Letters to the Listener and the Sunday Programme, National Radio.

This letter comes about following an ‘in depth’ coverage of our economic crisis, including a major contribution from Gareth Morgan. Yet again a major news outlet can discuss the total global economy without once mentioning the reality that lies behind it. The articles will appear on the Listener web site in about six weeks, you will be able to find them here www.listener.co.nz

The Editor
The Listener
Auckland

Dear Sir / Madam,

Your extended coverage of the economic crisis, including Gareth Morgan's contribution, welcome as it is, is, unfortunately, fatally flawed. There are two absolutely fundamental issues that are entirely ignored.

Many concerned people have for years been highly critical of our naive and destructive capitulation to monetarism and the corporatised neo-liberal global economy, and isn't what is happening now proof of justification of these concerns; so why and how was this criticism sidelined and silenced, and why is it still having difficulty being heard?   It's not surprising, surely, that New Zealand, a cheer leader for these philosophies, and the sufferer of the shock doctrines of Roger Douglas, is now one of the world's most indebted and vulnerable economies? Where also is the examination of the role of the media in failing to examine and fully critique these matters? Why did not a single main stream economist or commentator predict this crash even while the parapets were tumbling? The reason for these failings is that this financial mischief did not arise in a vacuum, but as an integral and inevitable result of the free-for-all, growth-at-any-cost and dog-eat-dog philosophies that constitute our present economic dogma. No one who has read Naomi Klein's "Shock Doctrine" will fail to understand the true genesis of our present economic travails.

But much more serious even than this omission is that in the many thousand words of explanation about this crisis there's not a single word about peak oil, steel, raw materials, energy or  global warming. It's like trying to explain a diabetic coma without mentioning insulin or sugar. Gareth Morgan, for all his undoubted skills, seems to be no different from all the other economists who can describe and explain the world economy without once referencing the reality that lies behind it; that our economy is a totally dependent subsidiary of our finite environment - the raw materials it furnishes, the energy we can extract from it and the atmopshere and oceans in which we dispose of our waste, each of which was a one-off endowment to humanity, never to be repeated.  The rocketing prices for oil, coal, iron, metals, and other vital raw materials that only came to an end in mid-2008, when the enormity of our present slump became obvious even to economists, was caused by the reality of our finite planet's resources inabililty to meet the perceived needs of our exponentially increasing demands on them. What we saw then was our first glimpse of the Club of Rome's "Limits to growth" and even this merest glimpse was enough to push the entire world economy into reverse. 

Your articles were very thorough in examining the symptoms of our economic woes, but totally inadequate in giving us a diagnosis; without a diagnosis all our present attempts at resuscitation are doomed to failure, they are economic quackery on a global scale. That you can publish so much about our economic crisis, and not even mention once this underlying reality, is proof enough of the delusional state in which we now live. Sadly, not only does the Listener and Gareth Morgan share this delusional state, but so do all our leaders. Even now National are looking back to last century, and the one before that,  for solutions to this century's problems. We are living now at the start of the most profound revolution to affect mankind, and our collective response to this unavoidable and epochal change is such a fatally naive, inadequate and anachronistic one as to make in comparison 'The Great Leap Backwards" of the late lamented McGillicuddy's Serious Party seem entirely rational.

Yours faithfully,

Today on the Sunday Programme, a NZ academic, Ngaire Woods, now resident in the UK, explains the problems with our financial crisis, and the needs of developing countries and the reform of the IMF. She made some good points I’m sure, but the interview was entitled “Tackling the Global Crisis”, which I would have thought might mean more than tackling some simple financial matters. But no, again we are treated to a blinkered view of reality. You can here the interview here.

Dear Chris and Team

Sorry to be repetitive, but to hear yet another economist talk about the global economy as if it exists in some sort of parallel universe of invented human activity, having no physical connection to the planet on which it thrives (or not), then I begin to despair. When will it get through to all these otherwise worthwhile human beings that we are a moderately, but still somewhat inadequately, intelligent ape, creatures of biology, who's economy is, as we are,  a wholly owned subsidiary of our environment. Economists, to a man and a women, who continue to discuss the global economy without discussing the realities of oil depletion, energy shortages, raw material resources, water resources and global warming, are no better than the sages of yore who spent all their time discussing how many angels can dance on the head of a pin. Economics, as it is presently constructed, bears a frightening similarity to a religion, a belief system who's main function it seems is to provide human beings with a more attractive alternative than facing reality. 

Best wishes,

And yes, I am repetitive, but even more so is the ‘system’ which I am criticising. It is becoming ever more apparent that there is no likelihood of our dealing in time with any of these massive environmental issues. I have previously critiqued Jared Diamond’s “Collapse” and Ronald Wright’s “A Short History of Progress”, and the warnings they contain, and one unfortunately has to come to the bleak conclusion, observing the perpetual cluelessness of our leaders, that we will do what humanity has always done, put on our wings of pride and arrogance, soar for a while in some stratospheric reach of human attainment, but then, like Icarus, heedless of the heat of the sun, crash to Earth in misery and confusion.