Mon, 12 May 2008
There’s been a few major issues lately where inflation and central banks have been key elements: Zimbabwe’s collapse under Mugabe, the recent Australian Federal election, and the US sub-prime mortgage crisis. What I find fascinating is that it all seems to be treated as an absolute black art by almost everyone, in spite of economics supposedly being reasonably well understood these days.
It’s particularly weird, because at a fundamental level, inflation is absolutely trivial to deal with: if you don’t want inflation, stop printing more money; if you want to print more money, you’ll get inflation. Tin-pot dictators like Mugabe can’t manage that fairly simple recipe because it’s the only way they can ensure they have more money (and thus control) than their subjects – since they don’t create anything of value themselves no one gives them money by choce, and since they run their country into the ground, tax revenues don’t work well enough, leaving printing more money as the only way to replace whatever they’ve just wasted.
Wed, 05 Dec 2007
The Liberals in Limbo -- how low can they go?
The latest squabbling incompetence:
Gold Coast MP Ray Stevens says leadership contender Tim Nicholls should withdraw his challenge and get behind Mark McArdle.
Mr Stevens says if the matter is not resolved that way, he says his legal advice suggests the only option left will be to draw names out of a hat.
“That is unacceptable to the people of Queensland [and] it’s unacceptable to me,” he said.
“If Mr Nicholls were to win that particular toss of the coin or ballot or whatever he would be forever known as toss-up Tim.”
Why the hell the Queensland Nationals are putting up with this incompetence from their supposed coalition partners beats me.
Against the 59 Labor MPs in Queensland, there are 17 Nationals MPs, and 8 Liberal MPs. Since Labor’s clever “Just vote [1]” campaign in 2004 stopped the Nationals and Liberals from running candidates in the same seat, that means that the Liberals won 16.3% of the seats they contested, while the Nationals won 42.5% (Labor won 66%).
The Qld Liberals are dead and getting worse every day, the Nationals are the only real opposition in Qld, and they should start acting like it – by trying to win a majority at the next election in their own right (rather than not even putting up candidates in over 50% of seats), telling people to let their preferences be heard and not “Just vote [1]”, and if the Liberals can’t get their act together, withdrawing from the state coalition entirely so they aren’t dragged down with them.
“You’re an embarrassment to Queensland. Get on with the job, get a leader and start doing the things you’re elected to do.”
What she said.
Earlier today, Nationals leader Jeff Seeney described the debacle as damaging to the Coalition's credibility.
[...]
Mr McArdle won when Mr Nicholls withdrew his challenge to take on the deputy's position instead.
The compromise was reached after Mr Seeney threatened to tear up the Coalition agreement.
Wed, 09 May 2007
Every time I’ve heard the budget mentioned over the past week or so, it’s prefaced by the words “big spending”, but I’m lost as to how that could actually be the case – it’s in surplus, and taxes are to be reduced a bit, so doesn’t that mean any other possible budget would be a bigger spending budget? Or is an “average” budget meant to include huge tax cuts while maintaining a surplus, and thus everything else is comparatively wasteful?
Or is it just that most of the people writing news stories about the budget don’t have anything useful to say, so they have to resort to a Pavlovian response of adding “big-spending” whenever an election is nigh to fill in time?
My take? It’s a boring budget – tax rates greater than 30% are getting less and less relevant, along the lines of the John Humphrey’s Reform 30/30 proposal, though in bite size-pieces. Education is getting a few more market-driven policies with some more full fee courses and some more incentive-based pay for teachers and schools that do well, though that’s more of a nudge than anything.
The higher education endowment fund could be pretty impressive, I guess; though I’m a bit lost as to how it should be seen as an “investment”, or, at the very least, how you’d even guess at an appropriate value to put on the expected return (which I’m assuming is expected to be collected through increased tax revenue coming from a higher GDP), so as to compare it against other possible investments of the Future Fund. Seems like a much more sensible thing for the government to be investing in than broadband, at least. That’s assuming you look at it from the perspective of that money having been “expected” to go to government superannuation entitlements, and thus “taken” from the Future Fund, rather than an expansion of the Future Fund to address other political goals, which I guess is the view that Costello holds, and at least according to one report does so with some justification.
Actually, I guess it’s not that hard to expect that to be a major success: it’s relying on universities to spend it sensibly, which seems a safe bet, and as an endowment fund should provide about $300 million to be invested every year forever, along with encouragement for significant private support simply by making the government funds available as matching, tax-deductible contributions, or similar.
There’s apparently a significant increase in military spending with no particular strategic change I can see, some pretty straightforward nods to the environment, and a bunch of stuff to help families that followed the child-rearing advice of “one for the mother, one for the father, and one for the country” from earlier budgets.
