>Swan’s panicked response to the global financial crisis does not count
Because it directly contradicts the biased thrust of the author? GFC stimulus **worked.**
endersai on
The author of this piece has also written a piece that breathlessly tries to make Trump’s economic agenda look favourable (if you squint and let your eyes defocus, it looks Reaganesque!), so they’re clearly a bit like Richard Wolff – an economist who pretends not to be compromised ideologically whilst being compromised ideologically.
>By rejecting public spending restraint, Chalmers is in effect calling for more inflation, higher interest rates or both. The Australian public, who are highly economically literate, are starting to realise this.
But this is *precisely* what is constraining Chalmers; that he has had to limit his public spending because even minimally, it’s inflationary. He’s literally been doing what he’s criticised for.
>Chalmers has also resorted to increasingly desperate attacks on the Reserve Bank – claiming its interest rate policy is ‘smashing’ the economy. As former prime minister John Howard has pointed out, this has only diminished him.
This is not entirely accurate either.
>Lightweight treasurers either have no framework at all or one that is hostile to markets and growth.
The concept is not inaccurate here, but it is inaccurately applied to Chalmers. For example, he massively expanded subsidies to renewables to help grow that market, with no direct ROI tied to the funding. Why? He thinks we need markets that can impact on GDP and GNP without being tied to houses and digging shit up.
Hard to classify this as hostile to markets and/or growth, yet Pearl does just that.
>Third, and most importantly, heavyweight treasurers get big things done. They may talk a big game, but they deliver. Lightweight treasurers, by contrast, either accomplish nothing, botch reforms they have carriage of, or satisfy themselves with rats-and-mice policy announcements
The main thing that Chalmers has done is break the Labor nostalgia for Whitlam and Frank Crean, and in a period of macroeconomic instability, he’s avoided profligate spending in favour of keep-the-lights-on as an approach born of necessity, not conviction. In other words, his hands are tied and this author would unambiguously condemn Chalmers were he to do anything different to what he’s doing now.
>While he subscribes to a form of anti-economic economics, in truth, Chalmers has no coherent economic view.
2 Comments
>Swan’s panicked response to the global financial crisis does not count
Because it directly contradicts the biased thrust of the author? GFC stimulus **worked.**
The author of this piece has also written a piece that breathlessly tries to make Trump’s economic agenda look favourable (if you squint and let your eyes defocus, it looks Reaganesque!), so they’re clearly a bit like Richard Wolff – an economist who pretends not to be compromised ideologically whilst being compromised ideologically.
>By rejecting public spending restraint, Chalmers is in effect calling for more inflation, higher interest rates or both. The Australian public, who are highly economically literate, are starting to realise this.
But this is *precisely* what is constraining Chalmers; that he has had to limit his public spending because even minimally, it’s inflationary. He’s literally been doing what he’s criticised for.
>Chalmers has also resorted to increasingly desperate attacks on the Reserve Bank – claiming its interest rate policy is ‘smashing’ the economy. As former prime minister John Howard has pointed out, this has only diminished him.
This is not entirely accurate either.
>Lightweight treasurers either have no framework at all or one that is hostile to markets and growth.
The concept is not inaccurate here, but it is inaccurately applied to Chalmers. For example, he massively expanded subsidies to renewables to help grow that market, with no direct ROI tied to the funding. Why? He thinks we need markets that can impact on GDP and GNP without being tied to houses and digging shit up.
Hard to classify this as hostile to markets and/or growth, yet Pearl does just that.
>Third, and most importantly, heavyweight treasurers get big things done. They may talk a big game, but they deliver. Lightweight treasurers, by contrast, either accomplish nothing, botch reforms they have carriage of, or satisfy themselves with rats-and-mice policy announcements
The main thing that Chalmers has done is break the Labor nostalgia for Whitlam and Frank Crean, and in a period of macroeconomic instability, he’s avoided profligate spending in favour of keep-the-lights-on as an approach born of necessity, not conviction. In other words, his hands are tied and this author would unambiguously condemn Chalmers were he to do anything different to what he’s doing now.
>While he subscribes to a form of anti-economic economics, in truth, Chalmers has no coherent economic view.
[Me right now](https://tenor.com/bmvdZ.gif).