Comments on: That’s not a debate, that’s Australian politics and commentary

By: Bernard Keane

Bernard Keane — Thu, 01 Jan 1970 10:00:00 +0000

Watch this space. Well, not exactly this space, but you know what I mean. More ill-informed ranting from me on the crisis later this week, when I think up another apt film metaphor.

By: Daniel

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

Um, Bernard, why is this well-written and thought provoking article buried near the bottom of the Politics section? This should be the headline article. It’s vastly more interesting than some humdrum by the numbers story about a Cabinet reshuffle that you could write in your sleep.

By: JamesK

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

Hmmm. An entertaining — dare I say it — ‘narrative’ from Bernard Keane.

Although, I am not sure that one could reasonably evidence an awkward Steve Price article as a sort of surrogate ‘Penn and Teller’ revealer of the Secrets of the Black Arts!

Furthermore, that Clinton, Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac, the Community Reinvestment Act and the 1999 repeal of the Glass-Steagall Act formed the soil in which abuse of new-fangled financial instruments of mass destruction flowered there can be no doubt. t And that especially despite Leftist op-ed pieces in the New York Times.

Lastly, no mention here of Rudd’s loathsome linking of the $42 billion plus porkbarrelling parody of a “stimulus package” with aid for the victims of the Victorian bushfires.

Still I have enjoyed this article, there is much truth in it and it is refreshingly different from the mainstream media opinion editorials

By: jeff

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

OUTSTANDING ANALYSIS!
This is the first thing I’ve ever read by Bernard Keane. What else do you got? A devastating critique of the boobs who pretend to “run the show”.

It does raise one question: if you can see what’s wrong, can you offer any ideas to fix it? In other words, how do you propose we get out of this financial mess?

By: will

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

That was good. Really really good. Better than anything I have read lately in mainstream press. First day of a trial. I hope it stays this good

By: Michael

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

Surely you don't mean that our Emperors have no clothes?!?

...and yes, JamesK, that's Emperors *plural* - yours AND mine, mate.

Great piece/rant/confession.

By: Venise Alstergren

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

Ah! Now you have it. One of the better comments by one of the better commentators in the land.

Sometimes I have an amazing dream. All the water in what used to be in the Murray Darling system, have gathered to create a Tsunami. Onto these surging waters all the men and women who have come into parliament to serve their own interests have been condemned to exist in fragile, shelled pea-pods-As in the owl and the pussycat but light years worse. Every time these little pea-pods get near the shore a mighty wind sucks them back into the vortex. They are doomed play out this dreadful trial for the next two-hundred thousand years. I love this dream.

Did anyone reading these pages see the photo of Pete the mule from Malvern in the Age this morning? He simply just doesn't get it. Or has he had himself hard-wired into this insane belief that he continues to matter?
He really and truly thinks he still matters.

By: Dr Harvey M Tarvydas

Dr Harvey M Tarvydas — Thu, 01 Jan 1970 10:00:00 +0000

I like your Wizard of Oz Bernard.
You’re missing that value that debate has when intelligent persons are genuinely searching for value in company. One can even debate with oneself. You need to continue your studies in philosophy Bernard.
Where value comes to the surface from any of our political persons or processes you can bet real debate has taken place albeit not in our company (the only valuable dictators decree in history was Napoleon’s on French Royalty and Samogitians).
I have commented on what I decipher as your attitude to Gough and Debt before in Crikey but an honest debate about the virtue of that attitude would include some unspoken Australian historical facts, President Reagan and the Harvard Business School with Nugget Coombs.
Many people may come to debates, advocates, debaters, a debater can’t debate from all points of view at once so there’s more than one required, open minded participants which may include the debaters and sometimes a convertible advocate but all will speak, think, understand and walk away differently.

By: Lucy

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

Very interesting. The point about the question-begging call for “smarter regulation” is a good one. As if anyone thinks that perhaps dumber regulation is the solution to all this.

The attempt by the right to pin the financial crisis on uppity brown people with aspirations to home ownership was one of the less savoury tropes of conservative politics in the last year. Fortunately, the blame has shifted to Wall Street Fat Cats - even among certain conservative politicians and media outlets - a more worthy target of demonisation, if only because they’re rich enough to ignore it.

I don’t think this phenomenon is confined to the Australian context. For instance: apparently in the United States, the hot media interview du jour is Nicholas Taleb, he of the “black swan” thesis, on the basis that he “predicted” the GFC. These interviews inevitably lead to an absurd conclusion, in which the interviewer demands to know where the crisis is leading us, and what the next crisis will be. This despite the fact that Taleb’s entire thesis is essentially that crises are inherently unpredictable, that risk is unquantifiable, and that trying to predict what’s going on is a fool’s errand. The use of Taleb as a financial crisis “expert” just goes to show how lost everyone is, meedja included, in the absence of the old economic orthodoxies.

By: Dr Harvey M Tarvydas #2

Dr Harvey M Tarvydas #2 — Thu, 01 Jan 1970 10:00:00 +0000

Hey you all
Bernard reads the comments and does that rather affectionate self-deprecating Oz thing. Hot stuff mate!

By: Mr Denmore

Mr Denmore — Thu, 01 Jan 1970 10:00:00 +0000

Bernard’s right, but this is not new. A few of us having been saying the same thing for years about the narrative fallacy. Now the press gallery’s cottoned onto it. Hopefully, for their sake, they won’t believe it too strongly themselves, as it calls into question their continued existence in Canberra

By: Bernard Keane

Bernard Keane — Thu, 01 Jan 1970 10:00:00 +0000

Daniel have you been spying on my work habits?

By: Tom McLoughlin

Tom McLoughlin — Thu, 01 Jan 1970 10:00:00 +0000

Is good is Bern.

Actually Steve Price was echoing something on a string here. The lady who did the story on bushfire packages that help after ACT 2003 megafire. Then my comment to her - see, you go in the field and you learn stuff, with a grim joke about hell of way to learn. So Steve Price does that - goes into the field and learns.

(Ironically I personally got that axiom from forest protection protests. Sitting in the office near the seat of political and media power until I realised I was stale and went out to meet the folks on the coal face.)

As for the big media looking behind the curtain too, that's our effect BK, the 5th estate, stretching out the political spectrum and finding gaps in that old revolving door big media to big politics. I should know, my grandpa apparently was very matey with PM Menzies.

And your thing about narratives are lipstick on a choas pig - well science is not like that, nor is medicine. Change a landscape from wet to dry forest over 50 years, throw in real hot weather - you get megafire. Again with medicine - don't know your stuff, people die like Mr Patel.

And dare I say so it is with the (political?) economy. Flying blind, you will crash. My bet is still on the intertubes invention thingy changing peoples levels of trust, time and spending habits globally. I can hope.