Crazy Barnaby shooting from the heartland
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Wow — just when conservatives thought that the chaos was over, they get hit with the full force that is Barnaby. Last Thursday your correspondent was dozing lightly, trying to gather the wherewithal to get up, when Joyce came on the Jon Faine show (Bruce Guthrie in the chair). Crazy Barnaby, conscious of his new responsibilities as a member of the shadow cabinet, was trying his best to rein in madhouse and the whole thing there now that he is omigod shadow finance minister — but this appeared to consist of belting out the same whackness in sombre and modulated tone, which made him sound like he was on Haldol. “Australians are subject to huge grocery price inflation because of a lack of competition” he mumbled, lachrymose, “it’s the same with the banks, it may be necessary to break them up.” OK, so I was sure as hell up now. Though the interview returned, inexplicably in my view, back to the sideshow of Westpac’s banana smoothie email, the shadow finance minister in the Liberal-National coalition had just called for the breaking up of Australia’s banks. Joyce, as everyone knows by now, had only just got started. It was only when he called for a ban on investment by Chinese state-owned companies that Tony Abbott pulled him in. The conservatoriat has been in uproar ever since, with the Oz sternly admonishing the shadow finance minister and Paul Kelly delivering one of his headmasterly talks disguised as an article, to school captain Abbott. They’ve scrambled quickly, and come up with a response: this is shoot-from-the-lip Barney. That’s a great solution — it has the appearance of being critical, while it’s actually nothing of the sort. Joyce may have an aleatoric way of putting things across, but the suggestion that he’s making it up as he goes along is bulldust. The trouble for the coalition is not that he says the first thing that comes into his mind — it’s that he’s speaking from the heart. And from the heartland. The depth of historical knowledge in Australian political commentary is so appallingly low that I can well believe that many in the press gallery really believe that none of Barney’s stuff hangs together. When they judge someone as whacko because he professes a belief in capitalism and free enterprise, and a desire to break up the banks, you know that they are missing the coalition’s deep dilemma for want of a knowledge of the 20th century. So let’s look at the history (and some actual class analysis, big shout out to my bro J. Passant, aright? Word.) Joyce’s thoughts — on everything from sports-only student unions to the defaulting of US debt — comes from a Right that is older than the recent neoliberal/neoconservative confection, and that is in many ways more inimical to the corporate/executive Liberal Party than is Labor. When the man from St George speaks, we hear a voice of rural Australia, and the urban petit-bourgeoisie — a voice like old music on a distant gramophone, saying things out of the 1920s and ’30s, because that is the last time that class was socially dominant. Largely though not exclusively Catholic, barred from advancement by sectarian prejudice and class immobility, squeezed from below by the organised labour movement, the experience of shopkeepers, small farmers, tradesmen and the like tended to be one of isolated work life, family and then church as the only collective identity, an adherence to particular and symbolic social meanings — the cross and the flag — rather than abstract ones, a promise of hard-won frugal security that is also uniquely precarious, subject to the movement of forces over which they have not the slightest control. With the Australian class system consolidating in the ’20s, and the Left becoming an international force, this class began to produce organisational expressions of its beliefs — the Country Party, the League of Rights, and the nascent Catholic Social Movements. For this class, the true society is one in which capitalism is largely bound within something else — the bonds of kin, religion, race and locality, as expressed in family businesses, local towns, etc. These things are more important than abstract notions of rights, freedoms, philosophy, etc, and they generate a set of virtues — self-reliance, independence from experts, a disdain for larger processes or collectives. Market and state are a means to the end of keeping social relations frozen that way for ever, and there is no hesitation in using the latter, whether it is expressed through the Grain Elevators Board or the Commonwealth Censor. Such attitudes effortlessly generate a belief in disaster, conspiracy, threat and sophiaphobia, as a multiple expression of a single great fear. That can easily be rolled over from real conflicts — with banks, that is — into the stuff we all joke about, such as a suspicion of water fluoridation. Fluoridation is a form