This morning the topic of revolution was in the air at macrobusiness.
Not so sure we are about to get a revolution but one thing is clear the so called “neoliberal consensus” is looking shakier than it has for years.
It seems to correlate with a sufficient number of people around the globe realising that all the cheap debt/money, glue, string and brown paper sprayed over the GFC Debt Machine reactor meltdown did not fix nor effectively seal the molten debt core.
As a consequence everyone on the political spectrum is now rushing to fill the explanatory vacuum.
Exhibit 1
The Eastern Bloc v the Tree Tories hit the mattresses in the Greens. Spectacular stuff.
Exhibit 2
Pauline and her merry men and now including a candidate of Asian ancestry in Queensland- and all the other smaller groupings.
Expect the unexpected!
The Race is now on
The first centrist party to pull their finger out and do some brain work and assess what part of the “neoliberal consensus” was baby and what was rank bathwater will win !
The other centrist parties will soon follow with their own variant of a new centrist consensus.
But don’t hold your breath waiting as our political parties are comatose and mostly inhabitated by poll driven flunkies who haven’t had an original thought in years. They are still busy fingering the faded works of Bill Clinton, Tony Blair, Ronald Reagan and Milton Friedman for insight.
To save them and others (in their Byron Bay fortifications) some work, here is a description of the baby that needs preserving and the bathwater that needs tossing.
BATHWATER
1. Unrestricted unproductive capital flows. Restricting those is easy and essential. A currency can still float nicely with some categories of capital transactions restricted. Unproductive capital flows are tools of manipulation by mercantalists and oppression – i.e. Greece and southern Europe and Latin America in the 1980s.
2. Private Bank credit creation as public money. This must be heavily restricted at the very least and more public money creation reserved for the elected government to deploy in the process of doing what they were elected to do. For all you Austrians and small government fans this does not necessarily mean a massive social welfare state. Even the smallest night watchman state can generate all the new money a growing economy requires by running a monestised deficit. Just tax a bit less than expenditure on the essential functions of government. Big government types can have a big govt sector if they like that as it is the size of the deficit/surplus that matters not the size of the budget.
3. Globalism in the sense of countries giving up the ability to resist the two key forms of noxious bathwater above. Most free trade agreements were nothing of the sort. At core they were agreements for the free movement of unproductive and predatory capital and deregulated international banking.
These forms of stinky rotting bathwater are so vile are repulsive there is a very real risk that the baby will be chucked by the mob as they toss out the tub muck.
BABY
1. More social freedom for people to live their lives as they choose whatever their personal preferences. If they don’t affect you leave them alone and let them leave peaceful productive lives without your nose in their bedrooms.
2. Liberalised movement of goods, services and people BUT the degree is always a matter for the local community/nation to decide. If the Japanese want to stay very Japanese that is a matter for them. I may think it is not a good idea and a more diverse community has advantages but it is none of my business. Needless to say Ponzi Immigration scams by bathwater enthusiasts like those run over the last 15 years in Australia by the LNP and ALP neoliberal ideologues is not BABY.
3. Economic freedom provided it is about encouraging genuine competition and not just a facade where regulations designed to drive and maintain genuine competition and a plurality of market participants are removed with the result being monopolies and oligopolies right across the landscape that shaft the consumer.
IF the ALP / Greens / LP or National Party can get their heads around the difference between liberal baby and bathwater they will be onto a winner.
Poor Malcolm has become a prisoner of his own vacillating spine and those with a stronger sense of urgency in his party and is increasingly beyond hope.
For all their faults Trump, Farage, Bernardi, Christensen, Hanson, the Green Eastern Bloc at least understand there is vacuum is developing as the neoliberal consensus is washed away and that someone needs to fill it.
Just a shame that the centrists in the major parties are still sitting in bed chewing on muffins imagining it is all just a bad dream and the “deplorables” will soon disperse.
Categories: Macrobusiness
The Glass Pyramid 
When the bank bail-ins (the last of the easily implemented transfers of wealth from the 99% up to to the 1%) finish in a couple of years, then I think there will be strong displays of voter anger at the ALP/LP political power bases here in Oz. Now, with Hanson etc, its just a succession of freaks at the circus freakshow.
I think the younger population (read: anyone other than baby-boomers) will find reason and support to finally become a major factor in AUS or even world politics.
I can’t help thinking how powerful a message the bail-ins will be to those who paid their savings only to fix the balance sheets of those who have fucked the bail-in-ees up the arse for 30 years.
That will be popcorn time.
you think bail-ins for the AUS big4 will never happen?
You don’t understand who is holding the power and who is not.
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