WHAT IS THE PROPER FUNCTION OF ECONOMICS?

by Peter Ewer
The proper function of orthodox economics is not to create or provide jobs, but to keep the capitalist economy rolling along and to keep those who run it, rich. If in the limit, a nation, race or people must go to the wall, so be it. Only Mammon is ultimately of value and must survive at all costs. This perverse philosophy contrasts sharply with social credit, which does not engage in commodity fetishism or deify the economy.

The economy has no other purpose than to serve man: man comes first, money second. Man is not a rational economic man, but a being with a spiritual purpose and destiny. There is more, much more, to life than production and consumption, but for orthodox economics, that’s all there is. Hence economists are capable of great evil in their illusory pursuit of a “value-free” science. Alas, orthodox economics is nothing more than the theology of capitalism, and a false theology at that.  

Editor’e note: What about some alternative thinking? Let’s look at Michael Lane’s suggestions for Capital Colleges presented to the League in 2002…

WHY SCIENCE IS NOT GOD

by Chris Knight
Science today is the god of the modern era, right up there nested with money. Few are the people critical in a truly fundamental way of science and technology. There is some criticism from respectable figures though, largely about the limits of science. John Horgan, "The Undiscovered Mind", (Phoenix, 1999) argued that the human brain defies explanation. Along similar lines is James Le Fanu, "Why U? How Science Rediscovered the Mystery of Ourselves", (Harper Press, 2009). This book also has a chapter on “The Unfathomable Brain”, but it goes further, asking some challenging questions of the materialist even in the domain of genetics.

According to Le Fanu the human genome project has shown that “the human genome is virtually interchangeable with that of our fellow vertebrates such as the mouse and chimpanzee – to the tune of 98% or more.” (p.15) Genetically, there is nothing to distinguish humans from chimpanzees, although as an empirical fact (reason, language etc), we are distinguishable. The differences then can’t be explained by genes – but Le Fanu asks, how then can they be explained at all? The central reductionist premise of biology is therefore undermined.

Intellectually this opens up the field again to basic theological concepts such as “the soul”, that which makes us more than just organised matter as materialistic science has supposed. If there is a “soul”, to explain the miracle of our life, then there must also be a creator of that non-material soul, known as God. Science is not God, but from God and ultimately leads us back to Him.  

FRANKLY SPEAKING OUT…

BBC red-faced over 'idiot' interview September 30, 2011 -
The BBC has apologised to the EU after a Brussels official was repeatedly called an "idiot" when taking part in a flagship news broadcast on the eurozone debt crisis. TV bosses said they contacted European Commission economic affairs spokesman Amadeu Altafaj Tardio to apologise for "discourtesy" that led him to walk off the Newsnight show during a video-link appearance from Brussels on Wednesday night. Read more here:

Worth Watching: A New Democratic Revolution is Sweeping northern Europe Nigel Farage

Another Worth Watching: The surrender of freedom and democracy? Nigel Farange  

MAMMON RULES - LIGHT OF TRUTH PIERCES MURKY SHADOWS!

by Betty Luks
“Goldman Sachs Rules the World – Not the Governments of the World”… Last week independent trader Allesio Rastani candidly admitted on the BBC that the ‘money men’ saw the Stock Market as ‘toast’ and its collapse - along with the peoples’ hard-earned savings and assets - as a golden opportunity to ‘make more money’. Not only does this fellow and his class dream of another ‘Great Depression’, he looks forward to making financial killings and feeding off the carcasses of those who have lost everything (OT Vol47 No39). Anyone who has read of those Great Depression years knows of the despair and heartache people went through. They learned of the suicides by businessmen who lost everything overnight. (I have often thought how sad that these men did not see that their ‘pearl of greatest price’ was that of Life itself.)

In my early association with the League of Rights older folk would explain it was because they wanted to understand how the Depression came about that led them first, to the Social Credit movement and then on to the work of the Australian League of Rights after WWII.
In the New Times Survey article “Financial Crisis: Catastrophe or Opportunity” I used the film version of Elizabeth Gaskell’s novel “North and South” to give a simple example of the role of the banks in financing the Industrial Revolution and the lack of purchasing power as a direct result of machines taking the place of human labour (machines do not receive wages or salaries but their running costs are included in costs of production translated into prices in the market place).
The operator merely attended the machine while the power, the energy, to run the machine and weave the cloth was supplied by the generation of electricity.

