often referring to Henry James, Marcel Proust and Gustave Flaubert. While others were ready to proclaim the death of the novel, he continued to think of it as a vital form. 'I never tire of reading the master novelists,' he said. 'Can anything as vivid as the characters in their books be dead?' Once, with reference to Flaubert, he wrote, 'I think novelists who take the bitterest view of our modern condition make the most of the art of the novel,' and added, 'The writer's art appears to seek a compensation for the hopelessness or meanness of existence.' Saul Bellow was a kind of intellectual boulevardier, wearing a jaunty hat and a smile as he marched into literary battle. In spite of - or, perhaps, because of - his lofty position, he was criticized more than many of his peers. In reviews, his books were habitually weighed against one another. Was this one as full-bodied as 'Augie March'? Where was the Bellow of old? Norman Mailer said that 'Augie March,' Mr. Bellow's grand Bildungsroman, was unconvincing and overcooked; Elizabeth Hardwick thought that in 'Henderson,' he was trying too hard to be an important novelist. He was prickly about his reputation but also philosophical: 'Every time you're praised, there's a boot waiting for you. If you've been publishing books for 50 years or so, you're inured to misunderstanding and even abuse.' Years ago, when he was at the Breadloaf Writers Conference in Vermont, he spent a great deal of time with Robert Frost. 'I thought when I was his age,' he said, 'people would let me get away with murder, too. But I'm not allowed to get away with a thing.' Smiling, he vowed, 'My turn will come.' In a long and unusually productive career, Mr. Bellow dodged many of the snares that typically entangle American writers. He didn't drink much, and though he was analyzed four times, and even spent some time in an orgone box, his mental health was as robust as his physical health. His success came neither too early nor too late, and he took it more or less in stride. He never ran out of ideas and he never stopped writing. The Nobel Prize, which he won in 1976, was the cornerstone of a career that also included a Pulitzer Prize, three National Book Awards, a Presidential Medal and more honors than any other American writer. In contrast to some other winners, who were wary of the albatross of the Nobel, Mr. Bellow accepted it matter-of-factly. 'The child in me is delighted,' he said. 'The adult in me is skeptical.' He took the award, he said, 'on an even keel,' aware of 'the secret humiliation' that 'some of the very great writers of the century didn't get it.' This most American of writers was born in Lachine, Quebec, a poor immigrant suburb of Montreal. Named Solomon Bellow, his birthdate is listed as either June or July 10, 1915, though his lawyer, Mr. Pozen, said today that Mr. Bellow customarily celebrated in June. (Immigrant Jews at that time tended to be careless about the Christian calendar, and the records are inconclusive.) Mr. Bellow was the last of four children, but as he was always quick to point out, the first to be born in the New World. His parents emigrated from Russia two years before, though in Canada their luck was not much better. Solomon's father, Abram, failed at one enterprise after another. His mother, Liza, was deeply religious and wanted her youngest child, her favorite, to become either a rabbi or a concert violinist. But Mr. Bellow's fate was sealed, or so he later claimed, when at the age of 8 he spent six months in Ward H of the Royal Victoria Hospital, suffering from a respiratory infection and reading 'Uncle Tom's Cabin' and the funny papers. It was there, he said, that he discovered his sense of destiny - his certainty that he was 'meant for great things.' In 1924, when their son was 9, the Bellows moved to Chicago, where the family began to prosper a little as Abram picked up work in a bakery, delivering coal and even bootlegging. The family continued its old ways in the United States, and during his childhood, Saul was steeped in Jewish tradition, learning Hebrew and Yiddish. But eventually he rebelled against what he considered to be a 'suffocating orthodoxy,' and he found in Chicago not just a physical home but a spiritual one. Recalling his sense of discovery and of belonging, he later wrote, 'The children of Chicago bakers, tailors, peddlers, insurance agents, pressers, cutters, grocers, the sons of families on relief, were reading buckram-bound books from the public library and were in a state of enthusiasm, having found themselves on the shore of a novelistic land to which they really belonged, discovering their birthright...talking to one another about the mind, society, art, religion, epistemology, and doing all this in Chicago, of all places.' Eventually Chicago became for him what London was for Dickens and Dublin was for Joyce - the center of both his life and his work, and not just a place or a background but almost a character in its own right. He began writing in grammar school, alongside his childhood friend Sydney J. Harris, later a Chicago newspaper columnist: 'We would sit at the Harris's dining room table and write things to each other - any old thing.' His father was disapproving, and remained so for decades. 'You write and then you erase,' he said when Bellow was in his 20's. 'You call that a profession?' His mother was more supportive, but she died when he was 17, a tragedy that he found difficult to overcome. With her death and his father's remarriage, he said, 'I was turned loose - freed, in a sense: free but also stunned, like someone who survives an explosion but hasn't yet grasped what has happened.' He added, 'It was disabling for me for a couple of years.' In 1933, he began college at the University of Chicago, but two years later transferred to Northwestern, because it was cheaper. He had hoped to study literature but was put off by what he saw as the tweedy anti-Semitism of the English Department, and graduated in 1937 with honors in anthropology and sociology, subjects that were later to instill his novels. But he was still obsessed by fiction. While doing graduate work in anthropology at the University of Wisconsin, he found that 'every time I worked on my thesis, it turned out to be a story.' He added: 'I sometimes think the Depression was a great help. It was no use studying for any other profession.' After graduation, he participated in the W.P.A. Writers' Project in Chicago, preparing biographies of Midwestern novelists, and later joined the editorial department of the Encyclopedia Britannica, where he worked on Mortimer Adler's 'Great Books' series. He came to New York 'toward the end of the 30's, muddled in the head but keen to educate myself.' While living in Greenwich Village and trying writing fiction, aimlessly and with little success at first, he also reviewed books. When World War II began he was rejected by the Army because he had a hernia; he later joined the Merchant Marine and was in training when the atom bomb was dropped on Hiroshima. During his service, he finished writing 'Dangling Man,' about the alienation of a young Chicagoan waiting to be drafted. It was published in 1944, before the author was 30, and was followed by 'The Victim,' a novel about anti-Semitism that was written, he said, under the influence of Dostoyevsky. Mr. Bellow later called those novels his 'M.A. and PhD.' They were apprentice work, he believed, finely written but weak in plot and too much in thrall to European models. In 1948, financed by a Guggenheim fellowship, Mr. Bellow went to Paris where, walking the streets and thinking about his future, he had a kind of epiphany. He remembered a friend from his childhood named Chucky, 'a wild talker who was always announcing cheerfully that he had a super scheme,' and he began to wonder what a novel in Chucky's voice would sound like. 'The book just came to me,' he said later. 'All I had to do was be there with buckets to catch it.' The resulting novel, 'The Adventures of Augie March,' was published in 1953, and it became Mr. Bellow's breakthrough, his first best-seller and the book that firmly established him as a writer of consequence. The beginning of the novel was as striking and as unforgettable as the beginning of 'Huckleberry Finn,' and it announced a voice brand new in American fiction -, jazzy, brash exuberant, with accents that were both Yiddish and Whitmanian: 'I am an American, Chicago born - Chicago, that somber city - and go at things as I have taught myself, free-style, and will make the record in my own way: first to knock, first admitted; sometimes an innocent knock, sometimes a not so innocent.' 'Fiction is the higher autobiography,' Mr. Bellow once said, and in his subsequent novels, he often adapted facts from his own life and the lives of people he knew. Humboldt was a version of the poet Delmore Schwartz; Henderson was based on Chandler Chapman, a son of the writer John Jay Chapman; Gersbach, the cuckolder in 'Herzog,' was a Bard professor named Jack Ludwig, who did indeed seduce Mr. Bellow's wife at the time; and in one guise or another most of Bellow's many girlfriends all turned up. 'What a woman-filled life I always led,' says Charlie Citrine. Those are words that could have been echoed by the author himself - he had almost innumerable affairs and was married five times. His wives were Anita Goshkin, Alexandra Tsachacbasov, Susan Glassman, Alexandra Ionescu Tuleca and Janis Freedman. All of Mr. Bellow's marriages but his last ended in divorce. In addition to his wife, Janis, he is survived by three sons, Gregory, Adam and Daniel, a daughter, Naomi Rose, and six grandchildren. With 'Henderson the Rain King' in 1959, Mr. Bellow envisioned an even more ambitious canvas than that of 'Augie March,' with the story of an American millionaire who travels in Africa in search of regeneration. Mr. Bellow, who had never been to Africa, regarded that novel as a turning point. 'Augie March,' he said later, was a little unruly and out of control; with 'Henderson' he had full command of his creative powers. 'Henderson' was followed in 1964 by 'Herzog,' with the title character a Jewish Everyman who is cuckolded by his wife and his best friend. 'He is taken by an epistolary fit,' said the author, 'and writes grieving, biting, ironic and rambunctious letters not only to his friends and acquaintances, but also to the great men, the giants of thought, who formed his mind.' Looking back on the writing of that book, he said: 'Herzog' was just a brainstorm. One day I found myself writing letters - all over the place. Then it occurred to me that it was a very good idea for writing a book about the mental condition of the country and of its educated class.' The novel won a National Book Award. In contrast, that same year 'The Last Analysis'' (one of several plays by Mr. Bellow) opened on Broadway in a production starring Sam Levene, and was a quick failure. 'It started as a lark,' he said, 'but it ended as an ostrich.' With 'Mr. Sammler's Planet' in 1969, a novel about a survivor of the Holocaust living - and ruminating - in New York, Mr. Bellow won his third National Book Award. 'Humboldt's Gift,' in 1975, proved to be one of his greatest successes. In it, the protagonist, Charlie Citrine, a Pulitzer Prize- winning writer, has to come to terms with the death of his mentor, the poet Von Humboldt Fleischer. Life imitated art in this case, and 'Humboldt' won the Pulitzer Prize for fiction. The Nobel Prize for literature soon followed, with the Swedish academy citing his 'exuberant ideas, flashing irony, hilarious comedy and burning compassion,' and Mr. Bellow was now placed in a class with his American predecessors Ernest Hemingway and William Faulkner. 'After I won the Nobel Prize,' he said, 'I found myself thrust in the position of a public servant in the world of culture. I was supposed to seem benevolent and to pontificate and bless with my presence - elder statesman whether I liked it or not. The price you have to pay.' His first book following the Nobel was 'To Jerusalem and Back,' a nonfiction memoir about his trip to Israel. That was followed by 'The Dean's December,' a novel about the decay of the American city; the short-story collection 'Him with His Foot in His Mouth' and, in 1986, the novel 'More Die of Heartbreak.' From then on, through 'The Bellarosa Connection' and 'The Actual,' his books became shorter and shorter, a case of Mr. Bellow sending out what he called 'a briefer signal.' With 'Ravelstein' (in 2000), he returned to longer fiction. Inspired by the life of his close friend Allan Bloom, the author of 'The Closing of the American Mind,' the book dealt with a celebrated professor dying of AIDS. In his review in The New York Times Book Review, Jonathan Wilson said it was 'a great novel of that much-maligned item, American male friendship.' In 1993, after many years of living in Chicago and teaching at the University of Chicago, he left his adopted city. The reasons for his departure were complex. Several of his close Chicago friends had died, among them Allan Bloom, and Mr. Bellow said he 'got tired of passing the houses of my dead friends.' He was also upset by the ugly racial climate in Chicago at the time. A few people in the radical black community tried to spread a story that Jewish doctors were deliberately infecting black children with AIDS, and Mr. Bellow expressed his anger at this 'blood libel' in an article he wrote for The Chicago Tribune. He moved to Boston and, at the invitation of the chancellor, John Silber, began teaching at Boston University. Explaining why he continued to teach, even though he was one of the most financially successful of serious American novelists, he said: 'You're all alone when you're a writer. Sometimes you just feel you need a humanity bath. Even a ride on the subway will do that. But it's much more interesting to talk about books. After all, that's what life used to be for writers: they talk books, politics, history, America. Nothing has replaced that.' In 1994, while on a Caribbean vacation with his wife in St. Martin, Mr. Bellow became sick after eating a toxic fish and almost died - an incident that is also recounted in 'Ravelstein.' After a long recovery process, he returned to his writing, with 'By the St. Lawrence,' a story evoking a traumatic memory of his childhood. In 'It All Adds Up,' a 1994 collection of nonfiction pieces, Mr. Bellow looked back on his writings and, by inference, on his life. 'I can see now where I went wrong,' he said. 'The 'road not taken' was taken, taken a hundred times. By now I have gone many miles toward the promise of sleep, but I reach my destination blindingly wide awake. My state therefore is something like a state of insomniac illumination.' Throughout Mr. Bellow's life, his approach to his art was that of an alien newly arrived on earth: 'I've never seen the world before. Now I was seeing it, and it's a beautiful, marvelous gift. Enchanting reality! And when the end came, I was told by the cleverest people I knew that it would all vanish. I'm not absolutely convinced of that. If you asked me if I believed in life after death, I would say I was an agnostic. There are more things between heaven and earth, Horatio, etc.'

