Young Master Smeet
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http://blogs.channel4.com/paul-mason-blog/china-danger-open-currency-war/4217Paul Mason on China's devaluation and the ongoing (undeclared) currency war – take this as the context for Corbyn's People's QE, if all currencies are in freefall, then the risks are much less…
http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/business-33884836Robert Peston has some vintage snarks:
Quote:There are plenty of political moderates who question why, at a time of scarce resources, it is a priority for messrs Cameron and Osborne to give tax breaks to better-off dead people.(someone clearly thinks he is fire proof, or doesn't care)Anyway, a pretty decent breakdown on the problems with Corbyns policy:
Quote:Central banks, like the Bank of England, have an extraordinary privilege and power to magic money out of nowhere. Which is another way of saying that money has no intrinsic value, and is only worth what we as a society determine it is worth. And, in the reality of global financial capitalism, it is currency traders who decide what sterling is worth, nano-second by nano-second.(Thanks Robert, someone talking sense about currency)
Quote:Now to be clear, none of this is to argue that Jeremy Corbyn is wrong to want more investment in energy, housing and other infrastructure. But it is to say that if the Bank of England were mandated to do that, most investors would conclude that the Bank of England's primary objective was no longer to preserve the value of the currency but to finance politically popular projects….In those circumstances, sterling would weaken, with inflationary consequences – and perhaps with devastatingly inflationary consequences.A clear and balanced analysis: the policy is a bit risky and may be counter productive (it all depends on the scale).
http://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2015/aug/11/jeremy-corbyn-close-deficit-poor-labour-economy?CMP=share_btn_twJohn McDonnel joins the fray, in quite a clever article.
Quote:So alongside deficit elimination, the Corbyn campaign is advocating a fundamental reform of our economic system. This will include the introduction of an effective regulatory regime for our banks and financial sector; a full-blown Glass-Steagall system to separate day-to-day and investment banking; legislation to replace short-term shareholder value with long-term sustainable economic and social responsibilities as the prime objective of companies; radical reform of the failed auditing regime; the extension of a wider range of forms of company and enterprise ownership and control including public, co-operative and stakeholder ownership; and the introduction of a financial transactions tax to fund the rebalancing of our economy towards production and manufacturing.I've bolded what I think is the most interesting, and most unrealistic bit: it's better than nationalisation, but impossible in a world of multinational companies and the drive to make profits, some firms will be more profitable than otehrs, that can't be stopped, and firms must compete for capital and labour.
Here are the current odds at the bookies:http://www.oddschecker.com/politics/british-politics/next-labour-leaderAlthough William Hill on their live site are offfering 1/16 (it was 1/15 when I started writing this, that's how things are moving).
Ah, here we go, this is what I heard, he basically trolled the GOP debate: could you get more 21st century?http://m.dailykos.com/stories/1409563
Actually, Sander's twitter feeds make pretty good viewing:https://twitter.com/SenSandershttps://twitter.com/BernieSandersYes, not our politics, but, hell, from the US it's pretty out there (from their mainstream, never mind ours).OK, he talks about the "billionaire class" but, that's actually quite clever. Think I may steal that.
Ineresting, the IWC material appears to be available (badly scanned) here:http://www.socialistrenewal.net/node/121
Yes, it's economic bunkum : although increased population would suggest that it wuld decrease GDP pr capita,inward migration has a positive effect on GDP (more work gets done), and productivity growth should do the rest…
Although there was an element of squeze in th election campaign against Corbyn, at leat the discussion was broadly critical of capitalism, and what to do about it — naturally, it was difficult to find space on a crowded platform to put our differences across (though I think I managed it on most occaisions): admittedly, by proclaiming that we want to abolish the NHS(!). But it would be better to be attacking a Labour party for the poverty of it's ambition, rather than them making a proud point of the poverty of their ambitions.
http://www.islingtontribune.com/letters/2015/aug/letters-passage-marx-jeremy-missedWell, I suppose I had to do it…
Short of time, but Mason has published an interest supplementary essay:https://medium.com/@paulmasonnews/neoliberalism-system-first-ideology-changeable-2f0ade2aabcf
I'm not sure the party agrees with those goals, and they are tied intimately to his methods, to promote the trends within capitalism towards its own supercession. Our method is to elminate the character of value altogether, by elminating the wages system. his goals are to take he wages system to its own breaking point: in that light his policy suggestions are eminently sensible, from what I can see. Our objectins are strategic, in considering the conscious abolition of capitalism as the best route, rather than working with the flow of it. That doesn't invalidate his analysis, nor mean that somethign of what he proposes may come about as 'natural solutions to problems'.
Quote:Helpfully, Mason closes his book with prescriptions – which he will be happy to see “torn apart and revised by the wisdom of angry crowds” – under the title of “Project Zero”. This refers to three overall objectives:a zero-carbon energy systemthe production of machines, products and services with “zero marginal costs” (ie, too cheap and plentiful to price)and the reduction of necessary labour time as close as possible to zeroOK, broad themese, but seems a bit different to the take down desribed above.
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/finance/oilprices/11768136/Saudi-Arabia-may-go-broke-before-the-US-oil-industry-buckles.htmlThis is quite extraordinary, the Suadis may well be fubarred.
Quote:OPEC now faces a permanent headwind. Each rise in price will be capped by a surge in US output. The only constraint is the scale of US reserves that can be extracted at mid-cost, and these may be bigger than originally supposed, not to mention the parallel possibilities in Argentina and Australia, or the possibility for "clean fracking" in China as plasma pulse technology cuts water needs.Saudi needs oil to hit $106 but currently it can't get it above $55: the US has the technology for shale and fracking, and ity can be turned on and off quickly.
Quote:Saudi Arabia is effectively beached. It relies on oil for 90pc of its budget revenues. There is no other industry to speak of, a full fifty years after the oil bonanza began.So, whilst the low hanging fruit has been picked, new technology has come along meaning we can easily reach the hard to get oil: the market is speeding up the extraction of the hydrocarbons we need to stay in the ground to see of AGW.
