Dear Kevin,

I don’t know if you’ve noticed but Melbourne, along with most of southern Australia, has lately busted all records. Last week we had three consecutive days of well over forty degrees, the last and hottest of which saw the mercury hit 45 degrees - the hottest January day for 70 years. Most of us had never experienced anything like it. Streets were deserted. Parks were empty. Read more . . .

Back on deck after a nice long break and straight onto the airwaves this morning with an interview on Radio Melbourne 774 with Alan Brough (he of ABC music quiz show Spicks and Specks). Hot topic was the coverage in the Australian this weekend
reporting that Rudd was proclaiming 30 years of neoliberalism over and
looking to define a new role for government, which as Alan pointed out
are, of course, precisely the themes of The Land of Plenty. Nice to see the PM thinking along the same lines as me. The full article will be in the Monthly, out later this week, but there’s a preview here.

You really do have to wonder at today’s Age. The online version has a link to an opinion piece by some dill telling people that all the hard times are in their imagination (including the now standard jab at Gen x and y), and that they need to ‘Harden Up’. Right next to it is a story about 10 000 forecast job losses in the finance sector, including 5000 at Westpac. To make things worse, the article by the dill recommends that people buy Westpac shares. Sometimes the left hand not only doesn’t know what the right hand is doing, it has no idea whatsoever.

 There’s a really interesting report from scientist Ian Lowe on the Inside Story site about the recent WEF forum on the economic crisis and climate change. It seemed to me as I was reading it that if the WEF hard-heads are at last starting to connect the dots, and to look at the failures of present economic assumptions re: growth etc, the environment, and the issue of governance, then the world really is changing. We can only hope!Meanwhile, Brit comedy duo Bird and Fortune have done a very funny pisstake on the sub-prime crisis. Well worth a look. 

Yay for the Australian Youth Climate Coalition for taking the climate change fight up to the government, and for having a go at the weak-kneed and defeatistGarnaut climate change review. You can sign the Your Targets = Our Future petition here.

McCain lost because he campaigned for the party. Obama won because he campaigned for the country. And maybe, even, for the globe. As an Australian looking on from the other side of the globe, that, at least, is my hope; that we’ll see some action on pressing issues such as global warming now that someone more responsible will be in the White House. And that we might see a decline in political tribalism. This loss should be sobering for the Republicans. Perhaps the days of cynical ‘feeding the base’ and divisive, lowest-common-denominator, tribalist politics, are over. Politics, in the end, demands principle, especially in complex, difficult times like these. And leadership. Obama’s victory speech can be found here.

Last Sunday the Age were kind enough to publish an opinion piece of mine on the stereotypes that surround Gen Y. I’m always surprised when I write on this topic just how many responses and how much support it gets, and this one was no different. Lots of young people have had a gutful of some of the crap that gets talked about them. As follows: WE’VE all heard the myths. Gen Y-ers are lazy, stay-at-home and good-for-nothing. They don’t leave home until they’re in their late 20s or early 30s and then return only to dump the laundry at the door. Selfish, indulged, pampered, consumeristic and easily distracted, they seek only instant gratification and the latest phone. Keep reading ?

Yes, it’s true. Just ask Andrew Bolt, who writes today that: 'You see, this crash wasn’t really caused in the first case by bankers’ greed. Or not by their greed alone. 'The “greed” that started it was that of poor people in the US who wanted a house and took out home mortgages they had little hope of repaying. 'What helped them to get these ninja loans - loans to people with no income, no jobs and no assets - were tough rules pushed through by then-president Bill Clinton forcing banks to issue more loans to minorities, or else. 'And financing and guaranteeing many of them were two semi-nationalised mortgage wholesalers, Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac, which were excused some of the tougher capital requirements of banks, so greedy was Clinton for success.'Bolt, of course, keen to absolve bankers from their responsibilities and markets from failure, sells short a whole range of factors that underwrote the crisis, such as the overleveraging of sub-prime based financial products, the anti-regulatory zeal that prospered under the reign of Greenspan, the excessive risks taken by bankers in the search for market share and new markets, and, yes, their drive to pile a bit more on those bonuses they have so craved. Read more . . .

One of the many disturbing things about the global financial ructions of the past few weeks is that climate change has disappeared from the news agenda. We really do seem to be short term animals, interested only in what’s on this side of the horizon. Hardly a surprise, perhaps, at a time when many people really are worried about their immediate future. But one implication of the media silence is that addressing financial problems and addressing global warming are antithetical, when so far as I’m concerned they are one and the same thing. Both are driven by our belief that unlimited economic growth is necessary and somehow sustainable.

So it was with surprise that last night I found myself agreeing with New York Times columnist Thomas Friedman, who I usually think of as an insufferable windbag, who was being interviewed by George Negus on Dateline. Read more . . .

It's funny how people keep talking about The Land of Plenty as if it's a book about the Howard era when in fact the 'big idea' at the heart of the book is that we're at the end of two thirty year cycles, the first based around economic protectionism and the centrality of governments, the second based around deregulation and the centrality of markets. It seemed a novel idea when I was writing late last year and earlier this year, albeit one that's since been realised in ways I'd never wish for.

The basis of my thinking wasn't to do with any particular government (the vast majority of the book was written in the belief that Rudd would win, then in the first few months of the government), so much as the whole political and economic system, which I believed then and believe now to be unsustainable. We seemed to be living in an 'economic fool's paradise', as I put it, where a decade and a half of economic growth had been fueled by consumer spending funded by easy credit, and then a commodities boom. The whole thing was a house of cards. A Very Public Sociologist has since put together a convincing summation that points out how the whole edifice was balanced rather precariously on rising housing prices. John Quiggin's recent posts have also been excellent. And an erudite summary of last week's events can be found at LP. Howard? Rudd? It wasn't going to make much difference.

But the thing that amazes me, speaking as a non-economist, is the idea that the collapse should be a surprise. Read more . . .