Subject: The Economy and Investing From: Terri To: All Date Posted: Tues, Apr 05, 2005 at 21:43:19 (EDT) Email Address: Not Provided Message: The prime economic problems for America are not market inefficiencies here and there, for that is always the nature of markets and can easily be resolved. Rather we have a serious government budget deficit, coupled with very low household savings. These combined problems are fiscal in nature and can not be dealt with adequately by monetary policy. The problem we have is finding intelligent ways to protect and increase assets through a period of such difficulty. I have no doubt that simple investment techniques, such as have been employed for decades, will allow this. Nor do I doubt the deficit problems can be solved.

Subject: National Index Returns From: Terri To: All Date Posted: Tues, Apr 05, 2005 at 20:40:30 (EDT) Email Address: Not Provided Message: http://www.msci.com/equity/index2.html National Index Returns [Dollars] 12/31/04 - 4/05/05 Australia 2.0 Canada 2.9 Denmark 7.6 France 1.1 Germany -3.1 Hong Kong -3.6 Japan -2.9 Netherlands 1.7 Norway 6.3 Sweden -2.0 Switzerland -1.8 UK 1.6

Subject: Lower risk investing with.... From: Pete Weis To: Terri Date Posted: Tues, Apr 05, 2005 at 21:56:59 (EDT) Email Address: Not Provided Message: decent returns is hard to find. It is very hard to beat Vanguard's funds when it comes low expense ratios and low overall costs. However, I'm not sure that Vanguard offers a fund which has a combination of uncorrelated investments providing low risk while focusing on what is going on in the global economy - falling dollar, rising demand for natural resources, etc. In fact there are very few of these kinds of funds. Johnny5 is recommending (or seems to be) Vanguard Precious Metals fund. This fund is perhaps the best precious metals fund out there with the best performance and as he points out low expenses. My wife and I have some investment in this fund. The truth - I'm speculating that the dollar will continue to fall for some time, the Fed is in a pickle and can not raise rates as much as it would like because of asset bubbles (real estate), the government has more obligations than tax revenue and will create money as necessary to meet obligations, and foreign demand for dollar assets will generally decline. Furthermore the 70's showed us that when the public gets exited about precious metals like gold it can run it skyward. I went back in time to the 70's and discovered that about 5% of total investment (stocks, bonds, commodities) ended up in the gold markets at the height of the craze. I believe that total worldwide investment in stocks and bonds is now about 60-70 trillion. Total cap for the precious metals market (including available bullion and mining stocks) is extremely tiny in comparison presently. Asians especially seem to be quite fond of precious metals and their purchasing power is growing while their paper currencies are not doing very well. So this is very much a speculative investment in a very volatile area. You have to stick to one's convictions and not let oneself become deterred regardless of the big swings. This is not for an investor who is not totally convinced and committed. Vanguard requires a minimum $10,000 investment for this fund. Another fund, Permanent Portfolio (PRPFX), is one of a very few funds which has made gains every year of the last 10 and is another of our investments and is conservative - not speculative. The following is an interview by Business Week with Michael Cuggino PRPFX fund manager. This fund has been in existance for more than 20 years. By the way I have no connection to this fund if I seem to be 'pushing' it. MARCH 8, 2005 INVESTING Q&A Balancing Assets for Lower Risks Michael Cuggino's Permanent Portfolio fund invests across a broad range, from gold and Swiss francs to T-bills and growth stocks With the numerous uncertainties in today's investing world, it pays to be defensive. Michael Cuggino, president and portfolio manager of the Permanent Portfolio Funds (PRPFX ), has a formula for just that: a fund invested in a variety of asset classes such as gold, Swiss francs, U.S. Treasury bills, and growth stocks -- designed so that if one type of investment is declining, another is rising to offset it, in hopes that the fund as a whole will increase in value. TWO PROMISING AREAS. By balancing assets to minimize risk, 'we take the prediction and forecasting game out of the equation,' says Cuggino. Because of the variety of its assets, no one benchmark gauges the the fund's performance, but Cuggino reports that in the year ended last Dec. 31, it returned 12.05%, vs. 10.85% for the Standard & Poor's 500-stock index and 1.24% for the T-bill index. On the stock front, Cuggino points to homebuilding and software as interesting sectors now. He cites homebuilder Ryland Group (RYL ) as an example of the kind of growth stocks he likes. Cuggino runs three other funds in addition to the Permanent Portfolio: the Permanent Treasury Bill Fund (PRTBX ), Permanent Aggressive Growth Fund (PAGRX ), and Permanent Versatile Bond Fund, which invests in high-grade corporate bonds. These were among the points Cuggino made in response to questions from the audience and BusinessWeek Online's Jack Dierdorff and June Kim during a BW Online investing chat presented Mar. 3 on America Online. Following are edited excerpts from this chat. AOL subscribers can find a full transcript at keyword: BW. Q: Michael, what's the big picture you see for the markets now? A: I think right now, there's uncertainty in multiple layers in the market -- not only equities but also fixed income, commodities, the bond market. If you look at equities, they're basically treading water, and the bond market, anticipating high rates, has not had much of a return. Gold is down a little bit for the year, commodities and energy prices are up a little bit. Government statistics on the economy are going in different directions, and corporate forecasts for 2005 are mixed. Q: So do you have anything in your portfolio that you think will do well, despite all the uncertainty? A: We do. Our strategy is based on the fact that the markets are uncertain as a general rule, and only investors who are able to embrace a high degree of risk, subject to forecasts and predictions, etc., should expose that core part of their portfolio to such predictions and speculative investing. What we do is take the prediction and forecasting game out of the equation by allowing investors to invest in an array of noncorrelated asset classes that should minimize the risks out there due to the economic and geopolitical events. So we try to produce growth by accepting a very low level of risk. The variety of assets we invest in -- gold and silver, Swiss francs, government bonds, aggressive growth stocks, and Treasury bonds -- are all material asset classes the investor needs to be exposed to at all times to provide for that appropriate diversification. Q: You mentioned noncorrelated asset classes. Could you give us some examples? A: Yes. Correlation is a term that describes the way assets react in relation to one another given a set of economic conditions and geopolitical situations. For example, some of the factors that cause an asset class like stocks to go up -- if they also cause another asset to go up -- that would be called a high correlation. Noncorrelation means they move in opposite directions. For example, the factors that cause a rise in equities may be the types of conditions that drive down the price of gold. By using noncorrelated assets for allocation, you're balancing yourself. Some of your assets are guaranteed to be increasing in value, while others may decrease. But the theory is that the outperformance should outweigh the underperformance. I mentioned gold and equities. Generally, gold is considered a noncorrelated asset class to dollar-based assets like stocks and bonds. Q: Are all the types of assets you listed included in your fund? A: Yes, they are. The Permanent Portfolio fund holds 20% in gold; 5% in silver; 10% in Swiss government bonds; 15% in real estate investment trusts and natural-resource and commodity stocks, things like energy, timber, raw land, gas and oil production, and commodity metals like nickel and copper; 15% in aggressive growth stocks; and 35% in U.S. Treasuries and high-grade corporate bonds. We believe an investor has to be exposed, regardless of market conditions, to these differing asset classes to be properly diversified. Q: And what about the fund's performance? A: Ah! Well, given the diversity of assets in the Permanent Portfolio Fund, it doesn't have a true benchmark. We typically measure it against the cost of money, represented by a short three-month Treasury-bill index or the consumer price index. Others have compared it to the S&P 500. That's an unfair comparison, given we're about a third invested in stocks. Be that as it may, we've compared favorably to all those indexes over a period of time. For the one-year period ending Dec. 31, 2004, we returned 12.05%, compared to the Treasury-bill index of 1.24% and the S&P 500 of 10.85%. For the three years, we returned 15.54%, vs. 1.34% for the Treasury-bill index and 3.53% for the S&P 500. For the five years, we returned 11.12%, vs. the Treasury-bill index of 2.80% and the S&P 500 of -2.32%. For the 10 years, 8.16% for us, 4% for the Treasury index, and 10.3% for the S&P 500. Q: You also invest in growth stocks. What's your stock-picking strategy for that asset class? A: We manage this part of the portfolio in the same fashion we manage our Aggressive Growth portfolio, which is an all-cap fully invested U.S. stock fund. We're looking to beat the broad market. We're diversified between 12 to 15 industry groups and have the ability to invest in companies of all capitalizations. What we're doing is looking for long-term winners. We'll first identify industries that we think are going to outperform the broad market. Within those, we look for companies we believe will outperform with good growth stories. New products and services, companies with strong and experienced management teams, strong balance sheets and operating models, companies with a history of bringing products from R&D to profitability -- all these characteristics are indicative of good long-term growth stories. We look to hold these stocks for long periods of time. Q: So, what are some of the top holdings among these growth stocks? A: A good example of our stock selection methodology would be Ryland Group. Ryland is a homebuilder based in Southern California. The homebuilding industry, despite gradually rising short-term rates, has been a hot sector over the last few years. Home buyers are still taking advantage of low rates by buying rather than renting. The sector has even been a good performer last year, when short-term rates went up. Longer-term rates didn't increase to that extent, though, so the homebuilding market remains strong. Ryland is a strong performer in a hot sector. They basically have consistent and ever-growing earnings. Their backlog remains very healthy. Their real estate contracts are in the right parts of the country -- Southwest, D.C., etc. Their management team has been around for quite a while and has exhibited a knack for not overpaying. They've demonstrated ability to increase their capacity at reasonable rates and deal out healthy dividends when the right prospects aren't out there. Q: Besides homebuilders, what other industry groups do you think will outperform the broad market? A: Another area that I think has been beaten down a little bit is computer software. For the most part, economic growth has been driven by consumer demand. Businesses are just beginning to spend more on capital improvements. Recently the jobs picture has gotten a little brighter. I expect an increase in info-tech spending as well, so a lot of the computer software stocks (which have been beaten down, though with good reason) are in a good position. We expect to see the software market experience pretty rapid growth. Q: To clarify, is Permanent Portfolio just one fund? You spoke as if Aggressive Growth were separate. A: The Permanent Portfolio family of funds is a collection of separate and unique funds. The Permanent Portfolio is our flagship fund -- that's the one we've been primarily talking about. We also have three other no-load portfolios. The Permanent Treasury Bill portfolio invests in short-term Treasuries. We also have an ultrahigh-grade corporate bond fund, the Permanent Versatile Bond Fund. Both of these funds are designed for fixed-income investors. The Treasury fund is managed like a money-market fund but has a variable price like a bond fund -- it does not maintain a dollar-per-share price. Our Versatile Bond fund goes out a little further -- it takes on a small additional degree of credit risk. The T-bill fund only goes out 90 days. The corporate bond fund can go out about two years. The final fund that I alluded to a little earlier, the Aggressive Growth Portfolio, maintains positions in a variety of industry groups and invests in any cap size. Q: What about crude oil prices? How do they affect your portfolio holdings? A: Well, we think exposure to energy and natural resources, including commodity metals, etc., is essential for investors. Clearly, we believe it's an area investors need to be in -- we've been invested there for a long time and hold several names in the energy sector. We hold ChevronTexaco (CVX ), we own BP (BP ), and we own Forest Oil (FST ), and smaller companies like them. High energy prices have implications in the economy, both favorable and nonfavorable. If you're an investor in commodity stocks in general, you've benefited from a worldwide mismatch of short supplies and increasing demand. This, combined with an accommodative Fed policy and a glut of dollars in the market, has caused commodity prices to boom, and they'll continue to remain high until these mismatches have been resolved. Clearly, we think it's an area to be in -- we own quite a few companies in all these areas. The negative implications, though, are that companies are having trouble passing along the higher costs of commodities to consumers. As long as these costs can be passed on, companies will do well. Oil companies spend more for a barrel of oil, but they still pass on the gasoline at a higher price. However, the auto industry, for example, cannot. The auto industry has higher material costs but cannot raise prices. The higher costs of components drive up the price of inventory, reducing cash flow and margins and ultimately reducing the margin. In the equity market, you want to find companies that are able to pass along these price increases with higher prices to consumers. Q: In what form do you invest in gold and silver? The metals themselves? Mining stocks? A: With respect to our gold and silver, we invest in gold bullion and coins, not the mining companies. We use gold and silver as part of an overall diversification strategy. It's important for investors to remember that [metals] stocks behave like stocks first. They have management teams, analysts, and others who may do things to move the business that could be independent of the movement of the metal. Q: Michael, for the typical long-term investor, what role do you think your defensive funds should play in a portfolio? How much weight? A: Well, again it goes back to expectations, acceptance of risk, etc. But I think all investors have that core part of their portfolio that they don't want to lose or expose to unnecessary risk, and need for a rainy day -- retirement, the kids' education, etc. I think this is a part of everyone's portfolio, to some degree. This chunk grows, but grows with low risk. I think our funds have application in just about everyone's portfolio. Many people use us as a core holding and scratch their speculative itch using other, more risky areas around this core. We've seen many people use this as their only investment, and we've seen it used in both taxable and tax-deferred accounts.

