Nice Job If You Can Get It

CEO's in Canada saw their pay raises go up by 39%! Not in base salary but in their shareholdings that they get as bonuses. And they get bonuses cause why? Well cause they are CEO's. Not because they produced anything. As the Globe and Mail reports.

In Canada over the last year average workers salaries increased by 3.1 % And despite the long boom for capitalism, that wage increase is the average over the past twenty five years according to Stats. Canada. In other words workers have not seen anything trickle down, but have remained steady making no gains in from the boom.

Dennis Entwhistle of Telus did quite well thank you, seeing as he stalled any compensation to Telus workers for five years and then forced them out on strike.
He more than doubled his bonus from 2004.

Hunter Harrison did quite well considering the major environmental disasters his company; CN had with record accidents and derailments in Western Canada last year. But I guess he earned his compensation by thwarting fines for those accidents and payouts to the folks affected by his companies toxic spills.

Executive Compensation

How much is too much?

CEO pay soared 39% in 2005; read Janet McFarland's live discussion transcript

Investors could certainly ask that question this year. A Report on Business survey of executive compensation shows that Canada's CEOs saw their pay soar an average of 39 per cent in 2005 compared with 2004 (itself a year of huge compensation increases) as stock markets and commodity prices rocketed higher.

While salaries and bonuses climbed a modest 6 per cent last year, CEOs saw their stock option gains climb 47 per cent over 2004. CEOs on average earned $1.8-million each from exercising stock options — a number that climbs to $4.5-million if only those CEOs who cashed out options are included.

(The ROB review looked at 247 of the 279 companies that make up the S&P/TSX composite index. The others have not yet reported their compensation data for 2005.)