So what is to be done? Looks like the hyenas are sniffing ‘the rotting carcass of a kill’ and as Allesio Rastani admitted they are not interested in saving the people from such a catastrophe but are more concerned with calculating just how to ‘make’ more money from the disaster.
I would think the first step for the ordinary Australian is to get his own affairs in order so as to be less vulnerable thus allowing him to ‘ride out the coming storm’. Seek the co-operation of your families and neighbours and understand what it means to draw on the social credit. It exists within all communities – large or small. It is based on mutual love and co-operation and there is a genuine increment from the association.
The second step is to grasp the fact that physically this nation could ride out any banker imposed international financial storm but we are going to have to strive together to force the Money Power’s lackies – the politicians – to represent “WE THE PEOPLE”… that is, WE, US, that is, ALL AUSTRALIANS’ interests.  

TRULY… THERE IS NOTHING NEW UNDER THE SUN

by Betty Luks
American writer Brooks Adams in his work, “The Law of Civilization and Decay” (1895) wrote of the Romans (chapter ‘History of Rome’, quoting Mommsen, Dickson's trans., 1 288, 290):
"The ruling class in Rome was a monied class; and it made and administered the laws with a view solely to its own interest. Thus the relation between lender and borrower was mixed up with the relation between sovereign and subject. The great men held a large portion of the community in dependence by means of advances at enormous usury.

The law of debt, framed by creditors, and for the protection of creditors, was the most horrible that has ever been known among men. The liberty, and even the life, of the insolvent were at the mercy of the patrician money-lenders. Children oft became slaves in consequence of the misfortunes of their parents. The debtor was imprisoned, not in a public gaol under the care of impartial public functionaries, but in a private workhouse belonging to the creditor. Frightful stories were told respecting these dungeons." (emphssis added...ed)

If one peers intently into the historical background of the framing of the Commonwealth Constitution Act it seems that a deal was made to leave the power of credit creation in the hands of Australia’s ‘monied class’; who made and (is still) administer(ing) the laws with a view solely to its own interest’.  

THE WEALTH AND SUBSTANCE OF THE WHOLE PEOPLE

Excerpt from Introduction to “The Story of the Commonwealth Bank”. At the official opening of the Commonwealth Bank in 1912, William Morris Hughes, the man who later became Australian Prime Minister and known affectionately as ‘the little Digger’, said: It (the Bank) stands here today as the outward and visible sign of the wealth and substance of the whole people. It is indeed Australia commercially translated in the terms of money. It is the symbol of our wealth: it will stand as long as we stand. Of its solvency there can be no doubt while the race that made Australia stands.

This realistic comment was echoed after the end of the First World War, when Sir Denison Miller said, as reported in the Australian press on 7th July, 1921, The whole of the resources of Australia are at the back of this bank, and so strong is this Commonwealth Bank whatever the Australian people can intelligently conceive in their minds and will loyally support, that can be done.

In 1960 the Reserve Bank took over the role of Central Bank from the Commonwealth Bank. Like other trading banks, the Commonwealth Bank is today governed by Reserve Bank controls. The Federal Government could direct the Reserve Bank to adopt a completely different policy to that which results in ever-escalating debt, crushing taxation and insidious inflation.
For example, interest rates could be reduced to the point where they were sufficient to meet the administration costs of creating and administering credit. New money could be made available as a credit, instead of a debt, for financing consumer discounts as a major part of an anti-inflation policy.
But none of these and similar steps will be taken until a more enlightened public insists that the disintegration of Civilisation can only be halted by a reversal of present credit policies. Eventually this must happen. When history is written, the name of D.J.AMOS, a distinguished Adelaide professional man, will be given an honoured place for his contribution to an understanding of a special Australian institution, the Commonwealth Bank.

SO-CALLED ‘BAILOUTS’: ENTRAPMENTS WITH MORE FINANCIAL DEBT

by Wallace Klinck
The real economy is the production and consumption of actual wealth - with financial costs and prices generated and the financial incomes distributed. The existing problem is that the latter are increasingly insufficient to purchase the totality of available consumer goods - and the only mechanism currently offered to deal with the situation is the creation of more pseudo buying power in the form of bank debt, which of course is not real purchasing power at all.
The national so-called "bailouts" are not bailouts at all but entrapments with more financial debts. They are not issued as gifts but as repayable loans which must register additional production costs and prices as they pass through the price-system, as they must under the conventions of orthodox national accountancy. And so the "solution" is ultimately and increasingly the cause of financial insolvency and ruination. As someone has said, "It is a mug's game."

