38 South

A good example of how expensive ‘clean energy’ policies can destroy an economy and jobs.

Click on this link to read an interesting article on the Deutsche Welle website: Lack of affordable energy in Germany

Fifty-eight percent of the companies surveyed said they feared power outages as a result of the government decision last year to put an end to nuclear power in favour of increasing the production of renewable energy.

This will happen to Australia too.

This reinforces my support of the Coalition’s policy to repeal the Carbon Tax if it wins government next year.

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No matter which way you look at the unfolding (unfolded?) drama that is the Europe it will be the people that pay, while the bureaucrats in Brussels continue with the grand plan that is obviously above the peasants understanding or vote for that matter!

This video makes sense of the latest plan.

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Self explanatory really

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The below is an article from Crikey. It makes some important observations about China and its economy, and is a timely reminder that China is not a free market.

Diplomats will always quiver when an Opposition Leader makes a bold comment about foreign and trade policy — especially when it is about our largest trading partner, which is of course China. Tony Abbott will have hit a few raw nerves in Canberra and Beijing, questioning whether China is really a “market economy” and that democratic Japan would be a much better partner to pursue a trade deal with.

The pros and cons of free-trade-agreements is a separate matter and whether we should sign one with China or Japan depends on the details. But as provocative as they might be, Abbott’s general points about China are actually on the mark in important respects.

China will continue to buy our commodities regardless of whether we sign any broader economic agreement with it or not. As 2009-2010 shows when the Australia-China diplomatic relationship reached an all-time low and exports to China kept growing, the Chinese want Australian resources not because they like us (or our policies) but because they need them and have few alternative sources.

But China’s insatiable appetite for our iron ore doesn’t mean it is a free-market economy. In fact, its system is more accurately described as a state-led and dominated one. The Australian business community might not care for this distinction but those looking to sell more than commodities to the Chinese market should for the following reasons.

The Chinese political-economy is deliberately designed in such a way that the country’s state-owned-enterprises (SOEs) are in the dominant position to benefit from the country’s economic growth — at the expense of private domestic firms and foreign companies. This was policy gradually cobbled together in the mid-1990s to retake control of the economy following the countrywide protests that almost brought down the party in 1989.

SOEs in China are given four major advantages.

First, about a dozen of the most lucrative and important sectors of the economy are effectively reserved for SOEs to compete among themselves. These include construction, infrastructure, finance and banking, insurance, resources, media and telecommunications. This means that foreign firms will not have access to the best bits of the Chinese economy.

Second, doing almost any business in China requires a permit of some kind and all permits are effectively issued by Chinese Communist Party (CCP) officials. Local governments want to protect their own locally managed SOEs. This means that any foreign company needs to curry favour with local officials in order to thrive.

Third, SOEs are given cheap loans from state-owned banks that will severely disadvantage foreign firms. If you combined with the fact that China has a largely closed capital account, have poor access to local finance, and must deal in an unconvertible currency, it is next to impossible for many foreign firms to competitively operate in China without setting up a joint venture with a local Chinese SOE.

And if an Australian firm does that, then the issues of poor intellectual property rights and a murky judicial and administrative system that is overseen by CCP officials could tragically come into play.

Finally, the Chinese consumer market — not much larger than the size of France’s — is actually a lot smaller than people think even if you were granted access to it. A large chunk of the consumer market is public (not private) consumption and Chinese firms are officially prioritised when it comes to government procurement.

So yes, Japan might be the two-decade-old sick man of Asia, but being a market economy under democratic governance has its advantages.

*Dr John Lee is an adjunct associate professor and Michael Hintze Fellow for Energy Security at the Centre for International Security Studies, Sydney University, and a visiting scholar at the Hudson Institute.

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Another Way to look at the British problem – An Opportunity

Dear Readers,

I think that we have all read many analyses of the riots ranging from excuses to attribution. It is also very easy to identify with a particular report that supports some of our member’s views about multiculturalism, the justice system, immigration, policing and any number of current popular views that can be conjoined in support of any particular position.

This simple observation alone, should give rise to a cautious and considered response when relating it to Australian conditions. I will be interested to see the court outcomes and the sentences that arise. The results from sentencing laws in England, which have been subject to silly fads and half baked psycho analysis for the last 50 years, will make interesting reading. The sentencing regime in England is very similar to that here, based on rehabilitation rather than punishment; perhaps the results will oblige us to better consider what we require from the justice system based on this British experience. Better there than here. Read the rest of this entry »

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This observation that most people new hardly needs comment and in the scheme of things perhaps some of the people charged with reporting what is happening may be belatedly developing a conscience. Then again, perhaps not. The coverage of the Canberra rally doesn’t seem to elicit any MSM  response so I guess it is myths at 40 paces and fairy tales for the folks like Malcolm Farr writing in Punch urging Joe Hockey not to tell the truth about the economy. Farr its fucked recognise it you twerp! Just like they rubbished Barnaby for telling the truth about the US finances, being right is always satisfying.  So better off listening to the shock jocks and the blogs I’m afraid. Your ABC is totally fucked like the AGE and its Sydney Sister.

H/T Keith Maggs

Writing what I should have written

So many years ago

By Kevin Myers                                              W20110817T0600H[tfd1-2]

Tuesday July 22 2008

Last Thursday week, with famine approaching yet again, I wondered about the wisdom of forking out yet more aid to Ethiopia. Since the great famine of the mid-1980s, Ethiopia’s population has soared from 33.5 million to 78 million.

Now, I do not write civil service reports for the United Nations: I write a newspaper column, and I was deliberately strong in my use of language — as indeed I had been when writing reports from Ethiopia at the height of that terrible Famine.

I was sure that my column would arouse some hostility: my concerns were intensified when I saw the headline: “Africa has given the world nothing but AIDS.” Which was not quite what I said — the missing “almost” goes a long way; and anyway, my article was about aid, not AIDS.

Since dear old Ireland can often enough resemble Lynch Mob Central on PC issues, I braced myself for the worst: and sure enough, in poured the emails. Three hundred on the first day, soon reaching over 800: but, amazingly, 90pc+ were in my support, and mostly from baffled, decent and worried people. The minority who attacked me were risibly predictable, expressing themselves with a vindictive and uninquiring moral superiority. (Why do so many of those who purport to love mankind actually hate people so?)

We did more in Ethiopia a quarter of a century ago than just rescue children from terrible death through starvation: we also saved an evil, misogynistic and dysfunctional social system. Presuming that half the existing population (say, 17 million) of the mid 1980s is now dead through non-famine causes, the total added population from that time is some 60 million, around half of them female.

That is, Ethiopia has effectively gained the entire population of the United Kingdom since the famine. Read the rest of this entry »

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The Wall Street Journal has it, the Financial Review has It, Time to get some of it I think!

Catallaxy Files has it, The man in the street has it. Great  pity the US Federal Reserve or the IMF doesn’t,  get some now!!

Download (PDF, 128.31KB)

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The riots and the aftermath.

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Fortunately not all Poms have thrown up there hands and given in

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