of adulteration of the natural and given — just as is usurious interest or collective bargaining. The dominant way in which this sort of thinking proceeds is to collapse abstract and mass forces into particular and conspiratorial ones — thus conflict of and suspicion of finance capital is transferred into anti-Semitism, and capital’s pitiless rapacity becomes the character of The International Jew. That, of course, is the title of League of Rights founder Eric Butler’s 1946 book, published at the start of Butler and the League’s half-century of tireless rural organising, often as entryist groups within the Country and then National Party. Butler once was asked what his greatest triumph was — “survival” he replied, and he was right. Though he would complain about Pauline Hanson stealing his thunder, a map of League of Rights activity with an overlay of One Nation strongholds would show a pretty tight fit. And the themes — banks, China, etc — that Joyce is raising are coming straight from the League of Rights playbook (with the exception of anti-Semitism — there is no indication that Joyce is anti-Semitic). Take Barney’s recent pronouncements on American debt levels, and the possibility that the country might default. Your correspondent has written at length about what a parlous state the US is in, in a manner largely hidden by consumption of ever-increasing levels of crap, but that problem is one of growing underdevelopment and low social investment. Default isn’t on the cards, because it would be the end of the global financial system — and of China’s markets. US debt will simply be restructured in whatever way keeps things circulating. Where would Barney get a crazy idea about default from? From Eric Butler and the LOR — which, like all such organisations, adopted the “Social Credit” ideas of C.H. Douglas in the ’30s. Explaining Social Credit would take the whole of this edition of Crikey, but the short version is that Douglas thinks that many of our economic woes come from a radical misunderstanding of the nature of money, which has been allowed to float free of any measure of real social wealth, and autonomously dictate production levels. For Douglas, stimulus packages such as those of Australia and the US are the worst possible answer because they generate cycles of “super-production”, leading to trade wars, which become real wars. So when Barnaby Joyce talks about bank break-up, the rampaging Chinese state, a US default and a world currency, he’s not riffing — he’s elucidating the various aspects of a complete, consistent, and clearly long and deeply held philosophy, one that matches the preoccupations of his constituents and supporters. Climate change takes the place of fluoridation as a perversion of plain common-sense (“any man on the land will tell you that the weather goes in cycles”), inevitably expressing itself in plans for a new tax and One World government, being mooted at Copenhagen. It all fits together so well, how could it not be true. This is much, much worse for the coalition than him being Crazy Barny, because it means that Tony Abbott is now offering us a potential finance minister whose political philosophy is drawn deeply from a tradition that believes finance per se to be the problem. Personally, I don’t have a problem with that — a lot of what Douglas said about overproduction, military spending and the drift to war seems spot on to me, but the ideas are going in the opposite direction not merely of neoliberal economics, but of the whole foundation of modern business and international commerce. So Abbott has a big problem — trying for a gonzo, wild-west shadow cabinet, he’s allowed the League of Rights their greatest entryist triumph to date, even though Joyce isn’t a member of that group (or so we presume). Given what he’s said two weeks in, it seems unlikely that he’ll stop now. His belief in the things he talks about, and his conviction that he is representing the people from which he comes — both go far deeper than his affiliation to the National Party, much less the coalition. Abbott will have to sack him eventually, which will seriously damage his leadership credentials, and the longer he keeps him in the centre of the shadow Cabinet, the more damage he can do to any sort of consistent message. Joyce’s elevation was an unbelievable screw-up, another gift to Labor from a leader whose neurological capacity for risk assessment has probably been damaged by his sustained endorphin addiction. If Abbott was lost in golden slumbers from his runner’s high, you can bet he’s awake and listening now. |
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32 Comments
Bloody hell Guy! You’re a shock to the brain cells on a Monday.
Sophiaphobia?…Sheesh…..(fear of wisdom)
Just as well we’re reading this online and have access to google.
BTW
I think Crikey should run a sweep/competition to pick the date Barny Rubble gets pushed off the coalition pier.