The stock market is a highly manipulated activity which operates in a rarified atmosphere. It goes to extremes because of margin trading wherein the speculator can purchase perhaps ten or more times of a commodity by resort to margin trading, i.e., borrowing far beyond his own personal available financial resources. Stop loss orders may eventually be filled, but in a panic the market can drop (or advance) for a number of days down or up the prescribed daily limit with the speculator blocked from trading and subject to ruin. If speculators were required to match their purchases or sales with their own financial resources this surely would eliminate the artificially induced wild gyrations of the market. If they had actually to pay for the value of the traded commodity this might bring some reality into the process.  

MURDOCH PRESS SUPPRESS IMMIGRATION/POPULATION QUESTION 

by James Reed
Crispin Hill, a former editor of The Canberra Times has told it like it is in “Population Question Gets Scant Coverage,” The Canberra Times, August 6, 2011. Hill begins his article by pointing out that the Murdoch press loves to sock it to the Gillard government – on all things except immigration.
For example, a Monash University team led by Bob Birrell published Immigration and the Resources Boom Mark 2 which made the case that the “skills shortage” could still be met even if net overseas migration was halved from 180,000 to 90,000. There was only a brief mention of the report in Melbourne’s Herald Sun and The Australian, even though the immigration issue “genuinely threatens the economic and social wellbeing of Australians far more seriously than a carbon tax”.

Hill points out that the Monash report showed that the government was relying upon circular arguments. Advice from Skills Australia was that Australia would need an extra 2.4 million skilled workers by 2015 and an extra 5.2 million by 2025, requiring high migration. This forecast was based on assumptions made by Access Economics that net overseas migration would increase from 220,000 in 2010 to 250,000 by 2025.

As Hill concludes: “In other words, we will need more skilled migrants because we have high immigration. Under the government’s reasoning we must have more migrants because we have so many migrants. The Government’s position is a circular illogicality. There is no logic in the conclusion that we have a skills shortage that must be met with higher immigration.”
The skills shortage, if it exists, is because of high immigration and is generated by high immigration. Nor is the mining boom causing a skills shortage as mining is not a people-intensive industry. Birrell (et. al.,) point out that the mining boom will employ 80,000 more people in 2025 than it does now. Most migrants have nothing to do at all with mining.
Hill says that the government persists in high immigration as high immigration allegedly gives higher GDP growth, to avoid the economists’ definition of a recession as two successive quarters of “negative GDP growth.” However high immigration results in less wealth per person so on this measure, Hill argues, as per capita income fell in two successive quarters, even though the total GDP rose, Australia did not avoid recession during the global financial crisis.

Hill finally concludes: “What is the point of having a higher income if you have to spend more time in traffic on the way to work; wait longer for elective surgery; have larger class sizes for your children and so on? Business, including big media companies, goes along with high population growth because their business grows and makes more profit. This gives advantage to people in upper management and people with large shareholdings – people who do not have to worry about stretched public transport, congested roads or waiting for elective surgery – at the cost of everyone else.”

“The major political parties go along with it because their donations come from business. Also media-savvy lobby groups representing those businesses push for it. A scare campaign over population growth would be warranted because it really is scary, but not even Tony Abbott will take it up because his political party is so beholden to big business interests.”`  

AN ALERT FROM PHILIP BENWELL AUSTRALIAN MONARCHIST LEAGUE

Myer Stores are promoting clothing by the Republic Clothing Company with the wording ‘Be a Citizen, Not a Subject’. Whilst the clothing company can produce what it wishes, Myers should be careful about making what is a political point in support of a republic and an attack on our system of Constitutional Monarchy.
The Australian Constitution is specific that Australians are subjects of the Queen. In fact, the only way one can be a citizen and not a subject, is not to be Australian. Decisions of the High Court have not altered this in any way but have emphasized that the Queen is Queen by right of the Australian Constitution.

We have nothing against Myers selling republic clothes, but not with anti-monarchist slogans. We urge members and supporters to petition Myers not to become involved in the politics of a republic and to immediately remove any poster or other advertising material which directly or indirectly supports a republic. Those who have Myer accounts are at liberty to warn that they may be closed.