Executive Compensation Report 2005

RANK	COMPANY	CEO	TOTAL($)	DETAILS
1	Precision Drilling Trust	Swartout, Hank	$74,824,335
Salary: $840,000 Bonus: $3,360,000 Subtotal: $4,200,000 4% chg Other: $15,589,000 Share Units: $0 Option Gains: $55,035,331 TOTAL: $74,824,335 New option grant: 403,038 ($3,345,215) Industry: Energy Legend
2	Canadian National Railway Co.	Harrison, Hunter	$56,219,496
Salary: $1,665,950 Bonus: $4,664,660 Subtotal: $6,330,610 2% chg Other: $1,710,324 Share Units: $20,931,213 Option Gains: $27,247,347 TOTAL: $56,219,496 New option grant: 250,000 ($2,136,051) Industry: Industrials Legend
3	Nortel Networks Corp.(1)	Zafirovski, Mike	$37,429,297
Salary: $305,785 Bonus: $0 Subtotal: $305,785 % chg Other: $28,698,591 Share Units: $8,424,921 Option Gains: $0 TOTAL: $37,429,297 New option grant: 5,000,000 ($10,695,000) Industry: Information Technology Legend
4	Canadian Imperial Bank of Commerce	Hunkin##, John	$29,471,306
Salary: $750,000 Bonus: $0 Subtotal: $750,000 -81% chg Other: $2,250 Share Units: $28,719,137 Option Gains: n/a TOTAL: $29,471,306 New option grant: 0 ($0) Industry: Financials Legend
5	Talisman Energy Inc.	Buckee, James	$23,330,301
Salary: $1,104,300 Bonus: $1,988,000 Subtotal: $3,092,300 5% chg Other: $151,704 Share Units: $0 Option Gains: $20,086,292 TOTAL: $23,330,301 New option grant: 300,000 () Industry: Energy Legend
6	Potash Corp. of Saskatchewan	Doyle, William	$22,128,851
Salary: $1,151,020 Bonus: $1,279,450 Subtotal: $2,430,470 -14% chg Other: $165,412 Share Units: $7,672,916 Option Gains: $11,860,067 TOTAL: $22,128,851 New option grant: 225,000 ($5,351,334) Industry: Materials Legend
7	Magna International Inc.	Walker, Donald	$19,557,890
Salary: $195,795 Bonus: $6,061,090 Subtotal: $6,256,885 % chg Other: $35,600 Share Units: $13,257,872 Option Gains: $0 TOTAL: $19,557,890 New option grant: 0 ($0) Industry: Consumer Discretionary Legend
8	Power Corp. of Canada	Desmarais, André	$18,844,090
Salary: $906,000 Bonus: $700,000 Subtotal: $1,606,000 1% chg Other: $545,064 Share Units: $0 Option Gains: $16,693,025 TOTAL: $18,844,090 New option grant: 263,000 ($2,272,320) Industry: Financials Legend
9	EnCana Corp.	Morgan##, Gwyn	$18,162,456
Salary: $1,475,000 Bonus: $2,660,000 Subtotal: $4,135,000 2% chg Other: $159,171 Share Units: $1,916,000 Option Gains: $11,952,283 TOTAL: $18,162,456 New option grant: 150,000 () Industry: Energy Legend
10	Bank of Nova Scotia	Waugh, Richard	$17,180,536
Salary: $1,000,000 Bonus: $1,500,000 Subtotal: $2,500,000 -3% chg Other: $275,801 Share Units: $3,000,000 Option Gains: $11,404,738 TOTAL: $17,180,536 New option grant: 224,788 ($3,000,000) Industry: Financials Legend
11	Cameco Corp.	Grandey, Gerald	$16,567,579
Salary: $771,300 Bonus: $600,000 Subtotal: $1,371,300 -1% chg Other: $6,449 Share Units: $2,433,600 Option Gains: $12,756,231 TOTAL: $16,567,579 New option grant: 210,000 ($2,558,325) Industry: Energy Legend
12	Peyto Energy Trust	Gray, Donald	$15,512,035
Salary: $210,000 Bonus: $15,302,021 Subtotal: $15,512,021 14% chg Other: $0 Share Units: $0 Option Gains: $0 TOTAL: $15,512,035 New option grant: 120,000 () Industry: Energy Legend
13	TELUS Corp.	Entwistle, Darren	$14,096,690
Salary: $970,000 Bonus: $1,200,000 Subtotal: $2,170,000 54% chg Other: $149,635 Share Units: $4,473,780 Option Gains: $7,303,221 TOTAL: $14,096,690 New option grant: 140,200 ($1,693,616) Industry: Telecom Services Legend
14	Power Corp. of Canada	Desmarais Jr., Paul	$13,881,209
Salary: $906,000 Bonus: $700,000 Subtotal: $1,606,000 1% chg Other: $455,021 Share Units: $0 Option Gains: $11,820,187 TOTAL: $13,881,209 New option grant: 263,000 ($2,272,320) Industry: Financials Legend
15	George Weston Ltd.(2)	Weston, Galen	$13,443,682
Salary: $1,600,000 Bonus: $460,000 Subtotal: $2,060,000 -10% chg Other: $10,000 Share Units: $2,830,059 Option Gains: $8,543,633 TOTAL: $13,443,682 New option grant: 187,383 () Industry: Consumer Staples Legend
16	Sherritt International Corp.	Delaney, Ian	$13,254,590
Salary: $750,000 Bonus: $112,500 Subtotal: $862,500 15% chg Other: $331,405 Share Units: $0 Option Gains: $12,060,670 TOTAL: $13,254,590 New option grant: 0 ($0) Industry: Materials Legend
17	Alimentation Couche-Tard Inc.	Bouchard, Alain	$12,048,833
Salary: $850,000 Bonus: $424,307 Subtotal: $1,274,307 26% chg Other: $0 Share Units: $0 Option Gains: $10,774,500 TOTAL: $12,048,833 New option grant: 0 ($0) Industry: Consumer Staples Legend
18	Alcan Inc.	Engen##, Travis	$11,850,529
Salary: $1,817,400 Bonus: $4,240,600 Subtotal: $6,058,000 38% chg Other: $-1,044,265 Share Units: $6,836,756 Option Gains: $0 TOTAL: $11,850,529 New option grant: 450,100 ($6,058,000) Industry: Materials Legend
19	MDS Inc.	Rogers##, John	$11,730,988
Salary: $425,000 Bonus: $195,000 Subtotal: $620,000 -16% chg Other: $10,772,801 Share Units: $338,203 Option Gains: $0 TOTAL: $11,730,988 New option grant: 46,000 ($275,080) Industry: Health Care Legend
20	Imperial Oil Ltd.	Hearn, Tim	$11,497,563
Salary: $1,100,000 Bonus: $900,000 Subtotal: $2,000,000 7% chg Other: $418,028 Share Units: $8,302,498 Option Gains: $777,030 TOTAL: $11,497,563 New option grant: 0 ($0) Industry: Energy Legend
21	Canadian Tire Corp.	Sales##, Wayne	$11,259,253
Salary: $990,000 Bonus: $1,079,555 Subtotal: $2,069,555 -9% chg Other: $2,651,745 Share Units: $1,613,968 Option Gains: $4,923,994 TOTAL: $11,259,253 New option grant: 0 ($0) Industry: Consumer Discretionary Legend
22	Ivanhoe Mines Ltd.	Friedland, Robert	$10,875,000
Salary: $0 Bonus: $0 Subtotal: $0 % chg Other: $0 Share Units: $0 Option Gains: $10,875,000 TOTAL: $10,875,000 New option grant: 0 ($0) Industry: Materials Legend
23	Inco Ltd.	Hand, Scott	$10,715,736
Salary: $1,240,969 Bonus: $2,416,888 Subtotal: $3,657,857 12% chg Other: $161,791 Share Units: $2,436,903 Option Gains: $4,459,173 TOTAL: $10,715,736 New option grant: 54,000 ($800,789) Industry: Materials Legend
24	Onex Corp.	Schwartz, Gerald	$10,576,533
Salary: $781,300 Bonus: $9,795,248 Subtotal: $10,576,548 -15% chg Other: $0 Share Units: $0 Option Gains: $0 TOTAL: $10,576,533 New option grant: 0 ($0) Industry: Information Technology Legend
25	Paramount Resources Ltd.(3)	Riddell, Clayton	$9,981,976

