Tag Archive for 'Glenn Stevens'

Lame claims: invoking the Reserve Bank and Treasury politically

Published
by
Mark
7 months ago
in Economics, Media and Politics
. 16 Comments

Sometimes, in politics, it might be better to remain silent.

Glenn Milne’s latest intervention, talking up a line from Liberal MP Scott Morrison, has to be one of the lamest ever political attack lines. [For those who don't want to wade through a farrago of fallacies expounded at excessive length, his core point is echoed by Sinclair Davidson at Catallaxy, though without attribution to Milne. Rendered in short form, the basic logical fallacy is starkly evident.]

So, there’s going to be an “emissions financial crisis” and the Reserve Bank wasn’t consulted by the Government before climate change legislation was prepared? A non sequitur built on speculative and incoherent fantasy does not make for an effective political attack. ‘OMG! Governor didn’t read legislation! Rudd FAIL!’…

The political syntax of this claim, of course, is that Rudd and co successfully berated the Liberals for ‘ignoring 20 (or whatever it was) successive Reserve Bank warnings’ in the lead up to the 2007 election. Now, we have the Liberals, and their echo chamber, arguing that the Reserve Bank should have been given a chance to warn. Somehow a hypothetical and unlikely warning was pre-empted by the Government deliberately choosing not to do what it doesn’t have to do. Try to make any sense of that.

What would be far more interesting to examine would be the politics of invoking the Reserve Bank (and for that matter, Treasury and its ubiquitous Secretary, Dr Ken Henry). Continue reading ‘Lame claims: invoking the Reserve Bank and Treasury politically’

John Hewson discovers excitable punctuation, anti-political fantasies and other stuff to do with the end of political year 2008

Published
by
Kim
1 year, 3 months ago
in Activism, Christmas, Climate change, Economics, Energy, Federal Elections, Foreign Elections, International, Markets, Media, Policy, Politics, Sociology and USA
. 12 Comments

End of year reflection on the state of politics and the nation type articles can be interesting. They can be tedious rehashes of trivia and reinventions of an already distorted reality to prove punditarian narratives r us and are ace (read any column in the Opposition Organ for an example). They can be quite thoughtful and rise above the usual trivia and actually say something. Or they can be quite weird.

John Hewson’s contribution in today’s Fin falls into the latter category. I strongly suspect his article is the first time evah a columnist in the venerable biz organ has written the sentence: “Whatever!” – indeed, Dr JoHew has been rather exuberant with his punctuation for emphasis in what is a sustained attack on the Reserve Bank. He may have a point that Glenn Stevens indicating that he’ll be taking a rest over January isn’t the best idea – as he points out, the Fed has rates heading down to a range between 0% and 0.25% and UK rates are at 2%. Perhaps Stevens thinks that in the month or so of the Great Australian Stupor, we’ll all spend the economy back to health by splurging on alcopops and sunscreen. On the other hand, Hewson is probably right that Aussie parochialism can’t be afforded anymore – the rest of the world may not understand that we’re all at the beach.

But Hewson’s paradox is that his solution is typical of what got us here in the first place – better “governance” and a more “independent” board – which sits uneasily with his own complaint that no one is allowed to complain about the independent Bank. This is the sort of neoliberal managerialist fantasy that landed us in this mess (in part) and the proscription is even more technocratic wonkery!

Speaking of which, that takes me to my segue about Kevin Rudd, political reality, climate change and technocratic wonkery.

Continue reading ‘John Hewson discovers excitable punctuation, anti-political fantasies and other stuff to do with the end of political year 2008′

Spend, spend, spend! It’s your patriotic duty… or something

Published
by
Mark
1 year, 3 months ago
in Disasters, Economics, Markets, Sociology and USA
. 90 Comments

The stock market has lost 51% of its value since its peak, a decline we’re told now exceeds the destruction of value seen in 1987. On the ABC News tonight, Alan Kohler grimly pointed to an index (tradeable, I think, but don’t quote me on that) of future sentiment which is apparently dire, and which apparently depressed that reified hive mind “the markets” even further. On Lateline Business, a British fellow in a very smart three piece pin stripe suit bemoaned the fact that all rationality in terms of valuation had departed from equities market, and what was left was “pure human sentiment” which apparently “isn’t pretty”. I think John Maynard Keynes might have had something to say about all that.

The stock market’s fall may also have had something to do with evidence of a growing deflation in consumer prices in America, or so opinionators opined. Well, I guess we don’t have the “inflation dragon” to kick around anymore.

And we’ve had another outpouring of deficit aversion, bipartisanship at last (!), in response to Glenn Steven’s expression of the belief that the government had a responsibility to “borrow to invest”.

And, yet, we’ve had a piece of prime silliness – to put alongside all these other signs of the times – in Crikey’s editorial:

There’s not a lot politicians can do. The Government handing money to low income earners who’ll have virtually no choice but to spend it makes sense, but there’s only a limited number of times a $10b heart-starter can be administered to the economy. Even the Opposition has been doing its bit lately, prefacing virtually every statement on the economy with the mantra that Australia is best-placed to weather these difficulties.

And there’s not much businesses can do without demand. It’s actually up to us consumers to realise Australia’s economic fate is in our hands, and act accordingly.

Righteo. Continue reading ‘Spend, spend, spend! It’s your patriotic duty… or something’

A lapse in judgement? Or too many barristers?

Published
by
Mark
1 year, 4 months ago
in Economics, Ethics, Law, Markets and Media
. 47 Comments

The Coalition’s apparent belief that everything that they read in the (Australian) newspaper must be true has got them into all sorts of trouble this week. The bizarre spectacle of a gaggle of Liberal Senators piling on Treasury Secretary Ken Henry in Senate Estimates was quite extraordinary… and all this to score what would have been quite a minor debating point, if there’d been any veracity to the story in the first place. It was quite clear in fact that it was wrong, or w r o n g ! if you prefer, before the inquisition even began, but that didn’t stop Eric Abetz and Helen Coonan from reviving some courtroom tricks. In fact, the spectacle of George Brandis in full flight – declaiming as though the Treasury Secretary were some sort of a hostile witness in a criminal trial – was really quite the thing to behold.

Henry’s testimony led to a most unedifying spectacle where Malcolm Turnbull failed pathetically to dig himself out of his hole on the 7 30 Report. It was – quite seriously – one of the most appalling interviews I’ve seen a political leader give.

Michelle Grattan claims, in a column that – among other things – recites some of Turnbull’s own talking points, that the opposition leader suffers from “periodic bad judgement”. I’d like to ask – quite seriously – if someone can instance for me an example of Malcolm Turnbull exercising good judgement. When are the media going to realise that Turnbull’s not the Messiah, just another arrogant barrister with an inflated ego?

Update: If anyone was wondering about Dennis Shanahan’s “we were right!” stuff in today’s Australian, Bernard Keane puts it to the test and gives it the epic fail.