I thought it interesting that it even got published bearing mind some of crap they pass off as news and current affairs and environment.

But you still have to get that list of names that need to be filed on the” never to be forgiven list” from somewhere!

Can’t help myself but I do have a soft spot the SMH letters page and cartoon and column 8. And the AFR does have infinitely more local listed co. info than the SMH would ever have. So, you know……

Having had many letters to the AFR published over the years, I discovered that once they worked out who I was, (a nasty, red-necked, capitalist) letters were then not published.

The AFR is part of the Fairfax Press and thus has it’s closed system editorial policy.

That the Pierpont column was never replaced with a modern equivalent points to the Fairfax malaise.

I would not waste time writing to it – I haven’t read the AFR for years and certainly don’t rely on it for financial news.

Expensive as it is, a subscription to the Wall Street Journal is a far better investment.

you wrote: “Its too bad that some greedy bankers screwed up the lives of so many people, and if it that was not enough, destroying the planet.”

Well, the planet is still here but your post says it is destroyed.

What does seem destroyed is your perception of reality.

Would you like another try?

Your editorial (September 13) rightly argues that an emissions reduction policy “has to withstand the blowtorch of hard analysis before it can be safely launched”. The problem is that despite calls for an independent inquiry into the scientific basis of the policy, the government has given no indication that it will undertake such an analysis. Instead it has simply assumed that the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change reports reflect scientific consensus that increasing human activity will lead to damaging increases in temperature unless emissions are reduced. The green paper even says that the government provides no warranties that the information in it is correct.

Yet it has become increasingly clear that there is no concensus. Claims that 2500 scientists who contributed to IPCC reports support its conclusions have been denied by the IPCC secretariat and a long list of scientists now reject the basis of the IPCC conclusions. This includes 31,000 American scientists as well as a number from Australia.

There’s a long list of reasons why so many scientists reject IPCC analysis. Leaving aside the cessation of temperature increases in recent years, these include analysis, acknowledged (astonishingly) even in IPCC reports themselves, showing that increasing concentrations of CO2 in the atmosphere have long ceased to have any warming effect that would justify an emissions reduction policy.

It would be grossly irresponsible for government to introduce an emissions reduction policy and it is suprising you have not called it to account. The latest Garnaut report estimates the cost of such a policy would be more than the cost of no policy reinforces the need for an independent review.

Des Moore
Institute of Private Enterprise
South Yarra Vic

Fanny and Freedie were creations of government and had become a racket of Congress. But all banks exist under license which restricts them in many ways in order to make it plausible that they be allowed to practice fractional reserve. Or the ponzi-scheme of pyramiding notional money on top of actual cash.

Since this can never work a motherload of regulation is required and these regulations are all in the form of cartelization requirements. As a poor substitute for no-pyramiding… aka 100% backing, banks are required to hold to certain capital requirements. A capital requirement is something which says “Are you already rich? Good. You can participate in our money-creation scheme in proportion to how rich you already are.”

This is so anti-competitive its ridiculous. And its against all principles of capitalism an freedom, since an important principle of any just society is that all are equal before the law. But if I started taking deposits with only 3% cash on hand backing I’d be hauled before the courts on all sorts of fraud charges.

In fact lending out half of your on-call-cash might be alright, if everyone knew you were doing it and if all other people in the same line of work agreed that you were the only one allowed to do it. But once you get two parties doing that you have pyramiding and therefore a ponzi-scheme and therefore something which is inherently fraudulent in accordance with natural law.

It may not seem that way to us. Since we have grown up all our lives with cash that gets less valuable as time goes on, and with a sort of guarantee to the on-call cash we deposit with our banks. Its not really a flat out guarantee. It involves the idea that the central bank will ease pressure on the ponzi-scheme whenever things start coming unstuck. Like all corrupt arrangements it involves a lot of factors that are not really spelled out.

A recession is simply a time when the ponzi-scheme has overshot and is now unravelling. Too much pyramid-money has been made for the cash available, all sorts of economic distortion has occurred, our trade deficit blows out even during an explosion in the terms of trade in our favour, and we have become indebted to foreigners for the privelidge of running up the price of the land that we always had prior. While our capital investment falls behind.

At the same time this bubble-creation overstates book profits and capital-gains and allows bigshots to vote themselves larger salaries every year as their actual decision-making deteriorates.

So a recession is when the ponzi-money starts dissapearing and the central bank is too damn stupid to replace it with cash money and whack in a reserve-asset-ratio to stop that cash-money from leading to a new round of counterfeiting.

Neoclassical economics is hopeless flawed in this department. Since though its leading lights were smart guys somewhere along the line they appear to have pitched their monetary-economics in such a way as to make it acceptable to bankers. And preferably Swedish bankers.

All socialist systems are bankrupt by definition :-) And finally they are starting to heed Ron Paul in the US.

Ah it’s wonderful time to be in when yet again Austrian Economics is confirmed again. The tragedy is that so many people have to suffer for the hubris of the socialists or social democrats as they like to call themselves.

http://www.kitco.com/ind/index.html#d

And what did we hear on ABC Radio at 12.15 PM today? Cash flooding into safe havens, US Treasury Bonds and gold. Why you might ask? No perceived counter-party risk. Simple. Simple as climate science.