The pond thought it should start with a Kudelka this meditative Sunday for a couple of reasons: first what a relief it is to see him in his home at the Saturday Paper, available here, and what a relief and a pleasure it is to see this refugee from the lizard Oz make a home in a new land. It means that the lizard Oz lacks anyone who might be accepted as a cartoonist - sugar spoons and nepotic loons hardly qualify - but the pond rarely mentioned Kudelka during his time there, because of the sorrow and the pity and the sense that things were not quite right ...
Secondly, this particular cartoon explains almost everything that's to follow below, and makes any commentary by the pond superfluous, which is how the pond likes it.
The less it actually has to write about prattling Polonius, hagiographer to SloMo's court, the better, especially when Polonius clearly took up Kudelka's offer and rushed to buy an injection of "back in vax", or as Acca Dacca fans know it, "back in blax in the year 2525, where everything you think, do and say is in the shot you took today."
So let us marvel at how well the vaccination worked for "Polonius" ...
You see? All the pond needs to say is Kudelka, you little ripper, what a beauty. Deficit? 2008? Labor party extravagance? All gone, as if the men in black had dropped in and given Polonius a quick blast with the neuralyzer ...
Of course Polonius had to drag the ABC into his memory loss caper, and if Sales was mightily impressed with her questions, then it should be noted that Polonius was mightily impressed with his ability to rage at the ABC, and do an enormous suck-up to SloMo, Josh and deficits ... because yesterday is yesterday in Polonial history lessons, and today, everything old isn't new again, so much as weirdly the same, in a kind of Superman bizarro world way ...
Oh sorry, that short gobbet came about because the reptiles spacing looks very odd on the pond's browser - just like the spacing in the new wretched Blogger format, which is a daily hassle and travail - and the pond can't be bothered keeping the gaps in the lizard Oz copy, especially as it also has to cut out the reptile click-bait links, those desperate and pathetic attempts to keep readers within the lizard Oz world (and buggered if the pond is going to spend time in a forest of HTML just to sort out the spacing) ...and now, back to the history lesson, and that wicked, dreadful ABC ...
Ah yes, though really, shouldn't have Polonius said it's truly, rooly unique? You see a person-made or computer-made financial meltdown is in no way comparable to a virus-induced meltdown, even though it's still financial meltdown, all global ones at that, and the cure you take is the same for meltdowns ... go heresy, go debt, go Keynes!
Or perhaps go King ...
But back to Polonius, proudly avoiding any charges of hypocrisy ... and wheeling in Ming the Merciless as proof ... and if that doesn't show how well that Kudelka shot works, the pond has no idea what would ...
Never mind, in a short time, the pond will inflict more of the same on the stray reader not aware of the pond's tricky, treacherous ways, but before we get to nattering "Ned", can we do a little screen criticism 101 with Dame Slap? She's no Andrew Sarris (or shudder, Pauline Kael), and she probably missed out on the auteur theory, but that might explain why she's also not up to Sontagian camp ... but instead, she shows the same wondrous reptile capacity to forget ...
Here's the reason the pond wanted to interrupt the reptiles' hagiographic "black is white", "hated Keynes is wondrous Keynes", "Hayek who, what, where?" flow.
For some time now, the pond has been observing Dame Slap and wondering when she might get around to writing a piece about the Donald ... right now the time is beyond ripe, and yet it never happens, even though she once donned her MAGA cap and strode out into the New York night.
It's a bit like her recycling that "Lord" Plonkton or whatever his name was, and his conspiracy theory that by Xmas, the United Nations would have used climate science to introduce world government.
Dame Slap stole away from that one too, yet here - given the Donald's social media habits and love of conspiracy theories, tweeting and re-tweeting them with wild abandon - there was a chance for Dame Slap to recant her love of the Donald, or at least wonder how she might have been so deluded in the first place ...
She might have used her 101 film school criticism as a chance for a retrospective screening of her Donald moments.
The opening line offered a tantalising glimpse of what might have been with "God knows in the age of Trump", which suggests some sort of ambivalence in relation either to god or the Donald ...but what a short spluttering fuse that was, to a sky rocket that failed to explode and ended up in the mud ...
The hijacking of our psychology by social media companies? But what of the hijacking of our psychology by the Murdochians, the reptiles at the lizard Oz, the Donald?
Might not Dame Slap have used the occasion for a little reflection, a little introspection? Not really, it's so easy to blame social media for being persuasive and pervasive, without mentioning those who use it, and the Donald and his nefarious, demagogic, authoritarian purposes ...
Uh huh, but speaking of self-harm, what about those deluded souls who donned the MAGA cap and stepped out into the streets? Has the Dame got nothing to say about them, those poor benighted, lost souls, swamped by a zillion tweets?
Talk about addictive dangers! And yet still Dame Slap can't talk about her addiction to the Donald ...
