Levy Institute & the forces of evil

[dhenwood@xxxxxxxxx (Doug Henwood)]

An LBO subscriber urged me to post this little article from issue #69.

Doug

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Doug Henwood
[dhenwood@xxxxxxxxx]
Left Business Observer
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MONEY & IDEAS. The Jerome Levy Economics Institute at Bard College is
one of the few respectable joints that opens its doors to people left of
mainstream liberals. It holds conferences on income polarization and the
dangers of finance unbound; post-Keynesians (or postkeynesians or Post
Keynesians, your choice) clot its hallways, including the very smart
Hyman Minsky; and it's even periodically housed the very smart Marxist
Anwar Shaikh.
   The Institute takes its name from a Wall Street speculator who,
fearing disaster, liquidated his stocks just before the 1929 crash. He
turned his attention to economics, and developed what's sometimes called
a Keynesianism before Keynes. In honor of their father, Jerome's sons
endowed the Institute to carry on his style of economic work.
   Local 100 of the Hotel Employees and Restaurant Employees (HERE)
union recently circulated a letter it wrote the Institute's director,
Dimitri Papadimitriou, highlighting some behavior that sheds as much
light on finance and polarization as any conference can. One of the Levy
fils, Leon, co-runs an investment firm called Odyssey Partners with Jack
Nash. Both Leon and Nash sit on the Institute's board, and another
boardmember, Brian Wruble, will soon become a partner at Odyssey.
Odyssey does leveraged buyouts, among other things; they borrow money,
take over companies, and cut their costs so debts can be serviced and
dividends paid to Odyssey. Prominent among the cost-cutting strategies
are mass firings and shifts of production to cheaper sites. An Odyssey-
associated company, Leslie Fay, which recently decided to close most of
its U.S. operations, eliminating 1,200 jobs, has been sued for cooking
the books before a 1991 stock offering. Levy and his partner, Jack Nash
also own a piece of New York's Smith & Wollensky Steakhouse, whose 170
Local 100 workers have been working without a contract for a year; the
federal government has found that the restaurant violated labor laws by
threatening employees, and other infractions are being investigated.
   Now what is this: one of the charming contradictions of capitalism,
testimony to the irrelevance of intellectual pursuits, or a sign that
Institute's practice will eventually reflect the practice of its
funders?