Is Glenn Stevens shaping up to be the worst RBA governor for a long time?

Bruce Head writes: Re. “RBA boss Glenn Stevens: He came, he spent, he soothed” (Friday, item 1). Is Glenn Stevens shaping up to be the worst RBA governor for a long time? I am normally an optimist and I know he needs to soothe, but their quarterly outlook overlooked the meltdown in subprime debt markets; and now he tries to say the fundamentals of the economy are sound — (the currency traders would not seem to agree). Isn’t the USA China’s no.1 export market and it (the US) is a very large customer of most of China’s other big trading partners?

Ken Lambert writes: Former US Fed Reserve boss Alan Greenspan was lauded as a genius and left office nicely in time to just spot his subprime chickens heading for the roost with a 1,000 yard stare. Al’s masterful pumping up of the stock market with his 1% prime rate, and the resulting boom in historically high P/E ratios for every class of share is now exposed for what it is — a massive easy money boom which had to bust when prime interest rates returned to somewhere near normality. The first to go is the subprime mortgage market in the US where janitors with no collateral could get a 3% housing loan from any spivvy financier who tapped into Al’s 1% river of gold. Not good when the same spiv comes looking for 7% at renegotiation time. Al was a Wall Streeter and looked after his own; Ben Bernanke will probably follow his teacher. Their mates always made big money by getting a little slice of a huge churn in margins between buyer & seller, lender & borrower. A little chad, clipped off each dollar as it passes by. Ben will drive the US prime interest rate down to keep money in stock market equity, try to pump the housing market again with low interest loans and hope to keep those chickens away long enough to be called a genius. This time it might not work if the masses discover that the finance spivs have rorted a big chunk of their hard earned and start cutting up very rough.

Michael Shrimpton writes: Re. “The ABC’s Natural History unit becomes history” (Friday, item 22). This amazing appointment of the egregious Courtney Gibson is breathtakingly inept enough, but to see her falsely credited with commissioning The Glass House (which she inherited and straightaway slapped her own credit on its tail!) and Spicks ‘n Specks (Which ditto) is more than human flesh can bear. She did commission The Sideshow and was inexperienced enough to slot it at 7.30pm… with Paul McDermott, Flacco etc, how could she have missed 9.30pm behind The Chaser? These naughty boys have 50% of their natural verve blue pencilled at the earlier time slot. Did she never see The Big Gig? I need to fess up that as Head of Arts and Entertainment for much of the 80s and again at the end of the 90s, I commissioned Australia You’re Standing in it, The Big Gig, The Late Show, The D-Generation, Andrew Denton’s The Money of the Gun, Live and Sweaty, The Libby Gore Specials, Club Buggery, Mother and Son, Rage and then some.

Uranium sales to India:

Martyn Smith writes: Re. “Hurray! A point of policy difference. At last!” (Friday, item 8). In Friday’s Crikey, Richard Farmer discussed the difference in approach between Howard and Rudd on uranium sales to India. It is nice to see there are some differences between them; maybe more will appear once Howard actually calls the election and he and Rudd are forced to detail their policies for all of us to see. It is also noteworthy to see Howard returning to his party’s roots. He really is a Liberal after all. Wasn’t it his party’s founder, “Pig Iron Bob Menzies” who sold pig iron to the Japanese prior to WWII? Now we have Howard selling uranium to India despite that country’s track record of untrustworthiness with uranium. What a far sighted statesman our current prime minister has turned out to be. He will certainly deserve a place in the history books, assuming there is someone around to write them.

The Rudd “me too” strategy:

David Baker writes: Re. “Election 07: “what he said”” (Friday, item 9). The item by Sophie Black asks “Have we missed anything?” at the end. You have missed something pretty important in attributing the following to the government: “The government announces that it will amend the Electoral Act to foil legislation Mr Beattie’s Government passed that allows him to sack councils.” Dated 7 August. In fact Rudd has been taking the lead on this issue for ages, eg the following headlines from the ABC: “Rudd told to ‘butt out’ of council amalgamation row” and “Beattie says Rudd ads against amalgamations no worries“. Whereas Rudd has been worrying away at this problem for ages, Howard has just jumped on the bandwagon. Only Liberal Party spin and/or incredibly lazy journalism could possibly attribute this one to Howard and suggest Rudd is following!

Gray Ramsey writes: Please remember, when we are merrily taking the p-ss out of the Rudd “me too” strategy, the lesson of Bush/Gore in 2000. The left, frustrated with the “sameness” of the two parties, failed to see that very small differences at the centre of power can have a vast difference to those who dwell on the circumference. That allowed Bush to come close enough to steal the last electoral votes, and we can now be pretty certain that the world is substantially different than it would have been under Gore. With our own upcoming election, it is very likely better the devil we do not know than the one we do. Australia is a pretty conservative place, and Rudd’s current job is winning. If by doing that all he achieves is a slowing of the march to the right, I for one will be grateful.

