economic rationalism a confected, erring ideology designed to rip us, we the people off

.. both Lib & Lab ...

  .. push rotten neoliberalism ...

    .. bipartisan = un- & anti-democratic

Thesis/Subtitle: candidates 'loose with the truth'

Concomitant: reps who fail to represent us

Corollary: our democracy is criminal

-=*=-

Trigger article 1:

Don't dream it's over: Reserve upbeat on economy
By business editor Peter Ryan
Updated August 21, 2012 14:33:00
  «The Reserve Bank has forecast that the resources boom will continue for the next few years, countering suggestions that it has already peaked.
In the minutes from its August meeting released today, the RBA said resource investment would "continue rapidly over the next year or so, broadly in line with expectations."
However, in a reality check the RBA has pointed to the boom's "eventual decline", but expects the fallout to be offset in "a ramp-up in resource exports" as projects are completed.
The RBA has also signalled a recovery in non-mining parts of the economy which have been hurt by the multi-speed nature of resource investment.
The minutes refer to "a gradual strengthening in some parts of the non-resource economy that had been relatively weak."» 
[AusBC/'news' August 21, 2012]

Comment 1: Never believe anything - till it's officially denied?

Comment 2: resource investment - FDI = profits go o/s

Comment 3: eventual decline = unsustainability

Comment 4: gradual strengthening - why?

Trigger article 2:

Mining boom alive and well, says Emerson
Posted August 26, 2012 14:20:15
  «Craig Emerson hits back at claims the mining boom is grinding to a halt, saying Australia is "not even halfway through" it.» 
[AusBC/'news' August 26, 2012]

Comment 1: He has to say something like this, doesn't he?

Comment 2: "not even halfway through" = admission of unsustainability.

Comment 3: At least Lab's MRRT is trying to 'claw-back' then bank some of the (temporary) bonanza, a bit like saving for retirement - in this case, when the mining boom turns to bust (as all booms do).

Trigger article 3:

Mining boom has years to run: report
By Samia O'Keefe and staff
Posted August 27, 2012 10:02:25
  «A report by an economic forecaster predicts investment in non-mining industries will not increase until there is less activity in the resources sector.
The BIS Shrapnel report found any weakening in mining investment is still at least another three years away, and that will help the nation's economy grow by 3 per cent each year over the next few years.
The firm's chief economist Frank Gelber say other industries are only achieving growth by cutting costs, but that will eventually change.
"As mining projects start to peter out, other projects will come through to take their place, non-mining investment in particular will come through," he predicted.
"I think interest rates now are already low enough to stimulate a housing recovery in those states where there's a housing shortage, and I would include WA amongst that."» 
[AusBC/'news' August 27, 2012]

Comment 1: Again, the "three years away;" odd to be so exact.

Comment 2: "achieving growth by cutting costs" = 'competitivity' = reducing workers' wages and conditions.

Comment 3: "non-mining investment in particular will come through" - why?

Comment 4: "to stimulate a housing recovery" - people need $s to buy houses; with workers' wages and conditions being cut, and less FDI-$s flowing in, where're the $s coming from, to revive the housing market? Also note, that Costello's ½CGT led to a house-price bubble, taking prices up to ~9 times average incomes. That 'market' has topped out; nowhere left to go but down.

Trigger article 4:

America’s Descent Into Poverty
by Dr. Paul Craig Roberts
August 26, 2012
paulcraigroberts.com
  «The concentration of wealth and power in the US today is far beyond anything my graduate economic professors could image in the 1960s. At four of the world’s best universities that I attended, the opinion was that competition in the free market would prevent great disparities in the distribution of income and wealth. As I was to learn, this belief was based on an ideology, not on reality.

[me: a deliberately confected, erring ideology]

Congress, acting on this erroneous belief in free market perfection, deregulated the US economy in order to create a free market. The immediate consequence was resort to every previous illegal action to monopolize, to commit financial and other fraud, to destroy the productive basis of American consumer incomes, and to redirect income and wealth to the one percent.» 
[globalresearch/PCR]

Comment 1: What I said.

