Silicon Investor (SI) -- The First Internet Community

STOCKTALK

We've detected that you're using an ad content blocking browser plug-in or feature. Ads provide a critical source of revenue to the continued operation of Silicon Investor. We ask that you disable ad blocking while on Silicon Investor in the best interests of our community. If you are not using an ad blocker but are still receiving this message, make sure your browser's tracking protection is set to the 'standard' level.

Strategies & Market Trends : Booms, Busts, and Recoveries -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: elmatador who wrote (26521)	12/27/2002 1:38:10 AM
From: Maurice Winn	Read Replies (2) \| Respond to of 74559

<New Zealand provides another recent example. Its 1980s experiment in liberal economics under David Lange and Roger Douglas was certainly non-consensual and the electorate's distaste for such harsh (and not noticeably effective) medicine ensured an early change in the system to proportional representation.> A completely ignorant comment by John Plender, though a well-cliched one. NZ's 1980s changes were no more experiments than every daily action by every person is an experiment. The changes were not even new, just repeats of 19th century laissez faire capitalism to a greater or lesser extent. Neither were they 'liberal economics' other than in comparison with the government-run bureaucratic suffocation and kleptocracy we'd suffered for decades before. Nor was there any change in the main problem which was one of extensive and increasing 'redistribution' of wealth and a feeding of the burgeoning sociological nightmare, literally, which has seen murder rates zoom [especially of young and very young children] - and murder rates are only the tip of the iceberg in child abuse, cruelty and torture carried out by recipients of state munificence with taxpayers' money. On the contrary too, the changers were consensual - 1987 saw the greatest re-election victory for the Labour Party ever. The public for the most part loved the progress on the 1980s - until the financial bubble implosion which exposed the debt and flim-flam levels which were as great as the great Y2K Biotelecosmictechdot.com debt and flim-flam puff ball. What the electorate didn't like was the resulting economic mess. Few of the electorate have a clue about the economic factors causing the crunch, high unemployment and high interest rates. They blame it on the removal of the equivalent of the USSR from NZ's economic system. China is wisely taking it easy and sensibly did not allow a street riot in Beijing to cause an economic and political implosion in China as happened in the USSR. Russians did not do well over the 1990s. It has been a long, hard road back. A comparable crunch in China would have been a global catastrophe. Instead, China has had a decade of dramatic progress towards prosperity. In fact, contrary to Plender's idea that the reforms were not noticeably effective, NZ has made huge gains economically over the past 18 years. That's despite the horrific social mayhem in the welfare sector promoted by the government. The extra wealth has funded greater social mayhem. The change to proportional representation wasn't as a result of the 1980s politics. It was frustration with politicians, who do not respond to the electorate's will, which drove the idea that proportional representation would ensure political representation of favoured ideas. The electorate was right and they have got their Greens, Act, NZ First, Jim Anderton, United etc. Of course the politicians still don't respond to the electorate's will, but the buggers can be turfed out and new ones installed more easily now. Small parties can get a piece of the action if they represent popular electoral will. I assume [without doing other than skimming] that the rest of his article was as ignorant as those comments he made. "Only a disaster can save Japan and Germany" is drivel. "We have to kill the villagers to save them". Yeah, yeah... better dead than red. Mqurice

To: elmatador who wrote (26521)	12/27/2002 2:03:04 AM
From: smolejv@gmx.net	Respond to of 74559

Hi Elmat: trying to prove, you've been right from the very beginning? Hey, you got that signed and delivered. My main interest - yours as well I guess - is the future. I would say, we're past one bust, in the middle/end of another boom, and for recovery... >>Hence the euro's weakness until recently.<< Dollar was range-bound july to october, and then fell off the table. Can a dollar disaster save Japan and Germany? I dont think so. RegZ dj