Analysis

Write On: Letters to the editor What paper are you reading? Allen Myers's letter (GLW #786) said: "It would be nice to see a socialist analysis of the economic crisis in GLW." I'm not sure what newspaper he thinks he has been reading, but it

The Australian Financial Review doesn’t mince words, nor does it try to conceal reality from its readership.

The following statement was recently released by Climate Action Canberra in response to the government’s proposed Carbon Pollution Reduction Scheme. Visit http://climateactioncanberra.org .

The Fair Work Bill (FWB) being decided in the Senate will be weakened by Labor’s deal with the opposition and independent senators, which further delivers the corporate agenda to undermine gains for workers’ rights.

“We’ve got two goals in the G20", US President Barack Obama said of the approaching London summit of finance ministers and central bank governors from 19 of the world’s largest national economies plus the European Union. “The first is to revive the capitalist system and the second is to agree on new regulations to save capitalism from itself.”

“We have to cut down a lot of the clutter of anything, clutter of the work, focus product innovation, detail, all that is going on in the business but [we] just need to remove so much of the distraction to enable us to do that well”.

National accounts figures, released by the Australian Bureau of Statistics on March 4, showed that the Australian economy contracted by 0.5% in the three months to December, despite the federal government’s $10.6 billion stimulus package, which was paid out to pensioners and families before Christmas.

On February 18, 10 Australian economists criticised the Rudd government’s proposed carbon emissions trading scheme, and called for a science-based policy to achieve 25%-40% cuts in emissions by 2020. The statement is reprinted below.

Cairns Action for Sustainable Transport formed at the start of last year. CAST advocates a sustainable transport system — urban mass transit, regional rail and bus services and rail freight, all powered by renewable energy, and bikeway and pedestrian access networks. Green Left Weekly’s Jonathan Strauss spoke to CAST activists Renee Lees, Svargo Freitag and Stacey O’Brien about CAST’s aims.

Prime Minister Kevin Rudd likes to give the impression that he takes his mission very seriously.

In the face of the Rudd government’s refusal to confirm whether federally-funded maternity leave will be included in the upcoming May budget, the Australian Council of Trade Unions has retreated from its previous stance calling for immediate implementation.

Keynesianism and neoliberalism Graham Matthews' interview with Professor Bill Mitchell (GLW #785) presents a standard Keynesian view of the economic crisis. Essentially, it claims that the crisis is due to the bad policies of neoliberalism: