Neoliberalism: The Economy, Banking & Asset Markets

[Wrecker45 3,378]

1 hour ago, Grr-owl said:

 

There's a difference between censorship and warnings re lack of facts. Trump simply lies; that deserves to be flagged. 

There is an old joke:

Q) how do you know when a politician is lying

A) when they open their mouth

I don't think Trump is worse than others, Bill Clinton lied to the world under oath. It's just he is a terrible person and grates on people 

Why does twitter still allow footage of Trump saying bleach could help cure carona? It rightly humiliates him. I don't think a sane person would say that.

But if Trump tweets more rational things and less likely to harm people they get censored. That is my beef with Twitter 

[Accepting Mediocrity 1,418]

9 hours ago, Wrecker45 said:

But if Trump tweets more rational things and less likely to harm people they get censored. That is my beef with Twitter 

There's no doubt twitter has a massive problem with censorship. You brought up Eric Coomer earlier in the thread, but it's the cases you don't hear about that are a far bigger problem. Take Charles Gomez (yep - the same Gomez that was arrested for assaulting a police officer in the Minneapolis riots earlier this year). He's a a far-left ex-democrat with strong socialist ties that sits on the Election Administration of Georgia (a supposedly impartial commission). Remember those 4000 'missing votes' (from Republican counties - the missing votes always are) that magically turned up Georgia the other day when Republican observers were finally granted access? There are screenshots of leaked emails going around that not only show Gomez buried them, but it's just the tip of the iceberg. There are literally thousands more votes out there (doubtless long since destroyed by now) that will never see the light of day. 

Twitter and Facebook have both censored all posts sharing the screenshots of the emails though. They've magically disappeared. Probably because they never existed and Charles Gomez is a fictional character I made up 2 minutes ago. You were probably suspicious reading this post Wrecker, because you know from my posting history that I don't subscribe to conspiracy theories. If you'd read this on twitter, or was shared by a mate or whatever, you wouldn't have bothered to fact check, because it fits with your underlying political narrative. Same goes on the other side of the political spectrum, obviously. We live in a post-truth world, but fact-checking does not equate to censorship. Anyway, sorry to derail the thread. Carry on.  

[Wrecker45 3,378]

11 minutes ago, Accepting Mediocrity said:

There's no doubt twitter has a massive problem with censorship. You brought up Eric Coomer earlier in the thread, but it's the cases you don't hear about that are a far bigger problem. Take Charles Gomez (yep - the same Gomez that was arrested for assaulting a police officer in the Minneapolis riots earlier this year). He's a a far-left ex-democrat with strong socialist ties that sits on the Election Administration of Georgia (a supposedly impartial commission). Remember those 4000 'missing votes' (from Republican counties - the missing votes always are) that magically turned up Georgia the other day when Republican observers were finally granted access? There are screenshots of leaked emails going around that not only show Gomez buried them, but it's just the tip of the iceberg. There are literally thousands more votes out there (doubtless long since destroyed by now) that will never see the light of day. 

Twitter and Facebook have both censored all posts sharing the screenshots of the emails though. They've magically disappeared. Probably because they never existed and Charles Gomez is a fictional character I made up 2 minutes ago. You were probably suspicious reading this post Wrecker, because you know from my posting history that I don't subscribe to conspiracy theories. If you'd read this on twitter, or was shared by a mate or whatever, you wouldn't have bothered to fact check, because it fits with your underlying political narrative. Same goes on the other side of the political spectrum, obviously. We live in a post-truth world, but fact-checking does not equate to censorship. Anyway, sorry to derail the thread. Carry on.  

Quite an interesting post. I agree with your contention for the most part including an apology for derailling the thread 

Hunter Biden is a good example of censorship by twitter. People cc'd in his emails have confirmed that they recieved them. Yet twitter won't allow them to be published. Trump's tax records which are likely true but unconfirmed are published by twitter.

I smell a rat 

[Grr-owl 1,219]

15 hours ago, Wrecker45 said:

There is an old joke:

Q) how do you know when a politician is lying

A) when they open their mouth

I don't think Trump is worse than others, Bill Clinton lied to the world under oath. It's just he is a terrible person and grates on people 

Why does twitter still allow footage of Trump saying bleach could help cure carona? It rightly humiliates him. I don't think a sane person would say that.

But if Trump tweets more rational things and less likely to harm people they get censored. That is my beef with Twitter 

You mean they are in effect editing him for the downside. That’s interesting. 

[Grr-owl 1,219]

On 11/26/2020 at 9:41 AM, A F said:

Biden has just appointed Yellen as you mentioned, so expect the debt conversation to go on and on. She's a massive neolib. America will not get change with her, unless she's suddenly learnt new lessons.

I figure change will not come without circumstances forcing it, or at least compelling it. And that means a crisis of some sort.

I had a big post mapped out, going into the colonial model - UK, USA, China, economic and political models in sympathy, decentralisation and sovereignty (lately an important issue re Aussie wine, 14 points on how to be a good boy, alliances with old enemies, welcome realignment in the US etc) - and it cuts to issues discussed in Reclaiming the State, which I'm reading as you recommended. I've been utterly blown away. There it all is, the entire misstep, laid out in a nutshell, so thanks for that. I’ve also finished The Square and the Tower, which discusses Keynes, and so I’ll lay off further opining about neo-liberalism for the moment until I've digested those.

Just on Ferguson… take a look at this (short) video: 

I find his history books enlightening, but his economic commentary and journalism is often dismissed as rabidly conservative. But, unless I’m mistaken, in this video he brings attention to the fact that Adam Smith and Friedman in fact considered regulation of the market to be essential, which I've heard him discuss a number of times. Ferguson’s beef seems not be regulation itself, but the nature of it. In the Square and the Tower he makes the point that the regulation introduced after the GFC to prevent a reoccurrence amounted to 23,000 pages. He argues that it is counterproductive to expect people to understand and implement all that.

