The pond can't remember a Thursday being so blessed in the lizard Oz in a long time.
The bromancer leading the way, of course, but not far behind the savvy Savva, and then our Henry, still fixing that hole in the bucket, followed by an IPA-trained loon masquerading as a "contributor" rather than an MP, and to top it all off, a massively inspirational missive from the lizard Oz editorialist …
Well, the pond has no say in this, it is driven by the reptiles, and they determined that the bromancer would be blessed by a sacred offering from the cult master, and so the pond had no choice but to lay the bromancer entrails on the altar for inspection …
Is it only the pond that thought that Lobbecke was truly grotesque, though in no way up to the grotesque incompetence of Angus "pure beef", "must send a letter to the Mayor" Taylor?
Now one of the joys of reading the bromancer, no matter what the topic, is to spot a line that delivers pure pleasure and delight ...
Did anyone else share the pond's sublime pleasure? The pond almost felt like Uriah Heep, cracking knuckles and writhing about, when confronted by "There is a spectrum of opinion within the Liberal Party which is not left or right. Politicians such as Andrew Hastie …"
The pond knew at once that with his usual flash of brilliance, the bromancer was suggesting a new category in the spectrum of opinion within the Liberal party: "barking mad Xian fundamentalist". With the hastie pastie, and others, a natural fit …
Naturally the hastie pastie is delighted that we're keeping our oil parked safely … across the Pacific ocean, where it will come in handy some day no doubt … until we get around to building the storage, some day, over the rainbow ...
It's a good thing that the bromancer rarely strays into economics, but the pond commends the last two pars as an undiluted delight.
It was almost as an afterthought that the bromancer remembered that part of the Catholic Boys' Daily catechism is to always blame the unions … and say, not the bloody mindedness of the powers that be within the American corporations controlling Ford and Holden …and praise the long absent lord, he got there ...
There will be a lot more loonacy of this kind to come as the cabin fever really gets hold of the reptiles. For the pond's part, it thanks the immortal Rowe for remind it of the twanging of banjos, and the sounds of reptiles squealing like a pig …
There's more immortal Rowe here of course, with a very busy correspondence section, but perforce the pond couldn't stop for a refill, it had to move on immediately to the savvy Savva while there was still gas in the tank …
Of course it's not SloMo's problem that a few teachers might be nervous, and if any of them happened to glance at the story that led the reptile tree killer and digital editions, they might be thinking 'what the fuck?'
What virus science says it's safe? Is it coming from the same health advice that only a little while ago suggested it was fine to shake hand and trot off to the footy? But the pond digresses, and must return to the savvy Savva ...
Oh she really doesn't like SloMo that much, does she, and will she do the reptile thing, and mention that dreadful Malware 'tome' …?
Eek, she did mention Malware, she did, and what's more, she dished out some adjectives of praise, and thought he was perfectly entitled … to publish the book, as well as being perfectly entitled …
Are the reptiles completely unaware they have a heretic in their midst? Must it be left to the pond to point it out? Oh heck, have a cartoon instead, and while it's not the same as SloMo using the crisis to revive his failing, flailing reputation, it features another media hog …
And so to what can only be described as soupçon serves.
Poor Henry must be off his oats today, because he made a very short offering …
While he's short on text, naturally our Henry is outraged, and at one with others in the current crisis …
The pond had to provide a few cartoons, because in a few more pars, poor Henry was all over, a fizzer, a dud, an Oscar Wilde rocket, without the spectacular display in the sky, but with plenty of forlorn mud ...
Oh indeed, indeed …the finest economists are at work ...
And so to a final treat … the lizard Oz editorialist …in full inspirational mode … and the opening line is a wonder to behold ...
Was it only a few days ago that the red-blooded rent-seekers and schemers at the lizard Oz were howling for the blood, and revenue, of the tech giants?
The pond guarantees somewhere in any reptile text there will be rich humour, and enough irony to keep the budget in balance by exporting tons of irony abroad …
No doubt others will find their own personal highlights, but the pond has tarried too long, and must get the final gobbet out of the way ...
The pond barely understood all the reptile gobbledegook, but it seemed to be saying, forget the federal government, SloMo and the rest of his herd, and leave it to the states …
Forget SloMo? Has the conspiracy, the heresy, spread to the very centre, the very heart of darkness?
It seemed like the perfect federalist coda to federal issues elsewhere, with the same heartfelt message coming down the tubes as we had from our Henry …
The Henry decries 'gibberish', but writes 'it would make sense to identify and relax restrictions whose benefits no longer exceed their costs.' Yes, with all the careful forethought of hindsight, which so characterises his contribution today. I looked, in vain, for that tricky little concept in economics -'opportunity costs'. I guess there was a lot of competition for space in the flagship today, so the Henry might have been truncated.
ReplyDeleteWhile I am here, a small diversion (apology DP). I looked on the 'Sky News' website last night, and found that their take on the concern of Turnbull's publishers', over pirating of his book, was all about - 'copy write'. To be fair (be fair - Sky News??) that might be how they see a lot of content that comes their way.
