Listener 23 February 2002
Keywords Globalisation & Trade; Political Economy & History
I fear the terrorists have won. Oh sure, they may all be eventually eliminated by the efforts of the Western Alliance, but another generation will rise, who will have had confirmed that the methods of bullies and thugs are justified. …
Notes for Panel Discussion, National Library, 14 February, 2002.
Keywords: Globalisation & Trade; Literature and Culture;
The superficial relationship between Australia and New Zealand was captured by last night’s Evening Post article ‘Why do We Hate Australia?’. The short answer is, of course, if the ‘we’ refers to New Zealanders, that we dont hate Australians – we have a complicated relationship with them which is similar to a couple of siblings living with one another in the same unfashionable corner of a city.
Listener 9 February 2002.
Keywords: Globalisation & Trade; Macroeconomics & Money
Street demonstrations and the fall of four presidents in a fortnight tell us something is desperately wrong with the Argentine economy (which, with 56 million people, is the world’s 17th largest economy on some measures). It is a century since the expression ‘as rich as an Argentinian’ was in vogue, and many things have gone wrong since. But the precipitant of the recent crisis was the ‘currency union’ with the United States. The Argentinians had abandoned an independent currency and locked their peso to the US dollar. This ‘dollarisation’ is much stronger than pegging the exchange rate, as occurred in New Zealand before 1984. In a currency union there is a common currency – in effect the US dollar was the Argentinian currency, although they used a ‘currency board’ so that while there was a local currency, the ‘peso’, all financial contracts were effectively written in US dollars. The arrangement has the advantage of price stability if prices in the primary currency (the US dollar) are stable.
Listener 13 October, 2001.
Keywords Governance, Globalisation & Trade
‘Subsidiarity’ is an ugly word. It comes from Germany where they designed their governmental institutions on the principle that decisions should always be taken at the lowest practical level in the hierarchy. It is now a central principle of the European Union, so that Brussels may not make decisions which can be left to the individual member states, just as the German Federal Republic devolves political power to its constituent Lander (states).
Listener 15 September, 2002.
Keywords: Globalisation & Trade; Macroeconomics & Money
A hundred years ago, New Zealand turned down the chance to federate with Australia – to become one of its states, rather remain than an independent nation. Ten years earlier there was a groundswell in favour, but the prosperity and the social consolidation of the 1890s gave us the confidence to go it alone. How different it is today. A survey of the New Zealand elite, by Bob Cately, professor of political studies at the University of Otago, found 88 percent believing that New Zealand would benefit from a single economic union with Australia, and 55 percent that economic amalgamation would lead to political union. (His book Waltzing with Matilda describes the elite as parliamentarians, ‘businesses, business organizations, trade unions and some media outlets.’ He does not mention senior public servants but my impression is that they would have responded similarly.)
Presentation to the Wellington Labour Party Conference on Globalisation 1 September, 2001.
Keywords Globalisation & Trade; History of Ideas, Methodology & Philosophy
I begin by affirming the central tenet of any realistic and fundamental analysis of New Zealand: The dominant single feature of New Zealand over the last two centuries has been its ongoing engagement with the rest of the world. Unless one understands that principle, New Zealand’s history makes no sense. Unless one uses the principle one cannot think realistically about the future, nor meet its challenge. Isolationist strategies are bound to fail. There have been isolationists of the Left, who have tried to isolate New Zealand from the world by a self-sufficient economy. But like the rest of us, their ideas came from overseas, they used imports unobtainable in New Zealand, and they travel overseas. There have also been isolationists of the right, the most recent of whom were the Rogernomes, who thought they could ignore the external sector, and by fiddling the financial sector gain us prosperity. They failed.
Listener 21 July, 2001.
Keywords Globalisation & Trade; Growth & Innovation
In 1987 the Irish decided that their economy needed a new direction. Rather than policy being seized by a small group of extremists, there was a national consensus for change, including from the parliamentary opposition.
Quo Vadis (Trinity Methodist Church, Pakuranga, 2001) p.33-44. Revised version of the text of Brian Easton’s message at Trinity Church in July, 2001.
Keywords: Globalisation & Trade;
I originally undertook to talk about commercialization, but I have recently been working on another, although closely related, question – globalisation. I hope you will forgive me if that is what I talk about today, because it is very much on my mind. I will start by defining globalisation; then talk about two earlier periods of globalisation to see what lessons we can learn from those; then I will talk about some of the current issues.
Listener 17 February, 2001.
Keywords Globalisation & Trade;
The US-led world economic boom of the 1990s may be ending. The economy in 2001 is likely to be rocky in the US, stagnant in Japan, and the rest of the world could suffer with them. That will generate a loss of confidence, not only in the state of the economy, but in some of the euphoric theories that have been dredged up to justify the over-optimism. Dont panic: monetary-based economies fluctuate – always have, always will. But the long term trends – such as globalisation – will grind remorselessly on, and we still need to think about them rigorously.
Listener 6 January 2001
Keywords: Globalisation & Trade;
I like Warsaw. The young people swing along the street with all the insouciance of Parisians. But the old folk bear their past. One could easily have been ruled by the Russians, the Germans, the interwar Republic of Poland, the Soviet Union, and the communist regime of Poland, without hardly moving residence. And now as age (and some brutal winds from the Steppes) close on them, they are once more in a democratic regime.
Listener:24 June, 2000.
Keywords: Globalisation & Trade;
I probably read a major article or a book on globalization every fortnight. One usually finishes thinking the authors do not know what they are talking about either. ‘Globalization’ means so many different things, even to the same writer, that one ends up in confusion. The best I can conclude is that massive technological changes are changing the potential economic geography of the world. Globalization is the financial, economic, social and political response. Different writers look at different facets of the whole, and miss the complexity of the totality.
