[Marxism] The State of the World

[Louis Proyect <lnp3@xxxxxxxxx>]

NY Times, May 23, 2004
For Home Sales, Spring Fever
By DENNIS HEVESI

HOME home buyers are rushing into the market because mortgage rates have 
inched up by a percentage point since March, brokers throughout the New 
York region say. For precisely the same reason, they say, other buyers — 
particularly skittish fledglings — are cringing from taking the plunge.

And at the same time, some sellers who had been holding onto their 
properties to maximize a seemingly inexorable rise in prices have now 
made that phone call to a listing agent, suddenly wary that the housing 
market — a reliable piston of the nation's economy even during recent 
sluggish times — might go into a grind should interest rates take too 
many more upward ticks. As a result, listings have lurched up a bit in 
the last two months.

Or is it just spring?

"People are affected by sunlight," said Sari Kingsley, president of the 
Staten Island Board of Realtors. "Listings have started to pour in. 
Then, maybe, it was just the lousy winter we had."

From the heights of Manhattan's towers to the capes of the New Jersey 
coast, the market remains on an inventory-squeezed, high- and 
higher-priced roll, a boon to sellers (at least until they have to find 
new digs) and a bane to buyers.

One Brooklyn broker says buyers these days seem to move in flocks — the 
same faces showing up at every open house; some people submitting 
defensive bids for a home not quite of their dreams, then slipping into 
buyer remorse and sometimes, just sometimes, backing out of the deal.

The primary angst for buyers, of course, stems from still-rising prices.

The average cost of a Manhattan apartment set a record during the first 
quarter of this year, coming in just short of $1 million at $998,905. 
Manhattan's median price of $625,000 also set a record during the first 
quarter, bounding up 21.4 percent from $515,000 in the first quarter of 
2003. In the not-quite-as-rarefied environs along the southern tier of 
Brooklyn, the median home price during the first quarter of 2004 was 
$495,000, a 13 percent increase from the same period in 2003.

full: http://www.nytimes.com/2004/05/23/realestate/23COV.html

====

NY Times, May 23, 2004
STAVING OFF STARVATION
When Real Food Isn't an Option
By DONALD G. McNEIL Jr.

ALL the mukhet bushes near the refugee camps in eastern Chad have been 
picked clean, the World Food Program warns in its latest appeal on 
behalf of more than 100,000 Sudanese who have fled fighting in their 
country and now face starvation. Mukhet berries are poisonous, and must 
be soaked for days to leach toxins out. After drying, they are ground 
up, but the flour has little nutritive value.

In Haiti's slums, round swirls of dough can be found baking in the sun. 
They look almost appetizing until you learn the ingredients: butter, 
salt, water and dirt.

In a world where the rich spend millions on ways to avoid carbohydrates 
and the United Nations declares obesity a global health threat, the 
cruel reality is that far more people struggle each day just to get 
enough calories.

In Malawi, children stand on the roadsides selling skewers of roasted mice.

In Mozambique, when grasshoppers eat the crops, people turn the tables 
and eat them, calling the fishy-tasting bugs "flying shrimp."

In Liberia during the 1989 civil war, every animal in the national zoo 
was devoured but a one-eyed lion. Dogs and cats disappeared from the 
streets of the capital.

But all that is, at least, fresh protein. During the siege of Kuito, 
Angola, in the early 1990's, Carlos Sicato, a World Food Program worker, 
described a man producing an old chair and promising his family, "If we 
don't die today, we can survive for four more." He soaked its leather 
for 15 hours to soften it and remove the tanning chemicals. Then, with 
boiling water, he made "lamb soup."

full: http://www.nytimes.com/2004/05/23/weekinreview/23mcne.html

--
Marxism list: www.marxmail.org




_______________________________________________
Marxism mailing list
Marxism@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx
http://lists.econ.utah.edu/mailman/listinfo/marxism