Each morning the pond wakes up wondering what fresh delights the reptiles might produce in the herpetarium …
And look, there's the Major in his glass house, talking of degrees … and so the pond rushed off to the Major's wiki listing to check on his many degrees and his academic expertise, with particular emphasis on his qualifications - Greg Hunters can do it here - and came away with the news that he seems to have started as a cadet at the age of 17, didn't have a blessed degree to his name, but was an expert, if failed, hunter of Order of Lenins …
Funnily enough, the reptiles also failed to mention the Major's many economics degrees …
Does it take an economics expert to recognise the need for an economics expert? Does a cackling goose know how to fly? Could the ABC do with an expert in Order of Lenin hunting?
There's nothing like a Monday morning in the herpetarium to get the pond into shallow waters - no need to get into the deeper philosophies on a cereal box - and callooh callay, what joy, there was also a rolling Stone gathering no moss, but producing a tempting array of delights for your average onion muncher …
Some might think it passing desperate that the reptiles have to drag the rolling Stone out of the closet to endorse the onion muncher - after all, according to the Greg Hunters attending his wiki, the lad was born in January 1929, which - carry the one and add the 18 - means the lad is of an age …
But the reptiles aren't ageist and nor is the pond. After all, if the point is to have angry old men shouting at clouds, they certainly need to be old …
Trust the man who gave us knighthoods to tell it like it is?
Well the pond can go along with that. Scott Morrison is clearly a shameful twit, prone to faulty analysis, and worse, erroneous claims, and is notoriously duplicitous, and an under-handed double dealing dog of duplicity, and deeply wrong, and if anyone carefully framed a parliamentary question (please, take care) he'd fold like a pack of trick playing cards.
Vote him out, vote him out, vote the lot of them out …
Well the pond can go along with that. Scott Morrison is clearly a shameful twit, prone to faulty analysis, and worse, erroneous claims, and is notoriously duplicitous, and an under-handed double dealing dog of duplicity, and deeply wrong, and if anyone carefully framed a parliamentary question (please, take care) he'd fold like a pack of trick playing cards.
Vote him out, vote him out, vote the lot of them out …
And then we can have the pleasure of ending The Insiders with comrade Bill and his Rocky coal miner speechifying …though truth to tell, such was the agony, the pond had to leave early ...
Now around this point it's possibly becoming clear that the pond isn't that interested in the actual debate.
There are plenty of others that have bitten on the lure … how it glimmers and glistens in the water ...
There are plenty of others that have bitten on the lure … how it glimmers and glistens in the water ...
Oh they were banging on about economics degrees in Fairfax here …
Where's the Major when he's needed? And they were at it hammer and tongs at the Graudian, with Greg Jericho here, and Infrastructure Australia here …
But the pond isn't interested in the argument, so much as in the effectiveness of the trolling. The old onion muncher's still got the magic, and the old rolling Stone knows how to troll ...
Indeed, indeed, because young Australians have shown an extraordinary desire to rush into the fields and pick fruits …
And so the cry, 'they's takin' our jobs' rang out around the land ...
Well, there's no need to have a degree in economics to know what's going on here, and that's just as well, because the pond still wakes up covered in sweat in the middle of the night recalling the horrors of economic history units and Sir Lewis Namier … what a strange mix he was, English gentleman and East European Jew, a perfect example of the onion muncher thesis …
No, the entire point has nothing to do with economics, it has to do with the greater glory of the onion muncher and his quest to stay atop the pond's banner, and perhaps to resume his mastery of the universe in due course …
In the meantime, there's much populist, mindless mischief to perform, and much muck in the stables to rake, and also time to serve as inspiration for glorious cartoons of the Rowe kind.
By golly, the Rowe is firing on all cylinders of late, and there's more compelling Rowe sights here …if you can possibly get past this haunting image ...
No degree? Judging by their raft of "experts" on climate, energy, telecommunications & environment I had assumed they saw a relevant qualification as some sort of impediment to reporting.
ReplyDeleteIn any case, a degree in economics never seems to confer much understanding. It's more a religion than a science - it can mean whatever you want it to mean. If you are working for Treasury or the RBA you have to conform to a strict orthodoxy or you will be cast out. If you are employed in academia you may be able to follow the facts a bit more closely without treading on important toes. All very predictable.
Very much like a religion, Bef; indeed very much like the so-called Christian religion with a plethora of sects and cults and schisms and splinters and organised heresies. And even a proto-Pope and Vatican at one stage (Milton Friedman and the University of Chicago).
ReplyDeleteEven Australia has various factions with their various belief axioms and ideologies - and the occasional heretic such as Steve Keen (still no housing bubble burst yet).
Just the usual state of mutual ignorance and disdain in rationalist versus empiricist convictions.
Yes, the Austrians & Keynesian are in a sort of hundred years war. There has been a lot of clever stuff done pointing out their errors in data analysis or the rather hokey assumptions they both make about human behaviour but they just blunder on repeating their creeds. I think it is because the discipline is a bit incestuous - they only tend to listen to their own. Mandelbrot, among others, pointed out errors in traditional methods & assumptions but nothing ever seems to get through.
ReplyDelete