Other Anonymous
Yair, the joy with djckheads like Henry is that they're always in favour of "tradeoffs", but they can never provide either their evaluation formula or the parameter values to be fed into it. But they've mostly ignored Paul Frijter's ludicrous attempt to do that.
DeleteThis idiot was once an Australian public servant. Is that a case of 'wingnut welfare' ?
Today in the mever ending one death at a time advanciing culture war: Henry Ergas says; "Coronavirus: Return to sender - economists' letter is gibberish"
ReplyDeletehttp://clubtroppo.com.au/2008/03/02/henry-ergas-man-of-many-parts/#comment-245421
I have this same problem with my child... "His repeated claims that the paper is unclear reflect the problems he is having matching my paper to the one he thinks he is reading."
https://johnquiggin.com/2008/01/08/ergas-v-quiggin-on-risk-and-social-democracy/
Interesting comments.
Neatly said, Anony. Thanks for the links. Especially about Henry's compulsion to do a huge amount of pointless reading (to quote Talleyrand "[He] had learned nothing and forgotten nothing.”)
DeleteTo quote Emma Dawson (has Henry ever read her ?) "Public debt is not like household debt." [ https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2020/apr/22/we-do-not-have-to-worry-about-paying-off-the-coronavirus-debt-for-generations and also https://percapita.org.au/our_work/some-facts-about-debt/ ]
Nicely retrieved, Fellow Anon. Gives a segue into Quiggin's recent 'Economics in Two Lessons', which reminds practicing economists, and seekers of knowledge, that the fundamental practice of economics should be to consider - opportunity costs.
DeleteIt also, rather sadly, marks the decline in Ergas' reasoning over these 12 years. Perhaps, for the Henry, the opportunity cost of maintaining his earlier reputation is the dollars that otherwise trickle down from the Chairman.
Other Anonymous
You know, OA, that Quiggin once claimed that Malware was a great politician and that Peter Hartcher was a great journalist. I've never been able to quite take him seriously since.
DeleteThe difficulty is - apart from everything involved in quantifying the inherently unquantifiable - just how wide is the applicability of 'opportunity cost' ? For instance, I would really like to see a rational analysis of the 'opportunity cost' associated with building the Great Wall(s) of China. And the maybe of the 'opportunity cost' of the Mongol invasion of China.
Ah, GB, can we agree that the wall was a version of defence spending (with a minor serve of some of the justifications used by Trump for his ‘great wall’ - hmm, whatever happened to the Mexican wall?).
DeleteAnyway - defence spending. As it happens, Quiggin does touch on that in the ‘Two Lessons’. The article he mentions by Barro is short, and available
https://scholar.harvard.edu/files/barro/files/01_1105_waronterror_bw.pdf
Barro does claim that for the USA, expenditure for wars, not on continental soil, showed a boost to the economy of the order of 60-70 cents for every dollar outlay. Barro is another Fellow of the Hoover Institution, which we last remarked on in the interview by Epstein on these pages just last weekend, and which invites caution.
Comparing brick and stone walls with, say, jet fighter aircraft, we should also apply a very different discount rate. The Ming Wall seems to have provided some defence benefit for 5 centuries, then a (hitherto unforeseen) boost to tourism. What is the service life of the Joint Strike Fighter likely to be? And, no, I don’t want to try to think of the ‘economics’ of the Australian submarines. I had hoped a modern Aussie Edmund Burke still might emerge from the submarine debacle, and his name is not Sheridan.
Other Anonymous
Ah, well considering the Chinese Walls and that hitherto unforeseen boost to tourism, I guess we can at least say that for many things we have no idea how to set time boundaries for calculating both costs and returns.
DeleteSo even when considering the Joint Strike Fighter which, in itself, may not return much direct benefit (other than the loads of dosh Australia will send to America for our lot) but may, by opening up assorted technology paths, provide a necessarily inescapable basis for very rewarding contemporary and future advancements.
And maybe not, who knows ? After all, many $billions were spent on the Apollo Moon landings for what reward ?
We did see this article on how good the French are at defence works?:"Fighter jet crash averted by defect in civil ejection incident" https://www.aerotime.aero/clement.charpentreau/24788-fighter-jet-crash-averted-by-defect-in-civil-ejection-incident?
DeleteEnjoyed that little story about the war capability of the Surrender Monkeys, Joe. Thanks.
DeleteRowe is referencing Deliverance https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gsC4kf6x_Q0. It starts slowly, but stick with it.
ReplyDeleteAnd it's got 'Duelling Banjos' !
DeleteA pretty dull day from the Bromancer and the Savvy Savva. Hardly worth the effort of typing a few warranted words of scorn. Though I did like Savvy's bit about how "...in my humble opinion Turnbull is perfectly entitled to publish his version of events". Gee, do tell, Savvy; you reckon maybe that Malware actually has some small right, with your explicit approval of course, to some "free speech" ?
ReplyDeleteSays Holely Henry: "...the burden being imposed on future generations is already enormous..."