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Mortons Homophobia Rebuked

In a move that exemplifies how parliamentary democracy can allow a very tiny minority to overturn a dangerous bill, the NDP and Liberals in the Alberta legislature defeated right wing ,would be fuerher of the PC's, Ted Mortons private members bill to allow hate speech against gays and lesbians.

Time runs out for passage of Alta private bill denounced as anti-gay

Opposition members used stalling tactics Monday to prevent final passage of Bill 208, effectively killing the legislation as the spring sitting winds down. "It's a sad day for democracy when the Liberals and ND's won't allow a debate on an issue this important," said Ted Morton, the rookie government member and Tory leadership contender who sponsored the bill.

And as I said he is pandering to the social conservative rump in the PC party.

Morton concedes his legislation is dead for now, but he's promising to make it an issue during the leadership contest to replace Klein as Alberta's Conservative leader.

Klein supports private anti-gay marriage bill Of course he did he his after all a demogaouge populist. Here is the irony though Brokeback Mountain is putting Alberta on the tourist map. For gay tourists. Yep welcome to the land of gay bashing cowboys. Opps.

City's gay community outraged by Bill 208

Winds of intolerance are blowing in Alberta

Fundamentalism Being Entrenched into Albertan Politics

ATA gives Morton’s Bill 208 a failing grade

Also See Same Sex Marriage

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Sentience

Where I agree with the animal rights activists is that we must confront our species chauvinism

Fellow Progressive blogger Nunc Scio reports that another one of our deeply held chauvinistic beliefs has bit the dust. Dolphins have names?

What is ironic is that there are those who insist that while animals have no sentience, artifical intelligence; man made computers/robots, can.