Tue, 20 Sep 2005
Pia asks:
Why is it that older, heterosexual, Christian, married, white males, who probably only make up ~16% of our totaly population are making the decisions for all of us? So much for representative politics :)
Let’s consider the alternatives. Younger rather than older means less life experience, which means you’re probably electing a party hack who knows how to stack a branch, and mouth a few cliches, but doesn’t really have any idea what it’s like to actually do something productive, which makes it difficult to do the job of actually helping people be productive. Being non-heterosexual usually comes with a feeling of being discriminated about it and a not-unreasonable desire to do something about that; according to some statistics, about 2.5% of people in Australia identify as homosexual or bisexual, and same sex couples apparently account for only 0.46% of couples.
Going on from that point, according to the 2001 census, about 51% of Australians are married, another 17% separated, divorced or widowed, and 32% of Australians who have never married; I don’t think it’s much of a leap to exclude a fair chunk of the latter group as “not married yet, but will be” (the average age to get married is around 30, apparently, and the 15-24 age group is about half the size of the unmarried group), or much of a stretch to think that the married folks are more likely to be better able to deal with the highs and lows of politics.
As far as “white” goes, according to the 2001 census, around 80% of Australians considered their ancestry to be Australian, English or Irish; the other 20% isn’t stated at all, but presumably includes at least a few Europeans. As far as Christian goes, 70% of Australians identify as Christians, followed by 16% as non-religious, and 10% who didn’t answer the question. The next most popular religions are Islam and Buddhism on a little over 1% each. (There are five times more pagans in Australia than scientologists, apparently, though there are fewer Rastafarians)
And then, if you look through the current Federal ministry, there are six women ministers (of 30, for a 20% contribution, and an additional five of elevent if you count the parliamentary secretaries for a 27% total contribution).
Which is to say, I don’t think what we’ve got is particularly unrepresentative. But then, I don’t think the point of representative politics is about representing your skin colour, religion, gender, sexual proclivities, or favourite sporting team anyway; why should they even be a consideration?
Sat, 10 Sep 2005
So it appears Michael Brown’s been moved aside from managing the Katrina response, and will probably be leaving FEMA entirely soon. No big surprise there; what’s interesting (to me) is this quote:
Asked ahead of the announcement if he was being made a scapegoat, Brown told The Associated Press after a long pause: “By the press, yes. By the president, no.”
“I’m anxious to get back to D.C. to correct all the inaccuracies and lies that are being said,” Brown said.
Asked if the move was a demotion, Brown said: “No. No. I’m still the director of FEMA.”
That squares pretty well with my post from just over a year ago about Bush’s policy on moving people on, summarised (by Dick Cheney in 2000) as:
You will never see him pointing the finger of blame for failure…you will only see him sharing the credit for success.
I’m still not sure whether I find it more surprising that that policy could work for the leader of the free world, or that random praise from your sidekick in an acceptance speech could actually be useful information.
Shortly after I posted the above, Mike Brown resigned, saying
"As I told the president, it is important that I leave now to avoid further distraction from the ongoing mission of FEMA," Brown said in a news release.
"It has been an honor and a privilege to serve this president and to work shoulder to shoulder with the hard working men and women of FEMA. [...]"
Pretty hard to tell from that whether or not he really did just decide that on his own, or whether he was pushed; after all if he was pushed, he'd be saying much the same thing, but on the other hand, would he still be emphasising the privilege of serving under "this" president, rather than the presidency in general?
Lending weight to the "wasn't pushed" line, is the following from the ABC/Agence France-Presse/Reuters:
His resignation as FEMA chief embarrassed under-fire President George W Bush, who had stood up for Mr Brown in the immediate aftermath of the hurricane, telling him: "Brownie, you're doing a heck of a job."
If he was pushed, you wouldn't expect his resignation to be an embarassment. That's still not terribly convincing, though -- if you assume that they were going to add some slur against Bush no matter what, claiming they're embarrassed by the resignation is probably more effective than the only real alternative of claiming they're turning him into a scapegoat, since making the latter into a bad thing would require making Brown a sympathetic character, when the article's focussing on how "his defense failed to impress".
Sun, 04 Sep 2005
Some interesting notes from American news. Below the fold, because politics isn’t what’s important.
Sat, 28 May 2005
From the Australian, via Tim Blair:
NONE of the three judges presiding over Schapelle Corby’s trial has ever found a defendant innocent, and they have now reached broad agreement on the verdict they will hand down on Friday.
