As global markets continue their slide into oblivion and the Washington Consensus begins to resemble a cringe-worthy pun from a late-era issue of Mad magazine, it’s worth reflecting on what self-professed “centre-left” governments are actually doing in response.
Although broadly supportive of Hank Paulson’s $US700 billion Wall Street bailout — the shortest of short-term fixes designed to strike the baddest of bad debts off the books — social democrats like Kevin Rudd and Gordon Brown remain hamstrung when it comes to dealing with the finance clot wreaking havoc on global markets.
As Guy Rundle argued recently, Western economies, with their manufacturing industries gutted and the entrails shipped abroad, are struggling to actually produce anything beyond amorphous “services” and intellectual property.
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