So it's not just the flu? Well waddya know, Killer?
And now to the winner of this heat, and of course it had to be the bromancer, aided by a poignant juxtaposition ...
Axis of hate barracking for Biden?
What do The New York Times, the Communist Party of China, the mullahs' regime in Iran and antique, ruined, ancient Troy of Bramston have in common? They are all desperately keen to see Donald Trump defeated.
Say what? What do The New York Times, the Communist Party of China, the mullahs'
regime in Iran, antique, ruined ancient Troy of Bramston ... and the bromancer himself ... have in common? They all think that the Donald deserves to be defeated...
On balance, the bromancer is at one with the mad mullahs, and Xi and Troy and more than a few billion others?
How did the bromancer weasle word his way out of that one?
There you go, the bromancer won this day's heat by cheating ... by starting out yesterday with startling stupidities, wondrous nonsense and classic fatuous bromancer word dribble ...
Oh that's got to be worth a Rowe ...
There's more Row here as always, and so we swing on to the bromancer's winning performance in the heats this day ...
As usual, the reptiles got it right, juxtaposing the bromancer with a sociopathic, narcissist, populist, authoritarian, dictator-worshipping, con artist doing the fist pump of power - by golly did you watch John Oliver do over fucked up monarchist, dictator-worshipping Billy Barr, and the fucked up Donald's virus response? Thank the long absent lord for YouTube pirates ... because the pirate on the torrents who fucked up his transfer should be banished for life ...
Sorry, where were we again? Oh, the winning entry, better get started, it's always a long haul with any reptile ...
William Evanina? Your honour the pond rises to oppose the appointment of William Evanina, for his failure to protect whistle blowers ...
He still got the gig and whistle blowers still aren't protected? Never mind, on with the bromancer ...
Ah the bromancer, what a joy he is, what a winner. The Russians did it, but the Russians did nothing, nothing I tells ya ... but please, in the interim, note how the reptiles decided to illustrate the bromancer with a happy snap of the Donald and one of his deep affections. You almost wonder if they decided to get a branding done in the style recorded in The Vow ... talk about high class, weird, actor-driven shit, cult soapie cranked up to eleven, the sort of cult soapie you can also find in Surry Hills at reptile HQ ...
Sorry, the famine induced in the hunger games is already sending the pond a little weird, as if the bromancer wasn't enough already ...
Say what? The reptiles themselves were so bored with the bromancer that at that very point they decided to slip in another snap of the Donald with a dictator, another romance that got a little rocky, but not rocky enough to get in the road of the Donald paying his Chinese taxes and scoring a China loan and a China bank account, and Ivanka getting her China patents ...
But that means the pond is running out of room to insert cartoons as interstitials ... by golly these hunger games are hard ...
Already at the final gobbet, and the bromancer is ready for a bit of climate science denialism, because spending money on the military to bomb each other is the right way forward for the planet?
Sure thing ... and that's why the bromancer's love of the impending rapture will be tough to defeat in future hunger games ...
Is there some cryptic message in that final image, showing someone sensible enough to be wearing a mask in these troubled times?
But why end with a photo of a mad mullah instead of further bromancer insights? Well the bromancer doesn't specialise in insights ...rampant stupidity and celebrating the arrival of an overheated planet is more his thing ...
And so to a final cartoon, as noted and linked to by a pond correspondent, but also worth celebrating by the pond because in recent times the pond has run more than a few of Toles's cartoons, and the pond farewells him with a tear ...
We all eventually fall aside in the hunger games, but better to fall as a Toles, than as a monumental fuckwit of the bromancer kind ...
ReplyDeleteMy Source sent me the Killer’s contribution for this day, in part because some of it made sense to her. Oh - there was also something labelled ‘economics’ from the Dame, but seems it is her usual grizzle that industrial relations is a mess - apparently with no suggestion from her time spent with groups researching labour economics on how that mess might be given the Marie Kondo treatment.
Back to the Creighton. Yes - for a couple of paragraphs I thought he might be working up to say something useful, but his clincher was -
’Prosperity is . . . a consequence of technological progress and more efficient allocation of resources.
On the former, we’re hostage to fortune. On the latter, we need much more: such as tackling waste in the supply of healthcare, financial services and education - and, of course, government itself.’
Yes, he might lapse into writing something that other economists might recognise as useful discussion - but he remains aware that he must endorse to the ideology before he signs off.
We are ‘hostage to fortune’ with technological progress? Well, you were saved my comments for some of last week, into the weekend, because what the supplier earnestly assures me is ‘NBN’ was not available because it is transmitted from a tower, and the power to the tower was having some problems. So - NBN was a bit happenstance. This over the days when the Royal Commission into National Natural Disaster Arrangements issued its report, which had a lot to say about communication in areas prone to bushfires, like the kind that went past our estate within the last year.
Hostage to fortune? Hostage to the lingering brain snaps of an Onion Muncher.