Subject: Interesting From: Terri To: Pete Weis Date Posted: Wed, Apr 06, 2005 at 19:34:48 (EDT) Email Address: Not Provided Message: Another fine post.

Subject: I am only in XOM From: johnny5 To: Pete Weis Date Posted: Wed, Apr 06, 2005 at 00:36:47 (EDT) Email Address: johnny5@yahoo.com Message: Most of this is academic for me and a way to make great friends like you and terri Pete. I hold XOM, I buy it through scottrade once a quarter to keep the trades to only 4 times a year and always keep about 10% of my money in cash for whatever. I used to own a lot of INTC, IBM and MSFT, but decided oil and XOM might outlast them 2 years ago. In the future I may switch to energy index funds or etf's to diversify away from ONE company, but I never expect to have my core holding outside of oil or the energy sector in my time horizon. The only sectors that may even interest me slightly in the next 10 years will be nanotech or biotech related and in the future I may buy index funds of those. I expect gold and oil both to go down and go up over the next 30 years which is my investment horizon, the direction is irrelevant to me. I expect in 30 years no matter with wars, trade restrictions, corporate corruption, government collapse, currency debasement - etc etc that oil and gold will have future VALUE but I have several currencies and stock certificates on my wall that have no value other than sentimental. My uncle is going to invest with a financial planner that will earn a 1% fee and will put him into a few index funds with lots of dividends through fidelity it seems - he also has a military pension. My father has a military pension and most of his wealth is in residential and commercial real estate in georgia and florida. My mother's wealth is in her west palm real estate that I am talking to her and her real estate attorney about 1031 exchanging into japanese commercial real estate. I live very miserly in an old trailer in west central florida and eat the dollar taco's at taco bell most days or sweet potatoes from the local market. I take greyhound when I travel which I try to do several times a year. Wireless technology has become so ubiquitous I am even considering going on the road full time and foregoing my trailer. An old friend sent me some emails last week about buying iraqi dinars because the president of his bank is buying them and telling him what a great investment next to western currencies they are and I sent him this http://www.millionbill.com/ and told him to tell this Nations Bank president to buy these too - that taco bell won't take either currency or the silver coins he begs me to buy when I get hungry for a taco. After several expletives sp? he got very emotional and bought more dinars - these are the types of people making up our world - emotions and behavior drive markets - often irrational and shortsighted - if ease is the real goal - warren has done a great job with berkshire no? Regardless, people will value energy and food even if they don't have currencies or governments - this is my thinking and how I invest. I keep a good selection of wines in my kitchen, money no object my dream would be to own a great vineyard with huge underground cellars in a nice part of france. I plan to go there in a few years and see how to accomplish that by the time I am 60.

Subject: Please Be Careful From: Terri To: johnny5 Date Posted: Wed, Apr 06, 2005 at 08:41:25 (EDT) Email Address: Not Provided Message: Forgive me, but the idea of selling a wonderful home to invest in a Cayman Islands Japanese real estate plan seems more risky than we might ever begin to suspect. Please please please be careful for yourself and your family. Diversify a bit. All your relative would need is Vanguard.

Subject: Mom is stubborn From: johnny5 To: Terri Date Posted: Wed, Apr 06, 2005 at 08:48:25 (EDT) Email Address: johnny5@yahoo.com Message: My family never listens to me Terri, I am the black sheep. If mom's real estate attorney and CPA doesn't think it is a good deal she won't do it, last time she talked to them they told her not to sell her west palm house that it will ALWAYS GO UP. It has went from 89K to 239K in just a few years now - doesn't feel right to me to stay in it, but what do I know - the real estate attorney and CPA are paid experts.

Subject: A Home is to Live In From: Terri To: johnny5 Date Posted: Wed, Apr 06, 2005 at 09:01:30 (EDT) Email Address: Not Provided Message: A home is to live in and deeply and truly enjoy always.

Subject: Property is For Building From: Terri To: Terri Date Posted: Wed, Apr 06, 2005 at 10:57:00 (EDT) Email Address: Not Provided Message: I would hold the property forever, and build on it and be forever grateful.

Subject: She likes to travel From: johnny5 To: Terri Date Posted: Wed, Apr 06, 2005 at 16:37:17 (EDT) Email Address: johnny5@yahoo.com Message: Sweet dear Terri, I do appreciate your interest - let us go further into the rabbit hole and see if you share the same convictions for I do value your insight: The property is in a pretty run down part of west palm now and only by the grace of god has not been blown away by a hurricane - which she has not insured against because with that added cost she would no longer make much profit after taxes, management fees and maintenance. Her tenant has stopped paying rent and she is having the tenant evicted - six months no rent and basically destroyed the house - holes in the walls, the roof, damage everywhere - the stove has been stolen - mom is definitely getting out of residential and going to commercial property if she stays in property at all - at the advice of her real estate attorney. The tenants will have less impact on commercial property then and it will probably survive a hurricane better if she buys in florida. But there is another goal Terri, having property in Japan would allow her to travel there and take it off her taxes as a real estate investor business expense - she did europe with hubby and usa with grandfather - but she always wanted to see tokyo and the military never provided. This would give her a way to save money on her asian journey. The real estate attorney recommended commercial, I am trying to get him to figure out with japanese commercial is better than american commercial - looking at graphs of commercial american versus commercial japanese - it does seem they are at the bottom of thier 20 year cycle and we are at the top - time to re-allocate no?

Subject: Re: She likes to travel From: Terri To: johnny5 Date Posted: Wed, Apr 06, 2005 at 17:37:34 (EDT) Email Address: Not Provided Message: This makes more sense, but the need may be to make sure a person can live a comfortable life in America initially. Then, a person has to figure out how to buy property thousands of miles away in a country in which English is not spoken. Then, even if property is well valued, how does a person buy intelligently?

Subject: Good questions From: johnny5 To: Terri Date Posted: Wed, Apr 06, 2005 at 18:10:51 (EDT) Email Address: johnny5@yahoo.com Message: 'but the need may be to make sure a person can live a comfortable life in America initially.' She has grown tired of her time here in the USA, she is not the spring chicken she once was and wants to travel before she grows too old for the journeys. She wanted to see Egypt too, but feels it is safe to travel to tokyo but not there. ' Then, a person has to figure out how to buy property thousands of miles away in a country in which English is not spoken.' She did this several times when she lived in germany and many other non english speaking parts of europe for 16 years. It's not so complicated to her I guess. She still has lots of pocket translation dictionaries that seemed to serve her well. ' Then, even if property is well valued, how does a person buy intelligently?' Ah there is the rub, is the Phoenix Fund some fly by night cayman islands offshore shell scam group that will milk her wealth dry and dissapear into the shadows of night as the LOCAL KL financial people did with 300 million in west palm beachers hedge fund money? Or are they jam up good people who are honest and ethical and have a safe strategy unliked shorting GOOG at 160? Like Munger and Buffet says - you got to find good PEOPLE and MANAGEMENT and invest in them and the value will come back to you 10 fold! So it all comes down too are these guys running the phoenix fund making smart low risk investments - can the be trusted - and is there lots of trasnparency and accountability?

Subject: Re: Good questions From: Terri To: johnny5 Date Posted: Wed, Apr 06, 2005 at 18:25:33 (EDT) Email Address: Not Provided Message: Well, she seems like a capable person. Will she be able to live comfortably here however no matter an international investment? How a Cayman Islands real estate venture is to be checked out is beyond me.

Subject: Re: A Home is to Live In From: johnny5 To: Terri Date Posted: Wed, Apr 06, 2005 at 09:35:20 (EDT) Email Address: johnny5@yahoo.com Message: You must not have read my previous posts here at PKarchive - mom has not lived in the house for many many years now - it is a RENTAL property in section 8 housing and in very bad shape from the last inspection report - not her house that she lives in. She lives in an old beatup RV and travels all over florida mostly now parking in walmart - she loves that life. Like the old saturday night live skit - the van down by the river with chris farley. Do you travel much Terri or does wanderlust never possess you and you want to plant roots? My family has always travelled - she travelled with her grandfather all over the USA working farms as a child and teenager - and then travelled with my dad all over the world in the army, she can't stand staying in one place for more than a few months.

Subject: Re: Lower risk investing with.... From: Terri To: Pete Weis Date Posted: Tues, Apr 05, 2005 at 22:08:24 (EDT) Email Address: Not Provided Message: The dollar will fall for some time, some time, though in zig zag pattern. I agree.

Subject: My investment in..... From: Pete Weis To: Terri Date Posted: Wed, Apr 06, 2005 at 10:59:05 (EDT) Email Address: Not Provided Message: precious metals is not a long term investment since I see it as more speculative than one based on fundamentals. The trick will be figuring when to get out. I like Permanent Portfolio for the longer term and I need to find more funds which are similar. I think, like Charles Munger seems to believe, that most stock index funds are too broad and therefore the mediocre to poor stocks in the index drag down the good ones especially in a bearish environment. With a falling dollar eroding mediocre gains or adding to losses of broad index funds, our retirements will erode with the dollar. While Johnny's strategy is riskier than many of the rest of us would want (including myself), he probably will do better than most of us who spread out the risk over the next 10-15 years, but that probability comes with the risk that XOM might become a target of terrorists, they're severely overstating proven reserves, or a very severe worldwide recession substantially reduces world consumption of oil, etc. etc. I think the latter is most possible. I think the older we get and the bigger the retirement piggy bank the more we think of diversity to protect what we have.

