Well, no, that really was the most important point, and it's a shame that Birks didn't jump on it. Mind you, it's entirely orthogonal to his post, and we all know how peeved he gets when you jump on a passing comment about the meltdown of the world economy rather than a remix of a recently-discovered Peel session band from the late '70s...
It might not be that orthogonal at all, in a way. I'll get to that.
I was a little perplexed by the news that Brit Insurance re-domiciled to the Netherlands (hardly a tax-beneficial move that my own accountant would recommend, if indeed I have one). Then I realised that this is either an immediate move to the Netherlands Antilles, or else a short step towards that. One of the big, unanswered, questions about G7..20 "solutions" to avoid a repeat of the recent Great Financial Depression is why there is no steam in the international engine behind the idea of getting rid of offshore tax havens once and for all.
China (and how I enjoy discussions about the Chinese economy, because they almost invariably play into my field, History, and not into the advertised field, Economics), has, I think, fallen into an unanticipated trap here. It's not so much the rural poor. It's not so much wage inflation. It's not even property bubbles -- and the Doubleday Rule of Thumb is that if everybody involved in the process of selling a particular market's real estate says "rumours of its imminent decline are exaggerated," then that's a good time to get out.
Nah. The present and looming problem with China is massive industrial overcapacity, which was in fact encouraged by the PRC between 2008-2010 in the fond hope that the rest of the world would start buying again. Well, that's not going to happen, and the "overcapacity" isn't some stupid Western thing involving service companies: it's factories and production lines and massive stockpiles of raw materials. This is not going to be an easy one for the Communist Party to deal with.
Oh yeah, the boat-stopping thing. Passing by the vague present swingometer (72 Lab 73 Lib/Nat 1 Green Loon 4 Loonier Ind 76 Needed for majority), and concentrating on the ridiculously small number of swing constituencies, and still ignoring the fact that the Aus Labour party failed to put the traditional money in the traditional brown paper bags, the problem is simple:
There are only about ten constituencies that currently make any difference at all to the result. These constituencies tend to be either in the Western Suburbs of Sydney (v blue collar, old South European immigrants from the 70s) or in the more booming bits of Queensland.
Sadly, the bog-standard political discourse in Australia is therefore to bleat on about the ozone layer and Mom and Apple Pie and ... whoops, that would be pay back the debt and stop the waste ... in order to lock down the sheep, and then fight over the one issue that actually matters to the 20,000 "swingers."
It's getting much better these days. These days, it's only "Stop the Boats." Thirty years ago, it was "Bring back free-range shooting of Abos."
The other Power-point issues are merely a clearing of the throat. The only important point is buried in a nice safe place that will be noticed by the intended audience but which won't cause palpitations amongst the activists.
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Date: 2010-08-22 08:31 pm (UTC)It might not be that orthogonal at all, in a way. I'll get to that.
I was a little perplexed by the news that Brit Insurance re-domiciled to the Netherlands (hardly a tax-beneficial move that my own accountant would recommend, if indeed I have one). Then I realised that this is either an immediate move to the Netherlands Antilles, or else a short step towards that. One of the big, unanswered, questions about G7..20 "solutions" to avoid a repeat of the recent Great Financial Depression is why there is no steam in the international engine behind the idea of getting rid of offshore tax havens once and for all.
China (and how I enjoy discussions about the Chinese economy, because they almost invariably play into my field, History, and not into the advertised field, Economics), has, I think, fallen into an unanticipated trap here. It's not so much the rural poor. It's not so much wage inflation. It's not even property bubbles -- and the Doubleday Rule of Thumb is that if everybody involved in the process of selling a particular market's real estate says "rumours of its imminent decline are exaggerated," then that's a good time to get out.
Nah. The present and looming problem with China is massive industrial overcapacity, which was in fact encouraged by the PRC between 2008-2010 in the fond hope that the rest of the world would start buying again. Well, that's not going to happen, and the "overcapacity" isn't some stupid Western thing involving service companies: it's factories and production lines and massive stockpiles of raw materials. This is not going to be an easy one for the Communist Party to deal with.
Oh yeah, the boat-stopping thing. Passing by the vague present swingometer (72 Lab 73 Lib/Nat 1 Green Loon 4 Loonier Ind 76 Needed for majority), and concentrating on the ridiculously small number of swing constituencies, and still ignoring the fact that the Aus Labour party failed to put the traditional money in the traditional brown paper bags, the problem is simple:
There are only about ten constituencies that currently make any difference at all to the result. These constituencies tend to be either in the Western Suburbs of Sydney (v blue collar, old South European immigrants from the 70s) or in the more booming bits of Queensland.
Sadly, the bog-standard political discourse in Australia is therefore to bleat on about the ozone layer and Mom and Apple Pie and ... whoops, that would be pay back the debt and stop the waste ... in order to lock down the sheep, and then fight over the one issue that actually matters to the 20,000 "swingers."
It's getting much better these days. These days, it's only "Stop the Boats." Thirty years ago, it was "Bring back free-range shooting of Abos."
The other Power-point issues are merely a clearing of the throat. The only important point is buried in a nice safe place that will be noticed by the intended audience but which won't cause palpitations amongst the activists.
Such is liberal democracy these days.