I'd be interested in your opinion of Friedman, and Ferguson.

Just on R&D, I have some scientists in the family and it is so ridiculously difficult to get funding. We produce the graduates with the skills, but make them beg for opportunity to practice. But it is obvious to anyone who bothered to look into the matter genuinely, that R&D pays off big time. Obviously not AUS, but the Apollo Program paid for itself 14x over.

[Adam The God 30,221]

18 hours ago, Grr-owl said:

I figure change will not come without circumstances forcing it, or at least compelling it. And that means a crisis of some sort.

I had a big post mapped out, going into the colonial model - UK, USA, China, economic and political models in sympathy, decentralisation and sovereignty (lately an important issue re Aussie wine, 14 points on how to be a good boy, alliances with old enemies, welcome realignment in the US etc) - and it cuts to issues discussed in Reclaiming the State, which I'm reading as you recommended. I've been utterly blown away. There it all is, the entire misstep, laid out in a nutshell, so thanks for that. I’ve also finished The Square and the Tower, which discusses Keynes, and so I’ll lay off further opining about neo-liberalism for the moment until I've digested those.

Yep, Reclaiming the State blew my mind. It really is the roadmap for getting out of our current mess. If you see the debates about China at the moment. We don't need China. One of the most dangerous things the Liberal Government did was allow Lib MP Andrew Robb to lease Darwin Port to the Chinese on a 99 year lease. The company it was leased to, he then sat on the board of after politics. It's utterly traitorous IMV. I don't mind Chinese companies holding state bonds or federal bonds, because we issue those in AUD, so can always pay them back. But I don't agree with the idea that we need them for infrastructure or resources whatsoever. The state has the power and crowds in with its spending. Without it, the private sector relies on debt to drive spending and higher profits. The latter is not always possible, because the economy is inherently unstable.

Our Federal Government has the capacity to purchase anything available for sale in AUD. It issues the currency. We should not be selling bonds to China, although it's fine, it means they're looking to invest here. But even allowing direct foreign investment is a political choice. Japan doesn't. It's a very closed economy. I'd be looking at what they've done with their private debt levels too in Japan. We have the second most in the world to GDP, and the Japanese, the Brits and even the Americans have less household debt to GDP than we do. This is where the crash will come from - the housing market.

As for Keynes, his General Theory, which inspired the so-called Keynesians is still an important work today, but Keynesians (neo and New) have bastardised the General Theory and Keynes' ideas. One of his fundamental ideas was the economy was unstable. The mainstream has completely butchered Keynes and as his contemporaries once said it's a bastard form of Keynes, with its roots in Ricardian Classical Economics and Walrasian General Equilibrium. The mainstream does not describe the real world. It describes a barter world with no anthropological evidence to back it up. But that doesn't matter, because it's just a story. It's wrong though.

18 hours ago, Grr-owl said:

Just on Ferguson… take a look at this (short) video: 

I find his history books enlightening, but his economic commentary and journalism is often dismissed as rabidly conservative. But, unless I’m mistaken, in this video he brings attention to the fact that Adam Smith and Friedman in fact considered regulation of the market to be essential, which I've heard him discuss a number of times. Ferguson’s beef seems not be regulation itself, but the nature of it. In the Square and the Tower he makes the point that the regulation introduced after the GFC to prevent a reoccurrence amounted to 23,000 pages. He argues that it is counterproductive to expect people to understand and implement all that.

I'd be interested in your opinion of Friedman, and Ferguson.

He effectively says that Friedman predicted the GFC and that the only reason the central bank targeting the money supply didn't work is because the central bank had moved away from it. For starters, they moved away from it, because it didn't work. Friedman used Marx's idea of Reserve Army of Labour and created NAIRU. I think he was a dangerously wrong economist whose ideas were proved to be incorrect within a decade of winning Sweden's central bank economist award (sometimes called the Nobel Prize - it is not a real Nobel Prize...).

His economics are still part of the foundation for the New Keynesian movement. New Keynesian has its roots in Friedman's monetarism too. Deregulation has been an absolute disaster and caused the GFC. It's completely disingenuous to suggest otherwise. Keating, Clinton and Blair's deregulation have absolutely smacked our three countries. He had no idea about institutional operations, unlike Minsky who worked with private bankers and central bankers all the time. 

And Ferguson is an absolute hack, and either liar or deluded. He holds up his phone and claims the free market is responsible for it. Except that the R&D that took the chance on tech companies like Apple was the Government itself. The big giants all started with R&D grants and loans from the Government. Again, disingenuous. 

He also cites Krugman twice as some sort of left wing intellectual. The guy is the king of the neolibs and his career relies on continuing the lie of his economics. His quote from Friedman that he uses to cite the importance of the free market hinges on the corporations acting within the law. Moments earlier he talks about the importance of Friedman to the idea of deregulation. It's only legal if someone deregulated it. It used to be illegal for banks to deal in many things they are currently allowed to deal in, and yet those very risky practices are what caused the GFC. And yet this bloke is up there talking about Friedman and the GFC in the same sentence and not realising (or again, not caring) that his ideas caused the shift from a stable robust system of capitalism that gave us the golden age of capitalism, to one that is either in crises or stagnation.

The only reason Friedman went mainstream was because the Neo Keynesians like Samuleson had no answer to the real world problems (like the OPEC oil shocks) of the 1970s. If they'd used more of Keynes' ideas or Abba Lerner's ideas, along with Minsky's, they'd have found it quite possible to beat off the inflation and there would never have been the unemployment that followed. Minsky was calling for an employer of last resort from the 1960s. That idea is today's Job Guarantee proposal. That's how slow this stuff moves. 

I agree with Ferguson on his views about the EU, but he flip flops so much you wouldn't know what his new view is this week.

18 hours ago, Grr-owl said:

Just on R&D, I have some scientists in the family and it is so ridiculously difficult to get funding. We produce the graduates with the skills, but make them beg for opportunity to practice. But it is obvious to anyone who bothered to look into the matter genuinely, that R&D pays off big time. Obviously not AUS, but the Apollo Program paid for itself 14x over.

Yeah, we need to get serious about R&D in this country. If we do, we'll have everything we need at our finger tips. We need nobody and we do not need direct foreign investment either.

[Kent 2,909]

"This is where the crash will come from - the housing market."

Yes AF

this overinvestment is a direct result of the tax concessions given to place of residence

It distorts the value equation

Thank God for low interest rates or the crash would already be here

Its like close your eyes and hope

It will be awful messy

[Grr-owl 1,219]

On 12/7/2020 at 8:57 AM, A F said:

And Ferguson is an absolute hack, and either liar or deluded.

When Ferguson talks about most things, I can make sense of it, but as you suggest when it comes to economics he can be incoherent. At least, it seems incoherent to me. As is no doubt obvious, I know barely nothing of economics, so it’s only prudent to be prepared to accept that he may be right, but somehow I just can’t quite get how that could be. The pieces of the puzzle don’t quite fit.

In his podcast with Sam Harris — #117 if you are interested, from 1:27:28 — they discuss inequality. Sam brings up Scheidel’s The Great Leveler, which argues that “very bad things” such as mass-mobilization warfare, transformative revolutions, state collapse, and catastrophic plagues are what redistribute wealth. Ferguson agrees, citing two world wars, multiple revolutions, hyperinflations and a great depression in the last hundred or so years, for their impact on wealth distribution which “left the world in 1950 in a remarkably egalitarian state.” He says that over time, with relative peace, we’ve reverted to the kinds of distributions of wealth and income comparable with those in the period before the First World War. Then he says, “It never struck me as plausible that there was a fiscal policy that could replicate the effect of two world wars, a revolution, a great depression etc, which was the argument Thomas Piketty made….”

My question to you is, is his position in any way legitimate? Ferguson’s view essentially elides, dismisses, Keynes’s influence entirely...

[Adam The God 30,221]

16 hours ago, Kent said:

"This is where the crash will come from - the housing market."

Yes AF

this overinvestment is a direct result of the tax concessions given to place of residence

It distorts the value equation

Thank God for low interest rates or the crash would already be here

Its like close your eyes and hope

It will be awful messy

The government interest rate is now 0 and has been for a month. The Gov announced at the start of November that it would stop paying interest to ES balances, which was the last interest bearing route that was initially the support rate (0.10%) below the 0.25% cashrate. But when they announced that 0.25 cashrate in March, they introduced QE too, so due to the excess deposits in the banking system resulting from QE (QE is an asset swap - gov bonds or highly rated corporate bonds for new reserves in the private banking system), the interest rate dropped to the support rate 0.10%, which is what the RBA paid on ES balances.

There hasn't been a real reason other than maintaining interest rates to issue debt since we floated the dollar in 1983, but now there is certainly no need to issue debt. So gov/public/national debt will start to come down now, as shorter bonds mature, providing interest rates stay low.

The New Daily wrote this piece today about market sentiment and how market confidence is back and then proceeded to cite CBAs household credit numbers being higher than 13% at this time last year. In other words, households are driving the economy with debt.

I read the Fin Review a bit and one of my best mates is in property and all I hear from both is deluded blue sky junkiness. I'm constantly saying, the private debt level is unsustainable, nah, nah, we're back on track. No we're not. 21% of new loans are interest only. As Minsky would say they're somewhere between a speculative position and ponzi position. And yet the Federal Government wants to continue deregulating the banking sector. Absolute nightmare on the horizon.

[Adam The God 30,221]

48 minutes ago, Grr-owl said:

When Ferguson talks about most things, I can make sense of it, but as you suggest when it comes to economics he can be incoherent. At least, it seems incoherent to me. As is no doubt obvious, I know barely nothing of economics, so it’s only prudent to be prepared to accept that he may be right, but somehow I just can’t quite get how that could be. The pieces of the puzzle don’t quite fit.

In his podcast with Sam Harris — #117 if you are interested, from 1:27:28 — they discuss inequality. Sam brings up Scheidel’s The Great Leveler, which argues that “very bad things” such as mass-mobilization warfare, transformative revolutions, state collapse, and catastrophic plagues are what redistribute wealth. Ferguson agrees, citing two world wars, multiple revolutions, hyperinflations and a great depression in the last hundred or so years, for their impact on wealth distribution which “left the world in 1950 in a remarkably egalitarian state.” He says that over time, with relative peace, we’ve reverted to the kinds of distributions of wealth and income comparable with those in the period before the First World War. Then he says, “It never struck me as plausible that there was a fiscal policy that could replicate the effect of two world wars, a revolution, a great depression etc, which was the argument Thomas Piketty made….”

My question to you is, is his position in any way legitimate? Ferguson’s view essentially elides, dismisses, Keynes’s influence entirely...

If he says there is no fiscal policy that can replicate what the World Wars did, I'd say he is utterly wrong. Firstly, the lack of adequate fiscal policy and regulation over the private banking sector caused the 1929 crash. Secondly, the fiscal policy position taken by governments post WW2 was a full employment agenda. That agenda is still absolutely possible, but what happened eventually is that the market lost its discipline and so slowly lobbied for deregulation in search of higher profits. Things that were previously illegal were now okay and the financial system grew increasingly unstable. This is why I follow Minsky and his disciples. His belief was that stability breeds instability in the capitalist system.

He was a Wall Street insider and had a very good handle on private banking and central banking operations. He said that the Kennedy jobs program would fail in the 60s because there was no employer of last resort. He was right. He was big on the lender of last resort too, in terms of the central bank stepping up and backstopping the system from failing. He would not have liked what the US did in response to the GFC though.

He'd be shaking his head at Frydenberg's approach to the banking sector also. That guy is a deadset loser. I wouldn't let him handle my company accounts, let alone the country's. He even managed to get the Herald Sun off side by trying to run a surplus in 2018-2019 that triggered two per capita recessions and he didn't even managed to run one.

I will be surprised if the LNP in its current form and the ALP in its current form exist in ten years time. They're both utter disasters who represent no one but corporate interests, maybe some religious interests too and that's about it.

Edited December 8, 2020 by A F

[Grr-owl 1,219]

15 hours ago, A F said:

The government interest rate is now 0 and has been for a month. The Gov announced at the start of November that it would stop paying interest to ES balances, which was the last interest bearing route that was initially the support rate (0.10%) below the 0.25% cashrate. But when they announced that 0.25 cashrate in March, they introduced QE too, so due to the excess deposits in the banking system resulting from QE (QE is an asset swap - gov bonds or highly rated corporate bonds for new reserves in the private banking system), the interest rate dropped to the support rate 0.10%, which is what the RBA paid on ES balances.

There hasn't been a real reason other than maintaining interest rates to issue debt since we floated the dollar in 1983, but now there is certainly no need to issue debt. So gov/public/national debt will start to come down now, as shorter bonds mature, providing interest rates stay low.

The New Daily wrote this piece today about market sentiment and how market confidence is back and then proceeded to cite CBAs household credit numbers being higher than 13% at this time last year. In other words, households are driving the economy with debt.

I read the Fin Review a bit and one of my best mates is in property and all I hear from both is deluded blue sky junkiness. I'm constantly saying, the private debt level is unsustainable, nah, nah, we're back on track. No we're not. 21% of new loans are interest only. As Minsky would say they're somewhere between a speculative position and ponzi position. And yet the Federal Government wants to continue deregulating the banking sector. Absolute nightmare on the horizon.

Is it as simple as asking how long we can go on borrowing until someone wants their money back, and as we can't find another lender prepared to lend, the whole system collapses? 

[Adam The God 30,221]

8 hours ago, Grr-owl said:

Is it as simple as asking how long we can go on borrowing until someone wants their money back, and as we can't find another lender prepared to lend, the whole system collapses? 

Well, this is why the Government (or its central bank) acts as a lender of last resort, which is to basically act as a backstop to the major licenced financial institutions and ensure there's no run on the banks. 

The Government can pay can debt owing in AUD as it issues the currency, so that's not a problem. But the private sector running on credit is simply unsustainable. It can work for a little while, particularly if debt levels are relatively low and perhaps there's a demand on the trade account (ours was a once in a 100 year occurrence between 2000ish-2007), but ultimately the private sector buckles unless the government deficit spends (that is, puts more money into the economy than it takes back out in taxes). Households and businesses cannot pay down their debt if they're in a perpetual state of debt financing. Government spending enables the private sector to save and either pay down the debt or invest in assets. In other words, government spending crowds in, despite the common economic mainstream myths.

I'm beginning to think that the LNP will keep JobKeeper going past March next year, which will mean parts of the private sector will be able to save, meaning the crash may be delayed, but unless the government starts spending, it's all over at some point in the not too distant future.

There's a terrific graph one of the journos posted on Twitter the other day, which basically shows that the Government didn't spend a dollar in the 2nd and 3rd quarters outside of JobKeeper and JobSeeker. Next year, their 2021 budget is so small that if JobKeeper is stopped and JobSeeker is halved (back to what it was prior to the pandemic), in terms of GDP, we won't just stagnate, the economy will crash. Meanwhile, you've also got a property bubble and a share market bubble. The financial system is on a cliff top ready to tumble and take millions of families with it.

What might actually happen though is that the states and territories will shoulder the deficit spending that the Federal Government can't be seen to do (ideologically), and in the background, the RBA (so the Government) is buying up billions of state and territory debt and effectively financing the spending of the states. This could help keep the wolf from the door a little longer too.

Here's that graph by the way.

Edited December 9, 2020 by A F

[Grr-owl 1,219]

Still reading. Making progress. In the meantime, I’d say there’s potential in this. Be interested in what you think. Seems to combine a few positives while eliminating some negs:

https://www.aspistrategist.org.au/iron-or-getting-energised-about-reducing-australias-trade-dependence-on-china/

 

 

[Grr-owl 1,219]

I'm still reading, so I won't say much in relation to Mitchell and Fazi yet except, Yes. I know jack-s@#! about economics, so the technical stuff is a little confusing, but the ideas chime with mine. So good to find out I have been right all these years..... ; )

I think the worm is turning. Let me know what you think of this:

Globalization suits the neo-liberals in the pursuit of higher profits because it allow corporations to have things made in the place where labour and other costs are cheapest. And in the age of global products, iPhone for instance, which are manufactured by the billions, China is at a massive advantage because of its huge labour pool not only of workers but of engineers, and because it's Confucian systems of government over many millennia had impoverished everybody except a minuscule elite.

And so China has risen in the neo-liberal age. However, there has been cost in terms of sovereignty as the CCP has at a central mission to encroach on the sovereignty of its partners, as recent events highlight:

https://www.aspi.org.au/report/party-speaks-you

https://www.aspi.org.au/report/chinese-communist-partys-coercive-diplomacy

https://www.aspi.org.au/report/cyber-enabled-foreign-interference-elections-and-referendums

So Australia needs to push back against this by reclaiming its sovereignty. But how? Well, any government who wanted to change the status quo would need people to vote for it, and that mean the middle and lower class or wage earners to do that, so there would have to be jobs in it to gain such people's vote.