Even a member of the inner city latte set like me can see that we would all be better off with more competition in the supermarket and banking sectors. Supermarkets in particular treat farmers like shit. But as for the rest of BJ’s nonsense, couldn’t agree more with you Guy.
I see Joyce (& therefore Abbott) with 2 problems as a shadow minister. Firstly, he should only speak on matters within his portfolio ie Finance ( I know this never stopped Abbott but can there be 2 loose cannons ). Secondly, whatever pronouncements he makes should be consistent with coalition policy ie Liberal policy, where it exists. I can’t see Barnaby lasting 3 months subject to these restraints. Even if Abbott is prepared to tolerate “shoot from the lip” policy musings, other Liberals won’t and if they can bring down a Nat so much the better.
I think Rundle’s analysis, apart from its heavy reliance on an outmoded marxist critque of capitalism and its imminent demise, misses the point.
Joyce articulates a perspective that resonates wth much of middle Australia. The debt levels of the UK and the United States are major concerns, as is Australia’s growing deficit.
Writing in the recent edition of Foreign Affairs, in an article titled ‘The Dollar and the Deficits”, C. Fred Bergsten, states “The US government’s continued failure to responsibly address the fiscal future of the United States will imperil its global position as well as its futue prosperity.”
The Wall Street Journal reports that 2 years ago it cost $5,ooo to ensure $10 million of British Government debt against default for 3 years, now it costs $52,000.
Joyce’s criticism of the banks, in the light of Westpac’s recent decison to pass on substantially more than the RBA’s official increase, will again reverberate with the electorate and that is what Abbott wants.
Abbott is defining the battle lines. Copenhagan is a farce, ‘Climategate’ is gathering momentum and Rudd must now begin to explain why his ETS will be a benefit to middle Australia.
The only positive thing about this piece is that it is unlikely that anyone would take the writer seriously.
The US Senate and the House have many “un-sponsored” politicians regularly speaking out on the fact the US is facing economic imminent collapse as is Brown’s hollowed out UK. The UK Telegraph regularly reports on the state of western (specifically but not exclusively, English speaking) economies which it sees as on the brink.
Australia which has over 60% of its bank lending in foreign borrowings is no better off. And don’t say we have all of these resources. A close look at all of the major companies including resources companies will show you that they are no longer controlled by Australians. They are controlled by international hedge funds/ banks i.e. JP Morgan Nominees, Citigroup Nominees and HSBC Nominees and so on.
If you don’t believe me go check for yourself and tell me something that these three majors don’t hold the controlling interests in..
If the corporations are not extremely attentive to these players, they could sell out from under them and put them to the wall. When people find out that there the entire economy is predicated on debt; that there is no money and only debt which is created ad lib by the banks and borrowed ad lib by governments they will sp&w.
In my view, the US has lived off everybody like a parasite since it departed the gold standard in 1971 and became the global currency. From that time and up until recently, the only currency that could be used to purchase crude oil was US dollars although Saddam Hussain’s Iraq, Iran and Venezuela have tried to trade in Euros and other currencies totheir peril.
Crude oil accounts for at least 50% of the world’s real economy through energy, plastics, synthetic rubbers, synthetic fibres, detergents, personal care products and I am sure I have left out the other half the supermarket.
Joyce is just making everybody aware that we are all on borrowed time. The new bubble attempting to be inflated in Copenhagen I believe, is intended to replace the real estate scam of the 90’s and 2000’s by means of a carbon trading scam. This is designed to get us through the next few years before that bubble bursts.
But I don’t think anyone except the Australian papers and Guy Rundle are buying it. Even the activists have realised that this is a joke and only direct action will produce results which protect the planet and save the Third World. No carbon credits sleight of hand is going to achieve anything other than to shift further wealth to the top 0.005% of the world’s people. The Libs know this and to their credit, they are bothering to share it with the slumbering public.
Wonderful piece of financial analysis there. We can’t have the end of the global financial system, can we ? So it can’t happen.
