Listener 19 December 1998.
Keywords: Macroeconomics & Money;
There will be frequent reference next year, to repeating the “fin de siecle”, a movement of decadence at the end of the nineteenth century. However the economic end of an era may be this year. If so, it will be identified with the Russian financial crisis of August 1998. This is not because of the size of the economy, but rather numerous financial institutions were heavily exposed to Russian debt. Some were highly “leveraged”, with a high debt to equity ratio, and are very vulnerable. One hedge fund had a liquidity crisis, others have taken a terrible financial pounding.
Cullen, Anderton, English and Bradford Would Make A Great Team
Listener18 December, 1999.
Keywords: Political Economy & History;
Right to the last day before the election, business commentators presented their own self-interest disguised as ideology disguised as analysis, in a vain attempt to affect political outcomes. They symbolised the end of an era: out of touch with the polity, out of touch with the economy, arguing a case that was known to have failed, as if it is impossible to learn from experience.
Paper to the Annual Conference of the New Zealand Historical Association, Hamilton, 7 December 1999.
Keywords: Political Economy & History;
The question of whether New Zealand has an economic history could be thought of as rhetorical, with an obvious answer of yes. But if we take it as a question about the state of current New Zealand historiography – asking whether historians include the economy in the stories which they tell about New Zealand – the answer is less obvious. If we look at many of the accounts of our history, be it the grand overview or a monograph or essay, we find them bereft of any conscious portrayal of the economy interacting with society and having some influence on the path which New Zealand takes. This is a very sweeping statement and there are exceptions – notably some of the work of John Gould, Brad Patterson and Russell Stone. Nevertheless this paper could take some standard histories and illustrate the broad proposition, including suggesting various insights the writers missed because they ignored an economic context.
Listener 4 December, 1999.
Keywords: History of Ideas, Methodology & Philosophy; Political Economy & History;
At the University of Sussex, where I taught in the 1960s, we talked about “the social control of industry, rather than social ownership.” This was a response to an ongoing debate in the British Labour Party, which had nationalised various industries in the 1940s, was nationalising more in the 1960s, and still had Clause Four in its objectives: “the social ownership of the means of production, distribution, and finance.” The point of the Sussex phrase was that ownership is a means to an end, and that there are other ways of pursuing it. In many industries, market competition will give society the outcomes it wants, far better than nationalisation and monopoly.
Paper commissioned by the Ministry of Consumer Affairs and available on their website. (December 1999)
Keywords Business & Finance
