Trevor Cook on public relations, social media and politics

Tag Archives: economics

More, not less, equality needed for economic growth

November 10, 2009 – 7:00 am

Now the attention of Australian policy-makers is turning to maximising prosperity, understood as GDP growth, over the next few years.
The Australian’s Michael Stutchbury says this will require ‘tough-love’ policies.
Usually, this is code for giving carrots to the rich and sticks to the poor. Tough for the bottom of society, great for the top,
In economics, inequality [...]

By Trevor Cook | Posted in Business & economics, Social issues, Uncategorized | Also tagged , , | Comments (5)

Economic theory vs. economic history

October 10, 2009 – 7:04 am

A passionate argument for re-integration (and a longer version here):
This is not to say that the macroeconomic model-building of the past generation has been pointless. But I do think that modern macroeconomists need to be rounded up, on pain of loss of tenure, and sent to a year-long boot camp with the assembled monetary historians [...]

By Trevor Cook | Posted in Business & economics | Also tagged , | Comments (0)

Executive pay greed demoralises employees

March 2, 2009 – 7:05 am

Executive salaries are routinely justified as market-based, as if there was some shortage of corporate bureaucrats ready to fill these plum positions. Some top CEOs are also business-founders and know what it is like to take a risk with their own money. In my view, the huge rewards that occasionally go to someone who sets [...]

By Trevor Cook | Posted in Business & economics | Also tagged | Comments (1)

Rudd cash splash ’supports’ ALP re-election.

February 4, 2009 – 8:13 am

The Rudd Government’s nation-building strategy contains much that is good.  Anything that is infrastructure will help overcome the terrible public sector disinvestment that has occurred in Australia in recent decades and help to ensure our economy can take maximum advantage of the global recovery when it comes.
But the package also includes a lot that is little [...]

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Why you should learn to love the GFC

November 24, 2008 – 5:08 pm

The GFC (global financial crisis) is a vital part of this great system of capitalism that we all seem to love, love in spite of ourselves or accept because we are simply at a loss to think of a workable alternative. Way back when this was a little downturn, George Bush said: “In a market [...]

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Panic not depression

October 23, 2008 – 9:07 am

In a great opinion piece in the Globe and Mail, George Athanassakos a professor of finance at the University of Western Ontario, draws a comparison between the panic of 1907 and the great depression of 1929 and says that depression was avoided in 1907 because governments intervened:
The March 1907 panic wiped out $2-billion (U.S.) of [...]

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Steve Keen (UWS) vs. Gerard Henderson (SMH)

October 21, 2008 – 1:32 pm

Gerard Henderson attacked Keen in the SMH this morning and Keen has promptly responded on his blog this morning (and carried in Crikey).
I worked with Steve Keen in the Commonwealth Public Service many years ago, in a unit that produced Australia Reconstructed. Keen has always been serious, iconoclastic and a devotee of Maynard Keynes.
I have [...]

By Trevor Cook | Posted in Business & economics, Media | Also tagged , , , , , | Comments (4)

The crisis we had to have

October 12, 2008 – 2:08 pm

From a great essay posted on the pinocchio theory blog:
Marx got capitalism right as to its structural tendencies; his mistake was to think that the inevitable, and in the long run inevitably worsening, crises to which capitalism is prone were the points at which the system itself could be overthrown. But in point of fact, [...]

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