One of the oldest ideas in philosophy is that animals act in a machine-like fashion with no conscious thought processes of any kind. The more we find out about animals, the more this idea is disappearing. Evidence is growing that animals have far more cognitive abilities than has traditionally been believed - they are sentient creatures. Animal Sentience Conference - London 2005

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Iraq Scandal

The Republican witch hunt overthe UN Oil for Food scandal pales in comparison to the recent revelations about the billions wasted in Iraq by US Occupation Forces and their private contractors. But it won't make Fox news. Here is another case of the failure of the privatization of war.

US audit finds 'spectacular' waste of funds in Iraq | csmonitor.com

Auditors believed Halliburton overcharged $218 million on a contract to import fuel and repair oil fields, for which the US company was paid $1.6 billion in Iraqi oil proceeds.

Billions wasted in Iraq, says US audit

• Guardian, Monday May 1 2006, Ewen MacAskill in Washington

A US congressional inspection team set up to monitor reconstruction in Iraq today publishes a scathing report of failures by contractors, mainly from the US, to carry out projects worth hundreds of millions of dollars. In one case, the inspection team found that three years after the invasion only six of 150 health centres proposed for Iraq had been completed.

US firms suspected of bilking Iraq funds

WASHINGTON -- American contractors swindled hundreds of millions of dollars in Iraqi funds, but so far there is no way for Iraq's government to recoup the money, according to US investigators and civil attorneys tracking fraud claims against contractors.

In addition, an Iraqi law created by the Coalition Provisional Authority days before it ceded sovereignty to Iraq in June 2004 gives American contractors immunity from prosecution in Iraq.

''In effect, it makes Iraq into a 'free-fraud zone,' " said Alan Grayson, a Virginia attorney who is suing the private security firm Custer Battles in a whistle-blower lawsuit filed by former employees. A federal jury last month found the Rhode Island-based company liable for $3 million in fraudulent billings in Iraq.

Even the United Nations panel set up to monitor the use of Iraq's seized assets has no power to prosecute wrongdoers.

America's billions fall short in Iraq

Mothballed projects leave U.S. wondering if money was wasted

By John Ward Anderson and Bassam Sebti
The Washington Post

"The United States must ensure that the billions of dollars it has already invested in Iraq's infrastructure are not wasted," said an October report by the Government Accountability Office, the investigative arm of Congress, citing what it said were "limitations in the Iraqis' capacity to maintain and operate reconstructed facilities."

For example, the report said, "As of June 2005, approximately $52 million of the $200 million in completed large-scale water and sanitation projects either were not operating or were operating at lower capacity due to looting of key equipment and shortages of reliable power, trained Iraqi staff, and required chemicals and supplies."

The Karkh facilities--not included in the GAO report--also illustrate the security problems that plague reconstruction efforts and have forced U.S. officials to redirect as much as $3.5billion from building projects and into security to protect them, raising the cost of infrastructure improvements between 16 percent and 22 percent, officials say.

IRAQ: Wasit residents protest fuel shortages, allege official corruption
BAGHDAD, 8 May (IRIN) - Residents of Wasit province, some 160km south of Baghdad, have accused local officials of corruption and collaboration with black-market fuel dealers."Local officials are ordering fuel stations to close as early as 3:00 p.m. on the pretence that the security situation is bad," said Jassim Mohamed, 47, a taxi driver. "But in reality, they're encouraging these stations to sell fuel on the black market. Officials are making money by creating the crisis."


Ayoon Wa Azan (The World's Largest Embassy)

The US is building the world's largest embassy in Iraq. The project of building on half-a-million square meters is going to cost one billion dollars. It will consist of 21 buildings, water wells and an electric power station. The standard American embassy is 50,000 square meters in size. However, the embassy in Baghdad is nothing but a gas station. This is the sole reason behind the war in Iraq and threat to all of the countries in the region.

Some have become aware that Iraqi reconstruction funds have been wasted or stolen. Three years have passed and the occupation has still not regulated electricity supplies, whereas, the besieged Saddam regime had operated electricity within a few months after the liberation of Kuwait. The embassy, or, gas station, includes a swimming pool, a sporting club and a food caterer. I do not understand how the Americans can believe that the Iraqis will let them enjoy this embassy for very long

UN warns on Iraq environment fate

Inspectors found much of the waste rotting and abandoned

Derelict factories, military scrapyards and battle sites across Iraq pose a threat to the environment and to public health, the United Nations has said.

