Webdiary - Founded and Inspired by Margo Kingston

IP will remain an extraordinary and controversial topic, especially in the midst of new technologies ways to convey a message. To think that your intellectual expressions can, one day, join your property portfolio is only as amusing as it's challenging and difficult to be delimited by law.

Earlier this year, as you might recall, the Federal government cut its skilled migration program by 14% in response to worsening economic conditions. Many people worried about Australia’s unemployment supported the decision - but they may not realise the number of working holiday visas is rising rapidly instead.

To the recently unemployed, the current economic crisis may seem like a flashback to the soup lines of The Great Depression. However, to many still working in high-paying sectors such as finance, law and technology, the credit crunch is merely a recurring news headline that could lower the cost of their next holiday.

The collapse of ABC has seen government funds being spent on bailing out ABC, rather than being spent on establishing new centres, or improving the quality of existing ones. One man’s greed has impacted on hundreds of thousands of families across the country.

It’s strange that just when Australia’s education system is crying out for more full-fee paying international students, the NSW government is continuously discriminating against them. While travel concession is generally provided to students, I am not getting it – because I am an international student. This means I’m paying twice more each week to get to and from uni.

Music bloggers the world over are getting nervous. Suddenly they are the target of an industry that censors and deletes content without warning, and there’s very little the blogger can do to prevent it. Since late last year, the Recording Industry Association of America (RIAA) has been making reckless attempts to crack down on online music piracy.

Many of the postings on this site discuss problems and solutions. Much of these discussions are about radical change. This thread seeks to contextualise the broader discussions by outlining a model of five types of problem solving: doing nothing; bombing the bejesus out of it; throwing money at it; continuous improvement; and disruptive innovation.

As I understand it, to be critical is the very opposite of the approach of adopting an alternative worldview, whether from left, right or centre. What we need is not an alternative economic worldview so much as a critical approach in the real sense of the word.

Fear. Breakdown in confidence. Market capitulation. Financial turmoil. These words are different, not just in degree but also in kind. They are more normative, but no less consequential to the real economy. They are indicative of panic conditions. In panics, once firmly held truths are no longer relied upon. Articles of faith are upended. And the very foundations of economies and markets are called into question.

In a time of economic downturn when the private sector is reducing its work force, the national government should step up to the plate with infrastructure spending to stimulate the economy and create jobs for the unemployed. We should be building infrastructure to benefit Australia when the boom times return.

One of the problems with the demise of neoliberalism is that it has left an intellectual vacuum in public and policy discussion on economics. Public discussion of economics has been dominated by mysticism founded on the belief that somehow markets are a form of social organisation separate from and distinct to social life.

The government is arguing, very strongly, that it is doing all it can, to help Australians cope, as the global economic crisis hits the nationnal economy. It is saying, too, that the banks should be playing their part, in that national effort. This is powerful talk. So if the banks do, in fact, have a good case for holding back, on the benefits of the latest rate cut, they would be wise to state it, very clearly.

The whole issue of data-carrying capability of the internet and associated services is complex in the extreme, and a very small proportion of the total users could actually use the capacity being talked about today, let alone know what to ask for.

I am here to issue a national call to arms: and that is for the nation to bind together as one in a national campaign against unemployment. While government must take the lead, everyone has a part to play. And our end point is clear: to do whatever it takes at the global, national and local level to support local jobs and to help those who lose their jobs to retrain and to find a new job. (Kevin Rudd)

"Ultimately, the challenges of the 21st century can't be met without collective action.  Agreement will almost never be easy, and results won't always come quickly. But I am committed to respecting different points of view, and to forging a consensus instead of dictating our terms.  That's how we made progress in the last few days. And that's how we will advance and uphold our ideals in the months and years to come." (President Barack Obama)

As to Hanson herself, you have to wonder at the cultural background that created the woman she was: women’s upbringing and enculturisation (and men’s), gender relations, and politics in general over the last couple of centuries and post ww2 in particular, perhaps against a sort of back drop of the sort of stuff that Prof Marilyn Lake discussed, concerning the Henry Lawson Bronzed Anzac / Pioneer myth and its sidelining of women...

As we look for solutions to the global situation it is becoming increasingly clear that the only way forward is a new path. We should listen to those who predicted the collapse nearly forty years ago. We must be willing to change and support those who are showing us some direction.

A far more effective control of the danger of climate change would be to tax all emission materials (oil, coal etc) at the point of supply, start at once, and at a low rate that would not panic the natives.

Some of the now confessed bastardry of Australian banks has now been exposed, at the highest possible level. The Reserve Bank Governor, Glenn Stevens, chose his words carefully – and spoke politely – when he did that late yesterday. But those who heard him had no doubts about what he was really saying.

Under pressure over the huge bonuses paid to executives of failing companies, the Government has finally announced it will take action. Mounting community outrage at huge payments to departing executives has led the Federal Government to announce an inquiry into the issue — but first it will pass law to give shareholders more power over payments.

Kevin Rudd has certainly nailed his colours to the masthead with his article The Global Financial Crisis published in the February 2009 edition of The Monthly. As a plain language account of the dominance of neo-liberalism in Western political economy over the last thirty or so years it is exemplary.

The election will be very close. Anna Bligh may scrape in with the help of Green preferences; the alternative will be disastrous for Queensland. Let us hope that the ALP learns from this election and works out how to manage both the economic crisis and the climate change crisis.

Limiting carbon pollution is the next step in the plan to ... revitalize our economy. But the fossil fuel industry has already signaled that it will spend whatever is necessary to maintain the status quo. To jumpstart our economy, we need bold action from our leaders. (Repower America)

Imagine a welfare scheme that gave minimum wage earners nothing, but handed out $11,000 a year to those on the top income tax rate. Surely if any political party ever suggested such a scheme they would be run out of parliament and have their doors kicked down by commercial current affairs programs. (Centre for Policy Development)

The World Bank predicts that global economy is likely to shrink for the first time since World War II, with global trade to decline by the most in 80 years.

No matter that Pacific Clothing say that they're still an Australian company; the heart of its trade, I reckon they'll find, is centred on the fact that their brands are synonymous with an Australian clothing manufacturing industry. While we could wear these brands we knew our country could always be self-sufficient in putting shirts on our backs. With the brands about to be accompanied with a "Made in China" tag, any such faith and trust is most likely about to be eroded.

As the punters get their pink slips one day, their credit card bills the next they are going to find it increasingly difficult to survive; the dole queues (across the globe) will grow and more and more people will be forced to deal with the government for their survival. And it won’t be pretty. After our initial sympathy for these victims wears off, they will become a nuisance to some and an embarrassment to others. Their numbers will grow as the black dog runs wild.

I'd argue that Gunns since the 'nineties is a subspecies of the privatisation/ PPP's phenomena that occurred over the last generation, forced on communities by burgeoning globalisation coupled with a giant con perpetrated by politicians and corporate interests on apathetic Western publics.

A clear lesson of the recent period is that the world is too interconnected for nations to go it alone in their economic, financial, and regulatory policies. International cooperation is thus essential if we are to address the crisis successfully and provide the basis for a healthy, sustained recovery. (Ben Bernanke)

Then the Gods of the Market tumbled, and their smooth-tongued wizards withdrew; And the hearts of the meanest were humbled and began to believe it was true; That All is not Gold that Glitters, and Two and Two make Four -- Rudyard Kipling, 1919