Welcome to the world of privatised electricity and canned music

Recently my research centre set up a new office in Melbourne, Victoria (a southern Australian state). We do a lot of work in Melbourne and so it was a cost-saving measure to establish a permanent capacity there. It coincides with some other big changes that I will make public on Monday next. The experience has generally been favourable – we have installed very reliable IT systems and have off-street parking, which is somewhat redundant given our proximity to the CBD and the University of Melbourne, where I am involved in some large projects. But try getting power connected – and when it finally is connected – try keeping that connection. Welcome to the world of privatised power. Read on to learn about how efficient it all is. And as you read reflect on the fact that the neo-liberals sold this farce on the back of arguments that the nation couldn’t afford state-owned power supplies and that the new privatised world would be like a journey to Shangri La! It just hasn’t turned out that way.

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A lost generation in Europe is being deliberately created by the elites

I am “on the road” again today so short of time (as usual). But yesterday, Eurostat released the latest labour force data from the EU and the Eurozone for the month of August 2012. It showed that the labour market continues to deteriorate and youth unemployment in some countries is heading into unprecedented territory. I have examined various speeches that representatives of the Troika have made when discussing fiscal austerity over the last few years and I have failed to find any specific reference to the the labour market collapse. There is lots of talk about fiscal consolidation and the need to maintain confidence with the “investors” (the bond market recipients of corporate welfare). But very little focus on the real human tragedy – which is epitomised by the rising joblessness. There is a huge disconnect operating between the policy makers and the people. I saw something of the way the European policy makers live and interact during my recent trip to Brussels. They should get out more and travel to Greece and see what is happening on the street where there are now more than 55 per cent of the 15-24 year olds unemployed – and without very many future prospects.

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The moronic activity of the rating agencies

It is a public holiday in NSW today – Labour Day – to celebrate the 8-hour day although for many workers that victory is now a thing of the past as labour market deregulation bites harder on the hard-won conditions that workers enjoyed during the full employment period. I am also ailing (with “the bug” that is “going around”) and I have two major pieces of work to finish (one completed this morning). There is also a birthday in my immediate family and so I am partying tonight (in relative terms). So all that means a shortish blog. I was giving a talk in Perth last week about the absurdity of state (non-currency issuing) governments running down public infrastructure because they refuse to borrow all in the name of preserving their AAA credit rating from the corrupt ratings agencies. The obvious question seems to evade people – why have AAA credit rating if you refuse to borrow. The ridiculousness of the ratings game raised its head again last week when one of the ratings agencies threatened to downgrade the British Government’s rating. It is clear that the agency is probably needing a revenue boost so tried to attract some publicity. If I was the Chancellor I would have told them to buzz off and to stress how irrelevant they really are. But the reaction was typical – angst and worry. For what? Nothing. The only thing it demonstrated was how mislead the public are and how mindless this “dark age” that we are living through at present really is.

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Saturday Quiz – September 29, 2012 – answers and discussion

Here are the answers with discussion for yesterday’s quiz. The information provided should help you understand the reasoning behind the answers. If you haven’t already done the Quiz from yesterday then have a go at it before you read the answers. I hope this helps you develop an understanding of Modern Monetary Theory (MMT) and its application to macroeconomic thinking. Comments as usual welcome, especially if I have made an error.

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Aggregate demand – Part 6 (redux)

I am now using Friday’s blog space to provide draft versions of the Modern Monetary Theory textbook that I am writing with my colleague and friend Randy Wray. We expect to complete the text by the end of this year. Comments are always welcome. Remember this is a textbook aimed at undergraduate students and so the writing will be different from my usual blog free-for-all. Note also that the text I post is just the work I am doing by way of the first draft so the material posted will not represent the complete text. Further it will change once the two of us have edited it.

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Scotland should vote yes in 2014 but only if …

I am in Perth today speaking at a public service employees union congress. The talk is based on a major report we have just finished tracking the implications of public spending cutbacks in Australia on the volume and quality of public service delivery. We did several case studies – one of which was child protection – and the cutbacks will lead to increased child abuse in Australia without doubt. The story is pretty grim and I will write about it once the Report is made public by the commissioning party. But with travel (Perth is a long flight from anywhere and I have to get back to Newcastle tonight – 6 hours) and commitments I haven’t much time to wax lyrical on my blog. But I have been meaning to write about the upcoming Scottish referendum on independence from Britain and it fits a nice theme with yesterday’s blog – The demise of social democratic parties – they are all neo-liberals now – where I argued that good intentions come to naught if the economic policy paradigm used is erroneous. I would recommend the Scots vote yes at the 2014 referendum. But only if they introduce their own unpegged, floating currency and avoid any talk of joining the Eurozone. Further, the yes vote should be conditional on the government committing itself to achieving full employment on the back of their newly created currency sovereignty. Then the yes vote will improve welfare for the Scottish people. If they continue to use the British pound – then nothing will be gained.

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The demise of social democratic parties – they are all neo-liberals now

There was an article in this morning’s Melbourne Age (September 26, 2012) by former Australian Federal Finance Minister Lindsay Tanner, which talked about the structural decline of social democratic parties around the world. Recently I was in the Netherlands for the Dutch national election and the Labor Party could not gain office and is likely to go into coalition with the Conservatives (what?) – the common bond – their support for the Euro and fiscal austerity. What set of circumstances would see what should be polar opposite political forces in coalition? And then there are the LDP and the Tories in the UK. And the debate in the US is not about a deficit versus a surplus but how quickly to get into surplus. The same goes in Australia. The policy debate is marked by claims from both major parties that they will generate bigger budget surpluses quicker than their opponents. The social democratic political tradition is fading because the parties have become indistinguishable from the conservatives in economic policy. They are all neo-liberals now and that is an ugly option for those with a progressive bent who have traditionally supported the social democratic parties.

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The Celtic poster child demonstrates the failure of austerity

The IMF boss claimed yesterday that her organisation believed that austerity and growth “can be reconciled and should not be mutually exclusive” (see analysis in blog). She lied just like the IMF has been lying regularly since the crisis began. She also claimed that the IMF forecasts have been trending down. The fact is that they keep revising them down because they are continually wrong. They want to dress their austerity bullying up in a favourable light by claiming growth will be higher. The reality is always different and growth, quite predictably, comes in lower. Their poster child – Ireland – was the first nation to succumb to the austerity narrative. The latest national accounts from Ireland released last week continue to provide a bleak outlook on what is happening there. Austerity is killing the economy – slowly but surely. Joseph Stiglitz said that fiscal austerity is tantamount to economic suicide. Ireland is leading the way. Despite massive austerity, Ireland is still going backwards and people are becoming poorer. Claims that Ireland’s austerity approach provides a model for other nations to follow because it produces growth cannot be sustained from the data. Further, as I will show in another blog – the poor economic performance is making it impossible for Ireland to achieve the ridiculous fiscal benchmarks that the Troika have imposed on it. It is folly all round. Pity the workers and the common folk.

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Fear of inflation scales new heights

The scaremongering about inflation and higher interest rates continues to flood out of the mainstream economics community. The conversation has become a little more sophisticated since the claims in the early stages of the crisis that the fiscal and monetary policy innovations introduced by governments would be inflationary. Now we are hearing stories about longer lags – channelling Milton Friedman who also fell foul of the evidence more often than not. So inflation is just around the corner rather than coming tomorrow. As in the past, the mainstream macroeconomics has a serious credibility problem. It is no wonder it keeps making erroneous predictions. It begins with an erroneous construction of reality. It is all downhill for them after that.

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