LETTER TO RICHARD KAUFMAN FROM HANS HEYMANN JR.

• Document Type: CREST
• Collection: General CIA Records
• Document Number (FOIA) /ESDN (CREST): CIA-RDP87R00029R000300530002-7
• Release Decision: RIPPUB
• Original Classification: K
• Document Page Count: 2
• Document Creation Date: January 4, 2017
• Document Release Date: April 15, 2008
• Sequence Number: 2
• Publication Date: May 31, 1983
• Content Type: LETTER

Approved For Release 2008/04/15: CIA-RDP87R00029R000300530002-7
National Intelligence Council
31 May 1983
Mr. Richard Kaufman
Assistant Director
Joint Economic Committee
United States Congress
Senate Dirksen Building
Washington, D. C. 20510
Dear Dick:
Attached is the latest edition of periodic effort to
compute the "planetary product" that I mentioned to you in our recent
telephone conversation. It is a long-standing tour de force by and a
highly idiosyncratic effort at that.
As I mentioned to you,0 has now virtually completed a follow-on
version which brings the estimates up through 1982 and recomputes the data
in constant 1982 U.S. Dollars. The pecularities of his methodology are as
follows:
o The study uses the purchasing power parity method of
transposing foreign GNPs into U.S. Dollars.
o The approach avoids the problem of exchange rate
conversion which skews the results by a random 10-20
percent, depending upon how sharply exchange rates
fluctuate.
o The method includes adding somewhere between a 20-40
percent supplement to reported GNPs in particular third
world regions, to compensate for output that
conventional national income accounting fails to pick
up.
o I mouses standard Census Bureau estimates for the
population of the 160+ nation states he covers.
o All of the GNP and population data for the previous
years are on computer disks and can be updated and
reprogrammed to add the latest data for 1981 and 1982.
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 Approved For Release 2008/04/15: CIA-RDP87R00029R000300530002-7
o We have a nt,l - who stands ready
to review draft and put it in clean publishable
I believe that work is interesting and valuable. For a quick
impression of the kind of thing it tell us, please look at his summary
table in the attached volume (page iv). Among other things, it points up
that:
o The US commands twice as much economic fire power as the
USSR.
0 NATO and Japan together command three times as much
economic fire power as the Warsaw Pact.
o The LDCs account for three-quarters of the world's
population, but only one-quarter of its output.
In addition highly personal observations are provocative and
unconventional; his style is not everybody's cup of tea, but he makes you
think. His tables on the percentage growth in national GNPs and per capita
GNPs are another valuable feature.
If you can think of any way of getting an update of the attached
volume into print by some JEC mechanism, it would be a great help. Call me
f you have any thoughts on this.
Sincerely yours,
Hans Heymann, Jr.
National Intelligence Officer
at Large
Central Intelligence Agency
Room 7E62
Washington, D. C. 20505
STAT
STAT
Approved For Release 2008/04/15: CIA-RDP87R00029R000300530002-7