So the equation is: maintaining sovereignty equals shutting china out (at least somewhat, though profoundly) equals jobs for Australians.

Well, China will source its iron ore from West Africa sooner or later, so Aus will need new customers, so the hydrogen idea and manufacturing steel in alliance with strategic allies such as Japan, Germany and US makes sense:

https://www.aspistrategist.org.au/iron-or-getting-energised-about-reducing-australias-trade-dependence-on-china/

 

[Adam The God 30,221]

We don't need China. This is what RECLAIMING THE STATE shows us. Neoliberalism has taught us that we need globalisation to deliver prosperity and that the nation state cannot compete with the power of global markets, but that's utter rubbish. 

Apart from the ecological costs of continued mining, we need to reorientate our economy around the domestic and ensuring tight full employment and prosperity for Australians. The RBA Act 1959 specifically states all this. We need leaders who are prepared to ingest in Australians and ensure workers have jobs, rather than multinationals maximising their profits.

China have managed their exchange rate brilliantly. They are a rare example, but they are still incredibly beholden to the US. Their currency has an unusual peg to the USD, but nevertheless a peg. So they're essentially operating in fixed exchange paradigm. Their working population gives them a great advantage though as you say.

Labor is making noises about pivoting towards making things in Australia and full employment, but given who their economic advisors are at Federal level, I don't see how they're going to manage any of that. 

[dieter 3,325]

On 11/26/2020 at 11:24 PM, Grr-owl said:

 

There's a difference between censorship and warnings re lack of facts. Trump simply lies; that deserves to be flagged. 

As does Morrison:

An Article published yesterday in The New Daily, Dennis Atkins.

All politicians lie. Some do it as easily as most of us draw breath and others struggle to avoid telling the truth but find it necessary for altruistic reasons or a matter of white-knuckle survival.

Within this general group there’s a special class of political liars, and our Prime Minister Scott Morrison, is as practiced and accomplished as any in this top tier of fabulists.

Morrison’s untruths transcend the usual, seen as the trademark of very good liars like John Howard and Peter Beattie – a Liberal prime minister and a state Labor premier.

 

While Beattie and Howard knew they were telling lies – often because it was easier than telling the truth or a habit born of a need to hide misdeeds and unpleasantness – politicians like Morrison are able to transcend the truth.

John Howard was a good liar, but Scott Morrison takes it to the next level. Photo: AAP

This characteristic is described wonderfully in Robert A. Caro’s majestic, still unfinished, multi-volume biography of former Democratic US President Lyndon Johnson.

Caro says Johnson’s predilection for untruth was part of his towering self belief. “Where Lyndon Johnson came to believe in something, moreover, he came to believe it totally, with absolute conviction, regardless of previous beliefs, or of the facts in the matter,” the biographer writes.

Caro quotes Johnson’s trusted media aide George Reedy as saying Johnson had a “fantastic capacity to persuade himself that the ‘truth’ which was convenient for the present was the truth and anything that conflicted with it was the prevarication of enemies”.

Reedy says Johnson “literally willed what was in his mind to become reality” while another senior adviser, Joseph Califano, observed that the former president could “quickly come to believe what he was saying even if it was clearly not true”.

It’s quite a skill and can be mesmerising, not unlike the effect of those happy-clapping preachers who peddle the prosperity gospel that Morrison’s evangelical church holds dear.

Throughout the twister-within-a-cyclone year we’ve just endured, Morrison found time to lie over small detail and, more concerningly, huge facts.

When he was inspecting fire damage on Kangaroo Island in January he sought to comfort people by saying “well, thankfully, we’ve had no loss of life”. When he was reminded that two men had died, he quickly dissembled, adding “yes, two – I was thinking about firefighters firstly”.

Despite the fact the two men who died had perished defending their property, Morrison kept insisting he’d been correct in what he meant as a reference to designated firefighters.

 

He clearly believed he had been absolutely correct in what he said. No one else did.

 

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The biggest set of untruths is found in Morrison’s contortions around aged care and whether it had its funding cut, and just which level of government carried ultimate responsibility for it.

Morrison gave a nod to the undeniable fact that aged care was a Commonwealth responsibility but, under the heat of the all too glaring failures exposed during the Melbourne second wave of pandemic infections and deaths, he dodged any ownership of events.

Morrison started by seeking to bury the whole issue of aged care failures in a word salad about “shared responsibilities” and finished with a breathtaking flourish which picked up aged care and dumped it into a basket marked “someone else’s fault”.

The full quote should be used in journalism and political science classes: “Well public health, we regulate aged care, but when there is a public health pandemic, then public health, which, whether it gets into aged care, shopping centres, schools or anywhere else, then they are things that are matters for Victoria.”

Morrison shut down further discussion with one of his favourite linguistic devices to have the last word, chiding the questioner for being “too binary”.

Morrison’s skill at dissembling can be mesmerising, not unlike the effect of prosperity gospel preachers. Photo: AAP

When he was Treasurer, Morrison handed down a Budget which snipped $1.2 billion in projected spending from the aged care portfolio. At every turn since he has flatly denied he cut any money from aged care, insisting there was a $1 billion nominal increase in spending. This is true, but the $1.2 billion the sector didn’t get was ear-marked for projected growth in specific needs by service providers. It was sold as an “efficiency dividend” although the “doing more with less” demand resulted in many operators in the sector putting the squeeze on activity.

Morrison loves to shape-shift reality by smothering conversations and explanation in jargon, whether he’s talking about government activity having to “wash its own face”, the need to avoid “burning platforms” and/or coaxing private sector capital “out of its cave”.

