@ my wits’ end

Try New Zealand, we’re really in it deep

I’m a fan of Thomas Friedman. He’s insightful, he’s entertaining, he has an outstanding grasp of the biggest issues facing us all right now and he explains their complexities with refreshing clarity. You don’t win three Pulitzers without having your journalistic faculties intact.

He’s particularly perceptive when it comes to climate change; the West’s dysfunctional handling of relations with Islam; and the ways in which we can fix and grow our economies without wrecking the planet. In has latest New York Times column he made this comment:

“We are the United States of Deferred Maintenance. China is the People’s Republic of Deferred Gratification. They save, invest and build. We spend, borrow and patch.”

That definitely applies to the USA, but it applies even more to New Zealand. We’re in a downward spiral which is likely to get worse as wages increase in Australia significantly more this year than they will here.

The Aussies have a skills shortage and we can’t pay our skilled people enough. Stand by for a resurrection of the exodus across the ditch.

Read his complete article here for a short course on some of the issues the Obama administration and our own timorous Kiwi politicos don’t have the backbone to address.

Just one year ago hope spread around the world like wildfire. Barack Hussein Obama’s inspired oratory gave us a glimpse of a better way. Here in New Zealand we had a double dose of optimism; new Prime Minister and all-round nice guy John Key promised change for the better, albeit without the soaring rhetoric.

For me and for many who’ve heard it all before the hope was tempered by doubt and cynicism. Nevertheless, the possibility of a sea-change was real and exciting.

Maybe this time…

The hope proved fleeting

There was a sea-change alright, yet another tsunami of missed opportunities to douse the flames of hope.

“Yes, we can” morphed into “maybe”, promises became aspirations. We’re almost back to business as usual. The dreams are on hold, the disappointment is acute.

What next? Sarah Palin?

Democracy doesn’t seem to work anymore. We need a system which punishes politicians who blatantly disregard their election manifestos. We need less adversarial politics-as-usual and more lets-all-pull-together consensus. We need less Old Testament Hell and Damnation and more New Testament Golden Rule.

To put one more nail in the coffin of hope we have the sad reality of President Obama using his acceptance speech for the Nobel Peace Prize to extol the virtues of a just war. I’m an ex-serviceman, and I’m not a pacifist. Nevertheless, I don’t accept the “just war” justification in the case of Afghanistan. There were many ways to fan the flames of freedom in that region without sending in fighting forces.

A few weeks ago the New York Times website ran a “Word Train” asking readers to describe their feelings about President Obama in just one word. The results were depressing but sadly predictable.

I chose disappointment and that seemed to be one of the big four, along with hopeful and proud for the optimists and disgusted for the realists and the “We told you so” brigade. Nowhere could I find pleased, delighted, or even a mild satisfied.

My disappointment was less acute for being not unexpected. I knew all along that there was a strong probability that Mr Obama would be subsumed by the pressures and realities of the beltway, so now that it’s happened I just feel sad.

1. I don’t believe that his dreams were impossible to realize. If President Obama had chosen to fight the Washington system he could have prevailed. He would have had two years of struggle against the House and the Senate, but he could have kept the people on his side and transformed Congress in the mid-term elections – just as FDR did when he went directly to the voters to expose the people who stood in the way of true reform.
2. I don’t believe that peace in the Middle East is not achievable. It’s just not achievable while continuing to provoke all Islam by backing Israel at all costs, by funding Israel’s abuse of power or by sacrificing young Americans to perpetuate to perpetuate factional Islamic squabbles.
3. I don’t believe that the war in Afghanistan is a necessity. Fix point 2 then the Taliban and Al Qaeda lose their raison d’etre.
4. I’m astounded that his administration has allowed the money manipulators to go back to business as usual bleeding the productive sector and that there hasn’t been rioting on the streets by those who’ve lost their jobs and their homes. Scrooge MacDuck is alive and well and bathing in your money again.
5. I do believe that climate change is a challenge we can meet and with sensible policies could be economically beneficial to any country which grasps the opportunities, to the planet, and to all mankind. A uniting cause. To find out how to do it read Thomas L. Friedman’s excellent “Hot, Flat and Crowded“.

Too late now.

Unless he has a cunning plan.