It is more likely that the US will print dollars to avoid default - that is what it is doing already, but the question is can they get it right ? If someone starts a rush for the exit on US Treasury Bonds, do you really think China will hold on to its $800,000 worth of bonds and watch their value go down the toilet ? No, they will try and dump them at a rate that maximises their returns, but will they get it right ? If the US has to print too many dollars, ( a 100 trillion is not out of the question) they will become worthless anyway, and THAT will be the end of the global financial system as we know it, because EVERY currency is a fiat currency these days, and once confidence in fiat paper is gone, it is gone for good.
All Australian superannuation will go down the toilet with GFC-2 - don’t you think it is worthwhile warning people about that ?
Wow Richard, I was wondering who Barnaby’s target audience is. Question answered.
I see Rudd, gleefully giving Barnaby all the rope he can take.
Guy, if you’re right about Joyce being a dyed-in-the-wool Douglasite (as opposed to just having some familiarity), then that is a brilliant piece of pattern matching and shows just how useful all that reading is. If you’re right. It sounds highly plausible, it would explain lots of things … but can you give us more evidence? You seem to have triangulated it from quite a small number of points.
BTW Joyce is right about the deteriorating grocery market, but that’s because a “free market” needs strong competition and antitrust laws and a strong body to enforce them, and we have neither.
Actually John James if you read the actual article, you’ll see that I say that capitalism isn’t headed for imminent demise. It’s Joyce who is talking about the US defaulting on its debt - a system-wrecking event if ever there was one - not I. I’m saying that won’t be allowed to happen.
Confusing when your hero starts to sound like the Green Left Weekly isn’t it?
As for Richard Wilson’s and Dave Kimble’s argument - I’m not suggesting that the global economic system will not face huge challenges and contradictions, and possible collapse, but the idea that US debt default will do it strikes me as unlikely, since the other major players have no interest in it occurring. China still wants the US market, and Europe would not want the instability, even though the evnt would make the euro the default world currency. The error - and there is a bit of Douglas credit stuff in Wilson’s piece - is to regard national debt as the same as individual or corporate debt.
It would be really great if you read the article before commenting.
Yes I tend to agree, funny how articles like this bring the nutters out of the woodwork,or ex members of the league of rights,I thought we had all this out when Abbott and co did for Hanson,how soon the little right wingers forget.
Guy, sometimes you sound like a loony to me, but you made sense on this article, so I won’t put you on the discount bin just yet.
The temptation to turn every ‘column’ into a history lesson has overtaken both Rundle’s common sense and taste. What does he say here that couldn’t have been covered in four or five paragraphs? I do hope it’s not catching.
Jeez Guy - you are going to be exhausted by the time Barnaby stays or goes - 1589 words - do I detect some Rudd like verbosity creeping in ……….
Capitalism, and money in general, are mere artifices to enable the proper functioning of complex global society, as Guy says.
As the excellent History of Capitalism, recently on SBS, outlined in great and informative detail, going back to the time of the Borgias, new financial instrumentalities have been spawned to enable ever greater leveraging of assets, and abilities to generate income and create new markets for nascent financial products. Those behind Capitalism, and their brothers and sisters who have traversed this road for centuries will not let the ‘Global Free market’ fail, and America, as the largest consumer and producer, fail either.
We didn’t have Carbon Trading until recently; now, they are an increasing parrt of the financial mix. And, so it goes, as infinitum.
Anyway, if you think about it, what would we do if the global financial system went down the tubes with America? Go back to bartering? Or, as Barnaby Rabble seems to have suggested on his Lateline appearance recently, go back to ‘Fortress Australia’, where we grow everything we need for ourselves, sell what’s left to favoured Trading Partners, such as the US, and don’t let China become too powerful. Superficially attractive to nationalists, xenophobes and the financially illiterate, to be sure, but anathema to the rest of the world and the majority of level-headed Australians, and those especially in this country who derive their livelihoods from the globalised economy.
Also, I think we need to remember that America still has great reserves of Gold, and with the price of that going through the roof, America will still have enough financial clout, which large stores of gold confer on a country, to get beyond the worst of this financial crisis with, at most, the financial equivalent of a broken limb, uninfected.