There’s a delightful technical term for this – gish gallop. It is a technique, named after a creationist, Duane Gish, who argued his fragile case by deploying a torrent of varied “half-truths and no-truths” in quick succession, leaving an opponent helpless when trying to combat any particular point at a single moment.

Morrison can serve up gish gallop with the best of them.

The sad reflection from this pandemic year, when the public has been more forgiving of politicians, their misdeeds and foibles, than ever before, is that Morrison not only kept practicing his trademark dissimulation but kept doing it when he didn’t need to.

[dieter 3,325]

10 hours ago, A F said:

We don't need China. This is what RECLAIMING THE STATE shows us. Neoliberalism has taught us that we need globalisation to deliver prosperity and that the nation state cannot compete with the power of global markets, but that's utter rubbish. 

Apart from the ecological costs of continued mining, we need to reorientate our economy around the domestic and ensuring tight full employment and prosperity for Australians. The RBA Act 1959 specifically states all this. We need leaders who are prepared to ingest in Australians and ensure workers have jobs, rather than multinationals maximising their profits.

China have managed their exchange rate brilliantly. They are a rare example, but they are still incredibly beholden to the US. Their currency has an unusual peg to the USD, but nevertheless a peg. So they're essentially operating in fixed exchange paradigm. Their working population gives them a great advantage though as you say.

Labor is making noises about pivoting towards making things in Australia and full employment, but given who their economic advisors are at Federal level, I don't see how they're going to manage any of that. 

I've just read this discussion for the first time and find it fascinating.

My background and interests are to do with the so-called Humanities - history, geography, music, literature etc. My grasp of economics, and the finer dimensions of politics are shall we say, very fundamental.

What I do have is a good Bulldust Detector and a sense of compassion for the underdog. So that, for instance, in Australian politics I admire Whitlam and Keating, and despise Morrison, Turnbull, Abbott, Howard, and Bob Hawke.

Which is a long-winded way of asking both Gr-owll and AF why the issue of Climate Change has not been mentioned once in your excellent discourse. It seems to me that sorting this issue out is both part and will have to be a very big factor in any solution to the quagmire of greed, stupidity and rigid finger-pointing school playground farce which has become the norm in Western Political Debate. Also, as far as I can see, there has been no mention in your debate about the simple fact that the biggest economy in the world, at the moment at least, is based on producing, selling and the 'deployment' of  weapons of mass destruction.

In other words, I think your economic discourse needs to address and embrace some very fundamental sources and cause of disaster in our world, because until the world addresses these issues, there won't be many economies left to worry about.

 

 

[Adam The God 30,221]

1 hour ago, dieter said:

I've just read this discussion for the first time and find it fascinating.

My background and interests are to do with the so-called Humanities - history, geography, music, literature etc. My grasp of economics, and the finer dimensions of politics are shall we say, very fundamental.

What I do have is a good Bulldust Detector and a sense of compassion for the underdog. So that, for instance, in Australian politics I admire Whitlam and Keating, and despise Morrison, Turnbull, Abbott, Howard, and Bob Hawke.

Which is a long-winded way of asking both Gr-owll and AF why the issue of Climate Change has not been mentioned once in your excellent discourse. It seems to me that sorting this issue out is both part and will have to be a very big factor in any solution to the quagmire of greed, stupidity and rigid finger-pointing school playground farce which has become the norm in Western Political Debate. Also, as far as I can see, there has been no mention in your debate about the simple fact that the biggest economy in the world, at the moment at least, is based on producing, selling and the 'deployment' of  weapons of mass destruction.

In other words, I think your economic discourse needs to address and embrace some very fundamental sources and cause of disaster in our world, because until the world addresses these issues, there won't be many economies left to worry about.

Thanks @dieter. I mentioned the ecological costs in my previous post. We need a just transition for fossil fuel workers and their families to ensure they don't immediately become unemployed, meaning our transition to sustainable industries would be negatively socialised.

I've heard Bill Mitchell talk about a just transition, which would be anywhere between 10 and 20 years. You cannot simply close the mines tomorrow. You need to wind them down. Neoliberalism has had dramatic ecological impacts and if we're going to have an habitable planet, we need to deal with this, and quickly.

Keating was a great orator but horrible on economics. His lasting legacy will be that he floated the dollar, but his deregulation of the financial sector, quashing of capital controls and wage suppression via the Prices and Incomes Accord of 1983 have been a disaster for our country IMO. Not to mention his sale of national assets like QANTAS (it'd be great for all those workers that just lost their lobs if the airline didn't have to run at a profit even in a recession) and CBA. He could also be credited with starting the depoliticisation of the RBA in this country too.

The RBA is independent in name only, I may have written this already somewhere, but the RBA board is appointed by the Government, operates under legislation laid down by government (or politicians) and along with Treasury (the chief public servant in the Treasury sits on the board), decides on the Government interest rate. It's simply so politicians can defer to unelected technocrats that the RBA has been given any sort of 'independence'. As the former RBA Governor Bernie Fraser once said "Given that central banks are created by government legislation and derive their powers from such legislation, they cannot be completely separate from the government". That speech is available on the RBA website.

Whitlam was a legitimate progressive, but his Treasurer Bill Hayden became a monetarist and turned the Labor Party into a fiscally conservative party that no longer represents working people. They've never recovered. The back end of the Whitlam Government saw the goal of tight full employment abandoned and when the Labor Party is telling people there is a natural rate of unemployment, then there's no chance of achieving what is laid out in the RBA Act legislation. 