The UN Environment Program has trained Iraqi specialists in detoxification, but says any clean-up could cost up to $40m (£23m).

Chemical spills, unsecured hazardous material and pollution by depleted uranium are among the issues.

Also See: Halliburton's Depleted Uranium Cover Up

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Bald Facts

The Guardian asks;

To baldly go Does male hair loss really matter that much? Nicholas Lezard reports. Special report: gender issues

No it does not but then I am biased. And it's not just a case of only men being bald, some women go bald and look damn good just like bald men do.

You have to be bold to be bald. And baldness implies a certain androgeny, which may be why it has always been a challenge to masculinity/feminitiy gender constructs.










Also See:

Boys will be Girls

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The White House War Criminals

Its not enough to just Impeach Bush but all the war criminals in the White House should be indicted. So says an article on Rumsfeld in the Guardian Weekly. Resignation is too easy, indictment for war crimes is the way to go.

By violating both the letter and the spirit of international law regarding the treatment of detainees, Rumsfeld effectively turned himself into a war criminal. The fact that terrorists stand outside international norms of combat and democratic oversight is what separates them from us. Erase that distinction and the war on terror morphs into a war of terror. The question at this point is not whether Rumsfeld should resign, Joanne Mariner, of Human Rights Watch, told Progressive magazine. Its whether he should be indicted.

Unfortunately for Americans, and the rest of the World, the Democrats being the asses they are lack the intestinal fortitude or political cumption to do this.. Democrats pledge probes of Bush, not impeachment Because Presidential candidates Hillary and Kerry voted for war.

A war that is now opposed by the majority of Americans and for good reasons, see this video. And unlike Viet Nam the majority still support their troops. That is why the White House must be tried for War Crimes.

Anti-war sentiments blend with pro-military culture
by Matt Stearns

Returning from a combat tour of Vietnam in 1969, U.S. Army Capt. Robert H. Scales Jr. stepped off the plane and into a torrent of abuse.

It got so bad that the West Point graduate and Silver Star winner went to an airport bathroom and changed out of his uniform before catching another flight home.

"People started banging on me about the fact that I was a soldier. ... How could I be a part of a military that was so evil, that was doing such evil things," recalled Scales, now a retired major general and a military historian.

Thirty-seven years later, public support for another distant war, this one in Iraq, is waning and some observers are drawing parallels to Vietnam.

But there is one dramatic difference between the two wars: The overwhelmingly positive view of the military and its troops among Americans - even among those who oppose the war...

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J K Galbraith RIP

He was the tallest economist in modern history towering as he did above his peers at almost seven feet. He was Canadian, giving him a unique view of American capitalism.

"The modern conservative is engaged in one of man's oldest exercises in moral philosophy; that is, the search for a superior moral justification for selfishness."

Embodying all the social democratic traditions this country offers as well as our most important export to that country; humour.

His brilliant deployment of subversive weapons -- irony, satire, laughter -- did not always please the more sedate members of his profession. But it vastly pleased the rest of us. Ken used the whiplash phrase and the sardonic thrust for several purposes: to reconnect academic economics, walled off in mathematical equations, with human and social reality; to rebuke the apostles of selfishness and greed; and to give the neglected, the abused and the insulted of our world a better break in life.
JK Galbraith's Towering Spirit

His most definitive work was on the Wall Street Crash as well as his critique of the supply side school of economics of the Von Mises and Hayek and their bastard son Milton Friedman; his most popular book The Affluent Society.

It was his smallish 1958 book, The Affluent Society, that earned Galbraith his popular reknown and professional emnity. Although the thesis was not astoundingly new - having long been argued by Veblen, Mitchell and Knight - his attack on the myth of "consumer sovereignty" went against the cornerstone of mainstream economics and, in many ways, the culturally hegemonic "American way of life". John Kenneth Galbraith

Forsaking Galbraith's good sense by Rick Salutin

It's too bad John Kenneth Galbraith died last Saturday at 97 — just before the Conservative budget. He'd have been the ideal commentator. He said it all nearly 50 years ago, in The Affluent Society. Today it's called the Humming-Along society as in: “The economy is humming along.”