But the real clincher was his nomination of examples for ‘efficient allocation of resources’. Not just tackling waste. Externalities - like the floating seas of discarded plastic - are implicitly inefficiencies, but they are disregarded by that Scandinavian economist Jobson Grouth. No - the Killer invites us to focus on waste in healthcare. It would help if he were a little more specific - does he mean the costs of prolonging the lives of oldies, who are gonna go anyway? Does he consider inculcating good habits for eating and activity in children a cost or a potential benefit? How about HPV vaccination?
Presumably the reference to financial services is the standard swipe at directors of industry superannuation funds, but we have to guess. Financial services must be inherently inefficient, because anyone who hints at applying the ’S’ part of the GST more widely to financial services, invites a massive campaign to show that that would destroy our beloved free market system almost overnight.
Education? Nah - life is too short to try to divine his direction there.
And, of course, government. Yes - but the Enclosure Acts, removal of mineral rights from land tenure, land resumption for railways and roads, zoning of urban land and a thousand and one other things that are so much the function of government that they no longer register in the minds of most people - have been the significant promoters of efficient allocation of resources. Not necessarily promoters of equality, but it is difficult to demonstrate how the ‘market’, in isolation, actually delivers high levels of efficiency of allocation, and it is unashamedly given to inequality.
Sorry, went on a bit, but - it is sad to see a column that starts with apparent understanding slip so easily into the Murdoch morass.
Glad you're back "on air" Chad, and especially with an extended comment that quite matches the new 'hunger bungler' style of extended response to but a single reptile per day. Not such a bad thing really - when Nullius Ned is the day's winner, we'll be able to do commentary that's as numbingly verbose as the nonsense he delivers.
DeleteNow mind, DP has had occasional episodes of at least partial withdrawal: the effort becomes too demanding and too unrewarding at the same time. So she takes some leave, relaxes, slowly recuperates and then, one day, two reptiles get up her nose on the same day, and wham ! So let us sincerely hope that this will befall the pond again. And in the meantime we can dissect the single daily reptile in exquisite detail as you have done with The Killer today.
Also, here is an incredible technological advance that is sure to revolutionise building:
Five-story building 'walks' to new home in China
https://www.upi.com/Odd_News/2020/10/30/Five-story-building-walks-to-new-home-in-China/4451604077447/
And apart from that, weren't you just a tad unrealistic to expect anything even remotely resembling coherence from The Killer ? You know he just does a semi-random lookup of key words and phrases from the catechism he's been supplied with and then strings them together to the great approbation of his fellow herpetarium residents.
Now, on with the designated show.
Throwaway lines about waste and misallocation of resources tie in with the sort of mean-spirited parsimonious attitude that conservatives tend to conflate with good management - "look after the pennies etc". It saves thinking about how you might actually have to organise something yourself.
DeleteConsider the American healthcare system for example. Basically, worse outcomes at greater cost. To quote Homer J Simpson "America’s healthcare system is second only to Japan, Canada, Sweden, Great Britain… well, all of Europe. But you can thank your lucky stars we don’t live in Paraguay!"
Bitching about something is a different thing to having an alternate plan.
I heard an epidemiologist quoted yesterday saying that Victoria's response had validated self policed stay at home quarantine. How different to Giddy Rozer being interviewed by Laura Ingraham about the horrors of Vic lock down.
It's all rather like the revision of the GFC response from huge success to utter failure.
It isn't always necessary to have an alternate plan; sometimes it's just a matter of smoothing out the wrinkles in the plan you've got. But ideological privatisation (Medibank) or privatisation by stealth (Aussie Post) isn't any kind of "alternate" plan, is it.
DeleteWingnuts, and especially reptiles, have never ever understood what the term "public spirited" means - and even if they do get an inkling, they would never understand why any "non-crazy" person would act that way unless there's either a gun to their head or a big bag of bucks at the end - or both.
And that's why some "very crazy" self approving libertarians had to cop some serious punishment. Apropos of which I see that the Liberal woman who took the curfew to court lost the decision but claims to have won anyway because the curfew was removed a whole 5 hours before the court gave its decision that the curfew was, and is, legal under the circumstances.
So don't try to tell the wingnuts that it was the Gang of Four who saved us from the GFC. Just like it wasn't FDR who saved America from the Great Depression.
Got a couple of spare hours? This from Some More News is well worth while.
ReplyDeletehttps://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Yj-wc9qugGY&feature=youtu.be
Started watching it, but 2hs15min is a long time to stay awake and focussed. :-(
DeleteThose RBA dvckheads have done it again; one more totally ineffective, totally useless cash rate decrease - now down to 0.1% which, given an inflation rate of 1.43% is a significantly negative interest rate for anybody with money in a bank. In short, you lose money by leaving it in the bank, so if you have anything better to do with it, then now is definitely way past time.
ReplyDeletePS: it simply won't do a single thing to "stimulate" the economy just as a raft of previous reductions hasn't: if the RBA's reductions achieved any stimulatory effect, the inflation rate would be closer to the 2%-3% target and interest rate cuts wouldn't be needed.
"They feel they've got to do something, even though it won't work." And they've felt that quite a few times and hence reduced the cash rate often only to have to keep on doing it and keep on failing to produce a positive result.