Just think about the number of American Banks which are repaying, and itching to repay their government bailouts, so that they can get back to business as usual. Hardly the conditions, one would have thought, to see America’s economy go down the gurgler any time soon. Anyway, China won’t allow it. Japan won’t allow it, and those two economies still have massive financial reserves with which to keep America afloat and buying all the rinky dink consumer durables that THEY rely on to keep their economies afloat. And so it goes…
Barmy Barny Joyce,anyone who has followed his ludicrous performances in the Senate would realise this is a person out of control. Usually, to be seen ranting and screaming and abusing in such fashion would attract the attention of the white coated gentlemen, as they lead him off they hear Barny sing that ever lovin ‘Screaming Lord Sutch’ ditty “they’re coming to take me away haha, they’re coming to take me away”
It’s sad really but obviously the refugee from the priesthood finds him a perfectly acceptable recruit to the Mad Monks circus. The assertion that ‘middle Australia’ will find favour with this bunch of buffoons, is fortunately laughable.
This is just my view of things based on what I have learned thus far. Please feel free to take it or leave it. It is only my opinion.
The US system is unfortunately the world system largely driven through the City of London and Wall Street. The US dollar is involved in at least 70% of the world’s transactions. The City of London which is not part of the UK still controls US banking as it has since America came into being as a republic, with the exception of the years when Jefferson, Jackson and Lincoln controlled the presidency. Over the last thrity years and before, almost all US Secretaries of the Treasury have come through either Goldman Sachs, JP Morgan or Citigroup and are appointed to supposedly represent the interests if the people. At present the Goldman Sachs crew holds greatest sway but at other times people such as Rubin who came through Citigroup ran the show.
The Chinese are holding untold US junk, in addition to US property, equities and other financial instruments at all levels of government. So are the Saudis, the Koreans, the Abu Dhabi’s, the Taiwanese and a few others. I imagine as part of the arrangement that brought the Chinese and the Koreans (and the Japanese before them) out of the feudal system and into the 20th Century, was an arrangement whereby “the US would agree to buy their products and make them wealthy if they accepted the US’s paper promises in perpetuity.
The Chinese however grew past that point where this arrangement was likely to any longer serve their interests. They started to worry where this deal was heading. and so started trying to slowly unwind it. Unlike the Japanese and Koreans, there is no US Army in China and so the Chinese have much more freedom to act.
Nevertheless, until such time as China and all of the other major creditors can largely extricate themselves from worthless US treasuries and funny money, this charade will continue. It is however, nearing the end and ultimately the US system will collapse. Already the US Government holds long term obligations to the tune of $90 trillion and short term obligations of around $20 trillion.
In addition, three Wall Street Banks hold the lion’s share of the $500 trillion outstanding derivatives contracts still to be laid to rest. The argument amongst all of the major economies at the moment is what will the current system be replaced with? The Chinese are buying gold at a ferocious pace (they now have an acknowledged 1000+ tonnes but are looking for 4000. Other major buyers in the last few months have been the Indians and the Arabs and even the Europeans are getting in on the act. The Indians incidentally hold the largest privately owned reserves of gold in the world. Everybody is getting in except Australia which doesn’t even control its own gold reserves any more let alone the refined metal.
The IMF has restricted gold sales for the first time in many years to 400 tonnes annually fearing that the new standard may not be fiat but rather gold and other commodities. This may not suit Australia which holds only 80 tonnes of gold compared with France, Germany and Italy, each with around 3000 tonnes. UK holds around 200 tonnes after Brown sold off most of it at the bottom of the market ten years ago. And, Canada again has almost nothing. The US supposedly has 8000 tonnes but nobody believes that any more and several US senators and congressman have been trying to get a ratification of that based on assays not sightings…
Already the Chinese are trading in several currencies other than the US dollar and more and more, other countries are joining in this process. Not Australia however. The G20 is primarily about creating a new currency which unfortunately the Anglo American bankers want to be another fiat currency e.g. fiat SDR’s which will produce yet another bubble global economy and we will end up in the same predicament again. This time however the slide will be much faster because no one believes in fiat currencies any more. And that is why in my view, the global bankers want a one world government; because all nations would then be forced to use the one fiat currency which they could inflate and deflate at will to their advantage.
