Don't blame the voters, blame the Chicago School.

[Mar Tweedy]

There seems to be significant support on p.ie for general neo-liberal Chicago school based economics. There also seems to be a trend towards blaming ourselves for the current crisis - that we bought into the myth and kept voting governments in who promised us a low-tax liberal market economy heaven.

I didn't vote or ever support these type of policies however while it is true, these policies were popular, I would argue that there was an information deficit between ordinary voters and consumers and the ideologically driven pushers of the consumer debt drug.

Interesting piece here:
Ann Pettifor: Blaming the Victims: Heroic American Consumers

by an author who predicted the debt/deflation crisis years ago. She also was one of the founders of the jubilee2000 debt relief campaign.

Stats on the wage situation in ireland that would support that a similar situation (ie consumer debt led by relatively lower wages) is relevant in ireland here:
Notes On The Front: January 19th Morning: The Recession Diaries

[Irish Liberty Forum]

I would have thought the Keynesians were at least as culpable the Chicago School, if not more.

[Pauli]

There seems to be significant support on p.ie for general neo-liberal Chicago school based economics. There also seems to be a trend towards blaming ourselves for the current crisis - that we bought into the myth and kept voting governments in who promised us a low-tax liberal market economy heaven.

I didn't vote or ever support these type of policies however while it is true, these policies were popular, I would argue that there was an information deficit between ordinary voters and consumers and the ideologically driven pushers of the consumer debt drug.

Interesting piece here:
Ann Pettifor: Blaming the Victims: Heroic American Consumers

by an author who predicted the debt/deflation crisis years ago. She also was one of the founders of the jubilee2000 debt relief campaign.

Stats on the wage situation in ireland that would support that a similar situation is relevant in ireland here:
Notes On The Front: January 19th Morning: The Recession Diaries

Wing-nut economics is to blame for the global economic collapse. Friedmanist neo-liberalism was always a dodgy economic precept and it needed a violent coup d'etat in 1973 in Chile to test it out in perfect lab conditions. As it involves a massive transfer of wealth from the poor and not so poor to an elite of powergrabbers, it needed a military dictatorship to thrive initially.

Emboldened by its success, politicians in western democracies packaged the poison in a sugar-coated, less toxic form and sold it as political idea, with great success in the USA and the UK. Here in Ireland, we took the same basic rubbish and went so far as to specifically set up a political party to espouse this bilious concoction whose aim in the 90s was to get into power and stay there in order to gove neo-liberalist economics the traditional Irish crony-capitalist twist. Essential to this was a lack of regulation and we have seen with the massive fraud in our banking system the results of an absence of any proper regulation.

Fortunately for us, the Progressive Democrats are disbanding to tremendous applause and FF, their coalition partners since 1997, are at 22% in the polls. Unfortunately for us, we bought this shyte for as long as we did and allowed them to ruin the economy to benefit their friends and associates at our growing expense.

[Irish Liberty Forum]

Pauli, what do you think proper regulation would look like? Finance has been exceptionally heavily regulated, particularly in banking. Apart from nationalising them, I don't see what more Western governments could have done for them over the last couple of years.

[Irish Liberty Forum]

It's hard for most people to understand this, but you can't really have a deregulated financial system so long as central banks are running the show... I think we have a thread somewhere around here about the gold standard...

[Pauli]

Pauli, what do you think proper regulation would look like? Finance has been exceptionally heavily regulated, particularly in banking. Apart from nationalising them, I don't see what more Western governments could have done for them over the last couple of years.

I am no great fan of heavy regulation but I am sickened by the sheer unwillingness in Ireland to actually enforce the law. We have laws governing the misrepresentation of accounts. If auditors signed off on the accounts of a bank they know to be fraudulent, they should be charged. If a bank deliberately conceals millions in dodgy loans in some "warehousing" arrangement, the people responsible should be charged. Prosecutions should follow if evidence to do so is deemed sufficient. Nothing like that happens here. It does in the USA.

[Irish Liberty Forum]

It might interest haters of the Chicago School to know that at the start of his career, Milton Friedman was considered to be a raging statist. It was only later in his life that he (falsely) became associated with market fundamentalism. That's a pretty good measure of how far polite society swung from before and after World War II.

[20000miles]

Interesting piece here:
Ann Pettifor: Blaming the Victims: Heroic American Consumers

What a shoddy article. Let's take a look:

"But until recently it was these Americans that were heroically driving the global economy forward. They did this by borrowing and spending."

So if Crusoe consumes the fish that he catches today, this will somehow foster economic growth? This is economic illiteracy that wouldn't get you through Economics for Dummies.

And to reiterate what ILF said, one of the main postulates of Keynesian economics is that the interest rate is limited by the existence of the monetary unit. Therefore, to foster growth, the government should pump money into the system which will have the effect of "turning stones into bread".

I'm sad to say that all governments since 1971 were, and always have been Keynesians.

[Asi-Irish]

Read Naomi Klein's "Shock Doctrine", a great book...

Incidentally, where did Obama establish his political career?

[Pauli]

Read Naomi Klein's "Shock Doctrine", a great book...

Incidentally, where did Obama establish his political career?

NOT the University of Chicago Economics Faculty, that's for sure.