Recovery is not reform. The government’s intended path to recovery is a mixture of borrowing, pay cuts, and spending cuts. All recovery plans treat the symptoms of a downturn. Global aggregate demand has been buoyed by injections of capital by governments. There is evidence the medicine is working. Global recovery looks in sight. Reform however, is a deeper, and more important, matter.
What kind of permanent changes to the international financial system do we want to see to reduce the likelihood of prolonged downturns in the future?
You can read the rest of Stephen Kinsella's piece in today's Sunday Independent here.
1 comment:
Excellent piece Stephen, accurate in its definition of the fundamental problems and not the hyped distractions.
Clearly to ask politicians to reform politicians is unlikely to succeed, as is the case with bankers, and in truth the main agents in the gross errors evident in the last decade or so are still in position. I have said here a number of times that a general election is not only desirable but is in fact essential to recovery, and reform, not even from a party specific perspective but purely because the current party is so entangled with the other agents that reform/recovery will prove elusive.
However, there is probably one potential avenue of reform that could come from your article also. A real reform of the Seanad (understanding that it has emanated from a cheap political shot looking to anihilate FF by FG) could be pushed for which would mean that members of the Seanad were not allowed to be affiliated to any political party.
It would seem at the moment that the most efficient in the house are non-party, and it is clear also that a lot of the parrotting that occurs in the house is due to the fact that the mother party is discussing the same issues and party allegiance is required.
Another problem is that many of the members of the Seanad are clearly there as their second choice. This is surely not a positive start.
If the seanad could actually offer the oversight of their party affiliated Dail colleagues as outlined above then surely the function of a second house, the oversight, would prove worthwhile.
It would also hoepfully provide many able men and women who may not normally look to public service to consider throwing their hats in the ring
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