Today I catch up on a number of threads that have been in the media in the last week or so. It is all bad. The focus is on Alan Greenspan’s extraordinary intervention into the policy debate declaring the financial sector unable to be effectively regulated. I have a solution for that! But as I read the data trends every day and listen to the politicians outlining their legislative ambitions I realise that there have not been many lessons learned at all. The neo-liberals are back in charge – unshamed – when they should have been driven out of every town in every land. Their leading lights are coming out of their rat holes and are once again lecturing us on how self-regulated markets are best and how we have to tolerate the occasional crisis as part of the wealth maximisation process. It beggars belief how this all is represented as credible policy input. It is time to get angry.

I gave an interview on the national broadcaster ABC about the latest talk in Australia to ramp up the pernicious Work for the Dole program. I noted that the unemployment problem in Australia at present reflects a systematic failure to produce enough jobs rather than the personal failures of the unemployed themselves. Standard stuff. The interview got me thinking of about make work schemes and unproductive labour and boondoggling! and leaf-raking. My mind turned, immediately, to the IMF which runs one of the largest make work programs in the world and employs thousands of workers on good pay to do nothing constructive at all. The IMF is the exemplar of leaf-raking. You only have to read their working paper series – where multiple authors attach their name to senseless reports about nothing. These papers are always “Authorized for distribution by x” – that is, some higher-up leaf-raker who spent years learning the craft of being occupied doing nothing. All IMF economists aspire to be the person who sits in the office and authorises for distribution the papers that all the peons pump out which provide nothing useful to anyone. At least aggregate demand is being maintained via the workers’ wages. Pity the IMF couldn’t find something more productive for their workforce to do. Perhaps they are not skilled enough though. Anyway, life in the IMF fantasy world!

The morning news headlines today (April 1, 2011) were all touting our Prime Minister’s tough talk last night while giving the Inaugural Gough Whitlam Oration. She outlined a plan to introduce harsh spending cuts in the upcoming May Federal Budget to preserve the strength of the economy. This is an economy that is barely growing and has 12.2 per cent of its available labour (at least) idle! Her speech was a frightening display of how far the public debate on macroeconomics has moved away from being based on an understanding of how things work to being driven by conservative fears about budget deficits based on a series of lies. Depressingly, which ever way one turns over here you have to conclude that the neo-liberals rule in Australia and seek to undermine our prosperity. At the same time, ironically, our prosperity is being saved by some communists .