His thesis was: Despite so much abstract wealth, most citizens in our affluent society lead impoverished lives. That's because the wealth gets frittered away in private consumption while the common goods that render life full — education, health, culture, even the air — are neglected since they tend to be in the public realm. The Harper budget is a fine example. It fritters away the potential in tax breaks to individuals.

In praise of ... JK Galbraith

Not that Professor Galbraith exonerated his calling. "Economics," he wrote "is a subject profoundly conducive to cliche, resonant with boredom." Yet Galbraith was the living refutation of that. Consistently in his lectures and writings he put great themes into the language, themes which lit up the study of economics for those who had never been taught it. The most compelling of these, which even a cursory daily look displays, was the co-existence of private affluence with public squalor.

A second, no less abundantly evident in this age of "must have", was the manufacture by producers of desires which consumers then dutifully come to believe are real needs. A third was the convenient view, so entrenched in the 1980s, that while the rich ought to be given more to make them work harder, giving more to the worst-off would only make them work less. Hypocrisy will sleep more sweetly tonight for the knowledge that Galbraith is no longer around to look down from his very great height and skewer it.

I rather like his quotes on economics. They were like those of GB. Shaw who once said; If all the economists in the world were laid end to end they would still not reach a conclusion.

"Economics is extremely useful as a form of employment for economists"The legacy of JK Galbraith

"In economics", he once said, "the majority is always wrong."

He was particularly outspoken about the folly of economic forecasting: "The only function of economic forecasting is to make astrology look respectable." The Wisdom Of JK Galbraith

Who will inherit the mantle of JK Galbraith? Ironically this particular Gaurdian article on Galbraith forgets to mention his son and namesake James Galbraith.

His BBC TV series in the seventies, based on writings is also a book; the Age of Uncertainty, showed rows and rows of thousands abandoned tanks in the US at the height of the Viet Nam war, giving a visual image of the very nature of what Schumpeter called creative destruction and what Galbraith called the waste of capitalism, military production.

His New Industrial State (1967) expanded on Galbraith's theory of the firm, arguing that the orthodox theories of the perfectly competitive firm fell far short in analytical power. Firms, Galbraith claimed, were oligopolistic, autonomous institutions vying for market share (and not profit maximization) which wrested power away from owners (entrepreneurs/shareholders), regulators and consumers via conventional means (e.g. vertical integration, advertising, product differentiation) and unconventional ones (e.g. bureaucratization, capture of political favor), etc. Naturally, these were themes already well-espoused in the old American Institutionalist literature, but in the 1960s, they had been apparently forgotten in economics John Kenneth Galbraith

Others have written his obituary even his opponents have been glowing in their faint praise of this great Canadian.

Despite his liberal views, Mr. Galbraith was befriended by conservative intellectuals such as William F. Buckley Jr. and economist Arthur Laffer. "The world is not just made up of people who turn out to be right," Mr. Laffer said. "It is the debate that's critical. ... It is the debate that moves the world forward. And there is no one better to debate than John Kenneth Galbraith."
JK Galbraith's 'genius' recalled

John Kenneth Galbraith, 1908-2006

GLOBE EDITORIAL

J.K. Galbraith, 1908-2006

May 1, 2006

THEY CALL IT the dismal science, but in the hands of John Kenneth Galbraith, economics was neither dismal nor much of a science. He turned his knowledge of economic basics into social criticism for a country that emerged from the sacrifices and privations of the Depression and World War II hell-bent on enjoying its newfound prosperity. ''Technical economists," as he once called them, might win the big prizes, but his wit and the Olympian perspective afforded in part by his 6-foot, 8-inch height won him both millions of readers and the confidence of Democratic presidents like John Kennedy, Lyndon Johnson, and Bill Clinton, and would-be presidents like Adlai Stevenson, Eugene McCarthy, and George McGovern.