Subject: The deflation of Japan and Oil consumption From: johnny5 To: Pete Weis Date Posted: Wed, Apr 06, 2005 at 16:54:07 (EDT) Email Address: johnny5@yahoo.com Message: I know thier real estate went down 80%, also thier stock market went down to 25% of what it was, did thier consumption of oil go down in the same time frame and the same relation? You may pleasantly surprise me with data contrary to my beliefs. http://www.eia.doe.gov/emeu/cabs/japan.html ENERGY Japan lacks significant domestic sources of energy and must import substantial amounts of crude oil, natural gas, and other energy resources, including uranium for its nuclear power plants. In 2002, the country's dependence on fossil fuel imports for primary energy stood at more than 80%. Oil provided Japan with 49.7% of its total energy needs, coal 18.9%, nuclear power 13.7%, natural gas 12.7%, hydroelectric power 3.7%, and renewable sources 1.1%. About half of Japan's energy is used by industry and about one-fourth by transportation, with nearly all the rest used by the residential, agricultural, and service sectors. Japan's energy intensity (energy use per unit of GDP) is among the lowest in the developed world. OIL Japan contains almost no oil reserves of its own (59 million barrels of proven oil reserves), but it is the world's third largest oil consumer (after the United States and China). Japan consumed an estimated 5.57 million barrels per day (bbl/d) of oil in 2003, up from 5.30 million bbl/d in 2002. Part of the increase in oil consumption was attributable to the shutdown of a large number of nuclear power plants in 2003, which caused utilities to maximize use of oil-fired generating capacity. Most (75%-80%) of this oil came from OPEC, particularly Persian Gulf countries like the United Arab Emirates, Saudi Arabia, Kuwait, Qatar, and Iran. Japan has worked -- with relatively little success -- to diversify its oil import sources away from the Middle East. Until 1996, when Japan's oil consumption peaked at nearly 5.9 million bbl/d, Japanese oil consumption (and imports) had been growing steadily for years. From 1997 through 2002, Japan's oil consumption declined as its economic slump caused demand by industrial and other users to decline. With nuclear electricity generating capacity restored, Japan's oil demand is likely to dip slightly in 2004, despite relatively strong economic growth. So yes it seems their oil consumption went down, but no where NEAR the levels that thier demand for stocks or real estate fell or am I confused again?

Subject: Re: My investment in..... From: Terri To: Pete Weis Date Posted: Wed, Apr 06, 2005 at 12:09:03 (EDT) Email Address: Not Provided Message: Nicely stated as always. I am thoroughly impressed by the concept of Permanent Portfolio, but believe this is readily done in a more transparent way with a few funds at Vanguard. The guess is that precious metals trades at least with the market till it becomes clear how our balance of trade adjustment will play out.

Subject: Steadfastly Optimistic on Corporate Honesty? From: johnny5 To: All Date Posted: Tues, Apr 05, 2005 at 20:20:26 (EDT) Email Address: johnny5@yahoo.com Message: From mish on silicon investor http://www.corpwatch.org/article.php?id=12039 Bringing Business Back Ashore Buenos Aires issues world's first ban on offshore shell companies by By Lucy Komisar, Special to CorpWatch April 4th, 2005 In December of 2004, there was a horrific fire in a Buenos Aires disco called the Cromagnon Republic. Three rock fans shot off flares that set fire to the ceiling and engulfed the overcrowded discotheque in flames and smoke. In the rush to get out, 200 people were killed and 700 injured, most from trampling and smoke inhalation. The main entrance had been wired shut, and some of the emergency exits were locked, blocking escape. In the days that followed, thousands of the victims' parents and friends marched in the streets and demanded justice. A judge started proceedings for manslaughter and froze $20 million belonging to the 'owner,' Omar Chaban. However, investigators soon discovered that Chaban appeared in no official disco documents; he was just the 'administrator.' The legal owners of the property and the disco company were offshore shell corporations registered in the tax haven of Uruguay, the neighboring country. The listed 'owner' of the enterprise was a Uruguayan 'straw man' in his 70s who had no money. The tragedy gave political space to a deceptively unassuming lawyer named Ricardo Nissen, Inspector General of Justice for Buenos Aires, who is committed to fighting the system of tax haven shell companies that is the underbelly of illegal global finance. He told CorpWatch, 'We think the owner of the discotheque is a single owner who divided it into offshore companies.' In response, Nissen has taken a step that is the first of its kind, anywhere in the world. Six weeks after the deadly fire, he banned offshore shell companies from doing business in the capital district of Buenos Aires. The Inspector General's directives, issued in February and March, build on two resolutions he issued in 2003 and ban offshore companies that cannot prove they have real business activity in their places of registration. The new rules apply only to the capital district of Buenos Aires, the sphere of Nissen's authority. 'After the tragedy of Cromagnon,' Nissen says, 'It seemed that the legislation had to become stronger.' There are around three million shell companies in the world. The term 'shell' is used to mean front or 'mailbox' companies. They are also sometimes called International Business Corporations (IBCs) or Personal Investment Companies (PICs). They are set up with secret beneficiaries to own bank accounts or property, to effect phony transactions, to hide or launder funds, and to evade legal responsibility. Nissen's directive is a shot across the bow of the world financial system, which relies on offshore shell companies and bank accounts to move money seamlessly around the globe. But it is not an isolated act. Rather, it is one in a series of indications of the confidence of the new Argentine government, following their success in defying international financial institutions such as the International Monetary Fund (IMF). The New Argentina The current government of President Néstor Kirchner came to power in late 2001, after street protests against the IMF caused the previous government to collapse. It has since brought about a series of a small economic miracles -- including the reduction of unemployment from 20 percent to around 13 percent and lowering the poverty level nearly 10 points in the last three years by encouraging cooperatives and worker-owned factories. With the backing of the protestors, who blamed the high rates of poverty and unemployment on the strict debt repayment program imposed by the IMF and other major bank creditors, Kirchner refused to repay the country's crushing $81.8 billion debt owed to bond holders. When the lenders were forced to negotiate (with the added bonus of a rebounding economy that repudiated the IMF's policies) Kirchner struck an agreement that forced creditors holding $62.2 billion of the debt to write off about 70 percent of the value. Much of the debt that Argentina has been saddled with (around $155 billion in all) is the direct result of the offshore banking system. It began under the dictator General Videla, who came to power in 1978. A judicial inquiry by the Argentine Federal Court in 2000 showed that many of the loans granted to the nation at the time -- by banks like Citibank, Chase Manhattan Bank, Deutsche Bank and Hannover Bank -- were diverted directly to front-companies set up in offshore tax havens. Some of the money was simply stolen and some was spent on weapons. None could be paid back. Profiting Offshore There are offshore shell companies registered in as many as 70 jurisdictions around the world -- places such as Grand Cayman, the British Virgin Islands, Jersey (the Channel Islands), Liechtenstein, Luxembourg and Switzerland. They are used by corporate fraudsters and tax cheaters, dictators and corrupt officials, drug traffickers and other criminals. Enron Enron's use of offshore shells was essential to its fraud. It had almost 3,000 corporate subsidiaries and partnerships, a fourth of them registered offshore, including 692 in the Cayman Islands, 119 in the Turks and Caicos Islands, 43 in Mauritius, eight in Bermuda, six in Barbados, four in Puerto Rico, two in Hong Kong, two in Panama, and one each in Aruba, the British Virgin Islands, Guam, Guernsey, and Singapore. Regulatory authorities, investment analysts and stockholders couldn't readily know who the owners were, and couldn't see that partnerships were secretly owned by Enron managers or associates. They couldn't check the books to see if the offshore company was dealing with another insider-owned company which was siphoning off its wealth. Significant offshore deals involved Enron's biggest bankers, Citigroup and JP Morgan Chase, which set up offshore companies which they controlled, to serve as sham trading partners in order to allow Enron to disguise multi-million dollar loans as trades, thereby shifting billions of dollars of debt off its balance sheets. Tyco Tyco International CEO L. Dennis Kozlowski moved the company's registration to Bermuda, then went on to set up 115 subsidiaries in tax haven countries, including eight in the Bahamas, 17 in Barbados, 55 in Bermuda, and five in the Cayman Islands. Most of these companies had nothing to do with real business, but were shells used in accounting games to shield Tyco interest, dividends, royalties, and other income from U.S. taxes and to allow it to issue phony accounting reports that hid bad debts and misreported assets. Stock prices shot up, investors bought, Tyco executive made a bundle, and investors lost their shirts when the truth came out. Tyco's former top executives were charged with looting the company of $600 million. AIG AIG, the global insurance conglomerate, used offshore jurisdictions such as Barbados, Bermuda and Luxembourg to help the company move debt off its books, launder profits to evade U.S. taxes and hide insider connections in supposedly 'arms-length' deals. Goldman Sachs helped it set up Coral Re, an offshore Barbados reinsurance company, which AIG secretly owned, and when state insurance departments found out about it, AIG stonewalled and bullied the agencies into declining to take action against the company. AIG's luck changed when New York Attorney General Eliot Spitzer discovered some similar current cases. Worldcom Worldcom had ten tax haven subsidiaries, including four in Panama, three in Bermuda, and one in the Cayman Islands. It used these subsidiaries to manipulate financial results to hide expenses and inflate revenues in a $11 billion accounting fraud, the largest in US history, all aimed at protecting the company's share price and CEO Bernie Ebber's personal wealth. They consisted of $3.8 billion of operating expenses being incorrectly reflected as capital expenditure, which hugely inflated profits to deceive investors and the markets. These expenses were deliberately distributed across a host of accounts for capital expenses to escape detection. The scam also cheated the Internal Revenue Service of hundreds of millions of dollars, and the collapse of the company cost shareholders about $180 billion; this includes state pension funds --New York State lost $300 million, Michigan lost $116 million, and Florida $85-90 million. And 20,000 workers lost their jobs. Another large chunk of debt was acquired by the Carlos Menem government in the 1990s, which privatized government industries such as telecommunications and the airline industry, and sold them to companies who bought them with discounted debt bonds from the banks, paying fire-sale prices. At the same time, companies that borrowed money did not pay their own debts, and the corporate-friendly Menem government 'nationalized' the private debt. And, like the regime before it, the Menem government also stole billions, which it shipped to offshore secret accounts. Kirchner's refusal to play by the rules of creditors, who for years had turned a blind eye to the wholesale robbery of the government coffers, is a challenge to the international financial system. Ricardo Nissen's ban on offshore companies is a second, more direct challenge to the system. Nissen's Rules Nissen is a soft-spoken man who wears oval, rimless glasses and a mild expression. His demeanor is belied by his passion to end the offshore system. He explains that he arrived at this position after 25 years as a business lawyer. 'It always appeared that ghost companies bought a majority of the stocks in companies,' Nissen says, noting that many companies privatized during the Menem era of the 90s moved their registrations offshore. He started asking himself, 'Isn't it strange that a Barbados or Cayman Island company is the owner of a furniture store, a restaurant, or a kiosk that sells newspapers?' One of the most creative loopholes, Nissen explains, was the acto aislado ('isolated act'). In Buenos Aires, 15,000 properties in the name of offshore companies have taken advantage of a clause in the national law that allows foreign companies to come to Argentina without registering, if they are doing so in a single incidence. This loophole led to a proliferation of tiny, fake businesses. Even ex-President Menem once admitted to avoiding the potential taxes on his home because it was the official property of a company in a tax haven. 'I don't have anything; a company lends it to me,' he says. (Incidentally, Menem is also currently under investigation for illegally selling arms to Croatia and Ecuador in the early 1990s and stashing tens of millions of dollars in 'commissions' in offshore Swiss accounts.) Nissen has issued four regulations over the last two years in an effort to create a watertight system to prevent such offshore scams. First, he ordered that all foreign companies had to prove activities in their original country or in another part of the world (resolution 2/03), then he created another one that closed the 'acto aislado' loophole (resolution 8/03). Then, this February, he strengthened the first resolution with another (general resolution 2/05) by banning offshore companies that are not authorized to carry out economic activities in their countries of origin. Finally, in March of 2005, Nissen required that anonymous and limited-responsibility companies, whose stocks are not traded in the local stock market, must identify their shareholders. The last resolution is the most stringent - all companies seeking to do business in Buenos Aires must provide a name, address, and passport or identification number. They must also disclose the amount of their stocks. If intermediaries hold the stocks, companies must name the ultimate owners. If the company is registered in a territory deemed non-cooperative in dealing with money-laundering investigations by foreign law enforcement, then Argentine authorities are allowed to require even more information. As a result of the first two orders, Nissen says, the number of foreign companies registered in 2004 was a third of that of previous years. Meanwhile, enforcing the resolutions will be the most difficult aspect of his job to come. He describes one aspect of the process: 'We send inspectors into the street. They ring the bell and ask the porter, 'Who lives here?' He says 'family so-and-so.' We know this family sold property to an offshore company, but continues living there. It's a fraud. When you sell a property, you don't stay there. There were three properties in this house. In each one it was the same: 'We sold property to a Virgin Island company, but for a year the company lent it to me, my mother and my daughter-in-law.' What a generous company!' Today, Nissen has some other targets, such as the offshore subsidiaries of international banks, that come to Argentina. Then, he wants to end a tax-evasion scheme under which people create foundations that carry out commercial activities, but don't pay taxes because of their status as foundations. Others have taken up Nissen's example. Mario Cafiero, a deputy in the Argentine Congress and longtime critic of the way the offshore system has been used to facilitate tax evasion and balloon the national debt, is developing legislation to extend Nissen's orders to the entire country. Important Precedent or Bad for Business? David Spencer, a lawyer who writes about international tax regulation for 'The Journal of International Taxation,' says that legislature that takes on these issues, normally does so on an information-gathering level. Therefore, it's significant that Nissen attempts to actually regulate the activities of a company. Jack Blum, a lawyer and international expert on money-laundering, calls the efforts 'fabulous.' He says he's been 'making the same arguments for years.' Blum, who ran the Senate investigations on the BCCI Affair and Iran Contra, also hopes the U.S. will refuse recognize corporate shells. 'We don't owe anything to the countries that charter them,' he adds. Dean Baker, co-director of the Center for Economic and Policy Research, a liberal Washington think tank also agrees with the move, as it will pose a barrier to dishonest accounting. The use of shell companies, he says, 'disrupts capital markets; it makes it easier to have more dishonest practices across the board. I don't see why any country shouldn't adopt comparable legislation.' Even the most conservative economists, he feels, should advocate for a system that is 'simple and transparent.' Ted Truman of the Institute for International Economics and coauthor of 'Chasing Dirty Money,' says, 'In the context of Argentina, it is noteworthy because there is a huge history of tax evasion.' He adds that, 'In principle, it's a good idea. You should be able to track the owners of assets; that would help in the context of taxation and money laundering. It would be easier if it was common practice throughout the world.' 'In the U.S. context, it would be a little extreme,' says Dan Shaviro, a visiting scholar at the conservative American Enterprise Institute who sees the fact that the US economy is larger that Argentina's as an important factor. 'There are a lot of major companies incorporated in the Caymans,' he adds. 'I suspect, in the U.S., it would be politically unwise for people who want to restrict tax shelters to restrict it in this form. But it would be sensible to have a proposal to say 'if they fit the definition of a tax haven where we don't do business, they are treated as U.S. companies for federal income tax purposes.' Dan Mitchell of Washington's Heritage Foundation sees such restrictions as bad for big business. 'The Argentinians who don't want to pay confiscatory taxes are going to invest out of the country,' he says. He believes this is only natural, when a country has an economic system that's so 'oppressive.' In cases where there's criminal negligence, such as the Cromagnon fire case, Mitchell says, 'I assume somewhere there must be some sort of documentation of who the real owner is. That's the solution where there's criminal liability... [countries like] Uruguay would agree to share information.' But tax havens do not generally share information, so such getting documentation would be virtually impossible under the current system. The new rules don't appear to have roiled Argentine big business, at least not publicly. Andrea Canónica, spokesperson for the Argentine Management Association (Asociacion Empresaria Argentina), the nation's chief businessmen's organization, declined to make an official comment, saying, 'It's not a theme the association gives opinions about. We speak about things that affect the Argentine entrepreneur.' The news has forced some public figures to come out in support of offshore business. In the daily La Nación, one lawyer, from the firm owned by Martinez De Hoz Jr., son of the economic czar of the 1976-1983 Argentine dictatorship, described offshore companies as 'efficient' for investment. Nissen's resolutions have also elicited disapproval from the real estate agency, Cushman & Wakefield Semco, which specializes in dealing with foreign investment. The company manager told the newspaper that Nissen's orders were a symptom of 'legal insecurity.' Indeed, making tax evaders and money-launderers 'legally insecure' is just what Ricardo Nissen had in mind. Lucy Komisar is writing a book about offshore banks and corporate secrecy.