Like Katie Brownell, they’ve managed not to blow their perfect game. Congratulations to Judges Suastrawan, Sirait, and Duah, may you never see an innocent man or woman for another fifteen years.
Thu, 17 Feb 2005
I think people need to stop talking about McDonalds and Starbucks on every corner, and instead start promoting the ubiquity of Krispy Kreme. Mmmm, sugary capitalist goodness.
Thu, 10 Feb 2005
My mum has a high school reunion coming up, and got some copies of her old school magazines so she could write some articles. As it turns out she wrote a fair chunk of articles for them, one of which was a glowing review entitled “Australia!” Interestingly, it came from the assumption that the reader would think Australia was a fairly boring, backwards, inconsequential sort of place – and as you can guess from the exclmation mark, went on in rapturous, euphoric tones to convince you of quite the opposite.
What’s fascinating, to me anyway, is that I can recall the same kind of “Pfft. Australia.” or “Australia? That’s some snowy country in Europe, right?” attitude not all that long ago – you’d really think that people living in a thriving state capital on the turn of the millenium might have developed a more optimistic view of the country than a young lady stuck in a tiny country town had *mumble* decades ago.
Thu, 25 Nov 2004
But in letters to US President Geroge Bush, British Prime Minister Tony Blair and Mr Allawi, Mr Annan warned that a large-scale attack on Fallujah could undermine efforts to promote stability.
…and contrast
Mosques in Fallujah: 100
Mosques used as Fighting Positions / Weapons Caches: 60
Hospitals Used as Defensive Positions: 3
Improvised Explosive Device (IED) Factories: 11
Slaughter House/Torture Chambers: 3
Number of Major Weapons Storage Areas in the City: 203
Evidence of Foreign Fighter involvement: 2
Jason counters. I tried rebutting in detail by email, but Thunderbird hung. Oh well. In brief: 14k civilians certainly weren't killed in Fallujah alone, nor was the assault on Fallujah about WMDs. There might not have been any pre-invasion links to Al Qaeda, but there were certainly Al Qaeda links to the Fallujah "insurgents". Likewise, while the Fallujah assault was certainly expensive, in blood as well as treasure, it certainly didn't cost $105 billion USD. Oh, and 62 journalists weren't killed in Fallujah alone either.
So for the relevant numbers, here's some context:
Number of people displaced prior to attack: 300,000
Number of people displaced from Iraq when the US invade and occupy: under 600k of 20M
Number of people displaced from Fallujah when "insurgents" occupy it: around 300k of 300k.
Number of people killed in Fallujah offensive: 2,000
Number of insurgents killed: over 1,200
Number of Iraqi/coalition troops killed: under 100
Number of unarmed insurgents killed on videotape: 1
Number of surrendering insurgents on that videotape: 1
Number of surrendering insurgents killed on that videotape: 0
Number of unvideotaped incidents of insurgents faking death, then opening fire on marines: 1
I'll also go with:
Number of journalists killed in Iraq: 62
Number of journalists killed in Iraq according to CPJ: 36
Number of journalists killed by US forces: 9
Number of journalists killed by "insurgents": 19
Number of journalists killed in Algeria in 1995: 24
I'm not sure what the point of saying "links to Al Qaeda: 0" is, when Saddam's payment to Palestinian suicide bombers wasn't even a nominal secret, nor what the point of focussing on the "no WMDs" point is given both WMD programs ready to be restarted, and failing sanctions. Or what the point of complaining about missing explosives is, if you're then going to imply a lack of existing WMDs made Iraq effectively harmless.
For some perspective on the dollar figure, annual US aid to Egypt of on the order of $2B USD, almost 2/3rds of which is military aid, and that's been going on since 1975, amounting to $50B USD up to now. These compare to Israel receiving around $2.7B USD in aid annually, a little of 3/4ths being military aid. Apparently that's amounted to $84B USD since 1949. The purpose of both payments is to try to stabilise the Middle East somewhat, by ensuring Israel can defend itself, and by bribing Egypt not to attack Israel (Egypt made peace with Israel in 1979, and began receiving $1.3B USD in military aid from the US in 1979). cf the 1973 Yom Kippur war (in which 23k people died, apparently).
Whether $100B spent in a few years trying to reform Iraq is better than $134B spent over half a century trying to preserve an armed detente will be interesting to see.
I'll leave playing with body counts to others. I can't say I'm spectacularly shocked by 14k civilian deaths in a war where one side isn't willing to follow the Geneva conventions though. (And from what I can tell, Iraqbodycount includes both political assassinations, and civilian deaths due to terrorist activity)
Okay, maybe that wasn't so brief.