The worldview of Galbraith, who died Saturday at 97 in Cambridge, was grounded in the waste-not, want-not ethic of an Ontario farm. He used education, first at a local college and then at the University of California at Berkeley, to move from that life to one of government service and a longtime professorship at Harvard. The experience helped to make him a believer in the power of government to use its resources not just to avoid the kind of economic collapse that brought on the Depression but also to create the schools, public transportation, and other civic institutions that can even out social inequality.

Say nothing but good of Galbraith

A theme of the posthumous attack on Galbraith was that monetarism had won the intellectual battle: that Friedman was right and the Keynesian Galbraith wrong. There was also the usual snide stuff that Galbraith, who had set out to be a populariser, was not 'really' an economist - because he did not rely on mathematical models. Well, Galbraith may not have followed modern economics down the narrow paths of econometrics; but he was every inch an economist and was not made president of the American Economic Association for nothing. He was quite simply the most famous, most widely read, most popular (and tallest) economist in the world. For some members of his profession this was, of course, unforgivable.

Professor Amartya Sen, our distinguished Nobel Prize winner in economics, was mindful of the resentment in his profession when he said some years ago: 'Galbraith's contribution still doesn't get enough praise.' As Galbraith's biographer Richard Parker pointed out, Galbraith realised the (often unrealistic) assumptions of classical economics were all very well, but it was important to connect the atomistic world of 'perfect competition' with the balance of power in societies.

A theme of Galbraith's major works - most notably in American Capitalism, The Affluent Society and The New Industrial State - is the need to beware the accretion of excessive economic power, not least to the business corporation. He was a Keynesian, with a deep understanding of the limitations of markets.

His concern about the coexistence of 'private affluence and public squalor' was well founded, and no less relevant today. Always on the left, a liberal in US terminology, Galbraith championed the underdog and was scathing about those economists who had a religious faith in the ability of 'markets' to produce a fair outcome in society.

John Kenneth Galbraith, 97, Dies; Economist Held a Mirror to Society

From the 1930's to the 1990's Mr. Galbraith helped define the terms of the national political debate, influencing both the direction of the Democratic Party and the thinking of its leaders.

He tutored Adlai E. Stevenson, the Democratic nominee for president in 1952 and 1956, on Keynesian economics. He advised President John F. Kennedy (often over lobster stew at the Locke-Ober restaurant in their beloved Boston) and served as his ambassador to India.

Though he eventually broke with President Lyndon B. Johnson over the war in Vietnam, he helped conceive of Mr. Johnson's Great Society program and wrote a major presidential address that outlined its purposes. In 1968, pursuing his opposition to the war, he helped Senator Eugene J. McCarthy seek the Democratic nomination for president.

In the course of his long career, he undertook a number of government assignments, including the organization of price controls in World War II and speechwriting for Presidents Franklin D. Roosevelt, Kennedy and Johnson.

He drew on his experiences in government to write three satirical novels. One in 1968, "The Triumph," a best seller, was an assault on the State Department's slapstick efforts to assist a mythical banana republic, Puerto Santos. In 1990, he took on the Harvard economics department with "A Tenured Professor," ridiculing, among others, a certain outspoken character who bore no small resemblance to himself.

At his death, Mr. Galbraith was the Paul M. Warburg emeritus professor of economics at Harvard, where he had taught for most of his career. A popular lecturer, he treated economics as an aspect of society and culture rather than as an arcane discipline of numbers.

GOOGLE News coverage of Galbraiths death.

John Kenneth Galbraith - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

Conflict and Conversion: Henry S. Dennison and the Shaping of J.K. Galbraith's Economic Thought

Journal article by Kyle Bruce; Journal of Economic Issues, Vol. 34, 2000

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Bella Ciao

While wandering the WWW I came across this news site from the European Left; Bella Ciao which I have added to my side bar under News. Never can have too much alternative news from the left.



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