Brookes News Update

Australian economy, recession and the trade cycle : The RBA's monetary policy is something we should be deeply concerned about, especially when we use a historical perspective
The US economy in the '90s was never what it seemed under Greenspan: The Fed failed to understand what happened to the American economy in the 1990s. This is why it could not explain the impending recession. Now it is repeating the same mistakes
Liberal Government fails on labour market reform and the right throws a tantrum: Why, after more than 20 years of intellectual grandstanding, our rightwing failed dismally to persuade the great majority of Australians that effective minimum wage rates destroy jobs
Labour market reform versus unemployment: Keith Hancock, former research officer for the ACTU is another critic of market solutions who never allows economic reasoning to reveal the role unions played in creating our unemployment problem
Paul Krugman lies about social security and slimes Bush: May Paul Krugman sink like the sun in the West and fade from memory

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ELSEWHERE

Plain speaking from Australia's conservative leadership: "Peter Costello is urging radical Muslim clerics to leave Australia if they do not share the nation's values ahead of today's national terrorism summit organised by the Prime Minister. As Muslim leaders gather in Canberra to discuss the spread of Islamic fundamentalism, the Treasurer has warned Australia cannot afford to be ambivalent about the teachings of extremists. John Howard has urged Islamic leaders to take a greater role inrejecting violence but he has been more restrained than the Treasurer. "If you don't like those values, then don't come here. Australia is not for you," Mr Costello said yesterday. "This is the way I look at it: Australia is a secular society, with parliamentary law, part of the Western tradition of individual rights."

An excellent speech about Leftist intellectuals: "Vaclav Klaus, President of the Czech Republic, spoke to the Mont Pelerin Society meeting in Iceland about the attraction which intellectuals feel for socialism and similar ideologies. He quoted Hayek's observation that intellectuals are drawn to visions and ideas, as well as to systems which accord them a greater share of influence and power. Intellectuals feel 'under-valued' by the market, in that it puts a value on them less than they think appropriate. The case Klaus put was that the 'hard' version of socialism (ie communism) might be over, but the weak versions, including social democracy, the welfare state, and the 'social model,' now posed the threat of big and patronizing government, high regulation, and large-scale income redistribution. Intellectuals are attracted to this type of thinking because it elevates their importance and the chance to impose their ideas on a world which would otherwise reject them."

What an inspiration! "Mart Laar told the Mont Pelerin Society in Reykjavik that when he became prime minister of Estonia in 1992, after it regained its indepenendence, inflation was at 1,000 percent, the economy was shrinking by 30 percent a year, unemployment stood at 30 percent, and they depended on Russia for 92 percent of their trade. His government championed property rights through privatization, introduced free trade by abolishing tariffs, and pursued tax competition via a flat tax. Guess what? They have stable growth of between 6 and 7 percent. Inflation is 2.5 percent. The budget is balanced, unemployment is low, and they have a very high level of investment.

Canada has still got a navy?? "Canada is sending its navy back to the far northern Arctic port of Churchill after a 30-year absence. The visit by two warships to the area is the latest move to challenge rival claims in the Arctic triggered by the threat of melting ice. The move follows a spat between Canada and Denmark, over an uninhabited rock called Hans Island in the eastern Arctic region. A visit there by Canada's defence minister last month angered the Danes".

Betsy Newmark has an update on the official investigation into the lying Prof. Ward Churchill. Looks like there's a chance he might eventually get the boot.

The latest from the People's Democratic Republic of Venezuela: "Chavez gave a new vote of confidence to Castro's communist government Sunday, calling it a ''revolutionary democracy'' in which the Cuban people rule. People ''have asked me how I can support Fidel if he's a dictator,'' Castro said. ''But Cuba doesn't have a dictatorship -- it's a revolutionary democracy.''... During the nearly six-hour show, Castro and Chavez talked mainly about their joint social ventures, particularly in the health sector. Cuba has sent a fifth of its doctors to work in poor communities in Venezuela, in gratitude for massive shipments of Venezuelan oil under preferential terms."

Anarchists and jihadists: "Bombs, beards and backpacks: these are the distinguishing marks, at least in the popular imagination, of the terror-mongers who either incite or carry out the explosions that periodically rock the cities of the western world. A century or so ago it was not so different: bombs, beards and fizzing fuses. The worries generated by the two waves of terror, the responses to them and some of their other characteristics are also similar. The spasm of anarchist violence that was at its most convulsive in the 1880s and 1890s was felt, if indirectly, in every continent. It claimed hundreds of lives, including those of several heads of government, aroused widespread fear and prompted quantities of new laws and restrictions. But it passed. Jihadism is certainly not a lineal descendant of anarchism: far from it. Even so, the parallels between the anarchist bombings of the 19th century and the Islamist ones of today may be instructive..."

British Muslim leaders 'in denial' claim: "Britain's most powerful Islamic body is "in denial" about the prevalence of extreme views among its members, one of its founders has told the BBC. The Muslim Council of Britain (MCB) pledged to tackle extremism "head on" after the 7 July attacks in London. But in a BBC Panorama special, Mehbood Kantharia and other prominent British Muslims question the MCB's commitment to meeting this challenge. The MCB has branded the programme "deeply unfair" and a "witch-hunt".... Mehbood Kantharia was a member of the MCB's central working committee between 1997 and 2004, but has since left the organisation. He told Panorama: "It is my personal view that because they are in a state of denial they cannot become real, you know, sort of like, forthright, really forthright about wanting to do something about the kind of extremism that prevails."

For more postings, see EDUCATION WATCH, GREENIE WATCH, POLITICAL CORRECTNESS WATCH, GUN WATCH, SOCIALIZED MEDICINE. Mirror sites here, here, here, here and here. And on Social Security see Dick McDonald

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Practically all policies advocated by the Left create poverty. Leftists get the government to waste vast slabs of the country's labour-force on bureaucracy and paperwork and so load the burden of providing most useful goods and services onto fewer and fewer people. So fewer useful goods and services are produced to go around. That is no accident. The Left love the poor. The Left need the poor so that they can feel good by patronizing and "helping" them. So they do their best to create as many poor people as possible.

The Big Lie of the late 20th century was that Nazism was Rightist. It was in fact typical of the Leftism of its day. It was only to the Right of Stalin's Communism. The very word "Nazi" is a German abbreviation for "National Socialist" (Nationalsozialistisch)

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