What I've learned from the economics of Bill Mitchell and co is the importance of history and empirical evidence. The mainstream does not operate in the real world. It is based on a world of barter where money is neutral (anthropologist David Graeber's book DEBT blows this out of the water - there is no anthropological evidence to suggest economies ever operated on barter and markets have always been entwined with the state); households can make superhuman decisions all the time, based on information they could rarely predict consistently; there are no banks; and there is certainly no chance of an endogenously created financial crisis. The latter of course was how the GFC was created, with financial institutions expanding credit unsustainably across the financial sector. That is, because central banks cannot control demand for deposits in private banks, the endogenous demand for credit by households and businesses can drive private debt to unsustainable levels. This IMO is where Australia is currently at.

Finally, the con of neoliberalism and its supposed free market approach without government intervention is that in order to privatise and deregulate, you need the government as a massive player to kick start anything. As for profits and wealth creation, it needs the government spending big to the rich in order to operate. 

[dieter 3,325]

1 hour ago, A F said:

Thanks @dieter. I mentioned the ecological costs in my previous post. We need a just transition for fossil fuel workers and their families to ensure they don't immediately become unemployed, meaning our transition to sustainable industries would be negatively socialised.

I've heard Bill Mitchell talk about a just transition, which would be anywhere between 10 and 20 years. You cannot simply close the mines tomorrow. You need to wind them down. Neoliberalism has had dramatic ecological impacts and if we're going to have an habitable planet, we need to deal with this, and quickly.

Keating was a great orator but horrible on economics. His lasting legacy will be that he floated the dollar, but his deregulation of the financial sector, quashing of capital controls and wage suppression via the Prices and Incomes Accord of 1983 have been a disaster for our country IMO. Not to mention his sale of national assets like QANTAS (it'd be great for all those workers that just lost their lobs if the airline didn't have to run at a profit even in a recession) and CBA. He could also be credited with starting the depoliticisation of the RBA in this country too.

The RBA is independent in name only, I may have written this already somewhere, but the RBA board is appointed by the Government, operates under legislation laid down by government (or politicians) and along with Treasury (the chief public servant in the Treasury sits on the board), decides on the Government interest rate. It's simply so politicians can defer to unelected technocrats that the RBA has been given any sort of 'independence'. As the former RBA Governor Bernie Fraser once said "Given that central banks are created by government legislation and derive their powers from such legislation, they cannot be completely separate from the government". That speech is available on the RBA website.

Whitlam was a legitimate progressive, but his Treasurer Bill Hayden became a monetarist and turned the Labor Party into a fiscally conservative party that no longer represents working people. They've never recovered. The back end of the Whitlam Government saw the goal of tight full employment abandoned and when the Labor Party is telling people there is a natural rate of unemployment, then there's no chance of achieving what is laid out in the RBA Act legislation. 

What I've learned from the economics of Bill Mitchell and co is the importance of history and empirical evidence. The mainstream does not operate in the real world. It is based on a world of barter where money is neutral (anthropologist David Graeber's book DEBT blows this out of the water - there is no anthropological evidence to suggest economies ever operated on barter and markets have always been entwined with the state); households can make superhuman decisions all the time, based on information they could rarely predict consistently; there are no banks; and there is certainly no chance of an endogenously created financial crisis. The latter of course was how the GFC was created, with financial institutions expanding credit unsustainably across the financial sector. That is, because central banks cannot control demand for deposits in private banks, the endogenous demand for credit by households and businesses can drive private debt to unsustainable levels. This IMO is where Australia is currently at.

Finally, the con of neoliberalism and its supposed free market approach without government intervention is that in order to privatise and deregulate, you need the government as a massive player to kick start anything. As for profits and wealth creation, it needs the government spending big to the rich in order to operate. 

So where do we start on the road to sanity and recovery?

I heard a programme on Radio National where a British writer pointed out that Climate Change-wise, we are on the brink of Armageddon. He pointed out that Climate Change Policy is in the hands of Politicians whether it be in their four or three year election cycles, whose main policy concern about Climate is to ensure that they tell voters what they imagine they might like to hear, and from the moment they are elected, they go back to ground Zero, which is based on 'Growth' and ecological suicide.

It often occurs to me that the Climate debate in this country needs to picked up by the scruff by a government with balls and brains, a government which can distinguish the forest from the trees. It would seem to me that if ever there was/is a country which has all the assets for renewable energy, it is Australia where sunshine hours abound. Surely, that would be the way to make the mining transition viable for all concerned, especially the workers. It would also seem to me that Solar farms along the Murray Darling Basin would be a much wiser investment that cotton farming and other 'industries' which strip our country of its main shortage, namely water.

That of course would require some wise and incorruptible politicians whose main concern is not their super and post Political perks, but real human beings who are genuinely concerned for our welfare. Instead, we elect this conga line of crooks, liars and total buffoons who spend most of their time making excuses for their total ineptitude. That includes the Gillards, the Shortens, the current Opposition leader, and most of all, of course, the criminals who run this government.

So,while  I am interested in the history of fiscal folly, while I am impressed with the scope and breadth of your knowledge of these matters - genuinely, I stress - I'm more interested in how we can avoid the total mess the world is heading towards. 

It has also occurred to me - and I'm not claiming authorship of this concept, it's more a case of filtering the impressions gleaned from many voices - that the fires, the floods, the melting ice, the imminent danger of more of these events, the occurrence of plagues and superbugs like Swine Flu and Covid - are Mother Nature warning us that enough is well and truly enough. 

 

 

[Adam The God 30,221]

On 12/20/2020 at 4:31 PM, dieter said:

So where do we start on the road to sanity and recovery?

I heard a programme on Radio National where a British writer pointed out that Climate Change-wise, we are on the brink of Armageddon. He pointed out that Climate Change Policy is in the hands of Politicians whether it be in their four or three year election cycles, whose main policy concern about Climate is to ensure that they tell voters what they imagine they might like to hear, and from the moment they are elected, they go back to ground Zero, which is based on 'Growth' and ecological suicide.

