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The Forum > Article Comments > Spin no cure for depression > Comments

Spin no cure for depression : Comments

By Bruce Haigh, published 21/11/2008

This is not a time for bureaucratic mumbling but plain, honest speech, of a type that Australians and their leaders were once noted for.

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Leadership is a very rare commodity when we are in the midst of major uncertainty at the top levels of government. When the only person that seems to have a clue as to what is going on in economic and financial terms happens to be the leader of the opposition, it would seem the government's response to all inquiries is fluster and bluster with total unwillingness to expose to the light of day the economic numbers they hold secret from the rest of the country. Economic numbers that could be useful to a much more experienced leader to plot a non-destructive corrective course of action.

So, what's a PM to do? First gag all ministers from saying anything other than bagging the opposition and secondly, leave the country to pontificate to all world leaders what they should be doing to address their problems.

Meanwhile, poor Aus stews in an economic primordial soup while the government hopes that a lucky lightning bolt from somewhere will restart the economic marvel that was inherited but seems to have fallen off the rails.
Posted by Bruce, Friday, 21 November 2008 9:16:02 AM
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I agree with Bruce Haigh that ‘feeling confident’ is not going to make any difference to the current economic situation. Talking about confidence in economic matters at the moment is like hearing of people ‘fighting for their lives’, when only luck and medical know how can possibly save them; or people with a terminal illness being told to ‘think positively’ when it will not make one iota of difference to their impending death.

We have been living beyond our means: greed, too much use of credit, and the belief that the last decade of luxury living (for many) was anything but an aberration; that the ‘good’ times could continue forever.

People have listened to “spin” because the more prudent commentators and advisers have been drowned out. For years now, we have known we have been living beyond our means. Nevertheless, people with access to easy credit have been getting deeper into debt buying services and goods which were once available only to rich people. The really silly thing is that many of the rich people have been the spin doctors; they get what they can from foolish people who really don’t have the financial backing to fund the new lifestyle, and when the punters go bust, the rich have the means to carry on.

The author’s statement that: “Many younger managers know nothing but the good times, so they haven’t been trained to manage hard times” is so true! The importance of history is overlooked. It could be said, I suppose, that the same reference to younger managers probably applied to the 1920’s and the real depression resulting from that era. But, we at least had the history of that to learn from. But, no! Making money is more important than ‘arty farty’ history to go-getters and most economists.

Continued...
Posted by Mr. Right, Friday, 21 November 2008 10:00:59 AM
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...continued

All is not lost, though, and if the irresponsible, head-line grabbing media tempered the bad news they love with some graphs, facts and figures showing comparisons with figures now and during the 1970’s to the early 1990’s, things would not seem so grim; still serious, but without the ‘she’ll be right mate’ rubbish. Things will improve – too late for many of us – but the Australian economy will never be the same again. It cannot be if we are to avoid in the future what we are now enduring – through our own misdeeds.

It’s impossible to see how Australia cannot go into recession next year. Rudd and his spin doctors tell us that it will not happen. But remember history again. Labor Governments are economically illiterate. Remember Whitlam, Keating, not so much Hawke who had some idea and took advice and stuck to prime ministering, unlike Kevin Rudd who sees himself as Mr. Fixit, not just for Australia, but for the entire world! Spin and megalomania are a very dangerous combination.

The author’s call for “leadership” is wasted on Kevin Rudd. Rudd is a one-man band who has the need to do everything himself, even when he is incapable of many of the tasks he takes on. Both Hawke and Keating have repeatedly, publicly told Rudd to learn to delegate and start to do some thinking. After 12 months, he has shown no sign of doing that. The personality and ego of the man – reflected by spin doctoring in order to make us believe he cannot fail – clearly indicates that he has no intention of changing.