Contact details are:
Mr Bernie Brookes, Chief Executive Officer and Managing Director, Myer Holdings Ltd PO Box 869J, Melbourne VIC 3001
Or:
Jo Lynch, General Manager Corporate Affairs. Phone: +61 3 8667 7571 Mobile: +61 (0) 438 101 793 Email: jo.lynch@myer.com.au  

WHAT DOES IT TAKE TO BE THE WORLD’S “NO 1” TREASURER?

by Peter Ewer
A gloating Wayne Swan, following in the footsteps of Paul Keating, was named by banking magazine Euromoney as the world’s finance minister of the year. Yes, that was the same Paul Keating that gave us the recession we had to have.
Swan is part of the political elite who gave Australia’s higher-income earners some of the largest tax cuts in the developed world (The Australian, September 21, 2011, p.6), continuing the ignoble tradition set by Peter Costello.

As for Euromoney, they found that the Lehman Brothers were the best investment bank of 2006 (they filed for bankruptcy in September 2008) and also in 2006 found that Bear Stearns were the best at risk management (filing for bankruptcy in August, 2007). One can only dread what lies ahead for Australia. 

ANOTHER NAIL IN EINSTEIN’S COFFIN

by John Jensen
According to Jewish physicist and alleged genius Albert Einstein, particles cannot travel faster than the speed of light. But the European Centre for Nuclear Research (CERN) in Switzerland and researchers in Italy hit neutrinos, tiny particles that were once thought to have no mass, with a laser and found that the particles moved at 300,000 kilometres per second, which is slighty faster than the speed of light.

Einstein’s theory is regarded by physicists, brainwashed by the media portrayal of his brilliance, as something almost beyond question, so it will be interesting to see how orthodoxy worms out of this one.  

THE IDEOLOGY OF GLOBALISATION

by James Reed
Arthur Sinodinos (“Open Further to Global Economy”, The Australian, September 22, 2011, p.12) proclaims that “Australia has no option but to increase its global integration.” He attempts to explain this by saying that we need the world economy because we are an exporting nation.
Further “Industry assistance must be geared to incubating global enterprises rather than specialised domestic producers.” And “Increased integration in the world economy also means a more permissive attitude to foreign investment.”
What more can we give them? See where all this is going? Globalisation in the end basically means, as I see it, dissolving this society and letting foreigners own and rule us. It means being at the mercy, even more than we are now, of the global financial elites.

Behind this globalisation rhetoric is the tortured logic of comparative advantage theory, that a nation produces goods which it has a comparative advantage in. Never mind that in the technical economic literature (eg. Paul Samuelson, “Where Ricardo and Mill Rebut and Confirm Arguments of Mainstream Economists Supporting Globalisation,” Journal of Economic Perspectives, vol.18, 2004, pp.135-146) all of these theories are questioned.

And what about national defence? It seems that confidential diplomatic cables show that Australia is deeply concerned about China’s growing military machine. (The Australian, September 28, 2011, p.2) Australia may well be feeding the giant that ultimately slays it. The doctrine of globalisation glosses over these issues. It is an ideology that leads, in the end, to national suicide.  

TAXATION ACCOUNTS FOR 35 PER CENT OF NEW HOUSE COST

Ewa Kretowicz in The Canberra Times 30/9/2011: More than a third, or about $189,000, of the price of a new house in Canberra goes to tax, according to a new report by the Centre for International Economics (CIE). The study was commissioned by the Housing Industry Association…
The CIE report found 44 per cent of the price of a $612,000 new house in Sydney was tax. In Melbourne tax accounted for 38 per cent, or $184,000, and in Brisbane it was 36per cent, or $191,000. ''In Canberra it would be above 35per cent,'' Mr Dale said. 

THE PERILS OF DIVERSITY: IMMIGRATION AND HUMAN NATURE

by James Reed
Byron M. Roth’s “The Perils of Diversity: Immigration and Human Nature” (Washington Summit Publishers, Augusta, Georgia, 2010) at 577 pages, is one of the thickest books criticising immigration, and one of the best. Roth is a racial realist who criticises both assimilationism and multiculturalism.
He shows that post-1965 immigration to America, with its high third world composition, challenges the capacities of US society for successful assimilation.