At the present time, most of the world’s debt is being created by the privately owned US Federal Reserve by monetizing anything that is left above ground level and using fractional reserve banking to amp it up to a 10 multiple. Remember that 70% of the US dollar investments exist outside the US, so if the dollar collapses everybody stands to take a bath. What I think has been happening is that Wall Street banks have been repaying their above the line debt to the US Govt. (which borrowed the money from the Fed) with below the line Fed Reserve created fiction money. This ,I believe, is why more than 2/3rds of the Congress has signed onto Ron Paul’s H1207 Audit the Fed bill which no one in this country would have a clue about if they relied on the local media. Within the next two months more than half of the US Senate will be forced by the people to endorse a similar bill in that house and then the fight will be on because the Fed is more powerful than the Congress and the President combined. Based on campaign contributions the President in my view will be forced to support the bankers. Whether he vetoes H1207 or not, at that point the US monetary system will collapse.
Its imminent let me tell you.
Barnaby’s comments will unfortunately resonate with elements in the community. He could even prove to be right with some of them. The problem is that when he opens his mouth he is not speaking as an accountant from St George or even as a humble back bencher - he is speaking on behalf of the alternative government and everthing has to be seen through that prism. It is why I don’t believe he will have a long tenure as a shadow minister.
Well, if Rome really is about to burn we should make sure we elect the maddest fiddler we can yeah?
Also, thanks for the class analysis. Here’s me spending years fretting that I’m not as Australian as my eight generations makes me - I don’t fit into the bogan class because I can’t stand cappuccinos. And now surprise surprise I find myself unexpectedly identifying with the hitherto unconsidered social class of Mr Joyce. What does that make me, a Douglasite? Probably not catchy enough to imprint permanently and overtake the more generic ‘wanker’ description.
Any chance Crikey can get some fresh writers.
You blokes need a rest.
I first subscribed in the last years of Howard and my memory is of enjoying reading someone sticking it to the Government over detention centres, the terror laws,the war in Iraq etc. when Howard was pretty much untouchable in the mainstream media.
Now the Government has changed but we still have the same terror laws, detention centres ,wars and plenty of other Government issues but the Crikey boys still wants to bag the now Opposition.
Isn’t this dribble the same article Glen Dyer wrote Friday ( with some dream sequences added ) and the basis of the story BK was probably submitting tomorrow?
Are Barnaby and Tony such frightening figures to you guys ( ? ) that you need to spend each day over-analysing their pronouncements and forcasting their doom. Buy some dolls and stick pins in them but FGS move on.
Is Andrew Bolt available for some balance ?
Richard Wilson - you’ve been up watching too much late nite TV. The US economy will not collapse, they will start WW3 to stop that from ever happening. You sound a bit like our resident real estate doomsayer Steve Keen who has been predicting the crash in Australian real estate values for years now. Hasn’t happened, won’t happen.
Richard Wilson - you sound like a LaRouche-ist. (sp?)
Guy - your article does make sense of Barnaby, and in doing so makes him more scary. How are the Australian big end of town going to take to him?
If this is the case it’s a further indication of how far the Coalition has gone to the right - the last time the LOR tried to enter the Coalition, in the early ’70s, Doug Anthony lead an almighty multi-year campaign against them which ultimately succeeded. I think Howard’s refusal to condemn Pauline Hanson waved the starting flag to say that the Coalition was now open for business for the lunar right.
Guy - what Douglas said about overproduction, military spending and the drift to war seems spot on to me,
OK so far, no sane person could disagree but then you write
but the ideas are going in the opposite direction not merely of neoliberal economics, but of the whole foundation of modern business and international commerce.
So, where’s there error with Barmy’s simplfieid Douglasism?