Thu, 18 Nov 2004
Curse the memory of Frank Sinatra
Here’s a fascinating article tying Hussein’s Iraq to the September 11 attacks. Fortunately there’s no need to read it, since all these issues are already completely settled.
Fri, 05 Nov 2004
But Professor Utonium Accidentally Added an Extra Ingredient to the Concoction...
I was amused when Steve Langasek invoked the Powerpuff Girls in response to the US election, with a beautifully crafted reference to episode 1.10. But my amusement soon turned to something deeper when David found this rather profound analysis via OpinionJournal’s Best of the Web:
Mojo Jojo speaks English with a Japanese accent. He has a bad habit of repeating, reiterating, and re-phrasing the same sentences over and over, continuously. He gets this speech pattern from a humorous interpretation of dialogue that is dubbed, probably from Japanese into English. It takes a longer time to say certain things in Japanese than in English. When dubbing, one wants to keep the English speaker’s mouth moving for as long as the Japanese actor’s mouth is moving. This can most easily be done by repeating phrases, again and again, and again. Thus a character in a Japanese movie seems to be repeating himself when listened to by English-speaking audiences.
David adds:
Personally, I think the comparison is a little weak but, hey, the Bush twins may be a functional substitute for the Powerpuff Girls…
Now, two datapoints might just be a coincidence, but three certainly means something. In confusing times like these, I think there’s something we could all learn from the Powerpuff girls cast list.
Thu, 28 Oct 2004
Another note for future reference on the Iraq situation. Today’s big ABC news story is Commit troops or delay Iraq election, Govt warned:
The Federal Government is being warned against promoting a January election in Iraq unless it is willing to commit more troops.
Australian National University Professor William Maley, who has just returned from overseeing the election in Afghanistan, says an Iraqi poll early next year could lead to a “bloodbath”.
“One shouldn’t underestimate the risk of that,” he said.
Indeed. One shouldn’t overestimate it either, though. Here’s his recommendation:
Professor Maley says Governments, including Australia’s, should step back from the current plan and delay the election by some months.
Wed, 13 Oct 2004
It’s a cracker Carnival this week, with a Catallarchy post on the link between competing replicators and gay amateur gang rape porn, a Truck and Barter post on how government makes us sick, and a Layman’s Logic post on home made speed cameras, for sale online.
Mon, 11 Oct 2004
You know, that double-entendre just keeps getting better. Anyway, a couple of days before the election, lefty blogger Robert Corr noted a Crikey mailout claiming the Age was forced to take a pro-Howard line in its editorial by their Editor-in-chief, supposedly on the basis that “backing Latham wasnt in the commercial interests of the company.” Clearly then, the media aren’t liberal at all, right?
Many staffers at 250 Spencer Street are disgusted, and rightly so. Three years ago, Fairfax took the line that Howard was a liar and a xenophobe who was whipping the public into a fear frenzy over national security. Little has changed since then, (except our Editor-in-Chief), who - it is said - was alone in his decision to support the Coalition this time around.
Afghanistan Elections Marred By Peace
From Indian news site, NDTV: Boycott call dropped in Afghanistan
So it wasn’t bomb threats by the Taliban, but allegations of mass irregularities that threatened to derail the three-year march towards democracy.
Uh, moving your worries from “bomb threats” to “mass irregularities” is marching towards democracy. Is it really that unreasonable to expect the first democratic elections in Afghanistan to be portrayed as primarily a positive development? This is a country whose history for my life has entirely consisted of bloody coups, mass arrests, tortures, mass killings, Soviet invasions, secret police, human rights violations, puppet governments, civil war with 40,000 dead, guerilla warfare, the establishment of an Islamic state by a fundamentalist militia, the capital being reduced to rubble, oppression of women, more human rights violations, mass graves, thousands of civilians massacred, more torture and murder of civilians, destruction of historical statues and sites, and, oh, don’t forget UN sanctions.
Look, keep your goddamn bias – Latham and Kerry are fine chaps, vote for them, and support them all you like – but if you’re going to do a story entitled, say, Counting begins in Afghan election, how about showing a little courtesy by spending more than a sentence on the counting, and not just using at as an excuse to promote the posturing of the also-ran candidates?
At least FOX News has a story on the construction in Afghanistan without trying to make the improvements seem like a bad thing. On the other hand, their story on the elections themselves takes the same negative line as everywhere else, Associated Press reprint that it is. And what an utterly ridiculous way to conclude: Islamic poet Abdul Latif Padran, another minor candidate, said: “Today was a very black day. Today was the occupation of Afghanistan by America through elections.”
The Professor summarises the good news.
