Abandon ideologies to avoid disaster

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Lead Editorial

12 June 2024
Vol. 26 No. 24

The pathway to reviving Australia’s economy and solving the “cost-of-living” crisis associated with its decline into a non-productive abyss, is clear: Throw out neoliberal economics.

The record of the neoliberal experiment is clear. It has wrecked this country.

The alternative economic pathway is also clear. Our own history, and China presently, shows us. Invest national credit into infrastructure, production and development. But seeing that straightforward solution requires abandoning—for much of the population—our perceptions of China. Perceptions that were moulded by the establishment media’s assault on all things Chinese.

That other “enemy”—Putin’s Russia—is also making the case for a new economic order. If we are willing to see it for what it is.

At the 5-8 June St Petersburg International Economic Forum, Vladimir Putin declared it’s time to replace the lawless financial enclave that enabled elite bankers to loot nations through speculation after the Bretton Woods agreements collapsed in the early 1970s. (p. 9)

The rule of “the market” is the rule of the jungle in which only the strongest will survive. And the only “rules”, as with the “rules-based order”, are the convenient but ever-changing decisions of the “ruler”, made in the moment.

Putin spelled out that the only thing underpinning the current financial order is “Trust in the US economy”, an economy which is crumbling.

Asked about defining a “new economic model” Putin cited China’s successful approach, which combines the best elements of economic planning and market mechanisms, based on historical experience, but it is not one-size-fits-all.

Acknowledgement of the crumbling US dollar order is also coming from within the USA. Republican Congressman Thomas Massie was asked in an interview with Tucker Carlson about the USA’s exploding debt and where it will end. Massie answered: “Right now we’re able to finance it because we’re the world’s reserve currency. And when we print more money, which we’re doing all the time— the Fed is doing that—we’re actually taxing the world.

“Everybody in the world who holds dollars gets like a 3 per cent transaction fee. I say we’re kind of like the credit card at the gas station. That gets 3 per cent because you’re using that credit card, right? Well, we get 3 per cent from inflation we cause because the world is using our currency. And we can do that as long as they use our currency. But I think it’s going to end at some point. They’re going to quit using our dollars as reserve currency.”

Demonising China and Russia comes from a position of weakness, not strength, and assuredly backfires. Sanctioning nations that don’t abide the “rules”; pulling US critic Scott Ritter off a plane and confiscating his passport to prevent him travelling to St Petersburg; breaching fair process to lock up journalists and whistleblowers such as Julian Assange and David McBride; and even funding a network of assassins to take out “information terrorists”— read our feature on p. 11.

The ultimate blowback, however, from moves made by a cornered, declining power, is nuclear war. And Putin made clear at St Petersburg that it is not Russia doing the nuclear sabre-rattling. But abandoning the notion that China and Russia are threats requires abandoning Anglo-American hegemony and adopting a collaborative approach. Or it is impossible to get off the iron track to world war.

Pope Francis addressed this, speaking at a Vatican Pontifical Academy of Sciences conference on “Debt Crisis in the Global South”, on 6 June, where he called for “a new international financial architecture that is bold and creative.” To exit the current crisis, he stressed, “it is necessary to create a multinational mechanism, based on the solidarity and harmony of peoples, that takes into account the global nature of the problem and its economic, financial and social implications. The absence of such a mechanism favours the mentality of ‘every person for himself or herself’, where the weakest always lose.”

In this issue:

• LPOs launch petition: Help grow our Local Community Post Office 
• Bullock: RBA would provide postal bank services if instructed by government 
• Sterling First tenancy victims protest Mark McGowan’s gong, ongoing cover up 
• Defence recruitment crisis is of Canberra’s own making 
• Public servants condemn Australian Government complicity in Palestinian genocide 
• Economic revolution presented at St. Petersburg 
• ‘Countering Disinformation’ by Assassination: Lessons of the Fico Hit
• Don’t forget: We are many, they are few!  
• Moon Goddess mission attracts cooperation
• ALMANAC - To industrialise Africa: The small, Pebble-Bed Modular Reactor is indispensable

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