This post is a sequel to my previous one on economic faith and doctrines. When thinking further about the ideological construction of “oppressive state intervention” and some of the comments made on the thread, I kept thinking about the fact that the liberal economy needs an enormous amount of state intervention and support to function, and that a social democratic perspective can be non-statist. Read more »
So GetUp has raised $93 000 in just 24 hours to get the Spot the Difference ad1 on the air during the boxing day test, suggesting the discontent over the target announcement will crystallise into a significant force during the new year. Read more »
Those coal eating surrender monkeys1 sure get defensive when cornered. The latest shrill squeaking comes from Heather Ridout of AIG with the plaintive request to cut carbon dioxide later. Ali Moore nailed this duplicitous bullshit argument in an interview, pointing out that we’ll have to deal with it at some point in the cycle. Read more »
Picking up on Reserve Bank governor Glenn Stevens’ remarks about “borrowing to invest” and not being afraid of a deficit if there are good policy outcomes to be had, eight prominent economists (including a couple of blogging ones) have written an open letter to Kevin Rudd making suggestions for a further fiscal stimulus under three headings of policy - Superannuation flexibility, Building the nation and Preparing for climate change. Read more »
The stock market has lost 51% of its value since its peak, a decline we’re told now exceeds the destruction of value seen in 1987. On the ABC News tonight, Alan Kohler grimly pointed to an index (tradeable, I think, but don’t quote me on that) of future sentiment which is apparently dire, and which apparently depressed that reified hive mind “the markets” even further. Read more »
Earlier this year, the price of energy, particularly oil, was one of the biggest issues in world politics, and particularly American politics (climate change has always been a second-order issue there). The spike in the oil price drew mainstream media attention to a theory that had been doing the rounds of the blogosphere - and, later on, the mainstream media - Peak Oil. To recap, the Peak Oil hypothesis states that the level of world oil production will reach an absolute peak, and then start to decline, on a fairly rapid basis. The consequences? Read more »
A couple of billion dollars a year. That’s all it would have taken to make the CPRS targets much more attractive. Read more »
The big questions for those in Poznan are those around financing. In what ways do existing instruments need reform? What novel measures could be devised to reign in emissions growth in areas like air and sea transport? Read more »
I awoke to Fran Kelly struggling to elicit Richard Denniss’ point about an emissions cap acting as an implicit floor this morning. (see media release [pdf]) Even asking him the same set of questions twice didn’t seem to help. You need to unpack the underlying assumptions of the debate as it’s being conducted in Australia over to understand the beauty of The Australia Institute’s formulation. Read more »
MB writes: The Search Foundation, working with Professor Frank Stilwell of Sydney University, has prepared a short statement on the global financial crisis and possible responses. Read more »
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