Actually, ‘leadership’ by one person is not what we need. We need responsibility spread over several people who know what they are doing: each co-ordinated with the others, but each dealing with parts, not the whole, so that they are fresh enough to come up with answers. A single person, jet-setting on a weekly basis all over the world is no use to Australia
Posted by Mr. Right, Friday, 21 November 2008 10:02:39 AM
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GOVT removed house prices/petrol prices from the consumer index,thus our real wages deflated,;inflation was spun to be lower that the reality proved.

same spin with em-ploy-ment;working as little as 2 hours is reclassified as fully_employed[thus employment was spun to be increasing[when the hours worked fell]

spin;we have been sold as fact
[by lie of fact and numbers]

govt passed a law that allows public servants to lie to us[and so they are]numbers dont mean they are true

organisations makeup their numbers
unpaid debt is on the books as an asset]
thus]bankers have lots of this debt[bet]that has gone bad

so they'sell'it to another bank[for full value[plus fees charges etc

[all unable to be recovered]
BUT ITS NOT'SOLD'they swap debt for debt
my bookloss as value for yours=sale

result;[on the books we move debt into a sale;[income]
but it will never be income;[its dead_debt]

but two banks record buying an asset/at whatever the value was colluded

it goes on[gets made into a security]they sell on for real credit/cash[via pyramid selling]as long as stockholders THINK they are increasing their wealth they stay quiet

thats what the fake numbers do

its the enron strategy[thus you havnt seen any enron-esq trial reporting]

us real inflation runs at 13 percent
but the spin says we are getting near to deflation[PRIOR TO HYPER INFLATION]

SPIN IS NO CURE
SO im not depressed
so stick the cure give me the truth

but that aint going to happen till we accept the new cure[the carbon tax;who's price gets set by big buisness[who will set this tax[not a credit][thats the spin]it is a tax

but worse FULLY CONTROLED BY THE_carbon_market[forces;ie big buisness]

they will cost what the market needs them to cost
to keep the scam going[the scam is fiat currency and ursury #]

fiat currency issued by the bankers[NOT GOVT,the fed reserve is a banker OWNED entity that fractionally creates fiat currency out of any signed paper]

we give them signed promise[they give[create]the currency
but not the intrest to repay it,thus the lies[the boom and bust]

till the neo global tax drains us dry
Posted by one under god, Friday, 21 November 2008 11:31:35 AM
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Mate, hoping for no spin these days is like believing in God. The reality never arrives.

We don't have leaders. We have elected officials that hop directly into the trough upon election and just disappear deeper and deeper into it until they are thrown out. There are many so deep in there we have forgotten them. They are usually referred to as career back benchers.

Rudd made a huge mistake in giving Swan the Treasurer's role as he is basically a clown. So as a government they have little promise for us.

Turnbull is even worse as he seems to spend all his time looking into mirrors and practicing cliches which may or may not ne relevant. It doesn't seem to matter which to him. He's a fool and how he made money is obviously not due to wise investment. More likely doing what mates told him.

Who is there? Personally I'm hoping for Steve Waugh. An honest man with belief in himself and hasn't caved to the desperate pleas from both parties. He would be a leader but he's not that dumb.
Posted by RobbyH, Friday, 21 November 2008 11:38:00 AM
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Mr Right,

"Labor governments are economically illiterate", really? During the term of the Howard government, Australia's foreign debt increased each year, and no effort was made to correct our chronic current account deficit. We live on other peoples' money, our Howard-Costello 'prosperity' is a house of cards. Liberal economic 'literacy' amounts to the slogan "public debt bad, private debt good", we know now, how very, very bad private debt can be.
Posted by mac, Friday, 21 November 2008 2:42:29 PM
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RobbyH: yes, Turnbull "doing what his mates told him" is about as blunt a truth as we could hope for about that guy's "success". The FAI-HIH scam and Goldman Sachs mobster connections are what really count for Turbull's life story and "economic credibility"!

Bruce: it is fanciful to think that Turnbull has some clue as to what is going on. He may seem less flustered than his more Fabian opposites, but he's more certainly a psychopath, so he's not particularly bothered if masses go out of work, are evicted or even starve to death; psychos actually get off on that sort of thing. But just being a smug spiv does not mean that he somehow "gets it": in fact, he's oblivious to the real systemic implications here, because his whole schooling and experience is in the deluded fictions of mega-usury.

It is rather repulsive to hear yet again some misanthropic or at least ultra-conservative notion ("non-rich people have been living beyond their means"!) about the dynamics of this dysfunctional system in its death throes. The people "living beyond their means" are the hedge fund parasites (like Turnbull himself) who backed the QUADRILLION dollar derivatives bubble that Greenspan and Co set up. On this point, One Under God grasps well the essentially corrupt nature of the monetarists' entire thought process here.