Yes, yes, but what happens when a tool falls into the hands of a dangerous sociopath. After all, as the NRA is fond of saying, Twitter doesn't kill people, it's people who kill people, and it's only when Twitter falls into the wrong hands that you need someone else with Twitter to battle it out in the wild streets of Tron ... while citizens scuttle from the weird blue and orange wonder ...
And so to the last Dame Slap gobbet, and for once the pond found a moment of shared thinking ...
She's right. Is there anything more nauseating than virtuous Xians? People holding up bibles, having cleared the streets just so they could? Mike Pence rabbiting on about adultery, until he could get it on with an adulterer and pussy grabber ... and so on and so forth, not to mention all the ones that want to get back to church so they can resume fleecing their flock, at a small and humble price, the virus and death ...
And yet Dame Slap still can't bring herself to talk of the Donald and his ways ... though it's clear enough, if you can look for a nanosecond without blinking ...
He is a crook, and a wittering, twittering one at that. And so to the final chore for the day, but let us not underestimate the task ...
Yes, it's hagiography, prattling Polonius style, but being nattering "Ned", done at excessive length, so long that the pond decided it had to scale this Everest without the help of cartoons ... because we are all Keynesians now, and what a wonder and a marvel that Kudelka shot is ... please, consider buying a hit now ...
Ah, the reader with a memory longer than a gnat or a reptile will remember that this was also Polonius's line, that this was a truly rooly unique financial crisis, and therefore not comparable to any other global recession or crisis of the 2008 kind, because...well, because that would be awkward ... and hagiographers hate the awkward ...
Indeed, indeed, it takes inordinate and practised reptile skill to sort out Liberal Keynesians from Labor Keynesians, because it would never do to say we are all Keyensians now, Hayek who, what, where ...
Ah yes, there must have been a booster in "Ned's" Kudelka shot, because he remembered it's all the fault of the premiers ...
Hmm, perhaps "Ned" needs yet another booster shot. He remembered the evil premiers, but he seems to have forgotten the way forward, the promised land ... should Kudelka remind him?
It's gas that'll get the job done, gas and mountains of debt, and we might yet manage to fuck the planet.
And there you have it, the hagiography done for the day, and please, let us have no talk of women, not when you're a complacent old fart scribbling for the lizard Oz ...
Indeed, indeed, women have never had it so good (nor have blacks or anyone in search of housing).
And with that the pond has done its duty, and been impressed at the way that a jab of the Kudelka needle can produce such startling results.
Has he got any further advice? Well yes, he also explains how to become a Delphic Oracle and understand the reptiles, the Donald, love, pain and the whole damn thing, and that's more than enough for a meditative Sunday closer ...
Polonius: "In the GFC, Australia suffered only one quarter of GDP decline, meaning there was no recession."
ReplyDeleteIt's a simple pattern, isn't it: reptiles and wingnuts just can't understand that the extent of the pandemic in Australia has been kept small by the strong measures (lockdowns etc) taken against it and that's why Australia, even including Victoria, isn't suffering anywhere near as much as the vast majority of other places. And. likewise, the effect of the GFC was kept relatively small in Australia by the strong measures (government spending) taken against it and that's why Australia didn't suffer anywhere near as much as the vast majority of other places and there was no recession (close, though).
In short, as we've all noted quite often: the better that prophylaxis measures or fixes and cures work, the more that idiot reptiles and wingnuts will protest that they weren't needed.
"... it's still financial meltdown, all global ones at that, and the cure you take is the same for meltdowns ... go heresy, go debt, go Keynes!" Quite so, DP, and bleedin' bloody obvious to anybody with a brain bigger than a virus, which obviously excludes reptiles, wingnuts and Coalition politicians.
But the Polonius rant continues about Menzies and the outbreak of war in 1939: "He immediately presided over an increase in defence expenditure and borrowed to finance it. It's what all good governments do in response to economic or military crises."
Well, no it isn't, it isn't what the government did in response to the economic crisis of the Great Depression - just the total opposite in fact as required by Otto Niemeyer from the Homeland. And Polonius never mentions the Great Credit Squeeze of 1961 - now is that just possibly because the Menzies/Holt Credit Squeeze of 1961 was imposed by Coalition economic incompetence not by "external factors" ?
Anyway, if you're at all curious to know:
https://www.smh.com.au/business/its-half-a-century-since-australia-received-the-holt-jolt-20100222-orwn.html
And more inclusively:
https://www.crikey.com.au/2018/10/31/credit-squeeze-robert-gottliebsen/
GB - thank you for the reminders of the beautifully co-ordinated management of the economy that Liberals gave us with the ’61 ‘credit squeeze’.
DeleteIts effects were greatly exacerbated by Garfield Barwick’s simon-pure Trade Practices impositions, where were just filtering through small business. Small business - the supposed natural constituency of the Liberals, then and now.
At that time, many small businesses, particularly in rural Australia, operated under ‘agency’ arrangements, which required a particular kind of financial ‘floor plan’ for substantial items of stock.