It often occurs to me that the Climate debate in this country needs to picked up by the scruff by a government with balls and brains, a government which can distinguish the forest from the trees. It would seem to me that if ever there was/is a country which has all the assets for renewable energy, it is Australia where sunshine hours abound. Surely, that would be the way to make the mining transition viable for all concerned, especially the workers. It would also seem to me that Solar farms along the Murray Darling Basin would be a much wiser investment that cotton farming and other 'industries' which strip our country of its main shortage, namely water.

That of course would require some wise and incorruptible politicians whose main concern is not their super and post Political perks, but real human beings who are genuinely concerned for our welfare. Instead, we elect this conga line of crooks, liars and total buffoons who spend most of their time making excuses for their total ineptitude. That includes the Gillards, the Shortens, the current Opposition leader, and most of all, of course, the criminals who run this government.

So,while  I am interested in the history of fiscal folly, while I am impressed with the scope and breadth of your knowledge of these matters - genuinely, I stress - I'm more interested in how we can avoid the total mess the world is heading towards. 

It has also occurred to me - and I'm not claiming authorship of this concept, it's more a case of filtering the impressions gleaned from many voices - that the fires, the floods, the melting ice, the imminent danger of more of these events, the occurrence of plagues and superbugs like Swine Flu and Covid - are Mother Nature warning us that enough is well and truly enough. 

 

 

I'd start by reading RECLAIMING THE STATE mate. You're spot on about Australia's geographic superiority for renewable energy and even sustainable agricultural land. But the biggest hurdle we need to get past is the fallacy that free markets are too powerful and that the government needs to get out of the way. It is a lie and any possible situation you can think of, the government has the real control and markets depend on the government, and exist because of the government. Australia cannot be attacked on the foreign exchange, while we float our currency we will never suffer a balance of payments crisis and as long as we maintain monetary sovereignty (unlike the EU and many developing nations), we can greatly improve our domestic economy and then help others. When we help others, if we show leadership in the ecological space and provide financial support where necessary for developing nations to ensure they can develop their own nations without unsustainable ecological degradation, we can start to make a dint in the battle against climate change.

[Grr-owl 1,219]

I twice wrote up detailed replies to Dieter’s post but both times mi**** a link and lost them. Bloody heartbroken.

In short, Toby Ord’s The Precipice is all about existential risks, including Climate Change. If the book is a bit daunting, check out his appearance on Sam Harris’s podcast.

Elizabeth Colbert’s The Sixth Extinction is about the present state of things. As D has read in the fires and floods, the news ain’t good.

 

[dieter 3,325]

10 hours ago, A F said:

I'd start by reading RECLAIMING THE STATE mate. You're spot on about Australia's geographic superiority for renewable energy and even sustainable agricultural land. But the biggest hurdle we need to get past is the fallacy that free markets are too powerful and that the government needs to get out of the way. It is a lie and any possible situation you can think of, the government has the real control and markets depend on the government, and exist because of the government. Australia cannot be attacked on the foreign exchange, while we float our currency we will never suffer a balance of payments crisis and as long as we maintain monetary sovereignty (unlike the EU and many developing nations), we can greatly improve our domestic economy and then help others. When we help others, if we show leadership in the ecological space and provide financial support where necessary for developing nations to ensure they can develop their own nations without unsustainable ecological degradation, we can start to make a dint in the battle against climate change.

I get your point: agree entirely.

[Grr-owl 1,219]

I’m not quite as down on the poppies as Dieter. They are, after all, ordinary humans like the rest of us, and they reflect and respond to movements of ideas within society at large. They have to do so, otherwise it wouldn’t be a representative democracy.

And we should remember that long before they become candidates on a ballot they are chosen to be a candidate by their party branches, so anybody who wants to represent an electorate has to first represent the people in the party branches, who are also ordinary humans with interests and ideas and things to care about like the rest of us. It’s best to think of candidates as the top block on a pyramid, like the head of a faction, a group, a bunch of people who are the supporting blocks.

The fact that Australian polices have been so useless in climate policy I think reflects the fact that most Aussies actually just want more money anyway they can get it so they can pay their absurd mortgages and get their children a decent education. I am yet to meet a businessman who cared about what they sold or where it came from or how it was made; they just want to sell more of whatever it is they sell. Maybe that’s me being cynical, but that’s my experience.

Thing is, these dynamics within society actually work in the favour of climate change mitigation, because as soon as it makes economic sense to save the climate, it will be saved. Coal is already on the way out. Oil is too useful to go out entirely, but it’s role in climate problems is changing as I type. As soon as this is the case, the pollies will suddenly support it because that’s what their supporters will want; they will reflect that ideological change.

Shallow and fickle as that is, it’s probably not a good idea to expect pollies to ideologues. Then we end up with Hitlers. Better to just accept the bar on the conga line will always be set low, so only the slipperiest, most flexible can get through. Then they can join each other for punch, while the rest of us get on with actually making change.

Sooner or later the neo-liberal economy will go bust and its ideas will be shown up once and for all to be a great con. When that happens and everyone is broke, even those who benefitted most from neo-liberalism, maybe people will realise that you need to pay people well if you want them to spend, rather than forcing everyone to borrow at interest. I think Henry Ford worked this out way back in.... oh, 1910 or something. Basically, you want people in reliable employment. Once the population gets it, the pollies will follow. They’ll have to if they want a job themselves.

[Grr-owl 1,219]

AF, would love to know your thoughts on John Lee’s assessment of the Chinese economy and what that means re pivoting away from China, iron ore/clean steel opportunities, renewable energy, trade barriers etc... and the end of neo-liberalism, if you have the time ?: 

 

I sense a great confluence of ideas happening in this space...

[Grr-owl 1,219]

Along the same lines, this clip sums up how neo-liberalism’s promotion of an elite plays into the CCP’s hands....: