Comments on: Real economy part 1: The big picture

By: Venise Alstergren

Venise Alstergren — Thu, 01 Jan 1970 10:00:00 +0000

Marilyn: I’ve just decided you are the worthy, but tiresome, winner of the Golden Gatling award. Just in case you don’t know what a Gatling is. It was a gun much loved of Mexican bandidos. The forerunner of today’s machine guns. You fed in a belt of cartridges-then I think you had to hand-crank them. As a result, the gun- sight was bad and tended to induce the marksman (?) to pull hard to the left. The results of this was a very widely spaced, and to be admitted, deadly weapon at close range. But of superficial value when it came to accuracy.

By: Marilyn

Marilyn — Thu, 01 Jan 1970 10:00:00 +0000

Here is a better reality. A bunch of rich guys rule the world and when they cough they send the world into a decline.

Spread the wealth (horrors for Sarah Palin) and stop the old rich guys getting it all then panicking.

The stock market is always written about as if it is a thing with a mind of it's own but it is the nonsense of the stock holders dithering all over the place.

It is the debt load that is destroying the world's economy, the greed of the few and the equal greed and stupidity of the "mortgage" holders who are so ignorant they have no idea they simply cannot afford it.

By: Ev

Ev — Thu, 01 Jan 1970 10:00:00 +0000

Any comments on the public sector Bernard?

By: JamesK

JamesK — Thu, 01 Jan 1970 10:00:00 +0000

Vol, if I said this once, I said a million times!…….. why don’t they ever listen?

By: Cathy

Cathy — Thu, 01 Jan 1970 10:00:00 +0000

Australians haven’t thought a lot about the direction of their economy or their part in it. Hence the legacy of Australian governments is a politically-geared economy - all things to all people and not much to everyone. Our diverse ‘market’ caters for part-time, casual, special needs, disabled and marginalised workers as it juggles trainees and semi-skilled permanents with professionals. If it sounds bizarre and unworkable its what’s called a dogs breakfast. How on earth this flimsy foundation known as our national workforce copes in a global economy is beyond curious. Australians are more flexible than expert. Had the nation set and followed the sheep, wheat, clothing, footwear, mining and light industry narrative we’d be riding high and not shot-gun. People and political agendas are becoming poles apart - for lack of expertise, energy and vision on both sides.

By: Venise Alstergren

Venise Alstergren — Thu, 01 Jan 1970 10:00:00 +0000

Another depressing factor being that ten of out best companies, together with a new mineral strike, could come out with wonderful results and the market would continue to drift lower. There is nothing that good news could do to turn this market around. The Oz share buyer has determined that we are in a depression and that is blo*dy that.
There are only two things which will alter the present scenario. A very nasty little world war OR financial institutions refusing to lend money on credit. Ha blo*dy ha! A week into the current, and savage realigning of the market, my bank offered me a large loan @ ’ favorable rates’. As it was a circular I imagine the same letter was received by many creditors. What a way to run an economy.

By: Richard McGuire

Richard McGuire — Thu, 01 Jan 1970 10:00:00 +0000

“Reflexivity?” In main street they call it “fear and greed.” It kind of cuts to the chase, and saves on ink and paper.

By: Vol

Vol — Thu, 01 Jan 1970 10:00:00 +0000

Contrary to economic dogma, our interest-bearing, debt-based economies are fundamentally unstable and prone to disequilibrium. Idealised models of economic equilibrium sound nice, and their portrayals of undistorted markets achieving optimal net benefit and harmony attract acceptance and acquiescence. But such models have more in common with the Dark Ages grip on European world-view held by Christian churches, than with an objective rendering of empirical data. Their absence of predictive capability, together with mainstream economic blindness to the long-visible warning signs of the current crisis, are ample demonstrations of this. The Dark Age churches peddled false salvation at the cost of subservience to church authority. The 20th and 21st century economic priesthood peddles false market equilibrium at the cost of subservience to exponential growth.

That 97% of the world’s money supply is generated as interest-bearing debt constitutes a classic positive feedback loop, fundamentally unstable (in the nature of positive feedback systems), and requiring exponential growth in both debt and credit (money) to meet compounding interest on money supply. While ever we rely for our money supply upon interest-bearing debt, we can resign ourselves to continuing boom/bust/bubble cycles.

That such a systemic, positive feedback system, with its inherent, fundamental disequilibrium, has been packaged and presented to collective humanity as a structural necessity, is a testament to the dogma and ideology of a powerful and often self interested finance sector.

Money is a human construct, designed by people, for the benefit of people, to enable the exchange of the goods and services within and between the most productive economies in world history. To address an insufficient supply of money, we need to apply some critical thought to the effectiveness and wisdom of our basic money supply mechanism. We are too easily persuaded that this is neither possible nor negotiable.