Tag Archive for 'Great Depression'

Kevin Rudd the essayist

Published
by
Mark
7 months, 3 weeks ago
in Climate change, Economics and Media
. 142 Comments

[Via Terry Flew] In the wake of his essay for The Monthly, Kevin Rudd has written close to 7000 words for the Fairfax papers on the economy, claiming that the opposition’s approach is something akin to the Premiers’ Plan of the Great Depression. In this piece, Rudd poses the alternatives to Labor’s course of action – do nothing or retrenchment in spending. The latter, is of course, the logical implication of the Liberals’ obsession with debt and deficit.

The article follows a week when the Liberal Party again tore itself apart on climate change, ending with a bizarre op/ed from Tony Abbott (the frontbencher who won’t comment on Indigenous housing – core to his shadow portfolio – because of an embargo from the publishers of his book). Abbott recited all the old denialist saws about “cooling”, but in the process called on the opposition to pass the government’s CPRS because the Coalition needed clear political space to concentrate on its economic message.

But what is that message? There isn’t one. It’s an entirely oppositional stance – repeating the mantra of “debt and deficit” at every opportunity. The Liberals gave up even trying to articulate an economic policy, hoping – as Shaun Carney observes in an acute analysis – that the economy would hit rock bottom and that they would resume their rightful place as natural “economic managers”. As Carney observes, economic credibility isn’t a given, it has to be established. That groundwork has not been laid. And, if things turn out not to be as bad as everyone was predicting, the Coalition is left without any political strategy whatever.

G20 Summit: A new Bretton Woods?

Published
by
Mark
1 year, 4 months ago
in Economics, International, Media, Sociology and USA
. 60 Comments

The G20 Summit has come and gone, and if today’s coverage in the Australian press is any indication, the most important of the tea leaves to be read is whether George W. Bush snubbed Kevin Rudd over the “Kirribilli leak”. Yep, a non-story that has burbled along for weeks, now diverted into intra-press gallery trading of accusations and a tedious talking point for the opposition – that’s the most important aspect of the events in Washington according to our “quality” media. As far as I can work out, if Bush is indeed upset that his ignorance of the function and nature of the G20 was revealed to the world, that just confirms what a lot of folks have always known about W – that’s he’s at best unengaged, at worst ignorant. But I suppose our fearless journos aren’t allowed to draw that conclusion lest a global diplomatic crisis add to our woes from the global financial crisis!

But, anyway, the lame duck President made his ritual obeisance to the virtues of American leadership and the glories of the free market. One imagines there’s some personal and political imperative there, but the reality of his governance is better disclosed in the fate of the TARP funds which Treasury Secretary Henry Paulson was given by Congress – it appears that crony capitalism and socialism for the rich is the name of the game according to American blogs such as naked capitalism, Obsidian Wings, firedoglake and naked capitalism again.

But Bush will soon be fading into history, and Barack Obama sensibly declined to act at the summit without executive authority, so what emerged from the G20 is more in the nature of a directions statement for the way forward, as The Big Picture foresaw:

Hopefully, a long term agenda for regulatory cooperation and communication can be set with the next meeting’s agenda decided upon. Far better to talk then not, but no real decisions will come out of this meeting. There will be gnashing of teeth and venting of rage at the mess that excess securitization has created, and the international regulation of and accounting for such derivatives will probably be a focus.

Planet Money looks at what transpired, and links to the text of the communique here. Continue reading ‘G20 Summit: A new Bretton Woods?’