Month: February 2009

Left focus

John Quiggin8 Comments
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With the sudden collapse of the main ideas of the political right, the need for debate and discussion over social democratic and socialist ideas has become much more urgent.

One new venue for this is Left Focus, a blog that has been set up by longtime reader Tristan Ewins, with the aim of being open to a variety of left perspectives. The announcement says:

A new forum of the broad left. Contributions from around the world – and from the webmaster’s home in Australia – are welcome. We welcome Green, socialist, social-democratic, left liberal, and libertarian left perspectives.

All interested parties are welcome to visit and comment on the posts…

The webmaster will be publishing his work gradually through the site – but maybe you would like to contribute too?

Posts of good quality and of interest to a broadleft audience will be considered.

Anyone wanting to post contributions can write to Tristan Ewins at: tristane@bigpond.net.au

AARES

John Quiggin12 Comments

I’ve been in Cairns for the last few days, at the annual conference of the Australian Agricultural and Resource Economics Society. Although the city hasn’t been much affected by the floods, roads to the south were cut until today, so fruit and vegetables have been in short supply.

The conference opened with an address by Ross Garnaut, who got stuck into the government’s proposals Soldier buy for free permits and exclusions under the proposed ETS. My research group (Risk and Sustainable Management Group) presented a paper on this topic, and a number of others on modelling risk and uncertainty and the complex trade-offs between environmental flows, trees for carbon capture and irrigated agriculture. As well, I presented a paper with Terry Hughes of JCU on the future of the Great Barrier Reef, and gave the after-dinner speech, which I’ve promised to write up and post when I get a free moment. More soon, when I get a free moment or two.

Insulation and emissions

John Quiggin26 Comments

I’ve thought some more about the home insulation component of the stimulus package and I’ve come to the conclusion that (drum roll!) my immediate reaction was correct. In the absence of a corresponding lowering of the aggregate emissions target, the package will have no effect at all on emissions. The Australia Institute has come to the same conclusions, and IPART (the NSW utility regulator) has made the same point in a more general context.

Some minor qualifications to this. As Joshua Gans points out here The Russell Girl divx the effect of the scheme will be to reduce the demand for permits and therefore the equilibrium price. If the “safety-valve” price in the CPRS is binding, the scheme will reduce the government’s obligation to supply permits at the safety valve price. And, if home insulation is a cost-effective method of reducing emissions, which householders are neglecting for reasons such as credit constraints, the scheme could allow the target to be reached at lower social cost. This might, in the long run, encourage more ambitious targets

But there is no need to wait for the long run. The Greens and any other Senators who care about saving the planet should demand a reduction in the emissions target, equal to the savings from the scheme, as part of the stimulus package.

Fire and flood

John Quiggin63 Comments

The news from the fires in Victoria just keeps getting worse, with whole towns wiped out and more than 60 people confirmed dead. We can only hope the change in the weather will give firefighters a better chance. The loss of life in the Queensland floods has not been so severe, but there is still widespread devastation.

Picking up the phone

John Quiggin45 Comments

Looking at various topics that have been covered by both journalists and bloggers, I’ve noted a common theme in which journalist deplore bloggers’ habit of speculating about subjects instead of “just picking up the phone” and asking those directly involved (examples here

Doomsday hd

and here). The implied (and sometimes expressed) view of bloggers is that of lazy amateurs.

It struck me though, that asking questions of total strangers is both a distinctively journalistic activity and one that implies and requires a special kind of professional license. In fact, “Journalists do interviews” comes much closer to a definition of what is distinctive about journalism than formulations like “journalists report news, bloggers do opinion”.

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Souffles rising twice

John Quiggin50 Comments
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As the financial crisis has developed over the past year, I’ve been struck by the near-complete absence of any comment on the economy from Peter Costello. He would seem to have all sorts of reasons for commenting, from a desire to defend the previous government’s record, to enhancing his public profile and even, perhaps, contributing to public understanding of the issues and improving policy outcomes.

But, until the last couple of days, there’s been nothing. Now, however, he seems to be talking, and inevitably, this sudden end to reticence is being interpreted in terms of leadership aspirations.

For me, though, the more interesting question is how Costello performs without the Treasury, or even the staff allocated to a shadow minister to back him up. You can make your own judgements on this Lateline interview. My take: Costello performed reasonably well, as you’d expect from a sharp lawyer and Parliamentary debater, and he made some good debating points. But he didn’t give the impression that he had, or was interested in, any deep understanding of the financial crisis or the choices facing the Australian government, and other governments in responding to it.

The global spread of the financial crisis

John Quiggin66 Comments

Jim Henley asks a lot of good questions

There’s an awful lot of right/conservative/soft-libertarian economics I consider well and truly refuted by events. That said, I haven’t seen progressive thinkers grappling with the global nature of the current downturn, which seems to be falling on the social democracies and neoliberal regimes and post-mercantile states alike. What does it mean that pretty much all national economies are in a tailspin, regardless of model? Are the safety-net features of the social democracies successfully blunting the impact on their citizens? In ways that can be sustained through another year, say, of recession? Is the protectionism of post-mercantile states in East Asia protecting their industries more than the less protectionist regimes of the neoliberal countries?

I’ll try and answer these, with more confidence on some points than others.

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