We all know that pigs are smart creatures. It’s even tempting to surmise that they may be smarter than Filipinos — but I know that’s not the case because my friend Angelito’s a Filipino and he’s really smart.

The Philippines’ bureaucracy could do with hiring a few people like Angelito and sending some of their incumbents to the Manila scrapheap.

The idiots who decided to ban pork products originating from New Zealand because of the Swine Flu have the intellectual capacity of a pork chop.

And it’s not only the Filipino bureaucrats who are unbelievably stupid: Russia, China, Kazakhstan and Serbia have joined the herd. Just in case some of these fools stumble across this post:

You don’t catch the ‘flu from dead pigs.

Well, not unless they’re newly dead, very attractive, and you’re having more intimate relations with them than most of us would consider entirely normal.

OK?

No, we can’t

Amongst the few here in New Zealand who get it: Dr Gareth Morgan, Rod Oram,  Colin James and maybe Bill English. Dr Michael Cullen almost got it, but he erred bigtime in not putting the squeeze on consumer credit years ago.

What are these people on?

The Reserve Bank Governor, Dr Alan Bollard, doesn’t get it. He informed us last December that the recession had bottomed out.

The Treasury forecast a 7.2% unemployment peak. They’re dreaming. We’re either there already or close to it and there’s no sign of a slowdown in the rate of increase. Double figures are likely. Anything under a 12% peak would be a bonus.

The Prime Minister and the Finance Minister are on different pages concerning the imminent upturn. John says we’ll pick up at the end of the year, Bill says “No way.” I’m with Bill English. Nobody knows where this will end. Nobody knows when the turnaround will come. Assuming that it will come.

There are too many factors at work here which are totally out of our control. These people don’t have a clue what’s going to happen. Overseas the situation is still deteriorating, which doesn’t bode well for us. We depend upon two things to keep the over-stretched economic balls in the air: income from trade and income from borrowings. Both of those sources are in unfamiliar territory and both are out of our control.

Don’t grass over the veggie garden yet.

Wall Street ends week with biggest gains since 2007

Stocks on Wall Street capped the longest streak of weekly gains since 2007, as Federal Reserve chairman Ben Bernanke said programmes to unfreeze credit markets are working.

That’s all very well, but there are a few minor details to attend to. Paying back a trillion or two for instance.

What happened last time?

Enter John Kenneth Galbraith re The Great Depression:

A common feature of all these earlier troubles was that, having happened, they were over. The worst was reasonably recognizable as such. The singular feature of the great crash of 1929 was that the worst continued to worsen. What looked one day like the end proved on the next day to have been only the beginning. Nothing could have been more ingeniously designed to maximize the suffering, and also to ensure that as few as possible escaped the common misfortune.

I am not among those who cry, “Why wasn’t this predicted?” As I said in the previous post at My Wits’ End, Who predicted the financial meltdown? it was predicted by plenty of people, economists and economic laymen alike.  By Paul Krugman, and by me.

Put your faith in those who knew the score before the game was up. Those who picked the result at half-time. Not the Wall Street and Government regulatory eggheads who tinkered with the rules during the game and royally stuffed up through avarice, stupidity, or both.

What about the real experts?

Dr Paul Krugman said last week in one of his New York Times must read columns:

I’m detecting a trend in commentary that I find slightly ominous. Some of the economic news lately has been slightly better than expected, which was bound to happen at some point (on average, after all, half the news should be better than expected). Mostly this is in the form of things getting worse more slowly, but it wouldn’t be surprising if we see, say, an uptick in industrial production in a few months, as the inventory cycle runs its course.

If so, that doesn’t mean the worst is over. There was a pause in the plunge in early 1931, and many people started to breathe easier. They were wrong.

He illustrated his point with this graph:

It ain’t over.

The fat lady isn’t even on stage.

This is not going to come right without major pain. There are debts to be paid. Western nations, especially New Zealand, were already too far in debt before this dose of crap hit the fan. Crap we Western super consumers created by the way. Now we’re going deeper into it. Your children will be paying for this one. Your grandkids too.

Knuckle down and make the best of it. We can build a better way in time but we’ll need to hold our leaders to account to do it.

The West is going to settle down at a lower level of consumption and consumer debt than before. That’s a good thing, but it will cause transitional pain for many. Jobs will be redistributed, less in retail and real estate, more in productive labours.