Nothing that I can recall indicated that Barwick had any understanding of how all this operated. To be fair, neither did he initiate the ‘credit squeeze’, but he was in the Cabinet that, presumably, endorsed it - still without Barwick knowing, or being briefed on, its likely effects following his own disruptions to business.
So businesses that had been around for a generation or more, employing locals, training apprentices, servicing rural industries, were told, with a couple of days notice, that their local finance source would not rollover their floor plan, in part because Barwick’s rules had destroyed the security value of the agency itself.
Which pretty much left the option of a ‘fire sale’ of stock and - close the doors. It was a turning point for many country towns.
Of course, there was at least one lot of exemptions - for the ‘tied newsagency’ arrangements. A concession to the rising Rupert Murdoch, presiding over a trade in the rights to distribute his publications all over the country. Those exemptions lasted until Rupert no longer needed them, and, overnight, discounted the amounts people had paid for those agencies, effectively to zero.
Now that I was certainly not aware of - at least not consciously - Chad, so thanks for that. I do find that for "conservatives", the 1961 Credit Squeeze is like Monckton and Trump for Slappy: never to be even passingly alluded to ever again.
DeleteBut I remember the 1961 credit squeeze very well - after a 'gap year' in 1961 itself, 1962 was to be my first year of uni. That was the year that I and my father - a highly experienced and very well regarded bricklayer of about 35 years standing in his trade - found out about how Australians - back then at least - did pick their own country's fruit in the Mildura and Robinvale sultana harvest area. And I later did the berry harvest in the Dandenongs area too.
Could not resist some play with words. Yesterday DP cautioned that ‘our Gracie risks being burned at the stake.’
ReplyDeleteThis morning, on ‘Catallaxy’ she is being burned by the Kates (see what I did there?), essentially for straying from the path of Rupert. Then, in the endless recycling that we are familiar with, Kates repeats ‘comments’ from the Flagship, to show that other people (or dogs - the Steiner cartoon is framed on my wall) agree with him.
The ‘Catallaxy ‘ intellects join in for a while - but then meander off into their more favoured occupation of sniping at each other for solecisms in expressing the libertarian orthodoxy. I mean, why go to the trouble of commenting on a blog if you can’t include some sand-box level spiteful abuse?
Don’t bother consulting any of that, it is not entertaining - and you really can feel IQ points seeping away as you read down the comments on the comments.
So there really is a 'Kates' on the von Mises-Hayek blog. Hucoodanode.
DeleteBut if that helps pitch her out of the Murdoch paws and into something I can actually read her on, I'm all for it. It would even be a kind of compliment if sKate and his loony tribe weren't so mentally deprived.
Well now, what about Dame Slap today. Yep, DP, she is "religiously" (ha ha) avoiding any mention of the Donald as indeed she has been for some time now. But then when I think about Flinty's thought-free puppy love, and the Bromancer's devotional bromancing for Trump, I'm just mildly relieved. But have no fear, she won't be able to keep it up for long and pretty soon the MAGA cap will be waving again.
ReplyDeleteBut here, just for today, is a genuine Slappy whappy: "Listening to Harris ... is not unlike listening to the zealousness of a reformed smoker who talks a lot about the slippery slope or someone who has found religion after a very naughty life."
Wau, is that a confession or what: to Dame Slap, her addictions to Moncktons and Trumps is just like the addiction of a compulsive smoker, and trying to get free is just like trying to overcome a lifetime of being naughty in the eyes of god. Oooh, watch this space.
Now moving right along to Nullius Ned, he gives us his habitual output of a long, slow rumbling brainfart in jejune admiration of the SloMo and Josh show. Oh, how unimaginably wonderful they are. So nothing to see there.
But I did enjoy this: "...incurring a massive debt now to be paid by future generations". "Future generations" ? That means that none of the currently live and earning generations will be paying it, yes ? So, there will be a 25 year hiatus, until the first of the "next generations" gets established into the tax-paying economy ? And just how many generations will be paying for it - 2 at least ? So in 2045 (25 years hence) and for the next 50 years at least (two generations) the debt will be paid back by "next generations" employed Aussie taxpayers.
Or is it just maybe possible that every tax-paying Aussie from now on will be paying it back and that maybe it just won't take an elapsed 75 years to reduce the debt to a tolerable level.
And why is it that senile old noodlenuts like Ned keep on spouting this "future generations" nonsense when almost all of the reptiles have given up on that old codger's tale ? Just like applauding Keynes and ignoring the Donald.
But then he ruins it: "The longer one assesses the budget the more one is struck by the government's reluctance to commit to serious structural reform that will be contested." Whoops, SloMo'n'Josh are squibbing the hard bits. Oh my my, so it will all be for nothing after all ?
And that means that when SloMo and CorMo "...took aim at Labor for making women a central theme of its budget critique, pointing out that female labour force participation had previously reached a record under the government", well nothing will be done because the women will just have to learn to put up and shut up because of that "previous record".