Now Henry actually claims to have some economics competence, but there he goes, calmly repeating that reptile, and indeed wingnut in general, big lie. There is simply no "enormous burden" to be imposed on anybody.
Consider this: "At the end of the second world war, Australia’s debt was equivalent to over 120% of GDP, but Australians were not paying off this debt for generations." No we weren't, and we won't be paying back our much smaller coronavirus debt over several generations either. See:
We do not have to worry about paying off the coronavirus debt for generations Emma Dawson
https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2020/apr/22/we-do-not-have-to-worry-about-paying-off-the-coronavirus-debt-for-generations
But no, as Henry would have it: "...the tools economists have developed for analysing trade-offs are among the discipline's finest achievements." I'm so very glad that the economists, according to Henry, have it all down to economic science as to how to calculate the tradeoff between lives and dollars. But not the letter writing "bevy of economists", of course, who obviously have not applied economics' finest achievements to the situation.
As for The Editorialist, well they are casually inviting us to imagine the post they fondly imagines they are actually writing. [I'm using the 'gender neutral' form 'they' because that was the kind of mashed potatoes that any of the reptiles could have scroffed up.]
Anyway, how about this: "The crisis is a golden opportunity for state treasurers and finance ministers [hello, Tim Pallas] -- not for triage-era announceables, spending boondoggles or a lazy policy holiday."
Well no, we wouldn't want a spending boondoggle or two just because this is a population-wide matter of life or death would we. Does it include Danny-boi's $24.5 billion ?
If you really thought public debt was an issue, what would you make of the United States? The US debt to GDP ratio is over two and half times Australia's but, if you follow the money, it clearly doesn't matter.
DeleteAs someone without economics training, I cannot work out why they obsess about public debt and totally ignore household debt which seems to be a disaster in the making.
The household debt analogy is a case of replacing complex facts with a simple narrative that appeals to the banjo playing type. A friend of mine suggests that their own finances are a bit out of control so they project a responsibility onto the government to act as a sort of proxy, who does the sort of things they cannot do for themselves. Sort of like "border security" making people feel more in control or patriotism making them feel stronger.
I think that "replacing complex facts with a simple narrative" is pretty much spot on, Bef. It is the preferred mode of reptiles and their ilk.
DeleteAs to public versus private debt, I reckon they think that private debt won't affect them personally - just a bunch of over-spent under-paid people going broke at their own individual cost. Ah, but public debt, well ... austerity anyone ? There was a moment on the Channel 7 news last night where they had Jeff Kennett spruiking about multiple generation debt. Now I ask you, who believes a single word that Jeff Kennett says ?
That a lot of people going individually broke over a short period of time would screw the economy a lot worse than a bit of public debt never seems to occur to them. Any more than if nothing had been done about COVID-19, and lots of people had gotten sick and plenty had died - including those who may not have died if so many hadn't got sick over a very short period of time - that would have seriously disrupted the economy.
Have I ever mentioned 'high-decoupled' people before ?
“The pond guarantees somewhere in any reptile text there will be rich humour, and enough irony to keep the budget in balance by exporting tons of irony abroad …”....and why not? It’s worked a charm until this pesky virus came along and like a ”miracle” it is working even better. MIGA!
ReplyDeleteSupreme cartoons DP.
Well, The Bro sure has stepped through the looking glass, gone back to the future, nuked the fridge and ripped the head of the ideological baby today. No wonder he got the “satanically resigned Angus” Lobbecke.
Like a broken record, it’s BAU in the Trumpster manner.....where are those robotic D12’s?
https://www.thesaturdaypaper.com.au/news/politics/2020/04/11/angus-taylors-energy-projects-push/15865272009679
Cheery Anon.
On oil storage on home soil, I hope that none of those hundreds of crazy people who last summer got their jollies from lighting fires (I read about them in The Oz), decide that a fire in an oil storage facility would be wow, hubloodyfingmongous!
ReplyDeleteWasn't there just a little bit of that in Sydney not so long ago ? Google doesn't seem to think so, and I don't mean the fire near Mascot in January.
DeleteOf course there was the Coode Island fire in Melbourne back in 1991. That was just moderately spectacular.
I could be mistaken but I’m sure CM Lobbecke has appropriated this image in the LA Times of Bela Lugosi for his sinister take on the Angus -
ReplyDeletehttp://projects.latimes.com/hollywood/star-walk/bela-lugosi/
Relating Taylor to a vampire does follow the cult master’s thesis of exploring random thoughts. All he had to do then was google vampire images and come up with the piercing Lugosi pic. And to extend this bizarre idea why not distort the top of Angus’s head into weird devil horns for good measure? The graphic is hideous, freaky, ugly, and strange - and I have no idea what it means.
Apart from the fact that the Angus is hideous, freaky, ugly, and strange of course!
DeleteThat's a fairly innocent picture of Bela though; nothing 'vampireish' about that. But the CM vision with the ears and the 'flow' of oil ? No, I don't get it either.
Delete