We need to get our arses into gear. Most of all we must do something drastic about our dreadful productivity. A productivity which has dropped us from the third highest GDP in the world to around 40^th.

Maybe this time…

I was almost 20 years old when John F. Kennedy made this pledge:

“Let the word go forth from this time and place, to friend and foe alike, that the torch has been passed to a new generation of Americans … Let every nation know, whether it wishes us well or ill, that we shall pay any price, bear any burden, meet any hardship,support any friend,oppose any foe to assure the survival and success of liberty.”

Inspiring rhetoric, but ultimately empty promises. Nearly half a century later there are many “friends” of those United States who have missed the liberty boat. Racism, parochialism and ignorance are still rampant in the U.S.A. despite the election of a mixed race president. Protectionism, oil, the pork barrel and unenlightened self-interest still dominate U.S. domestic and foreign policy.

JFK filled my heart, and the hearts of many millions of others, with hope for a better world. The hope had waned even before an assassin’s bullet gave us Lyndon Johnson and killed it completely. But hope springs eternal and it flickered again when Robert Kennedy looked likely to take the helm. Once again an assassin left us mourning for what might have been.

We now have cause to dream once more of a better world. After five decades and eight more or less uninspiring occupants of the White House, the ponderous American presidential election process has delivered a man who has the intellectual power, the integrity and the ability to inspire which may just enable him to persuade his people to do great things.

“Today I say to you that the challenges we face are real. They are serious and they are many. They will not be met easily or in a short span of time. But know this, America – they will be met.

On this day, we gather because we have chosen hope over fear, unity of purpose over conflict and discord.

On this day, we come to proclaim an end to the petty grievances and false promises, the recriminations and worn-out dogmas, that for far too long have strangled our politics”

President Barack Obama

Now it’s in the hands of every American. President Obama has the skills required to set the ball rolling. Nevertheless the forces of darkness are ranged against him. The huge burden of expectation placed upon him can only be successfully turned into reality with the continued help of those ordinary people who put him there.

Americans must make it very clear to their Representatives, their Congressmen and Congresswomen; to their business, religious, community, political and union leaders; and to opinion makers everywhere that this time it must happen. For too long special interest groups have hog-tied successive administrations. It’s time the people’s will was given its due.

It’s heartening to know that three quarters of Americans now support this good man.

It’s sobering to reflect that almost half the voters wished to see a narrow-minded, bigoted and ignorant woman a heartbeat away from being in his shoes.

Yes you can, America. But it needs more than one man. The Dick Cheneys of the world are plotting their return as we speak.

Whatever next?

A politician apparently displaying common sense and old-fashioned integrity! Whatever next? Snow in Rarotonga?

Heavens to Betsy! Where will it all end?

John Key’s refreshing candour in ruling out Winston Peters as a coalition partner unless he cleans up his act is a welcome change from the wearying cynicism we’ve been enduring for years. Personally, although I’m a contemporary of Winston’s loyal blue rinse brigade, I’d had about enough of him a decade ago.

How many flip-flops can a politician perform before he can no longer persuade 5% of voters that he’s credible? Mind you, if the Yanks can put George Bush into power twice, there’s incontrovertible proof that a large proportion of voters have a near infinite capacity for stupidity.

Of course John Key may just be taking a calculated risk on the assumption that Winston First has dug himself into too deep a hole this time and he won’t be an option anyway. Nevertheless it’s a welcome change.

I actually got the feeling watching John on TV3 last night that he was being straight. He’s not good at faking sincerity.

Winston First is in his death throes. However, he’s come back from the dead more often than a flock of phoenixes (phoenices?) so we’d best not get the shovels out yet.

Come on Ron

What about some common sense and integrity from the Parliamentary NZ First folk.

Seems to me, New Zealand First’s only option is to dump Winston right now and anoint Ron Mark as leader. He’s the only NZ First MP with anything like the necessary credibilty to garner 5% in the polls. OK, he’s not guaranteed to pull it off, but he has more chance than his present boss.

What’s the alternative for NZ first? Political Armageddon in November. All out of a job.

Wouldn’t do any harm to the Maori vote either.

Go for it Ron.