Subject: Ownership Society Mr. Bush? From: johnny5 To: All Date Posted: Tues, Apr 05, 2005 at 19:20:46 (EDT) Email Address: johnny5@yahoo.com Message: Bush to Back Curbs on Fannie, Freddie Tue Apr 5, 2005 11:41 AM ET WASHINGTON (Reuters) - The Bush administration will back curbs on mortgage portfolios held by home loan finance giants Fannie Mae (FNM.N: Quote, Profile, Research) and Freddie Mac (FRE.N: Quote, Profile, Research) to ward off potential risks to the U.S. financial system, a senior administration official said on Tuesday. 'We believe that our capital markets could adjust to a significant reduction in the presence of the housing GSEs (government-sponsored enterprises) as mortgage investors,' said the official, speaking on condition of anonymity. Both companies have rattled markets and regulators with multibillion-dollar accounting problems in recent years. Treasury Secretary John Snow is due to describe the administration's views on how to improve oversight of the companies on Thursday in congressional testimony. According to the official familiar with the proposal Snow will discuss Thursday, the Treasury secretary will tell Congress that the companies' regulator should have the ability to set minimum and risk-based capital standards, as well as the power to place a failed GSE in receivership if needed. He will say the lines of credit that government-sponsored enterprises enjoy should not be interpreted by the market as an 'implicit guarantee' that signals the federal government would back the companies' debt obligations. Rather, the official said, the administration would only seek to exercise the line of credit in the event that a GSE was in 'significant financial distress and needed the capital to emerge successfully through the receivership process.' Snow's testimony will come amid a hectic week of GSE-related events on Capitol Hill. On Tuesday, Republican leaders in the House Financial Services Committee will offer a bill to substantially stiffen oversight of Fannie, Freddie and the Federal Home Loan Banks. Later in the week, Federal Reserve Chairman Alan Greenspan will discuss GSEs at the Senate Banking Committee. Other Bush administration officials are also due to testify. According to the senior administration official, the White House remains troubled that Fannie and Freddie have not filed reliable financial statements with the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission, the official said. The administration also believes that the Federal Home Loan Banks should be placed under the same regulator as Fannie and Freddie, but that the new regulatory regime should be structured to take into account the differences between the housing GSEs. --- --- --- --- --- --- --- --- --- --- --- --- --- --- -- All rights reserved. © Reuters 2005

Subject: Impossbile - China giving us the cold shoulder? From: johnny5 To: All Date Posted: Tues, Apr 05, 2005 at 19:17:52 (EDT) Email Address: johnny5@yahoo.com Message: Two top Chinese officials won´t attend G7/IMF meetings Tuesday, April 5, 2005 4:06:31 PM http://www.afxpress.com Two top Chinese officials won't attend G7/IMF meetings WASHINGTON (AFX) -- China's two senior economic policy makers will not be coming to Washington later this month to discuss the country's fixed exchange rate with U.S. Treasury officials and their G7 counterparts, U.S. and Chinese officials said Tuesday. China's central bank governor Zhou Xiaochuan and Finance Minister Jin Renqing won't attend the G7 meeting or the spring meeting of the IMF and World Bank. Deputy central bank governor Li Ruogu and vice finance minister Li Yong will instead represent China at the IMF meetings that take place over the weekend of April 16, according to a Chinese official.

Subject: Please help me understand Terri From: johnny5 To: All Date Posted: Tues, Apr 05, 2005 at 18:32:26 (EDT) Email Address: johnny5@yahoo.com Message: http://biz.yahoo.com/ap/050405/wall_street.html?.v=23 Associated Press Stocks End Up on Greenspan's Reassurance Tuesday April 5, 6:07 pm ET By Michael J. Martinez, AP Business Writer Stocks Close Higher As Greenspan Downplays Oil's Effect on Economy; Dow Ends Up 37, Nasdaq Up 8 NEW YORK (AP) -- Stocks got a lift from Federal Reserve Chairman Alan Greenspan Tuesday, rising modestly after he said the recent climb in oil prices was already curbing demand for crude. Oil futures dropped sharply on the news. Terri you state you are a 100% believer in the EMH, how ROBUST are our markets if the utterance of one japanese prime minister or one Alan Greenspan can have such HUGE effects on the global financial universe - not what these guys actually DO - but just WORDS they utter out of their mouth - that is an efficient robust market - not a jittery house of cards held together by scaredy cats? Huh? Make me understand how the people at this GREAT news site who are your government and financial representatives deserve the 100% trust you give them? http://www.newsoftheweird.com/archive/index.html Government in Action Public Servants in Action: (1) New Hampshire state Rep. Christopher Doyle, 26, was arrested in March and charged with slapping elections supervisor Gail Webster, 61, to the floor on election night after learning that he had lost his race for town selectman in Windham. (2) Shirley Martin, a member of the school board in West Orange, Texas, was convicted in February of disorderly conduct for threats against colleague Beth Wheeler. At a meeting, Martin had continued speaking after her colleagues had ruled her out of order, and subsequently Martin angrily told Wheeler, 'I'm going to stomp a mud hole in your ass.' [The Union Leader (Manchester, N.H.), 3-11-05, 3-18-05] [Beaumont Enterprise, 2-25-05] Despite state funding problems in health care and other areas, New York's Department of Transportation completed a $3.3 million beautification project in January in which intricately decorated 'flora and fauna' designs of bronze were inlaid in two 2,400-square-foot granite wall coverings whose purpose was merely to decorate an underpass below New York City's Brooklyn-Queens Expressway. According to the New York Sun, the walls are beside an off-ramp that's across a pedestrian-unfriendly street from a Burger King, and the site was selected primarily because it is at the intersection of the jurisdictions of three community boards (thus making possible a seemingly always-desirable joint petition for funds). [New York Sun, 1-10-05] The St. Petersburg Times, profiling retired pro basketball player Matt Geiger in February, described his $13 million, 28,000-square-foot, custom-built suburban mansion (whose 40 satellite-equipped TV sets include 18 wired together so he can play video games with his high school friends) and mentioned his 27 exotic animals that roam the grounds, earning him an unspecified 'tax break' (although he told the Times he loves animals and would have them anyway). [St. Petersburg Times, 2-27-05] According to a February Cox News Service dispatch from Mexico City, the government nearly killed its export market for the fabled mezcal, a liquor (similar to tequila) traditionally sold with a worm floating in the bottle. Bureaucrats had recently proposed to ban the worm because of its high fat content, even though as much as 70 percent of mezcal sales are based on the worm (with alleged sexual or hallucinatory powers), but changed their minds. [Seattle Post-Intelligencer-Cox News Service, 2-9-05] Surreality Tennessee state Sen. John Ford testified in a juvenile court hearing in January that his child support payments should be reduced, in accordance with a state law that he had introduced on behalf of fathers with many children. Ford owns two homes, lives part-time in one with his ex-wife and their three children (with another on the way), and lives part-time in the other with an ex-girlfriend and their two children. Hence, he said, he should have lesser payments to a third woman, who is the mother of his 10-year-old daughter. [Associated Press, 1-23-05] Least Competent Criminals In March, accused U.S. fugitive securities-swindler Frederick Gilliland, living on the lam in Canada, was tricked into coming back across the border, just for a free meal. A vengeful private investigator offered to buy Gilliland lunch at Brewster's in Point Roberts, Wash., and then alerted authorities, who intercepted the super-hungry Gilliland as he approached the restaurant. [Seattle Post-Intelligencer, 3-15-05]

Subject: Low Volatility From: Terri To: All Date Posted: Tues, Apr 05, 2005 at 17:22:35 (EDT) Email Address: Not Provided Message: What continues to be most nteresting about stock and bond markets here and abroad is the lack of volatility. Trading ranges are remarkably limited, sector by sector the ranges are minor. Also, despite a general nervousness markets have have held. REITs which might have been expected to be weak have given up only 7.5% of the gains of the last 5 years. The longer the stock market trades in a narrow range the less expensive it becomes as earnings rise. Again, long term bonds continue to hold.