Poor people - and I count myself here - have been overwhelmingly strict in paying their debts, rents, etc. And if some got hocked into bigger debt just for the plasma TV, so what? It does not compare to a derivatives portfolio that has actually depended upon getting more and more of us into debt anyway while compelling every type of business to run up much larger debt than the apocryphal proles-with-plasma-McMansion-beemer cliche. The DERIVATIVES are what cannot be paid - not most of the plasmas or even the beemers and McMansions, when viewed in isolation.
Posted by mil-observer, Friday, 21 November 2008 3:42:02 PM
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(cont.)

This is a systemic disintegration from the top. It is about the only case where the “trickle down” concept has actually functioned, but not as the neolibs and econorats meant of course. The debt bubble of derivatives trading among hedge funds has all compelled more and more debt throughout the entire economy. The screwing of workers, students and even many elderly has all intensified in order to ensure that they get into massive debt, so that they do their bit, as it were, to keep pumping the derivatives bubble!

Debating over which of the two buttons to press is really just "spin" also: the oligarch-driven Lib/Lab nonsense is as silly as that Rep/Dem farce in the US recently. Which corrupt and cowardly party apparatchik would you choose to save the corpse?!

The system is entirely bankrupt – has been for some time now – and must be junked, along with its latest IMF pipe dream of a global bankers' dictatorship. It's Game Over guys. Time for some substantial leadership a la FDR, Jack Lang, JFK - take these nasty monetarist bloodsuckers off their artificial life support of bail outs and other tax scams from their fawning toadies in the mainstream party apparatus.
Posted by mil-observer, Friday, 21 November 2008 3:47:43 PM
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Way to go, Mil-observer - that certainly sounds like the kind of no-frills, Yellow-band talk Bruce was calling for.

But just remember too, that some of us weren't taken in for a moment by the spin.

That was those of us living a completely separate and unregarded existence. We looked about and we saw unemployed all around us. We were the unemployed. But we didn't even exist according to the statistics. Or at least a large percentage of us didn't exist

When I first went to the dentist here he was shocked at the state of my mouth and asked why I had neglected it for so long. I told him truthfully that in Australia I couldn't afford dentists. Similarly, when I lost toe and finger nails to an infection shortly afterwards, I had admit that it was because I couldn't afford the cream I was prescribed in Australia. I was also exhibiting other symptoms of mal nourishment after 7 years of poverty in Oz. Imagine how those who have spent a lifetime there present?

We've been hollering down in the dark all along. But we have no power; no representation - so no-one heard us. Except, mainly, for those who seize the chance to tell us we are unAustralian; no-hopers; bludgers. They also, ad nauseum, stifle us with smug comparisons of how they worked hard for all they'd got.

But at least we were not taken in on the spin.

Down in the dark underbelly of Australia is a country which is so alien from the over-spending, over-eating, over-indulgent, over-gullible world to whom the blame for this mess is starting to be ascribed, as to be another country.

Ps. We also knew there were no WMD!
Posted by Romany, Saturday, 22 November 2008 11:28:31 PM
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"Gird your loins, we are in for a tough few years but as a nation we will come out of it stronger, more cohesive, more efficient and more self-sufficient."

If the current financial crisis has the effect of clearing out the stables and making us more efficient and self-sufficient, bring it on is all I can say.

As to Kevin Rudd's jetsetting ways, it's surmised by some on The Insiders on the ABC that he's positioning himself for the job as Secretary of the UN. If true, that would explain why he's directing his energies overseas. It might also mean he's not much longer for the job of PM.

I've been thinking for a while about Rudd's spin. I know that the Liberals (mostly Tony Abbott) have said Rudd's a fraud and he can't deliver on what he talks about, but at least he's being optimistic and not reverting to an unimaginative conservative political pattern. In my opinion, the Labor party is the instigator of change in Oz politics while the Liberals are the capitalisers. It's always easy to say the Liberals are better because they associate more with winning and with amassing this and that, but without Labor infusing its qualitative values into the country's affairs, we would have a poorer and less well rounded country.