Listener 15 April, 2000
Keywords Globalisation & Trade;
The Americans who first drilled for Arabian Gulf oil in the 1950s smoked tobacco. Despite an Islamic prohibition, the locals took up the habit, which steadily spread across the country. (Today lung cancer rates in the oil regions of Saudi Arabia are about double the national average, which is climbing.)
Listener 1 April, 2000
Keywords Globalisation & Trade;
Of Arrowtown, Denis Glover wrote there was “Gold in the ceilings/ gold in the floors”. He did not mean literally: rather gold mining has shaped the town. Saudi Arabia is shaped by oil. It holds more than a quarter of the world’s known oil reserves, and is finding more. Currently the kingdom supplies about an eighth of total production, and is flush with the revenue from its sales.
New Zealand Books, October 1999, p.3-4.
Keywords: Globalisation & Trade;
Malcolm Templeton’s Human Rights and Sporting Contacts and Trevor Richards’ Dancing on our Bones are about the same issue although sometimes the reader might think they were in different countries, so different are their perspectives: Templeton provides a comprehensive account of New Zealand’s fraught relationship with apartheid South Africa in the context of New Zealand’s entire foreign diplomacy; Richards’ account is that of the much vilified, but eventually successful (nowadays even respected), protest movement which he led.
Listener 11 September 1999
Keywords: Globalisation & Trade;
I wish Bruce Jesson were here, especially as I write this column about APEC. Bruce and I use to discuss our putative writings. Never directly of course, but after a mulling over, one of us would say “I’ve been thinking about writing a column on this issue, and …” Sadly, we dont know what Bruce would have written on the APEC conference, but there are hints in his last major article.
In R. Miller (ed)New Zealand Government and Politics OUP (2001) p.14-24. Written in August 1999.
Keywords: Globalisation & Trade; Governance;
In recent years there has been increasing concern that a phenomenon of economic globalization, in which the economic processes of production, finance, and exchange in each country are becoming more interdependent between countries, is undermining the sovereignty of the state. In the New Zealand of 1999 this was symbolised by APEC, one of the agencies which promotes this globalisation, albeit a minor one compared to the IMF, World Bank, and WTO (World Trading Organisation), but the government’s focusing on it as a part of its (failed) reelection strategy, because it was hosting the annual APEC conference in September 1999 in Auckland (and numerous preparatory ones before then) gave the organization an undeserved prominence. In particular there was widespread public discussion, much of it reflecting a concern, and some of it generating unrest because APEC (and more fundamentally globalisation) was seen to be against New Zealand’s interests, in contradiction to the government’s expressed belief that it was beneficial. Much of the debate, if it may be called that, from both sides was simplistic and rhetorical, missing the complexities and subtleties of the issue. Rather than provide a yea or nay, this chapter tries to set down the context, first by wading through the narrow economics, but later by opening up the topic to place the economics in the wider context of political economy.
Listener 19 June, 1999
Keywords: Globalisation & Trade; Macroeconomics & Money;
The OECD report on the Irish economy, released this month, is unusually fulsome about their economy, describing its performance as “stunning” and “the envy of countries around the world.” They were referring to the last three years, but they could have been referring to the last fifteen. The accompanying table shows an annual GDP growth rate of 6 percent, high employment and productivity growth, low inflation, a balance of payments surplus, and the almost halving of unemployment.The feat is all the more extraordinary because their economic performance before 1985 was worse than New Zealand’s. Between 1978 and 1985 Irish employment actually fell, consumer inflation was marginally higher than ours, and at 8 percent of GDP the current account deficit was even larger than New Zealand’s is today.
The Endangered Open Society Propels an Urgent Plea For World Financial Reform
Listener 16 January, 1999.
Keywords: Globalisation & Trade; History of Ideas, Methodology & Philosophy;
One of the more bizarre events of the late 1980s was the right wing think tank, the Mont Pelerin Society, holding a conference in Christchurch in honour of philosopher Karl Popper. The approach – one would hardly call it a philosophy – of the majority of attenders was an anathema to Popper. Especially Roger Douglas, whose paper reported his infamous blitzkrieg policy implementation principles, in which democracy is over-ridden, in the total certainty that his policies were correct. Popper would have been interested in the extent that the policies worked – they have not – but Douglas’s unwavering certainty in the truth of his vision would be totally unacceptable. For Popper knowledge is fallible. One constantly reviewed one’s hypotheses to judge their truth. Scepticism is at the heart of his approach, not ideological belief. Douglas’s paper was the equivalent of devil worship in the Popperian church.
In D. Lamberton (ed) Managing the Global: Globalization, Employment and the Quality of LifeI.B. Tauris. (2002) Proceedings of a conference sponsored by the Toda Institute and the Centre for Peace and Conflict Studies, at the University of Sydney, 28-30 November, 1998. P.163-168.
Keywords: Globalisation & Trade; Social Policy;
Globalization challenges us with the question ‘what choice (or what control), if any, does a society open to the globalized world have over its social and cultural policy?’ A common view is that it will that international competitive pressures are so strong that it will drive every country down to the lowest common denominate of a pure market economy, with a minimum of government intervention.
Listener 17 October, 1998.
Keywords: Globalisation & Trade; Macroeconomics & Money;
While I was recently analyzing a government report for a class, a student (who apparently worked on it) became increasingly agitated, asking what was my alternative proposal. Not worrying about analysis, but pursuing policy, is a characteristic Wellington foible. The same fallacy applied to the economists who criticized economist Paul Krugman when he was here. They did not suffer from the disadvantage of having read his analysis, which was considerably more subtle and sophisticated than the critics thought. You dont successfully spend time in top US university economics common rooms and the US economics circuit, without developing powerful defences to the elementary points the New Zealand critics made.