The greater the racial and cultural differences, the greater the problem of assimilation. Further, the evidence from history indicates that “social harmony among different ethnic and language groups is at best rare, and where it exists, tenuous.” (p.5) There is also a fundamental inconsistency at the heart of multiculturalism:
“It applauds ethnic minorities who maintain their cultural traditions, but looks askance at minority populations who wish to do the same. Political elites in all Western societies take a negative view of those who wish to preserve their traditional values and patterns of living.” (p.8) Indeed, the political elites have imposed mass migration upon the people in defiance of their wishes and have engaged in a totalitarian suppression of dissent.

The end result of this cultural-racial war is “that Western civilisation will go into inexorable decline and may eventually cease to exist.” (p.506) Roth pins the blame on the treason of the intellectuals, in promoting patently fake ideas about human nature, especially by the Left.
With powerful logic Roth reminds us: “Extreme egalitarianism…induces a profound nihilism, since if all things are equal, then there can be no value or moral code that can justify one’s commitment or any sort of personal sacrifice. By similar logic no one can claim that a certain standard of behaviour is superior to another, and there can be no justification for any attempt to impose such a standard on another.” (p.508) Multiculturalism thus leads to a paralysing relativism of values that ultimately undermines society and in the process, undermines itself.  

LETTERS IN THE PRESS

* Different ancestors, Adelaide Advertiser, 30/9/2011:
According to a Federal Court judge, Andrew Bolt has breached the racial discrimination laws. Some people claiming to be Aboriginal want to be more Aboriginal than those who walked the plains of Central Australia. My ancestral history evolved from England and Ireland, going back 100 years or more. So what does that make me, an Englishman or an Irishman?
Let me tell you, I am a bloody ordinary Australian and no interpretation of the racial discrimination laws by any Federal Court judge will ever change that.
I give my ancestors a place in my history, but to follow the line of these "fair-skinned Aborigines" in regard to the Bolt case, is a step too far for me. To do so would mean that everyone who has no Aboriginal ancestors is not an Australian. Does this theory sound like rubbish to you?

- - Allen Arthur, Middleton, South Australia.

* Stop these foreign takeovers: The West Australian, page 24, Friday, 30/9/2011:
“This is an open letter to Federal Resources Minister Martin Ferguson. I am gravely concerned that it appears that a monopolistic and ostensibly patriotic company like Wesfarmers seems to have sold the very source of WA's southern power generation capabilities (Collie coal) to overseas (Chinese) interests.
The WA Premier and his Government would be aware of the hurt that is being felt in the community because of recent State power tariff increases. To add insult to injury, they may now be implicated in additional consumer backlash by being involved in foreign ownership of a unique State resource the consumer relies on to provide energy at a price which the State normally controls.
With due respect, Mr Ferguson, you should also be concerned. China has not entered this particular market as philanthropists. It is my hope your office and that of the WA Government will therefore understand the following statement:
I do not appreciate paying overseas investors for the ability to turn on my lights in WA, particularly when the original power source is a State asset which may now only be administered by the State in terms of delivery price to my home and which price ultimately will be influenced by an international entity. If such a scenario gets legs, then something is wrong with the governance of our national and State sovereignty”.

- - Bob Corby, Two Rocks, West Australia.

LETTER TO THE PRESS

Another Tax Summit: The Editor, Weekly Times & Adelaide Advertiser: October 4 2011:
Another Tax Summit is before us and one can predict that all submissions will only aim for some 'movement of the deck chairs' to increase the tax burden for some while offering some minimal relief elsewhere. One can also predict that, whichever proposals are adopted by government, the overall tax take will increase. It always does!
It matters not, what name we give the taxes, all are a cost which must be recovered through higher prices (inflation) if a business is to survive. Has Treasurer Swan considered this impact on business when he calls for a lift in the economy and productivity? Perhaps some lateral thinking offering lower total taxes would be worthwhile.
We have almost been conditioned to believing we must pay more in tax to fund the necessary infrastructure and to deal with government debt. However the history of the original Commonwealth Bank (now Reserve Bank) demonstrates how Australia developed infrastructure like the East-West railway, for example, and kept debt levels to an absolute minimum at the same time. When will we revisit some of our successful policies rather than continue on the road to disaster?

- - Yours sincerely, Ken Grundy Naracoorte, South Australia