The neolib etc is for the garbage. Just a hopin’ an’ a praying and sticking fingers in ones own, other others, ears won’t help.
I’d rather live in Barmy Rudge’s Fortress Oz than the freezing, f amine stalked EU when (NOT if) the faeces interfaces with the air circulation device.
A trawl through the wit and wisdom on Joyce’s website suggests Guy’s right about the links with Douglas Credit. From Feb 2008 on the credit crisis: “A loss of balance overtook the market. Animal spirits, as Keynes termed them, were given legitimacy by the economic pundits as they rationalised the ever increasing capital base of the market beyond the growth of the economic base of production.” It appears to be on the strength of this statement that he claims to have predicted the GFC, but there aren’t many points for foresight here, as the credit crunch was already six months old.
Joyce’s foresight wasn’t too flash in his response to the October 2008 stimulus package either: “We will soon know who is right or who is wrong when the effects of this package are seen next year. Australia’s path will either be the same or worse as that of the global economy in which case the package didn’t work or, as I hope but doubt, Australia’s economic path will be better in which case I accept that I am wrong.” Fat chance of that now, though.
Good article bro’. Much better than my one yesterday on Barnaby and the Economics of One Nation.
MS:
There may be elements of Larouche in the history but not by design. In the US, unlike here, the Right and the Left are joining forces to stop Wall Street taking over the country. Look at HR1207 and S604, the Audit the Fed bills introduced by Ron Paul and Paul Grayson who are from different sides of the house. It has major bipartisan support despite the fact that on many issues the two sides do not see eye to eye. On this issue, 79% of Americans are in favour of this action. They want the Fed audited and just 6% don’t according to a recent Rasmussen Poll in that country.
To the best of my knowledge, all major central banks are privately controlled and are not part of their respective governments even though they present as such. I am not sure about the Reserve Bank of Australia but a freedom of information request would settle it i.e. Is the Reserve Bank of Australia a corporation? If so, where is it registered and who are its shareholders, should do it?
One thing I believe is that many US politicians, at the urging of their constituencies, are being forced to see eye to eye as a result of, what appears to me to be, the endemic corruption of the entire financial system in the US to which all of the world’s banks and businesses have been held to ransom. To this end, Congressman Ron Paul has introduced a further bill, HR4248. This bill allows for free competition in currency in the US. In other words, if this bill is passed, unconstitutional Federal Reserve notes will be just one of several currency alternatives available to the people of America and the rest of the world, along with gold and silver and other units of value. The market will decide what it wants to accept as currency not some private unelected cabal of bankers. It is precisely for this reason that gold and silver are anaethema to governments. A supply of real gold and silver that is limited in supply by nature cannot be inflated, and thus serves as a check on the growth of government. Without the ability to inflate the currency, governments find themselves constrained in their actions, unable to carry on wars of aggression or to appease their overtaxed citizens with bread and circuses.
Why has it come to this? Shadowstats.com has real US unemployment (i.e. when you count people who haven’t got a job after their SS runs out) at around 20%. America is hurting outside of the only places we in this country ever hear about namely, Washington and Wall Street, where real wages are rising while everybody else is taking a bath. I believe it has to end and it will.
Bakerboy:
I hope you are wrong. It depends on whether the Europeans are prepared to go along with the Polish aristocrat who runs US foreign policy or pull out of NATO and tell the Americans to take a hike. The Prisoner’s Dilemma I guess. Responses will likely depend upon the strength of the dollar and the strength of the US army I would imagine. If Europe were to go along with the present “invade Iran” scenario, the Russians will be firing up their booster rockets from their satellites as we debate, and it will be goodnight Irene.
There may be more oil and gas in Uzbekistan and the other Stans than in the ME, but I don’t think the Russians are going to let the Americans have it without a fight; even if it means letting the Iranians blow Israel off the planet. We, unfortunately, are in this up to our armpits whether we like it or not.
Global warming will become a blip on the radar if this baby gets going. Let’s hope not for all our sakes.