Subject: What are the mexican military goals? From: johnny5 To: All Date Posted: Tues, Apr 05, 2005 at 15:14:38 (EDT) Email Address: johnny5@yahoo.com Message: http://www.newsmax.com/archives/ic/2005/3/31/134212.shtml Thursday, March 31, 2005 9:37 a.m. EST Mexican Military on Standby in Response to Minutemen Mexico's President Vicente Fox is preparing to respond militarily to a group of U.S volunteers who plan to patrol the U.S.-Mexican border starting tomorrow, positioning more than a thousand troops nearby, according to an Arizona TV station. 'The Mexican military is on standby,' reports NBC's Tucson affiliate KVOA. 'One unit has about a thousand soldiers. They're located just across the border.' Over the last week spokesmen for the border patrol volunteers, who dub themselves Minutemen, have said they will not attempt to detain Mexican illegals, but rather report them to the Border Patrol and track them till they're apprehended. Despite the assurances, Mexican officials met with the mayor of Douglas, Ariz., on Tuesday to discuss how they will handle potential violence, KVOA said. Last week President Fox warned at a Mexico City press conference: 'We totally reject the idea of these migrant-hunting groups. We will use the law, international law and even U.S. law to make sure these types of groups, which are a minority, will not have any opportunity to progress.' Huh? Legal US citizens trying to enforce the LEGAL laws of the USA by reporting ILLEGALS to the proper authorities to be challenged by mexico's military - my eyes are rolling with confusion!

Subject: Investing in Precious Metal Stocks From: Terri To: All Date Posted: Tues, Apr 05, 2005 at 12:21:22 (EDT) Email Address: Not Provided Message: The problem with investing in precious metals company stocks has been both trying to determine when the stocks are reasonably valued and trying to gauge a crisis move. Over extended periods of time precious metals stocks have performed poorly, but the stocks are wildly volatile and can move 25% to 50% in a few weeks time. Since I do not know how to find proper entry points, I have stayed away from the stocks, but since they have trailed other sector stocks I have never felt a need for precious metals. Generally, when the Fed is in a tightening cycle these stocks have done poorly but that is the past....

Subject: Vanguards decision to invest From: johnny5 To: Terri Date Posted: Tues, Apr 05, 2005 at 15:24:35 (EDT) Email Address: johnny5@yahoo.com Message: You rebalance stocks and bonds - but feel physical assets like precious metals should not be part of the theory? Over extended periods of time *say 200 years* the physical stuff has done quite well - the standard oil and webvan stock certificates I have on my wall don't have much value but that 80 year old gold watch from my grandfather sure does. I cannot understand why bogle would allow such a fund if he thought it not prudent to some part of his clients portfolio. http://flagship3.vanguard.com/VGApp/hnw/FundsPerformance?FundId=0053&FundIntExt=INT&DisplayBarChart=false It seems all you had to do was listen to Warren and not disregard his advice Terri, he said 2002 was the year to leave the dollar and he did so with his money, from the chart here at Vangaurd precious metals and mining, you would have done well to diversify into some precious metals starting 2002. Make it simple Terri, too complicated out there to try and outguess Warren - he says it's still a good idea to expect the dollar to drop more and now I read other currencies like the euro and yen might too - and now the Financial Times are recommending gold related assets as part of a good investment strategy.

Subject: Illegal Immigrants and Social Security From: Emma To: All Date Posted: Tues, Apr 05, 2005 at 10:48:23 (EDT) Email Address: Not Provided Message: http://www.nytimes.com/2005/04/05/business/05immigration.html?pagewanted=all&position= Illegal Immigrants Are Bolstering Social Security With Billions By EDUARDO PORTER STOCKTON, Calif. - Since illegally crossing the Mexican border into the United States six years ago, Ángel Martínez has done backbreaking work, harvesting asparagus, pruning grapevines and picking the ripe fruit. More recently, he has also washed trucks, often working as much as 70 hours a week, earning $8.50 to $12.75 an hour. Not surprisingly, Mr. Martínez, 28, has not given much thought to Social Security's long-term financial problems. But Mr. Martínez - who comes from the state of Oaxaca in southern Mexico and hiked for two days through the desert to enter the United States near Tecate, some 20 miles east of Tijuana - contributes more than most Americans to the solvency of the nation's public retirement system. Last year, Mr. Martínez paid about $2,000 toward Social Security and $450 for Medicare through payroll taxes withheld from his wages. Yet unlike most Americans, who will receive some form of a public pension in retirement and will be eligible for Medicare as soon as they turn 65, Mr. Martínez is not entitled to benefits. He belongs to a big club. As the debate over Social Security heats up, the estimated seven million or so illegal immigrant workers in the United States are now providing the system with a subsidy of as much as $7 billion a year. While it has been evident for years that illegal immigrants pay a variety of taxes, the extent of their contributions to Social Security is striking: the money added up to about 10 percent of last year's surplus - the difference between what the system currently receives in payroll taxes and what it doles out in pension benefits. Moreover, the money paid by illegal workers and their employers is factored into all the Social Security Administration's projections. Illegal immigration, Marcelo Suárez-Orozco, co-director of immigration studies at New York University, noted sardonically, could provide 'the fastest way to shore up the long-term finances of Social Security.' It is impossible to know exactly how many illegal immigrant workers pay taxes. But according to specialists, most of them do. Since 1986, when the Immigration Reform and Control Act set penalties for employers who knowingly hire illegal immigrants, most such workers have been forced to buy fake ID's to get a job. Currently available for about $150 on street corners in just about any immigrant neighborhood in California, a typical fake ID package includes a green card and a Social Security card. It provides cover for employers, who, if asked, can plausibly assert that they believe all their workers are legal. It also means that workers must be paid by the book - with payroll tax deductions. IRCA, as the immigration act is known, did little to deter employers from hiring illegal immigrants or to discourage them from working. But for Social Security's finances, it was a great piece of legislation. Starting in the late 1980's, the Social Security Administration received a flood of W-2 earnings reports with incorrect - sometimes simply fictitious - Social Security numbers. It stashed them in what it calls the 'earnings suspense file' in the hope that someday it would figure out whom they belonged to. The file has been mushrooming ever since: $189 billion worth of wages ended up recorded in the suspense file over the 1990's, two and a half times the amount of the 1980's. In the current decade, the file is growing, on average, by more than $50 billion a year, generating $6 billion to $7 billion in Social Security tax revenue and about $1.5 billion in Medicare taxes. In 2002 alone, the last year with figures released by the Social Security Administration, nine million W-2's with incorrect Social Security numbers landed in the suspense file, accounting for $56 billion in earnings, or about 1.5 percent of total reported wages. Social Security officials do not know what fraction of the suspense file corresponds to the earnings of illegal immigrants. But they suspect that the portion is significant. 'Our assumption is that about three-quarters of other-than-legal immigrants pay payroll taxes,' said Stephen C. Goss, Social Security's chief actuary, using the agency's term for illegal immigration. Other researchers say illegal immigrants are the main contributors to the suspense file. 'Illegal immigrants account for the vast majority of the suspense file,' said Nick Theodore, the director of the Center for Urban Economic Development at the University of Illinois at Chicago. 'Especially its growth over the 1990's, as more and more undocumented immigrants entered the work force.' Using data from the Census Bureau's current population survey, Steven Camarota, director of research at the Center for Immigration Studies, an advocacy group in Washington that favors more limits on immigration, estimated that 3.8 million households headed by illegal immigrants generated $6.4 billion in Social Security taxes in 2002. A comparative handful of former illegal immigrant workers who have obtained legal residence have been able to accredit their previous earnings to their new legal Social Security numbers. Mr. Camarota is among those opposed to granting a broad amnesty to illegal immigrants, arguing that, among other things, they might claim Social Security benefits and put further financial stress on the system. The mismatched W-2's fit like a glove on illegal immigrants' known geographic distribution and the patchwork of jobs they typically hold. An audit found that more than half of the 100 employers filing the most earnings reports with false Social Security numbers from 1997 through 2001 came from just three states: California, Texas and Illinois. According to an analysis by the Government Accountability Office, about 17 percent of the businesses with inaccurate W-2's were restaurants, 10 percent were construction companies and 7 percent were farm operations. Most immigration helps Social Security's finances, because new immigrants tend to be of working age and contribute more than they take from the system. A simulation by Social Security's actuaries found that if net immigration ran at 1.3 million a year instead of the 900,000 in their central assumption, the system's 75-year funding gap would narrow to 1.67 percent of total payroll, from 1.92 percent - savings that come out to half a trillion dollars, valued in today's money. Illegal immigrants help even more because they will never collect benefits. According to Mr. Goss, without the flow of payroll taxes from wages in the suspense file, the system's long-term funding hole over 75 years would be 10 percent deeper. Yet to immigrants, the lack of retirement benefits is just part of the package of hardship they took on when they decided to make the trek north. Tying vines in a vineyard some 30 miles north of Stockton, Florencio Tapia, 20, from Guerrero, along Mexico's Pacific coast, has no idea what the money being withheld from his paycheck is for. 'I haven't asked,' Mr. Tapia said. For illegal immigrants, Social Security numbers are simply a tool needed to work on this side of the border. Retirement does not enter the picture. 'There will be a moment when I won't be able to continue working,' Mr. Martínez acknowledges. 'But that's many years off.' Mario Avalos, a naturalized Nicaraguan immigrant who prepares income tax returns for many workers in the area, including immigrants without legal papers, observes that many older workers return home to Mexico. 'Among my clients,' he said, 'I can't recall anybody over 60 without papers.' No doubt most illegal immigrants would prefer to avoid Social Security altogether. As part of its efforts to properly assign the growing pile of unassigned wages, Social Security sends about 130,000 letters a year to employers with large numbers of mismatched pay statements. Though not an intended consequence of these so-called no-match letters, in many cases employers who get them dismiss the workers affected. Or the workers - fearing that immigration authorities might be on their trail - just leave. Last February, for instance, discrepancies in Social Security numbers put an end to the job of Minerva Ortega, 25, from Zacatecas, in northern Mexico, who worked in the cheese department at a warehouse for Mike Campbell & Associates, a distributor for Trader Joe's, a popular discount food retailer with a large operation in California. The company asked dozens of workers to prove that they had cleared up or were in the process of clearing up the 'discrepancy between the information on our payroll related to your employment and the S.S.A.'s records.' Most could not. Ms. Ortega said about 150 workers lost their jobs. In a statement, Mike Campbell said that it did not fire any of the workers, but Robert Camarena, a company official, acknowledged that many left. Ms. Ortega is now looking for work again. She does not want to go back to the fields, so she is holding out for a better-paid factory job. Whatever work she finds, though, she intends to go on the payroll with the same Social Security number she has now, a number that will not jibe with federal records. With this number, she will continue paying taxes. Last year she paid about $1,200 in Social Security taxes, matched by her employer, on an income of $19,000. She will never see the money again, she realizes, but at least she will have a job in the United States. 'I don't pay much attention,' Ms. Ortega said. 'I know I don't get any benefit.'