The fact is we need both major political parties to be given a go steering the ship. But, it's society's job to throw the Government out whenever it exceeds its sustainable bounds and goes too far or too quickly with its agenda.
Posted by RobP, Sunday, 23 November 2008 2:06:21 PM
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Well said RobP. I have been mulling over Rudd's style, personality and character. By temperament and intellect Rudd is a small l-Liberal, but emotionally he is not.He does not seem to have a capacity to feel and in that he is the antitheses of both Hawke and Keating.
He reminds me of many of my former colleagues in DFAT.He is ambitious and has his career moves worked out, to get there he will keep his nose clean and make no decision that might come back to bite him.
He is still the bureaucrat. I see him as being insecure and a little immature. He does not seem very integrated.
In DFAT terms he has achieved the top posting.
Like you I was interested to hear what Bolt had to say on Insiders.
Seems to me that Rudd believes in very little. There is no agenda that he feels passionate about or would die in a ditch over. That is not to say that he does not know what needs to be done, but it is the commitment of a bureaucrat and not a statesman. He gives the impression that he is trying to impress a boss rather than meet and match his own standards.
My contention is that Rudd would not mind if he had one term as PM.
He will have achieved his ambition, he can tick that box and unlike Howard who burnt all his international, accademic and corporate bridges, accademic and international opportunities await Rudd.
For the sake of his ego Rudd will certainly pull all stops out to win the next election, but his heart is not in it, if it were, he would have ended the intervention, changed the refugee regime, removed privatisation from water, repealed the Howard terrorism laws, removed Keelty and put in place checks on the powers of the AFP and reduced the excessive level of aid to private schoools.
Next year as the pressure builds, Rudd might decide to walk.
Rudd is neither saviour nor statesman.
Bruce Haigh
Posted by Bruce Haigh, Sunday, 23 November 2008 10:06:11 PM
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Bruce,

I agree with what you say. I think it was Keating some time ago who called Rudd "dangerous". It was probably in reference to the robotic and supremely clinical style Rudd had showed during his career. I'd just add one thing to what you've said. His statement to the stolen generations was unemotionally brilliant. This is one thing that an academically gifted person can do very well. I couldn't imagine Hawke or Keating making such a clear and unequivocal statement, as they probably would have felt it too politically complicating as well as being incongruent with their style.

Sometimes the out-of-the-box, ambitious boy on the block can achieve a lot more than one would think. It's sometimes worth throwing them in the ring and seeing what they can do.
Posted by RobP, Monday, 24 November 2008 8:37:52 AM
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Mac,

You need to sort out the differences between public and private debt.
Posted by Mr. Right, Monday, 24 November 2008 10:27:26 AM
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Mr Right,you're Wrong,

I understand the difference, I'll explain, again, my point was that private debt was somehow regarded as self- regulating by the market ideologues, it wasn't was it? Private debt in the US has become everyone's problem. Now you explain the difference between private and public debt.
Posted by mac, Monday, 24 November 2008 11:56:38 AM
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SPIN is used to HIDE TRUTHS that threaten the illusory conception of benefits that Federal Government has for ordinary Australians and to hide, promulgate & extend the gap between Rich and Poor Australians.

Australia is a pure Howard Rudd PLUTOCRACY.

We all live in this spun out plutocracy where Federal and State governments:

* Brainwash with essentially state controlled media with Coonanesque removal of competition.

* Immigrate just to to boost GST revenue & a soon-to-fail property-market based economy, knowing full well, by their own reckoning that more people irretrievably cause more climate change (more drought, less water, more coal burnt, flithier urban air) in a geologia that is primarily one of perpetual drought subsistence ex climate change.

*Claim Immigration is Nation Builing when they know full well the externalising of its costs is rapidly lowering the living standards of the majority of Australians (who are increasingly being legislated to live in crime, Politico-affiliated & drug infested can-of-sardines cities like Dubbo and Sydney). All Rudd's version of Nation Builing achieves is to boost MARKET opportunities for the rich and nepotistically connected.

* Promote Democracy and Free trade like they weren't wolves promoting getting rid of shepherds & allowing sheep to run Free-Range as juicy stragglers. How much of our new $deficit will be because of a Rudd donation to Bush's post-presidency Freedom & Democracy Foundation?

* Don't want you to know the 2025 'Plutocracy PAYOFF' of large scale Global & Australian human genocide to permanently free the RICH from the sticky tentacles of the POOR: http://www.theaustralian.news.com.au/story/0,25197,24684836-12377,00.html

It is essential to have very adept and profitable spin doctors. They're guaranteed to have resiliant business plans -- In Advance.

