As the danger of a global depression recedes, the themes I am picking up regularly now from commentators, politicians etc are all pointing back to the mainstream status quo version of the way the economy works, in particular, for the purposes of this blog the labour market. I expect to increasingly hear and read the rhetoric that dominated the public debates prior to the crisis – that unemployment is essentially a supply-side phenomenon reflecting choices made by individuals in the context of government welfare policy that distorts these choices in favour of not working. In this context, the simple act of extending unemployment benefits in the US has been controversial. This takes us back to the dominant debates over the last 20 years which saw governments all around the World pursuing policies that were antithetical to full employment and pernicious in their impact on the victims of their policy failures. Stay tuned – 2011 – the mainstream will be in full attack mode again – conveniently forgetting where we have been over the last 3 or so years.

When I read the financial and economic news every day I sense a global madness has emerged. Global political processes are becoming distorted by the types of debates that the conservative media companies and the mainstream economists are driving. Every day a new whacko proposition is suggested or entertained by governments. Old hatreds are also resurfacing as our economies labour on (or not labour to be more accurate!) in the face of a major private spending collapse accompanied by inadequate government fiscal responses. The collateral damage of the deficit terrorism is increasing and spreading and still the major political parties in most countries slug it out as to which one will deliver the most fiscal austerity. Would someone please put something in the water supply so that we can refocus this debate onto what is important. That was the plan in the late 1960s to chill everyone out and distinguish the meaningful from the nonsense. Something has to restore our sense of priorities. The longer this madness goes on the worse it is going to get. There is no sensible solution that will come from following the present path.

I am now back in my normal office after a few days experimenting with a mobile office by the sea. Back in Newcastle I am still only a couple of minutes from the beach but somehow it was different being holed up in a little cabin. Anyway, on the way back down the coast this morning I was bemoaning the idiocy of the human race … again. Or rather cursing the vicarious way the elites exploit the lack of understanding in the community about economic matters to further their own ends. That is a better way of constructing the dilemma. Even some good intentioned souls are proposing “solutions” to non-problems which will worsen the actual problem. Other devious characters are continuing to reinvent themselves in the public sphere – presumably to get access to more personal largesse. Then whole blocks of nations are imposing penury on their citizens to make the “markets” happy while another national government has actually forgotten it is a currency-issuing government. All in a day’s work!

Today’s blog comes to you from beautiful Boomerang Beach, on the mid-North Coast of NSW and within the Booti Booti National Park. I am experimenting with the concept of a mobile office – well a cabin by the beach. Armed with my USB turbo mobile broadband and my portable computer, some files and books (not to mention a guitar and a couple of surfboards) I decided I can work nearly anywhere these days. Connectivity is no longer a problem. So I decided to head north for a couple of days to see how the concept works. Maybe it will begin a gypsy research life although I know one person who won’t allow that to happen! Anyway, it is a lovely setting and I can walk about 200 metres to the surf through the sand dunes. The perfect antidote to the sort of hysteria I covered in yesterday’s blog. Today I am considering corporate welfare among other topics and you definitely need a peaceful and soothing location to delve into that topic in any depth.

Its been a big weekend for hyperbole which in this context is a polite term for outright hysterical lies. Today’s blog reviews a few of the choice selections from a weekend’s reading. It amazes me how people can even mis-represent their own research when they know the audience hasn’t even read it in detail. It also is interesting to follow the way the media commentators are trying to out-do each other in use of superlatives – how much catastrophic can a catastrophy get – sort of thing. The analogies, the adjectives … are all designed to transport uninformed readers into a particular ideological space where the conservative forces can garner more of the national pie than otherwise might be the case. Anyway, that is what today’s blog is about.