qed’s blog

Now I really have no idea what the real politics of the IMF are, but they don’t have a great record in some places which tends to make me think they are probably just the caretakers of the rich, which makes this little development even more interesting.

By the way, The Age also had the good sense to run the story which just goes to show they have some journalistic integrity after all Actually that’s unfair, as Fairfax Digital seems to be shaping up pretty well these days as far as their reporting is concerned, certainly they seem to adapting well to the new digital reality. Mark Scott (a former Fairfax man) must be gnashing his teeth with frustration as his more nimble competitor seems able to bring the traditional news strengths of print to the emerging digital market, but I digress.

A couple of things really grabbed my attention in the Der Spiegel story other than the news itself. First was the rather frank admission that the current inflationary pressures in the world have got bugger all to do with the money side of the equation and that it is quite likely that the current low interest rate regime in place in the US is actually making things worse. To put it simply, as Der Spiegel does, “Modern inflation is driven by the global scarcity of resources. Nowadays purchasing power exceeds purchasing opportunity. Most of all, there is not enough oil, and too few raw materials and food products.” To a casual observer this seems so obvious and it also seems astounding that no-one else is drawing the same conclusion. This is really a King’s new clothes moment and one has to suspect that one reason that such information is currently not doing the rounds of the daily radio talk shows is the consequences that naturally follow from such a bleak analysis, namely that “these increasingly scarce resources are becoming the focus of disputes among many people and billions of dollars are at stake.”

After the gravity of this little economic discussion sinks in the rest of the article is almost superfluous but for the almost as revealing comment that little Georgie doesn’t want to get caught with his finger in the pie so his approval for the IMF inspection is conditional on its report not hitting the fan before he retires to his Texas holdout. Doesn’t really inspire confidence in government does it or the so-called economic system that is meant to sustain us. As we used to say in the shadow of the Vietnam War and the first oil crisis, there is enough in the world for everyone’s needs, just not enough for everyone’s greed.