Rupert Murdoch and Julia Gillared are right: Australian schools are a disgrace. They are teaching students to think CRITICALLY and that
is a clear and present threat to the Australian (SPIN) way of life.

The spin doctor anthem:

Making a killing is our business and Rudd is guaranteeing us that BUSINESS is gonna be good.
Posted by KAEP, Monday, 24 November 2008 12:37:08 PM
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Wrong about what? Goverments can't be blamed for private debt.There is a difference between what private companies borrowing overseas, and what governments might borrow. Most of the current debt is down to private companies, including banks.

Your "Mr.Right you are Wrong" wasn't funny the first thousand times somebody thought it was tricky; and my user name has nothing to do with whether or not I'm right or wrong.
Posted by Mr. Right, Monday, 24 November 2008 3:18:55 PM
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Mr Right,

Have you been told you were wrong 1000 times? I'm not at all surprised. Have people said that too? Yes, I know the composition of Australia's foreign debt, but governments can be blamed for private debt, if it is of the quality of the sub prime loans in the US. We could be heading to a depression because of the " self-regulation" fantasies of the American financial elite. FYI, economics is not a science. You still don't get it, private debt can affect the public.
Posted by mac, Monday, 24 November 2008 3:52:55 PM
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The limited real wealth has been accumulating in the pockets of the super-wealthy while the theft has been covered up by "lending". The government has allowed banks to effectively create "assets" out of debt (CDOs) thereby increasing the money supply without any real wealth being created.
Governments have completely dropped the ball here by allowing profit entities to effectively control the worlds money supply to the point of collapse. It seems the record "profits" of the last 10 years have already been wasted away and replaced by public funds. Private profit, public risk: thats the Liberal Party way.
Did Jonny Howard build any infrustructure, fund any research, do *anything* in fact to generate a real economy?
Nope: he just denied the reality of the modern world and made his rich mates (and family) very secure and obscenely wealthy.
Ask yourselves: How is doubling housing prices generating wealth? It is a *bad* thing that they sold as good thing purely for profit.
Every time I hear about Liberals as good economic managers I want to puke! Lies and Spin indeed.
Posted by Ozandy, Tuesday, 25 November 2008 8:31:01 AM
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mal-cume turn bull
has escaped too lightly in this post about govt spin

we all will have heard him playing his spinner
at the[soft[press club]

for those not sure what p'art'of his spin i refer to
please note
his trying to set up govt into[stating];not going into surpluss

he said essentially
;''any govt going into surplus is incompitant'

it made me laugh[cry actually]to hear Krudd
[sorry kevin i hold both leaders in contempt]and the media that betrays the gullible publics trust[with sports'reporting'in lue of one full half hour of real news and analisis]

but my passions divert me

did thee hearest kevi[r;247]sayeth
in the un_holy house of reprehensables
during his question time scoop

didst not thee hear him state[list]the number of countries going into deficit[all but canada and au apparently]

BUT NOTE ACCORDING to turncoat[bull]
all those Gee'7'[Gee'20?leaders?]

are incompitant !%!

how come he was let off
turnbull[malcome actually accused OUR ALlies[leadershiP]of incompetancy!

even noticing this to our media
has only resulted in further silence

but i think i have been even handed in my put downs

upon those clowns we were allowed to select from the worst of this two party system coleniser media dependant inbred elites who think their public service pensions cant ever bbe recovered

think again

this demon autocRAT-TIC demonic autocracy needs to stop the bull
end the spin

stop turning the bull rudd ER farce

er is a figure head[able to trade on insider confidences

australia is not a sovereign owned entity

it is a foreign buisness intrest,that allows the bankers and lawyers to loot and plunder their juristiction,via imposing ever more burdon on its poor

while hiving off the[PUBLIC}assets under the steward ship of ever fewer land holders[and even multinational coorperation's,bankers lawayers and an inbred elite playing the same old game

bringing in[birthing]their newest tax
[a tax on carbon[we are carbon life forms!]

but now we[being carbon producers will coontinue to be the cattle upon which the elites get ever more fat

rave ends

when complaining please specify specificlly
what you didnt want me to say[in the way i said it]
Posted by one under god, Wednesday, 26 November 2008 6:33:22 PM
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