Subject: Re: Patrulla ciudadana en Arizona From: Pancho Villa To: Emma Date Posted: Wed, Apr 06, 2005 at 11:28:41 (EDT) Email Address: nma@hotmail.com Message: Patrulla ciudadana en Arizona Dos centenares de voluntarios se dan cita en la frontera para frenar a los indocumentados CARLOS RAMOS Los Ángeles Han llegado al suroeste de Arizona desde distintos rincones de Estados Unidos. Desde Bufalo, Nueva York, desde el condado de Orange en el sur de California, o de ahí cerca en la ciudad de Phoenix. Algunos fueron soldados o policías, otros son funcionarios, directores de periódicos o gente ya retirada. Todos dicen ser cien por cien americanos, patriotas hasta la médula y estar haciendo una labor necesaria en la que el Gobierno y los políticos de Washington han fallado. 'Al reunirnos aquí pacíficamente estamos expresando nuestro malestar con el Gobierno y los funcionarios locales, quienes tienen la obligación de hacer cumplir las leyes de inmigración, y que al no hacerlo han dejado la puerta abierta para un ataque terrorista', señaló James Gilchrist, de 56 años de edad y uno de los organizadores del llamado Proyecto Minutemen, o Patrulla Fronteriza Ciudadana. Gilchrist, un ex infante de marina residente en California, no terminaba de creer lo que ha sucedido en los últimos días en varios de los pueblos perdidos del desierto de Arizona que hacen frontera con México. Los más de doscientos voluntarios que logró reunir consiguieron tal atención de la prensa que el tema de la inmigración ilegal ha sido catapultado a las primeras planas de la discusión pública. No es la primera ocasión que Gilchrist y Chris Simcox —el otro líder del grupo y también de California— organizan voluntarios para patrullar la frontera. Es la primera vez, sin embargo, que tanta gente se apunta para, en efecto, patrullar por todo un mes. Según Simcox, que publica el periódico Tombstone Tumbleweed, en el pueblo de Tombstone, justo a unos pasos del borde fronterizo, hay cerca de mil voluntarios en lista de espera. 'No importa lo que cueste, así es como debería ser la seguridad interna', explicó Simcox, citado por el diario Los Angeles Times, durante una de sus rondas en vehículos todoterreno junto a un grupo de voluntarios por el llamado Corredor de Naco, la franja de unos 40 kilómetros en el sureste de Arizona escogida por los minutemen para el patrullaje. Por esta zona cruzan la frontera decenas de miles de inmigrantes, en su gran mayoría mexicanos. Según estimaciones de la propia Patrulla Fronteriza estadounidense, aunque cada año se detiene a cerca de un millón de inmigrantes frustrados, por lo menos otro medio millón logra entrar con éxito a Estados Unidos. El desierto de Arizona se ha convertido en el principal punto de cruce debido a que en sitios como California y Tejas el Gobierno ha construido barreras, vallas, y utilizado todo un aparataje tecnológico para detectar seres humanos que hace muy difícil cruzar. Lo de los voluntarios no es exclusivo de Arizona. El pasado noviembre los votantes aprobaron una ley mediante la cual se prohibe dar beneficios públicos (sanitarios, por ejemplo) a los inmigrantes indocumentados. Según los expertos, ambos fenómenos son debidos a la frustración del ciudadano común con lo que percibe como una crisis del sistema migratorio. 'Lo que el presidente Bush está haciendo en Irak es magnífico, pero en esto ha fallado', señaló Jack Treese, otro de los voluntarios. 'Si no se hace nada, pos inmigrantes] seguirán llegando', advierte. EL PAIS, martes 5 de abril de 2005

Subject: Citizens Patrol In Arizona From: johnny5 To: Pancho Villa Date Posted: Wed, Apr 06, 2005 at 15:59:23 (EDT) Email Address: johnny5@yahoo.com Message: In English: Citizen patrol in Arizona Two hundreds of volunteers meet in the border to restrain to the undocumented people CARLOS BRANCHES the Angels have arrived at the southwest of Arizona from different corners from the United States. From Bufalo, New York, from the county of Orange in the south of California, or there close in the city of Phoenix. Some were welded or police, others are newspaper civil employees, directors or people already retired. All claim to be one hundred American, patriotic percents until the marrow and to be making a work necessary in which the Government and the politicians of Washington have failed. ' When reuniting to us pacifically we are expressing our malaise with the local Government and civil employees here, who have the obligation to enforce the immigration laws, and who when not doing have left it to the door opened for an attack terroristá, he indicated James Gilchrist, of 56 years of age and one of the organizers of the call Project Minutemen, or Citizen Border Patrol. Gilchrist, an ex- infant of resident navy in California, did not finish thinking what it has in the last happened days in several of the lost towns of the desert of Arizona that make border with Mexico. More than two hundred volunteers than it managed to reunite obtained such attention of the press that the subject of illegal immigration has been catapult to the first flat ones of the public discussion. It is not the first occasion that Gilchrist and Chris Simcox - the other leader of the group and also of California organizes volunteers to patrol the border. It is the first time, nevertheless, that as much people score for, in effect, to patrol by everything a month. According to Simcox, that publishes the newspaper Tombstone Tumbleweed, in the town of Tombstone, right to passages of the border edge, he has near thousand volunteers in waiting list. ' it does not matter what costs, thus is as interná would have to be the security, explained Simcox, mentioned by the newspaper Los Angeles Times, during one of its rounds in vehicles todoterreno next to a group of volunteers by the Running call of Naco, the strip of about 40 kilometers in the Southeastern of Arizona chosen by minutemen them for the patrolling. By this zone they cross the border tens of thousands of immigrants, in its great majority Mexican. According to estimations of the own American Border Patrol, although every year stops to close of million immigrants frustrated, by except another means million manages to enter with success United States. The desert of Arizona has become the main point of crossing because in sites as Californian and Tejas the Government has constructed to barriers, fences, and used everything a technological aparataje to detect human beings that it does very difficult to cross. The one of the volunteers is not exclusive of Arizona. The past November the voters approved a law by means of which prohibe to occur to benefits public (sanitary, for example) to the undocumented immigrants. According to the experts, both phenomena must to the frustration of the common citizen with which it perceives like a crisis of the migratory system. ' What president Bush is doing in Iraq is magnificent, but in this there is falladó, indicated Jack Treese, another one of the volunteers. ' If nothing becomes, pos immigrants ] will follow llegandó, warns.

Subject: Re: Illegal Immigrants and Social Security From: johnny5 To: Emma Date Posted: Tues, Apr 05, 2005 at 14:58:07 (EDT) Email Address: johnny5@yahoo.com Message: 'Ms. Ortega is now looking for work again. She does not want to go back to the fields, so she is holding out for a better-paid factory job.' Just like the article of the seamstress in south america you posted Emma, they are going to starve standing in the welfare line because no one wants to do that hard back breaking FARM work. Someone has to do it, I did it for 12 years. America pawned it off to latino's - who are they to pawn it off too? Anyways when I went to mexico last year I met the dispatcher for a trucking company in texas, he was on the greyhound bus with me and I guess since he and I were the only 2 non mexicans on the bus he wanted to talk to me. His company had been specifically instructed by the local government officials in texas how they needed to hire many illegal mexican truck drivers for the company because the government needed people to pay social security who would never collect, and this brought this man to bitter contention with his company because several of his american friends were layed off and replaced with illegal mexican immigrants. So this is the policy of the government to serve me and you and other legal citizens of this country, throw us to the curb and give our jobs to illegal citizens so they can make SS WORK? Huh? This does not sit well with me at all.

Subject: Scewing the legal and illegals From: johnny5 To: johnny5 Date Posted: Tues, Apr 05, 2005 at 15:10:43 (EDT) Email Address: johnny5@yahoo.com Message: This does not serve current legals job or retirement needs, this also does not serve illegal retirement needs - basically the gubbment is getting a bunch of people to do work to cheat both us and them in the future - way to go US GUBBMENT. Niether me nor pedro is going to have much of a life beyond our working years. Retirement will be a word relinquished to the pages of history.

Subject: The Bond Market From: Terri To: All Date Posted: Tues, Apr 05, 2005 at 10:27:45 (EDT) Email Address: Not Provided Message: There is so little understanding of the bond market, and the market is so important for us. The bond market tells us the health of the economy, not the stock market, though stocks are revealing as well. The Federal reserve does not control interest rates, rather the Fed set a very short term bank lending rate as a guide to investors and investors do the rest. The Fed balances between fostering growth and limiting inflation, and for 25 years the Fed has been most successful at this balance. Growth has generally trended up and inflation trended down. There have been 3 recessions, the last 2 shallow and short lived. Crises have come and quickly been resolved. The bond market has returned over 9% a year to investors for 25 years. What is needed is to gain an appreciation of the bond market, a sense of how bond funds can add to a portfolio especially as our assets grow substantial, and how to properly use bond funds which have many advantages over individual bonds. Ask whether duration is known and understood, for that is critical in understanding bond funds and the way to gain confidence.

Subject: Transparent Investing From: Terri To: All Date Posted: Tues, Apr 05, 2005 at 06:29:57 (EDT) Email Address: Not Provided Message: Transparency is important in investing. We should be able to find what we are invested in at a glance. I am struck in this day of the Internet how difficult this can be with mutual fund families. Vanguard funds are transparent, and information on the Internet is readily available for each Vanguard mutual and exchange traded fund. This is a prime source of confidence.

Subject: Monetary Policy From: Terri To: All Date Posted: Tues, Apr 05, 2005 at 06:23:21 (EDT) Email Address: Not Provided Message: http://www.federalreserve.gov/boarddocs/speeches/2005/20050330/default.htm March 30, 2005 Implementing Monetary Policy Remarks by Governor Ben S. Bernanke Among the most important of my duties at the Federal Reserve is serving on the Federal Open Market Committee (FOMC), the body that makes U.S. monetary policy. Nineteen men and women--the seven members of the Board of Governors and the Presidents of the twelve Reserve Banks--gather in Washington eight times each year to participate in FOMC deliberations on the course of monetary policy.1 If necessary, the FOMC can also convene by conference call between regularly scheduled meetings. The FOMC's decisions are guided by the dual mandate given to the Federal Reserve by the Congress, which enjoins the Committee to use its powers to pursue both price stability and maximum sustainable employment. To achieve its mandated objectives, the FOMC must influence the course of the U.S. economy, helping it to grow rapidly enough to make full use of available resources but not so rapidly as to stoke inflation. How, specifically, does the Committee exert this influence? The person in the street might tell you that the Fed 'controls interest rates.' That statement is not literally accurate. In fact, the Fed has little or no direct influence over the interest rates that matter most for the economy, such as mortgage rates, corporate bond rates, or the rates on Treasury securities. Instead, the Fed affects these key rates, as well as the prices of financial assets such as stocks, only indirectly. Since many of you plan to work in the financial markets, I thought that you might find it interesting to hear some of the details of how U.S. monetary policy is actually implemented and how policy decisions affect asset prices and yields....

Subject: Re: Monetary Policy From: johnny5 To: Terri Date Posted: Tues, Apr 05, 2005 at 08:26:36 (EDT) Email Address: johnny5@yahoo.com Message: From the diehards board: 30. Mel, comments? mellindauer| 04-04-05 | 11:13 PM Hello Everyone: I'm not really sure what this all means, but I'll have to go on the assumption that it's not good for investors. It appeared that EE Bonds were finally going to do their thing and start outperforming I Bonds after years of underperforming them, and now they go and change the game. Anytime the government, as opposed to market forces, starts messing with interest rates and setting them 'administratively', that most likely won't be good for investors. We've seen what can happen to rates that are set arbitrarily by the government when we look at the steady downtrend in the I Bond fixed rate. It would appear that one would have to make individual decisions each time the rate is announced as to whether the announced rate makes sense for one to five years, considering the effect of the penalty. If so, then one could probably consider them to be nothing more than a CD. I certainly wouldn't recommend them for younger investors, because they can really only be considered to be a 20-year bond now, since the Treasury states that it can change the rate for the 10-year extended maturity, and that rate may not be competitive with other options. One certainly doesn't want to have to cash in bonds with lots of accumulated interest when they're in their prime earning years (read high tax bracket). While they still will retain the guaranteed minimum return of 3.5265%, in a rising interest rate environment, that really isn't much of a guarantee. All the other options they offer (tax-deferral, freedom from state and local taxes, and possible use for qualifying educational expenses) are also available with I Bonds, which offer inflation adjustments every six months. Which means that the I Bond fixed rate may well be reduced even further as inflation picks up, so the total yield on I Bonds isn't too far out of line with the EE Bonds with the new fixed rate. All in all, I'd probably buy EE Bonds prior to May, and if the new rates ever become more attractive, then sell the lower-yielding ones and buy the new ones, thereby locking in a high rate for 20-years. Basically, it's going to be very similar to buying CDs; you have to decide when's the best time to lock in the long-term (20-year) rate. Somehow I don't feel the average investor is going to benefit from this. However, perhaps those who stay on top of things (like the Diehards) may be able to pick their spots and lock in decent rates they're happy with for 20-years, just as we were able to lock in those 3.4 and 3.6% fixed rates on the I Bonds. We'll just have to wait and see how this plays out. Somehow I have a sinking feeling that this could also spell the end of I Bonds. Wish I had something a bit more encouraging or billiant to say, but I really don't at this point in time. Best regards to all, Mel

Subject: Market Summary From: Terri To: All Date Posted: Tues, Apr 05, 2005 at 06:18:35 (EDT) Email Address: Not Provided Message: The trend in the American stock market so far this year is a mildly negative bent, with value ahead of growth and large cap ahead of small cap. Mid cap value continues to be strongest. Energy, materials, utilities, and health care are the strongest sectors. Europe and the Pacific are midly negative in dollar terms. International value is stronger than growth. Long term bonds continue to be positive. GNMA issues are holding nicely. There is strikingly little volatility in stock and bonds.

