(continuedfromabove)

The original source of the UN source statistics cited by Norberg, are not to be found in his document, rather he merely refers to another Cato institute document "Economic Freedom of the World: 2005 Annual Report" linked to from http://www.cato.org/pubs/efw/, but neglects to tell us the page it is on.

It appears that Johann Norberg is either incompetent or not telling the truth. When the original source is supplied I might be prepared to comment further.

I just heard the fantastic news that the NSW Labor Caucus has (finally) acted against Costa and Iemma. (Thank goodness they weren't taken in either by the facile "good cop/bad cop" routine that they had performed for their benefit.)

Good riddance to both of them!

But, why did they wait so long to act?

If they had done this the moment that Iemma and Costa stated their intention to ignore the 702 to 107 vote of the NSW Labor Party conference against electricity privatisation, they would have spared themselves and the NSW public months of trauma and expense.

Had the Opposition did as many were expecting them to and supported the privatisation legislation privatisation would be law today with disastrous social, environmental and social consequences. Thankfully (unlike the majority of the NSW state Labor parliamentary caucus at the time) they were principled enough not to.

Let's not forget the names of all those who backed them to the hilt in their efforts on behalf of the corporate sector to steal the electricity assets, rightfully belonging to the NSW public: former NSW Premiers Unsworth and Carr and Greiner, former Prime Minister Paul Keating, former Victorian Premier Jeff Kennett, current Victorian Premier John Brumby and all the other 'Labor' premiers who have been urging them on, either overtly or covertly.

And let's not forget the unconscionable misreporting of this issue by nearly all the mainstream newsmedia. Just a few names which come to mind include Imre Saluzinsky, Miranda Devine, and Jennifier Hewitt and Toni Matthews (see http://candobetter.org/PropagandaWatch for some examples.)

Bit out of breath, been dancing in the rain and the street, true.
Heard the great news on ABC radio on my way back from a very wet and closed job site.
Remembering that day I and my old warrior mate danced in the middle of a Sydney freeway I did my solo dance.
Great joy and pride.
Quite sure some motorist thought I was mad , yes I was, with happiness.
Once more NSW ALP center unity has got it right, at last.
Not kidding home now rained out I found that old track dancing in the street and have played it many times.
Watching with pride as the government begins to rebuild only place to go from here is up.

Dagget,

As any normal person could tell you, Friedmans' letter contains NO reference to his support for the coup, nor his support for Pinochet. He is polite but he limits his comments to the actions that Pinochet could take to improve the economic circumstances of his country. That is his area of expertise. He also wrote and gave lectures containing similar sentiments to the leaders of many other nations, including communist countries. That did not make him a supporter of communism.

I see you are backing off rapidly from your claim that it was Friedman behind the coup. Yet you insist on bringing up Letelier, who’s views regarding Friedman have been proved to be wrong.

You say >> “Clearly Paul.L has not read "The Shock Doctrine". If he had he would understand that Klein accounts for the differences in policies in the early days to those in 1975, and the fact that some of the Generals merely wanted to return Chile to the way it was before Allende's election in 1970. In fact, there was a second coup, in which those elements that Paul.L referred to as "corporatist and paternalist” were ousted in a second later coup.”

If you had done a little of your own research rather than just forming a cheer squad for Naomi Klein you would know that Pinochet's junta took power on September 11,1973. There was a failed coup attempt by Colonel Roberto Souper in concert with the Patria y Libertad in June 1973. But your suggestion that the policies of 1973/4 were different to the policies of 1975 because the regimes were different is patently NOT true. As I have stated earlier, the Pinochet junta were not interested in micro economic reform initially.

TBC,

cont,

“ The reality was that military officials were in charge of the economy at first. They were often corporatist and paternalist and opposed the Chicago Boys’ ideas about radical reforms. For example, the air force blocked pro-market reforms in social policy until 1979. It wasn’t until this way of governing the economy led to runaway inflation at the time of Friedman’s visit that Pinochet threw his weight behind liberalization and gave civilians ministerial positions.” http://www.cato.org/pub_display.php?pub_id=9384

This is where your and Kleins attacks on Friedman fall down. Most of the repression and violence occurred soon after the coup in 1973. Friedman didn’t visit until 1975.

You say >> “The Chicago Boys had confidently assured Pinochet that if he suddenly withdrew government in all areas at once, the 'natural' laws of economics would rediscover their equilibrium, and inflation---which they viewed as a kind of economic fever indicating the presence of unhealthy organisms in the market---would magically go down. They were mistaken. ..."

More rubbish.
“ While the 1980s have been described as the "lost decade" in terms of economic development for the rest of Latin America, since global recession in the early 1980s Chile's economy under Pinochet has enjoyed a sustained strong expansion.” http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Augusto_Pinochet

See a chart of Chiles economic growth vs the rest of Latin America. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Image:Chile_GDP.jpg

I can’t get access to the original document where Johan Norberg quotes the statistics of the freest economies. So I’ll provide some that I can.
Here is Wikipedia’s list of the freest economies globally. The top ten are, Honk Kong, Singapore, Ireland, Australia, the US, NZ, Canada, Chile, Switzerland and the UK. Now lets have a look at the least free. North Korea, Cuba, Zimbabwe, Libya, Myanmar, Turkmenistan, Iran, Belarus, Bangladesh, Venezuela, Guinea – Bissau. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_economic_freedom

I’ve got too much to do to bother adding up their GDP’s etc but I think I can safely say that it is the countries which have freer economies that are not only wealthier, but also politically more free. And vice versa.

Very happy for you Belly. I hope you realize that the chances of the ALP being reelected again in the near future have been destroyed. Once again the faceless men of the party have overturned a Gov't elected by, and responsible to, the people. What a great day for democracy and the labour party.

Imploding while governing. What a joke.