So the next thing to do is ask Joyce a few questions. You know, like a reporter. Something like:
1. Does he believe the works of Douglas or Butler explain what’s going on now?
2. Does he believe the financial system as we know it has a future?
3. Is he a follower of the League Of Rights?
Brilliant stuff. This article deserves a better response than the usual myopic political rantings of some of the lurkers on this blog.
Ok, Richard Wilson…you were making some reasonable points there, but your last few comments have ventured into the world of conspiracy…
In Australia, the Reserve Bank is part of the government. There is an act of parliment that lets them be independent, but the Governors and directors are appointed by the Government of the day. If you check out the rba website, you can learn all this info….their basic role is to keep inflation between 2-3% and to try to obtain “full employment”. I think they are doing a good job in this (and the stats agree)
As for the US, there is no way they will default on their debt. US Bonds are still being bought extensively by investors around the world, at extremely low yields (as there is so much demand for them). If there was any chance of default, those yields would be sky high as the risk would be greater. US Government debt is backed by the size of the US Economy and US military might. No chance of default. And when the US economy kicks into gear, as it is doing, tax revenues and reductions in social security payments will ensure the debt is bought back to reasonable levels. Same thing is happening here (with the deficits not being as big as predicted)
As for the second Ron Paul bill, it would be a mistake. Auditing the Fed is a waste of time, but if the punters want it, so be it. However the US currency acts as a stabiliser for the US Economy. When the US dollar is high, it makes imports into the US attractive (as the other currencies are weaker) and advances the economies of the world. When the US dollar reduces (as it is now), it makes the domestic US economy stronger, helping to lift itself out of the recession it is in. If you had a multitude of currencies (or metals) being used, this stabilizer would not have the same affect and make the US economy harder to control.
@ Scott:
Not what I wanted to know. My questions are:
Is the Reserve Bank of Australia a corporation? If so, where is it registered and who are its shareholders?
Apropos the apparent growth in US treasuries, the data is decidedly suss. It is my hunch that the Fed is eating its own faecal matter. If you look at Chris Martenson’s blog (http://www.chrismartenson.com/blog/dollars-treasuries-and-indebtedness/26572), he provides some very telling charts for the period 6 months to June 2009 which show it is the bankrupt UK and the bankrupt Japanese governments and not the Chinese that are accounting for 55% of treasury purchases by overseas entitles. The data also portrays a massive leap in private domestic purchases of reasuries from $72bn to $450bn. All I can say is Bu!!$h!t.
Martenson’s take is this:
“As an aside, one reason that I suspect the Federal Reserve is reticent to be audited concerns the UK purchases of Treasury bonds. One might wonder how an island nation that is mired in a deep and profound fiscal crisis finds itself in a position to buy so many Treasury bonds. Where did the money come from?
“While part of the answer lies with the fact that the UK banking center often operates as a pass-through for other entities (like Saudi Arabia, for example), it could also be operating on the behalf of other official parties. Like the Federal Reserve, perhaps? While that is rank speculation, it would certainly be nice to have a simple audit put such nagging worries completely to rest.”
Other bloggers in response are not so restrained e.g.
“… it appears the world’s Central Banks are “Thin Air-ing” money to each other… buying each others debt to keep this Ponzi game afloat. One feels that they can’t keep this pace up for much longer… without disastrous results!
As I said, the RBA is part of the Government. That makes it a government department, like the department of defence, not a corporation. No shareholders…but plenty of stakeholders. There is a section of the department called the “Note Printing Australia Limited” which is a fully owned commercial subsidiary but that just handles security documents and bank notes.
As for who is buying the US Treasury bonds, Check out this website http://www.treas.gov/tic/mfh.txt You will find China is still number one.
BTW, The UK and Japan are not bankrupt. They have huge amounts of reserves (especially Japan).
http://www.imf.org/external/np/sta/ir/802P816.pdf. Just because they are running deficits does not mean they have no assets. Japan is still the second largest economy in the world!
Also don’t forget that London has been a hub of world finance for decades. All the big corporates are there.
All this info is freely available. No one is covering up anything.