A sad commentary on NZ politics and media - and public

Martyn "Bombбer" Bradbury noticed the very same thing I did

Even now, one day later the Radio New Zealand has “all eyes on Fashion Week” and we are getting all sorts of reassuring messages.

The media is taking the New Zealand public for the complacent, “useless consumer” population they are.

Stock Market Meltdown – Dow Jones down 584 points

The fact that the global stock market meltdown wasn’t the headline on any of our TV News shows last night speaks terrible volumes of our blind ignorance

Martyn Bradbury

the Daily Blog,

25 August, 2015

The fact that the global stock market meltdown wasn’t the headline on any of our TV News shows last night speaks terrible volumes of our blind ignorance.

John Key however told reporters yesterday that he has had officials test the big banks and even if house prices fall 40% and we get 13% unemployment, the banks will be ok!

Thank god the rich are safe.

China’s stock market predictably melted down, this caused huge losses in Asia, which then chased huge losses in Europe which then hit America overnight. Watching the Dow Jones drop by almost 1100 points overnight was incredible.

With Australia getting hit hard yesterday (down 4%) and China getting hit even harder (down 8.5%) NZ gets hit twice because those are our two largest trading partners.

While John Key was promising NZ at the election that we were on the cusp of something special, the truth is that his rock star economy is choking on its own vomit. 305 000 NZ children living in poverty, Worker rights crushed, draconian welfare reforms designed to disqualify rather than help, privatisation of state houses that are freezing tenants to death, 5.9% unemployment and a property bubble in Auckland that is set to implode.

Beyond putting all our cows in a Beijing paddock, rebuilding from a natural disaster and helping fuel the property bubble with lazy immigration, this Government have done sweet FA to help build NZ, preferring to allow their blessed free market to stake out a Darwinian economic survival of the richest.

 

So are we entering a new economic meltdown on par with the Great Depression of the 1930s?

The unequal distribution of wealth and unregulated greed of modern capitalism, symbolized by the Great Recession of 2008, has fostered groups which challenge capitalism. This time it has come from trans-national movements like Al Qaeda, and anti-Globalization protestors rather than national ones. The recent rise of the BNP and UK Independence Party in England have increased as the effects of the Great Recession of 2008 have punished Britain’s finance sector (which now accounts for 20% of the country’s GDP) while $140 billion in bonuses for bankers who continue to write up questionable deals with the full backing of the taxpayer creates class resentment that can fuel extremism.

The differences between these two threats indicate how the definition of ‘crisis of capitalism’ has evolved in the shadow of the Great Depression. Fascism and Communism held pretentions to be the new global hegemony. Transnational challengers however, seek to modify or limit Globalized Capitalism rather than replace it.

As the planet struggles to reign in an industry that globally accounts for over $300 Trillion per year in the financial economy as opposed to the $8 Trillion created by the real economy, this obvious power imbalance gives some hint to the difficulty capitalism has to evolve beyond the influence of those wealthy enough to write the rules. Without the type of social pressure a W recession could enforce upon capitalism to evolve, neo-grasmcian counter hegemonic movements will have limited success for co-opting the leavers of power for internal change. The danger of wishing for the W recession is that the same fuel to create social change can be the same source of fuel for extremism.

The Great Recession of 2008 is a worse crises of capitalism than the Great Depression because the managed capitalism that was supposed to protect us from the cruel boom and bust mechanics have been replaced by the very deregulated wild west free market approach which led us to the 1929 collapse. The Great Recession is a failure of neo liberalism, but the additional problem for the Great Recession is that it is taking place within an environment that simply can not sustain the extra pressure consumer culture and unregulated growth has placed upon the biosphere.

The ‘solution’ to the Great Recession of the 2007-2008 has been printing money with zero interest, this has managed to kick the can down the road for America, it’s imploded Greece and the half a Trillion China poured into it’s economy have resulted in the obscene meltdown we are seeing now…

Fear China’s stock-market earthquake
Here’s the chilling thing. What’s going on in China is madly redolent of the 1929 Wall Street crash.

Here’s why.

The 150% rise over a year in the Shanghai Composite Index to its mid-June peak was largely driven by investors borrowing to buy shares, or margin trading in the jargon, just as happened in the US during the Roaring Twenties.

And the subsequent self-reinforcing collapse has been driven by China’s indebted investors being forced to sell shares to meet their debts.

As for the economic significance of what is going on, well these very big stock markets in Shanghai and Shenzhen are no longer serving their core purpose of supplying equity capital to businesses – which will have a significant negative impact on Chinese growth.

The despicable injustice of the wealthy elites looking after their greed is best summed up here…

A crisis should never be wasted, the question will be who exploits it first? Tobin taxes, taking happiness into account, redesigning the very masculine dominated growth measurements and a developmental rather than neo liberal approach on the one hand or the increased consolidation of power into the hands of a corporate elite on the other.

The latter isn’t working and a TPPA ‘free trade’ deal with America is no solution.

This so called Rock Star economy has had a terrible impact on the poorest of us while National’s rich mates have prospered. Real Left solutions will be demanded by voters who can’t afford to be consumers any longer.

The middle classes voted for Key in 2014,despite the dirty politics, despite the mass surveillance lies, despite his office colluding with the SIS to smear the Leader of the Opposition months before the 2011 election because his policies have continued to push their house prices up and up and up.

What happens when the only reason they are voting National pops?