So when they reduce it to 0% next time, will that give them pause or will the next change be to -0.1%, then -0.25%, then ...
So, here's a simple question: in the current economic circumstances, if RBA action puts more cash into the hands of businesses, do the businesses invest it in job creating expansions, or do they just engage in share buybacks which simply transfer the money - via bonuses rather than dividends - into the hands of "those at the top".
GB, and Befuddled - with 'profitless prosperity' a likely outcome of current, so-called economic management, it is interesting to revisit the period that has become known as the 'Second Stadtholderless Period' for the Netherlands - in the first half of the 18th century. The Dutch, having developed much of what became standard procedures of international commerce, and having accumulated lots of capital from their East India 'VOC', steadily dissipated their advantages, much as we are doing now.
DeleteEven though events in the Netherlands in that period were linked strongly with what was happening in England, I could find no mention of this in the high school history texts that my offspring had. I suppose this again confirms the adage that the lesson we learn from history is that we don't learn from history.
but... but... interest rates will always be lower under a coalition government.
DeleteUmm, no Bef, taxes are always lower under a coalition government - interest rates are high because that's how rentiers make their fortune.
DeleteBut, butt Chad, that's how it always happens at basically every level of society from empire on down to households and even individualls: those who, with many false starts and valuable "lessons of experience", who made the successful enterprise depart and die off over time and with each succeeding cycle of replacement, the knowledge and experience gained dribbles away until only a shadow remains.
It is, in fact, a stock standard progression from unknown unknowns to known unknowns to known knowns and then, increasingly, to unknown knowns (the things we once knew but now have forgotten). That cycle does repeat sometimes, but not often, so once 'empire' is lost it is very seldom regained.
Thus we do indeed learn from history, Chad, only to then, with a changing cast, forget whatever it was that we learned.
On behalf of Matt I will offer this
Deletehttps://www.smh.com.au/politics/federal/labor-means-rate-rises-pm-claims-20040830-gdjn7u.html
"He went so far as to pledge rates would always be lower under a Coalition government"
Of course, once it is seen as a bad thing "rates will always be lower under a Labor government".
Not disagreeing with what you are saying regarding snouts and troughs however.
I was, being an old rentier myself, just a tad 'tongue in cheek', Bef. But I see that Howard said "It is an historic fact ..." thus showing that in the distinction between 'a' and 'an' he knew that a leading 'h' counted as a vowel. Hence 'an hotel' and the famous quote from Howard's Hero (aka Bob) who, when asked by the uneducated Labor MP "What would you put in front of 'ouses ?" replied "I'd put an 'h'." Oh such an educational place, Menzies' parliament.
DeleteBut of course, when the cash rate goes low, us rentiers, depending for a positive return on the interest paid by banks on term deposits, are left out of the equation. Thus we will have to push for the Age Pension to be increased which of course means somebody else has to miss out because we must keep the government revenue take down.
And also, low interest rates encourage lots of house buying which drives up house prices and tends to keep the young out of the housing market. Hence the government must conduct a 'lottery' to fund some lucky youthfulls to be able to buy a house on low deposit and/or to buy a more expensive first house than they really can afford. Does this begin to sound like the faint echo of a GFC ?
But, of course, it's simply about the Conservatives finding a way to project every single thing that Labor does as 'destructive to the economy', and, despite decades of examples of how often and how much the Connies have screwed up the economy, the shrewd Australian voter just knows that "you can't trust Labor with the economy".
And so the whole cycle repeats: unknown unknowns -> known unknowns -> known knowns -> unknown knowns. And it is that final state that we spend most of our lives in, thus showing that "we never learn from history".
Thanks for those pointers, Chad; some interesting reading on Stadtholders (or their absence) and on:
Delete"During the period [the Second Stadtholderless] the Republic lost its Great-Power status and its primacy in world trade, processes that went hand-in-hand, the latter causing the former. Though the economy declined considerably, causing deindustralization and deurbanization in the maritime provinces, a rentier-class kept accumulating a large capital fund that formed the basis for the leading position the Republic achieved in the international capital market."
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Second_Stadtholderless_period
And a couple of other delightful comments:
"Tesla is the largest fraud that will explode the current Profitless Prosperity Sector bubble consisting of unprofitable companies without a competitive moat requiring further equity injections to execute their strategy."
https://medium.com/0xvlad/1-min-summary-of-the-profitless-prosperity-sector-will-collapse-by-kuppy-f7d5cdb3f0b5
"Is it just me? Or have investors in loss-making US technology companies, like Uber, gone completely insane? As a value investor, I see no good reason to fork out good money for businesses that have never made a profit, and possibly never will."
https://rogermontgomery.com/how-soon-till-we-see-the-collapse-of-profitless-prosperity/
Maybe they should invest in Chinese 'walking building' technology. ¯\_(ツ)_/¯
Concise summary GB - I am happy to send money to the 'Wiki' each year, and such entries remind me of what great value it is. I usually go to Fernand Braudel for discussion of these kinds of events - many more words, but so well written, and, in the Fontana editions, extra credit to Siân Reynolds for the translation, which is an art in itself.
Delete