The ALP is economically illiterate; always has been, always will be. Forget ideology. The best reason for not voting for them is their inability to handle money. The Whitlam spend-everything era, the Hawke and Keating periods of beating up the people who supported them – workers, and now Rudd and Swan.

The current government has blundered from one stuff up to another, the most hideous examples in less than 12 months being the punitive, extremely costly and useless plan to charge more for everything to stop CO2 emissions and wreck the economy, and the totally inane and panicked plan to guarantee bank deposits, which has heightened the feeling of crisis and impending chaos among the population.

Paradoxically, the people who have attempted to provide for their own retirement with managed funds do not get any protection. This has caused depositor panic, leading to funds freezing money, which has lead to further panic and the belief that people relying on that money for their retirement will be ruined. Rudd sneers at savings “attached to the market” making people believe that they are only for the greedy, and it’s stiff cheese for anyone using them to help in their retirement. These funds are not necessary all high risk, and the majority of people who are careful enough to plan ahead choose conservative options which should see them with a safe, if not glamorous, life in their last years.

Now, ‘most’ funds, we are told, will continue to pay dividends and income. People will just not be able to access their capital. And why would they, if they are relying on that capital to produce the income they need. But, I’ll wager that none of the funds have had a chance after Rudd and Swan dropped the bomb to advise their clients what is going on.

So, more panic and talk of doom and ruin on current affairs programmes. And, of course, our inept Treasurer, looking like a rabbit in a spotlight, babbling things he doesn’t understand, projects zero confidence.

The Rudd gang didn’t cause the problem, but they’ve made it worse.

Mark Lawson is probably right – though what is happening (with more of the same immediately in front of us) looks decidedly crook - it probably is not Armageddon for the current economic system.

Not yet.

Some means will be found to defer the issue. Rather than make appropriate changes, we will continue praying at the altar of the God of Growth – light candles to it for a decade or so. Do that, say our ooms and oms, until the fundamental underpinning of our social system reaches total collapse.

Be of good cheer, our Kevin will pray on our behalf in that direction. Australia, under his Government’s preferred philosophy of an extra million people every three years, will have the company of another ten million souls to share the pain of rapidly diminishing essential resources (eg water). They will help us further diminish stuff which is already in short supply.

In all likelihood he will hitch our wagon to another massive international stoush; join our buddies. That will keep the economy cantering along while we continue to have the dosh to pay the price of fossil fuels – their production, the byproducts we take for granted, their wastes.

We will follow our god yet – the sacred economy which hasn’t a clue about Homo sapiens biological status on a finite planet; not a clue about the simple mathematics of infinite expansion - about where we are in relation to asymptotic limits.

Yes, I know – the priests of the Economic altar do not recognize any similarity between rabbit, mouse, or lemming plagues to that of ever-expanding human numbers. Their god will prevail – we can defer the worst for a year or two yet; just leave it to the kids.

Isn’t it all really very simple?

We need two things;

To get it through our thick heads that continuous expansionism is utterly absurd, and that there has to be limits to growth on all sorts of different levels.

And a more socialistic regime of governance that distributes our wealth much more fairly and keeps rampant capitalism under tight control.

Of course the excesses of capitalism will continue within companies and sectors where the profit motive reigns supreme, if they are allowed to indulge in these excesses. That’s why we need a system of governance that can keep it in its place.

I’ll have to disagree that ‘compared to 87 this crisis is a dud’. Yes there was some pretty silly stuff going on back then. You might argue that there is less silly stuff going today. I’d argue that there is much worse silly stuff happening, but that it just not as blatant as is was back then, well...if you can't the elephant in the living room that is.

Of course, the silliest stuff of all is as blatant as all buggery - rampant continuous growthism with no end in sight, despite enormously obvious negative impacts on our environment, quality of life and future wellbeing. How can it be that 99.9% of us have an enormous blind spot with this factor?

I hope to goodness that this financial crunch will be more serious than the 87 one…so that it will at least get a lot more people thinking about what changes are needed – at the baseline level of what is good for our society, country and planet in a sustainable manner, not at a level that will prop up the continuous-growth business-as-usual paradigm. If it is a dud, then we will indeed see unbridled capitalism with all its excesses and problems continue for some time yet.

It is critical that we make the change towards a sustainable and more equitable society, starting NOW. So I dearly hope that this crunch will be serious enough to really get that happening.

Maybe, just maybe, it is a huge blessing in disguise.

Mr Right, what funds in Australia have frozen their assets in order to prevent people accessing their investments? Please name them.

This is the first time I've heard of this. While I'm no financial or law expert, surely this type of freeze, if true, would be illegal. Unless the funds are in liquidation or something of that order, and this is NOT the case.

Are you sure you've got the facts correct?

The title of the article suggests that the author is in posession of a crystal ball. Better wait a bit longer, maybe a year or so before making such a claim, huh Mark? I remember back near the beginning of the year, some economists were declaring the emerging problems "little more than a bump in the road". Since the poo hit the fan, they have changed their minds.

I don't think capitalism will dissappear but it is possible that we could move down the road of a more mixed economy.

Kev here,

We the Labor faithful are not economically illiterate.
What is important is money, Taxes and more immigrants to pay those taxes.

We lie about immigrants having a net positive effect on the economy for good reason. The externalising of the real cost of immigrants (making ordinary Australians redundant, hopelessly tied up in neighbourhood ethnic conflict, social gridlocks, poor services & our upcoming energy audit police to make more room for new better immigrant types is the cost of NATION BUILDING. Older Australians are easily conned into thinking we immigrate 450,000 people per-year to take care of the aged. We just let them die in rip off unscrupulous nursing homes with toxic carpets & underfloor heaters like we always did. And besides the immigrants are trained by THEIR governments and thus have better employment outcomes mainly in property development and mining.

So every which way we are using labor spin to seamleassly euthahanase dead wood Australians, boost GST/tax income & BUILD a better NATION. We've got it cavered. How could anyone possibly say Labor are illiterate on economics?

And for anyone who says the Labor faithful ARE economically illiterate .. we've got your number & there's a barracuda nursing home anear YOU.

And remember our slogan Immigrate&Baby bonus 4 GST!

PS Comrade Howard was the best Labor PM in Australia's history .. but don't tell Turnbull!