Comment 2: Read it all to see how bad things are in US - then recall that *our* politicians (in Aus, as much of 'the West') - are in the US' thrall, and are 'blindly'(?) following with ever-more neoliberalism *erring ideology*, including theft of our property by privatisations, brutally reducing services, and ('user pays') ripping us off with new charges.

Special note on privatisation: Hung off supposed 'government (= public servants') incompetence,' privatisation rips us off by the inadequate sums realised at the point of sale, then rips us off again by loading up the organisations with debt and 'shareholder obligations,' then rips us off a 3rd time by paying the new management obscene 'rewards' (some of the managers being the self-same public servants now on 'lucrative contracts'); all of these rip-offs adding to our, we the people's bills, and reducing both head-counts (= increasing unemployment), and service-levels as a result. Look only to privatised electricity, or fixed-line phones. Instead of doing preventative maintenance, say, they now wait for storms to knock the lines down = breaks in critical services we hardly suffered from before. Charging ever-more for once egalitarianly priced services is clearly not in our, we the people's interests - yet both Lib & Lab continue to do it - Q: Why? A: Because our reps have sold us out, they are *actively assisting* the neoliberal robber-barons.

Comment 3: What used to drive economic-thought were things like "Fair go, ya mug," whereby prosperity would be better shared. Henry Ford saw the 'writing on the wall;' workers needed to be paid enough so they could buy the product. Then, there was liberté, égalité, fraternité and the Enlightenment. All now eclipsed by 'greed is good' (it's not) and 'lean and mean' (mean they certainly are).

Comment 4: The 'race to the bottom' means that jobs went to the lowest bidders (o/s = jobs gone off-shore), and *our* (so-called 'Western') wages and conditions also had to follow the 'spiral down.' That flat/wide TVs etc. fell in price is clear - but see 'housing market' above. Note also, that main 'recreation' = watching Hollywood-movies = a sad waste of life. But 'freedom' = choose your own poison, I suppose.

-=*=-

Fazit: Neoliberalism was a racket from the beginning - but our (bipartisan = un- & anti-democratic) politicians sold it to our ppp-dd'd citizens with misleading rhetoric, transmitted via and *actively assisted* by the MSM+PFBCs. Big trouble if/when the citizens realise how badly they were deceived.

-=*end*=-

Ref(s):

[1] confect
verb [with OBJ.] make (something elaborate or dainty) from various elements: a trifle confected from angelica and piped cream. ORIGIN late Middle English: from Latin confect- ‘put together’, from the verb conficere, from con- ‘together’ + facere ‘make’.
[The NEW OXFORD Dictionary OF ENGLISH]

[2] criminal  -n. person guilty of a crime. -adj. 1 of, involving, or concerning crime. 2 guilty of crime. 3 Law of or concerning criminal offences (criminal code; criminal lawyer). 4 colloq. scandalous, deplorable.  criminality n. criminally adv. [Latin: related to *crime
[POD]

Abbreviations:

ELO/Os = hapless erstwhile legal owner/occupiers

I/J/Z-plex; illegitimate IL squats on genocidally ethnically-cleansed = improperly alienated, mainly Palestinian ELO/Os' land/property = IL is an un-remedied crime-scene and *all* I/J/Z-plex (except any actively opposing) are guilty; sole remedy = reparations = revest where possible, adequate = acceptable recompense where not + *sincere* apology

M/I/C/4a†-plex = military, industrial, Congress (US-speak for parliament), 4 = 4th estate = MSM+PFBCs, 'a' = academia incl. think-tanks, † = the churches.

MSM = mainstream media (print and broadcast), aka 'corrupt&venal'

neoliberalism = 'economic rationalism,' 'supply-side,' (wicked) privatisations, 'small govt.' = minimised to no égalité etc. + globalisation = wage arbitration etc. = <1% rips off 99%+

PFBCs = publicly-financed broadcasters, like the AusBC

ppp-dd'd = pushed propaganda paradigm dumbed-down

PRopaganda = PR + propaganda, usual qualifier: 'lying'

SQSHsO = snivelling quisling sycophantic hangers-on

US-MMH = Media (aka press, radio + TV), Madison Ave., Hollywood

US&/Zs = the US of A and/or Zionists; sometimes indistinguishable

XS-CO2-CCC = excess CO2 climate-change catastrophe