Gag. Via Tech Central Station:
KABUL - It was a regrettably typical comment from an American reporter in this part of the world. "At least it's news," he said of the Afghan election scuffle over the weekend. "Otherwise, this is just a success story."
Not long after I linked to the Yahoo story about confirmed bioweapons labs in Iraq last year, it disappeared. Let’s see if the same thing happens to this World Net Daily story that even includes pictures. These are almost certainly the trucks that the Duelfer report is talking about when it says:
[The Iraq Survey Group] thoroughly examined two trailers captured in 2003, suspected of being mobile [bioweapons] agent production units, and investigated the associated evidence. ISG judges that its Iraqi makers almost certainly designed and built the equipment exclusively for the generation of hydrogen. It is impractical to use the equipment for the production and weaponization of [bioweapons] agent. ISG judges that it cannot therefore be part of any [bioweapons] program.
The short summary of the Duelfer report is actually quite readable, and reasonably brief. It’s also a much more thorough and two-sided summary of the background than, eg, the Sydney Morning Herald’s take:
A report published last week by the CIA’s chief weapons investigator in Iraq, Charles Duelfer, concluded that Saddam Hussein destroyed his stockpiles of chemical and biological weapons in the early 1990s and never tried to rebuild them. But a little-noticed section of the 960-page report warns that the danger of a “devastating” attack with unconventional weapons has grown since the US-led invasion and occupation of Iraq last year.
David writes, under the heading Supermodels for Kerry:
Sure, I’m superficial and shallow – but you know you’re tempted too.
Don’t get me wrong, I’d accept a bumper sticker from Rebecca Romijn too, but it’s not like being superficial and shallow is an either/or choice compared with being a right-wing death beast. As Australian-American Gabrielle Reilly says: Senator John Kerry, Don’t Burn Someone Else’s Limited Edition Bra!
Sun, 10 Oct 2004
First, the scores: Betting markets: +1; Pundits: 0; Polls: -1.
While geeking out on partial tallies, Michael noticed the extremely high informal count in his electorate, and noted that “we’re none too bright here in Rankin”. If you consider informal voting a measure of dumbness, it turns out Rankin’s the dumbest electorate in Queensland (at least as of close of counting on election night). Not the dumbest in the country though – there are eleven with an even higher informal count, all in NSW. Ha! Unfortunately for Queensland’s claims to be the smart state, Victoria has the top four electorates as far as voting formally goes.
Apart from inter-state rivalry, there’s another correlation to be found too. See if you can spot it:
Reid, 11.41% informal: ALP with 62.3%
Greenway, 11.18% informal: ALP with 50.9%
Blaxland, 10.45% informal: ALP with 62.8%
Chifley, 10.32% informal: ALP with 62.9%
Prospect, 9.15% informal: ALP with 56.7%
Fowler, 9.13% informal: ALP with 71.5%
Watson, 9.04% informal: ALP with 65.6%
Werriwa, 8.07% informal: ALP with 59.4% (Mark Latham’s seat)
Parramatta, 8.02% informal: ALP with 50.4%
Kingsford Smith, 7.94% informal: ALP with 58.7% (Peter Garrett’s seat)
Lindsay, 7.68% informal: LIB with 54.0%
Rankin, 7.60% informal: ALP with 52.4%
Dobell, 7.48% informal: LIB with 55.6%
Banks, 7.33% informal: ALP with 51.2%
Port Adelaide, 7.23% informal: ALP with 62.4%
Oxley, 7.21% informal: ALP with 59.4%
Barton, 7.19% informal: ALP with 57.3%
Macarthur, 6.92% informal: LIB with 59.6%
Lowe, 6.89% informal: ALP with 53.4%
Fadden, 6.87% informal: LIB with 65.5%
Australia’s dumbest electorates overwhelmingly return Labor representatives. Coincidence?
(For reference, the 16 ALP seats above represent a little over a quarter of the seats the ALP are looking at winning, the Liberal seats make up about 5% of the coalition’s haul. For a little perspective, the PM’s seat of Bennelong had 6.20% informal, and went with 57.71%; Kim Beazley’s seat of Brand had 5.49% informal and went with 60.05%. Bendigo’s got the best informal rate so far on 2.83%, and is returning Steve Gibbons, the sitting Labor member.)
Sat, 09 Oct 2004
As the election day dawns, you can just feel the excitement in the air:
They seem genuinely excited. Almost everyone does. In the markets, people are actually talking about the vote. Some are driving around with pictures of candidates in their car windows. Posters of every hue cover the walls of central Kabul.
Meanwhile in Australia, it’s apathy central. You can only get so excited about keeping interest rates down, apparently.
On election day, stay in bed and vote [1] indolence!
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