Pauline Hanson:

Geoff Medley writes: Re. “Predictable outrage greets Pauline Hanson” (Friday, item 14). Having just returned from Hawaii after 2 weeks vacation the only news to reach the holiday islands from Australia was that Pauline Hanson was about to register a new political party and stand for election to the Senate on a racial platform based on hate of minority groups. Surely if this is the only news worthy reporting outside of Australia, then the media should do us all a favour and have nothing more to do or say about Pauline Hanson?

John Clements writes: Does she really want to win? Last election she received free publicity and ran a very low cost campaign and received how much? In public AEC funds? Think it through — Hanson was a true believer in something once. I am sure that passed with the working over from the liberal right and their caboose (The Nats). Maybe Hanson’s simply working on the superannuation now, you couldn’t blame her for wanting some funds back from the AEC.

Qantas security:

Matt Natalier writes: Re. “Qantas security is a joke” (yesterday, item 7). Actually there is nothing wrong with Qantas security (in this instance). You have mistaken identity with security. Your identity can be easily faked, so there is no benefit to QANTAS to validate it. A better approach (the approach which is taken) is to not allow items that are of high risk (ie guns, bombs, knives, etc) on the plane. Here is a rule of thumb. If you are ever asked for ID it is for reasons other than security associated with the ID.

Knee jerk reactions:

Bruce Graham writes: I am too busy, and tired, to try to explain cogently why Helen Armstrong is just silly (Friday, comments). But I would appreciate it if you would try to find somebody else who will take up the cudgel. There are a lot of people out there who want to see something like this (children with STDs) as simple and black and white. The world isn’t like that, and if you are going to publish the simplistic knee jerk reactions, you owe it to your readers to also publish considered responses.

The West Australian:

Eric Lawson writes: Re. “Newspaper sales: the not so simple truth” (16 August, item 5). Your story did not include The West Australian’s circulation figures. Is that because you no longer consider it a newspaper but a means of distributing many full pages of supermarket and white goods advertising? It’s true that there are good local stories here and there — they still have some good journos — but display advertising certainly dominates. I used to think it was illegal to have more than a prescribed proportion of advertising, as it was in my brief career as a journalist, but maybe that has changed. And then there are all the special sections wrapped up in the Saturday edition. I have to ditch half a gumtree into the recycling bin before I can find something to read. But anyway getting the West is probably the most reliable way of finding out who has died, which becomes increasingly important with age. I’m doing my bit to help circulation — now on my second series of six months (the current promo) at half price. I could have accepted a similar deal from The Australian but opted only for the Saturday edition which, except for certain of its columnists, at least reads like a newspaper and provides some worthwhile stories. As well, the local district give-aways help to swell the volume of recycled newsprint but at least they contain a lot of legitimate parochial news. Even Crikey can’t match that.

David Hardie writes: Re. “Things are getting wild at The West” (Friday, item 21). The argument from The West in their contempt of court proceedings that “the court should have been more robust and that it should give jurors greater credit than to believe everything they read in its newspaper” probably has a reasonable foundation in reality. Are they now in the same league as John Laws who sees that he is no longer in journalism but entertainment therefore factual accuracy optional?

Angus & Robertson:

Clancy Tucker writes: Re. “Angus & Robertson responds: setting the record straight” (10 August, item 22). As an emerging writer, Dave Fenlon’s comments from Angus & Robertson didn’t make me feel fuzzy and warm. In fact, his letter sent a chill down my spine. I’ll cut to the chase. Writing is a tough business. If published, we writers might receive 10% of RRP. That becomes 7% if we use an illustrator. The entire publishing industry in this country needs a revolution. I write for young adults and have always wanted to lock publishers and distributors in a room with me, other writers and a whole bunch of our clients (kids). Wow, what a great day that would be. Go, kids! All those who decide what literary works are published and distributed in this country have to realise three major things: writers work hard at their craft, they (the publishers) do not seek opinions from their clients and thirdly, the relationship between publishers and writers is like a marriage. Publishers would be out of business if it were not for passionate writers. They are lucky there is so much talent around. Hey, let’s make Australia the literary capital of the world, let’s encourage kids and adults to read and let’s stop mucking around. Talk’s cheap. Sure, no-one denies distributors a right to make a dollar. Unfortunately, the recent decision by Angus and Robertson has made it all that more difficult for emerging writers in this country. Trust me. Great stuff will languish as a result… or be snapped up by overseas publishers. Then again, what’s news, eh? Same old, same old. That’s exactly what has happened with our musicians, dancers, actors, medical breakthroughs, inventions etc.

Send your comments, corrections, clarifications and c*ck-ups to boss@crikey.com.au. Preference will be given to comments that are short and succinct: maximum length is 200 words (we reserve the right to edit comments for length). Please include your full name – we won’t publish comments anonymously unless there is a very good reason.