Subject: biggest central bank heist in the history of the w From: johnny5 To: All Date Posted: Mon, Apr 04, 2005 at 23:07:37 (EDT) Email Address: johnny5@yahoo.com Message: http://321energy.com/editorials/benson/benson040405.html AMERICA’S TRIBUTE BENSON’S ECONOMIC & MARKET TRENDS Written and published by Richard Benson, www.sfgroup.org April 5th, 2005 The Asians remain shocked and in disbelief. Just when Japan, China, Taiwan and Hong Kong had accumulated enough dollars to buy oil to keep them warm for many winters, it’s all over. In broad daylight, the Americans and OPEC cheered as the price of oil popped up from $30 a barrel to over $50 a barrel. Indeed, this jump in the price of oil increases the world’s daily oil consumption bill of 84 million barrels a day to $4.2 billion, from $2.5 billion (or $1.5 Trillion a year from $900 billion). The world now has to shell out an additional $600 billion a year of “lucky bucks” to the oil producing countries just to stay in motion. That’s quite a tribute to pay! The bigger shock, however, is in the devaluation of dollar holdings of United States’ Treasury debt. The rise in oil prices guarantees that the value of the dollar will be pushed down even further and stay down! Now that China is the number 2 oil importer and Japan is number 3 – with the rest of Asia very thirsty for oil as well – you can understand why the Asians must find a way to protect themselves. The American strategy for using oil to finance our deficit is, of course, brilliant. Our elected officials knew that at some point those independent foreign central banks would start getting edgy about buying more dollars to pay for America’s war and deficits. (The $650 Billion trade deficit is threatening the dollar.) So, which central banks can America continue to use as the fall guys to buy the dollar? Why not the Gulf Oil states, but where would they get the dollars to buy U.S. Treasuries? Well, with the Chinese piling up dollars and growing like crazy, at some point the oil market had to tighten. It was only a matter of time before the Chinese would start bidding up the price of oil. The Asians, therefore, are hung out to dry when the price of oil rises because they have to spend more of their dollars on oil. As the price of oil goes up, extra money floods into the Gulf Oil Kingdoms. With our Secretary of Defense putting troops all over the ground in the Middle East, and those nimble aircraft carriers are near by and ready to deliver the “shock and awe of sudden democracy” to the Gulf Monarchs, it’s a sure bet that America’s OPEC buddies will stash their newly found Asian lucky bucks into good old American Treasury Notes. With such a simple policy to fund our deficit for another year, it’s no wonder America can get by without any brain power at the Treasury Department. In effect, America and our Gulf Arab allies just pulled off the biggest central bank heist in the history of the world. The price of oil just went up 60 percent or more, which really cuts down to size those $3.4 trillion of net foreign holdings of U.S. financial assets. As a loyal American, we would like to cheer our government’s deft move to pick the pockets of our trading and financing partners. Moreover, America gets the Arabs to fund a large share of our deficit, subsidize our interest rates, and help keep our taxes low for another year! Surely, I can afford to buy another gas-guzzling Sport Ute, get a rifle, and wave a flag! America is extracting Tribute on oil from the world. If the world wants Middle Eastern oil, they can pay for it through the Saudi branch of the United States Treasury. Why do the heads of Saudi Arabia, Kuwait, Abu Dhabi, Bahrain, Qatar, etc., hold dollars? Because they want to keep the money and the power! (The ruling family of Saudi Arabia controls 25 percent of the world oil reserves and is completely dependent on oil revenues for its survival. Tens of thousands of Saudi princes live off lavish royal stipends). Think of Arabia as a family firm. If the dollar goes down in value, the Saudi Royal Family still gets to personally keep hundreds of billions of dollars. But, if they don’t buy dollars, why would America keep them in power? It would simply not be in our interests to do so. Remember when Saddam Hussein talked about pricing Iraq’s oil in Euros? “Shock and Awe” quietly followed. This program of oil for dollars and dollars for the U.S. Treasury deficit is the simple tribute that we, as the Super Power, can expect. America is well paid for keeping the world’s supply of “black gold” safe and available to all. Unlike Vietnam – when America was trying to finance guns and butter – getting others to pay now for our guns, allows us to milk the oil out of the sand and turn it into butter! The next question will be how the Asians respond to a 60 percent hike in the price of oil? Please, stay tuned. Notice in the chart below there are some big, smart, anonymous dollar holders (such as hedge funds) located in the Caribbean. No one knows who they really are. Written and published by Richard Benson, www.sfgroup.org April 5th, 2005

Subject: $100 laptop makes many new young Pkarchivers From: johnny5 To: All Date Posted: Mon, Apr 04, 2005 at 22:39:27 (EDT) Email Address: johnny5@yahoo.com Message: It warms johnny5's heart that many children all over the world will soon be able to download 'short circuit' and tap into the matrix. http://laptop.media.mit.edu/ http://www.cnn.com/2005/TECH/ptech/04/04/hundred.dollar.laptops.ap/index.html (AP) -- In a rural Cambodian village where the homes lack electricity, the nighttime darkness is pierced by the glow from laptops that children bring from school. The students were equipped with notebook computers by a foundation run by MIT Media Lab founder Nicholas Negroponte and his wife Elaine. 'When the kids bring them home and open them up, it's the brightest light source in the home,' said Negroponte. 'Parents love it.' Negroponte and some MIT colleagues are hard at work on a project they hope will brighten the lives and prospects of hundreds of millions of developing world kids. It's a grand idea and a daunting challenge: to create rugged, Internet- and multimedia-capable laptop computers at a cost of $100 apiece. The laptops would be mass-produced in orders of no smaller than 1 million units and bought by governments, which would distribute them. Ambitious projects to bridge the digital divide in the developing world at low cost have had a shaky track record. Perhaps the best example is the Simputer, a $220 handheld device developed by Indian scientists in 2001 that only last year became available and isn't selling well. But Negroponte and MIT colleagues Joe Jacobson and Seymour Papert aren't deterred. For one, three corporate partners have committed an initial $2 million apiece to the initiative and pledged to serve as suppliers for the 'one laptop per child' project: Sunnyvale, California-based Advanced Micro Devices Inc., which will bring expertise in processors; 'Do No Evil' search engine king Google; and News Corp., Rupert Murdoch's media company with global satellite capabilities. The mission: to make laptops as ubiquitous as cell phones in technology-deprived regions. Negroponte's pitch: The cost of a laptop comes in far lower than a child's textbook expenses for the computer's lifespan. 'It's a way of having the children be the agents of change,' Negroponte told The Associated Press. 'They bring the device home, and then the parents look over their shoulder.' He thinks it's extremely important that individual children own laptops; it will ensure they'll be well-maintained. In design and function, Negroponte wants the $100 laptop to 'be so close to the current laptops as to be nearly indistinguishable,' but acknowledges that the machine will have a relatively slow processor and modest storage capacity paired with barebones software. The biggest challenge, he says, is designing a display that doesn't put the price out of reach or drain the battery too quickly. Details are still being worked out, but here's the MIT team's current recipe: Put the laptop on a software diet; use the freely distributed Linux operating system; design a battery capable of being recharged with a hand crank; and use newly developed 'electronic ink' or a novel rear-projected image display with a 12-inch screen. Then, give it Wi-Fi access, and add USB ports to hook up peripheral devices. Most importantly, take profits, sales costs and marketing expenses out of the picture. 'The technology challenge is real, and you need to make some breakthroughs, but most of the money is saved in other ways,' said Negroponte, who pitched the project in January at the World Economic Forum in Switzerland, the annual confab of global powerbrokers. Negroponte has also met with Chinese and Brazilian officials to discuss expected orders and production in those countries, which would create local jobs. Two prototypes have been built, and test units could be shipped by the middle of next year. The project would essentially be nonprofit, with about $90 covering hardware for each computer and an extra $10 for contingencies or a small profit margin depending on how each government's order is structured. Yet even if all those hurdles are surmounted, some question whether a $100 laptop project is the answer to bridging the global digital divide. 'Even if you give the laptops out for free, Internet access and even electricity are huge problems,' said Marc Einstein, an analyst with Pyramid Research Inc., a Cambridge-based telecommunications consulting firm. Negroponte and Co. have part of that solved, at least in theory: Out of the box, the $100 laptops will be able to communicate with one another using peer-to-peer mesh networking. That doesn't directly solve the Internet or electricity problem, though. Al Hammond, director for the nonprofit World Resources Institute's Digital Dividend project in Washington D.C., worries about customer support in poor, rural areas. 'The key is to create something affordable and sufficiently robust to protect against voltage surges, against dust, and against being dropped, and against all the perils of the Internet,' Hammond said. 'Those things are more important if the nearest computer tech is three villages away and you don't have an air-conditioned office to work in.' Like Hammond, Andy Carvin, director of the Newton-based nonprofit Digital Divide Network, applauds the project's goals, calling an extremely low-cost, durable laptop 'one of the holy grails of bridging the digital divide.' But he said increasingly sophisticated and versatile wireless handhelds may gain favor over laptops as the developing world's online tools of choice. 'That's not to suggest we should not have an inexpensive laptop,' Carvin said. 'They're parallel tracks, and it's probably a healthy competition to have both.' The digital divide remains vast: The technology research firm IDC examined 53 countries and determined that a household in Canada was 131 times more likely to own a personal computer than one in Indonesia - hardly the world's least tech-oriented country. The United States trailed Canada at No. 2 by that measure in rankings that examined computer use in countries that fall in the top third for advanced technology use. Negroponte says his promotion of the $100 laptop project at the World Economic Forum meeting has helped it gain momentum. 'People are now calling me saying, 'We'd like to participate, and not only can we participate, but we can do it cheaper, or we can create better performance in this laptop,'' he said. 'People are saying, 'My God, this is real.''

Subject: Systemic Risk in England? From: johnny5 To: All Date Posted: Mon, Apr 04, 2005 at 22:01:28 (EDT) Email Address: johnny5@yahoo.com Message: Debt juggling, the new middle-class addiction Rosie Millard owes £40,000 on her credit cards – being an Impoverished Professional has become a way of life, she says My husband and I decide to go and see the latest Woody Allen; as couples do, we have supper before the movie in a noodle bar. At the end of the meal we realise that between us we have no cash, and so have to pay with a credit card. “I’ve brought all the cards,” says my husband cheerfully, riffling through about nine pieces of plastic. “Trouble is, I can’t remember which ones are up to their limit.” Go to a cash machine? Forget it. Both our current accounts have been frozen. Welcome to the world of middle-class debt. Last week it was announced there are more credit cards than people in the UK (67m, to be precise), and that personal debt is so huge Britain is more indebted than Argentina. If interest rates go up, the experts warn, the effect on ordinary people could be like a “time bomb”. Credit card debt accounts for £2 billion and Britain has in total a £1 trillion debt mountain. In our case, the time bomb has just exploded. On paper, my husband and I are what is known in polite parlance as “comfortably off”. In reality, we have no money. Anything that comes into Chez Millard goes out pretty much immediately on debt repayment. That, and paying the nanny so we can both go out to work and earn more money. For more debt repayment. An Impoverished Professional, I call myself. And there are plenty of us out there. My voyage into debt started, as these things do, with an almost unnoticeable, but incremental, downward curve. After the wedding (paid for by my father), we bought a house. “Extend yourselves as much as you can,” advised our friends. This seemed a great idea, particularly when house prices in Hackney started to rocket. So we bought a big house and signed up for an endowment policy. A couple of years down the line, when we had two nippers in tow, the value of the house had gone up, a lot. We borrowed against the booming equity in our home and bought a couple of flats, which we let. Avid readers of The Sunday Times may know thus was created a penchant for buy to let, which can make you quite a nice income. On paper. After we had finished charging around Ikea and furnishing two flats, we had another baby (and each extra child necessitates a pay rise to the nanny). It was at this point, I believe, that the great invention of the £10,000 interest-free card arrived. Flyers