9 thoughts on “Monday Message Board”

  1. The problems in Brazil are very concerning. Collapsing economy, collapsing law and order, collapsing health situation. The official Australian Travel Advice for Brazil is “Official advice:
    High degree of caution”. It’s the worse time to hold an Olympics. The chances of some venues being ready and event-tested look poor.

    The overall world situation looks bad. South America stagnant, Europe stagnant, Japan stagnant, Russia struggling, PIIGs in depression, Brazil in depression, China softening. Is the world going through its final secular stagnation change? I think so. The current economic system has run out of ideas and answers. While we stick with this system there is nothing but stagnation, inequality and eventual collapse in our future.

  2. @Ikonoclast

    ‘Is the world going through its final secular stagnation change?’

    Well, not final, no.

    If you’re right about conditions in Brazil, it’s not the worst time to hold an Olympics, it’s the best. If there is the prospect of a major discrediting of the whole Olympic movement, that’s a good thing.

  3. @J-D

    “If there is the prospect of a major discrediting of the whole Olympic movement, that’s a good thing.”

    I agree! Finally, here is an issue we can agree on. I am interested in your reasons. My reasons would be (in no particular order);

    – It’s economically wasteful.
    – It hurts the poor in the host country.
    – It leads to more environmental waste and damage.
    – It promotes elitism.
    – It promotes personal vainglory and cheap nationalism.
    – It’s tainted by too many performance enhancing substance scandals.

  4. @Ikonoclast

    Those would be pretty much my reasons also (I could haggle at the margins on some points, but I don’t think it’s worth the effort).

  5. The Olympics is very bad for sport. Think how many kids we could have running around the botanical gardens with nerf guns for the cost of training one Olympic athlete. A massive waste of sporting resources. And personally, I was disgusted when the Howard government offered cash prizes for gold medal winners but nothing for silver and bronze. Whatever happened to our cherished ideal of getting out there and coming third for Australia?

  6. @Ikonoclast

    It appears that Australia is on the same stagnation path, if Glenn Steven’s recent speech is any guide. His speech essentially announced that Central Banks have failed and could do no more. He tried to pass-the-parcel saying;

    It is surely time that policies beyond central bank actions did more in this regard. Our inability, so far, durably to lift growth prospects is arguably the biggest vulnerability the global financial system faces today.

    He also noted capitalism’s “Increasing … commentary about the difficulty – or impossibility – of … making good on their promises”

    So we really have been led up the garden path. His comment was in context of defined benefit pensions but he added – “The problem is surely not confined to defined-benefit pension plans”.

    Similar statements re stagnation are emerging from IMF.

    Our Central Banks are really just the blind leading the blind towards a precipice. Glenn Stevens thinks that the solution is to ensure that capitalism needs to produce real profits for Capital that are then matched by profits on paper assets.

    How on earth can a derived paper asset ever have the same rate of return as the underlying real asset?

  7. @Ikonoclast

    It appears that Australia is on the same stagnation path, if Glenn Steven’s recent speech is any guide. His speech essentially announced that Central Banks have failed and could do no more. He tried to pass-the-parcel saying;

    It is surely time that policies beyond central bank actions did more in this regard. Our inability, so far, durably to lift growth prospects is arguably the biggest vulnerability the global financial system faces today.

    He also noted capitalism’s “Increasing … commentary about the difficulty – or impossibility – of … making good on their promises”

    So we really have been led up the garden path. His comment was in context of defined benefit pensions but he added – “The problem is surely not confined to defined-benefit pension plans”.

    Similar statements re stagnation are emerging from IMF.

    Our Central Banks are really just the blind leading the blind towards a precipice. Glenn Stevens thinks that the solution is to ensure that capitalism needs to produce real profits for Capital that are then matched by profits on paper assets.

    How on earth can a derived paper asset ever have the same rate of return as the underlying real asset?

  8. BHP want to sell their share of coal mines in Indonesia, and other places. The market is very unsettled, Whitehaven share price defys the downturn.

    As the late 2015 Paris climate conference neared, the growing isolation of the coal industry caused panic in BHP Billiton’s ranks. While the company sought to rally the coal industry troops to defend the industry at the Paris conference, it was all too little too late.

    BHP Billiton entered into a multi-million dollar deal with SaskPower to hype Carbon Capture and Storage as a solution to burning coal and announced that it had a policy which supported keeping global warming to 2°C.

    http://reneweconomy.com.au/2016/behind-the-scenes-bhp-billiton-fears-for-thermal-coals-future-43812

  9. Policies that should be put to you at the Australian Federal elections of 2 July

    In the Australian Federal elections to be held on 2 July 2015, voters, who support each of the policies listed below, are entitled to know whether each candidate asking for his/her vote will, if elected, support or oppose that policy. We intend to ask each candidate, including the sitting member, his/her intentions should he/she be successful. Each response, or lack of response, will be posted here, to candobetter.net.

    …

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